While seeking to resolve his wife’s disappearance, a travel writer uncovers mysteries in the White Mountains that lead to ghosts, CIA revelations, and disturbing answers to political events that shook America in the 1960s. The story begins with an unusual train ride.
A good writer writes for only one reason. It isn’t fame. It isn’t money. And it’s not even for a desired readership, although that’s a part of it. A good writer writes for existence. Because he or she will not exist if he or she doesn’t write. And since you must define yourself through your work, you must also continue to redefine the state of the art based on who you are.
~ Marcus Steine
Train Ride
Roger Martens walked briskly beneath the eyeball-like arches of Boston’s South Station for the 7:15 a.m. train to Manhattan. After boarding, he took an aisle seat beside a teenage boy holding H.G. Wells’ Outline of History. Opposite the boy was a young woman in a business suit busy with her computer. Facing Roger was a middle-aged lady who’d already shut her eyes, seeking to bring the fleeting presence of dream to their tiny, seated community. A community of anonymity where silence reigned and Roger hoped to find peace of mind.
But with the train’s first jolting steps, a man wearing a trench coat entered the car. He looked back at Roger and took a seat on the opposite side of the aisle in a perfect position to watch and observe. Once the train left the station, the man picked up a magazine and continued to make eye contact.
Roger tried to tell himself that any concerns about the watchful reader were groundless when the conductor came by to scan tickets. Although as he began to review his notes for a book about the White Mountains, the trench-coated gentleman’s persistent glances cast an eerie spotlight on his wife’s unexplained disappearance in late January.
Rachel had been staying in at the Presidential Inn in Jackson, New Hampshire, after the manager, Ben Bishop, offered her a discounted price for a well-furnished room on the third floor. She was pursuing a probing inquiry into the JFK assassination for Currents Magazine. The concept was: “What/if some of the dissident researchers were onto the truth? When you add all the clues together, what, if anything, makes the most sense?”
It was nearly a decade since the fiftieth anniversary had failed to produce much of interest about the 35th president’s assassination. But the timing for Rachel’s article appeared to be good. New evidence was coming forth, along with new contentions about the CIA withholding relevant data. Rachel told him, “The majestic solitude of the White Mountains with its Presidential Range is the perfect place for me to work on this.” At Bishop’s invitation, her plan was to stay there off and on for three months, as she explained—”to accelerate the project in a new location.” The move also provided some surprising local connections, including Ben Bishop himself who’d once been employed by the CIA. An association that took on a more concerning tone after Rachel vanished from Roger’s life, leaving him with a threatening sense of isolation, but just as much in love as before.
*
While sadly reflecting on his wife’s likely demise, Roger reread a few excerpts from a file called “The Silent Dead” that he’d transferred onto his laptop from Rachel’s Lenovo. More than forty-five people associated with the assassination died mysteriously, most of whom were either journalists seeking inquiry, or witnesses to what transpired, or figures presumably involved in how it was set up.
Rachel began her list with the third category. When he glanced through a trio of names, all Mafia figures who’d spoken openly about their ties to the CIA, the trench-coated gentleman looked on inquiringly. The most notorious was Sam Giancana, a Chicago boss who oversaw several other Mafiosi linked to the assassination. Giancana was shot seven times with a .22-caliber pistol, on June 19, 1975, after he’d bragged about how the Mafia actively collaborated with the CIA. The bullet patterns formed a circle around his mouth.
Two others followed in Rachel’s notes. Johnny Roselli’s corpse was discovered cut up in an oil drum on August 7, 1976, after he’d testified to Congress about the Mafia’s ties to the CIA. And Charles Nicoletti was shot three times in the back of the head on March 29, 1977, after he’d been summoned to talk to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Both Roselli and Nicoletti had reported to Giancana.
*
Soon the man in the trench coat stopped looking up, and Roger managed to recenter himself in the travel book he was planning for Sam Pullman. Yet another quest for truth, although not nearly as challenging as his wife’s search for what really happened on November 22, 1963. It was odd, perhaps, that Roger had never written about the country or even the state where he lived and raised a family, but Rachel’s stay at the Presidential brought him into the White Mountains with new eyes. What had once been a holiday location soon became a place of mystery and intrigue, and her disappearance put a heart-wrenching exclamation point on both.
Roger’s White Mountains reflections ended after they left Stamford and the tall trenchcoated man began to walk toward the café car. When he was parallel to Roger’s seat he stopped and gazed out like he knew something concerning. Maybe even something about what happened to Roger’s missing wife. Suddenly the train jerked and the man leaned over. His eyes looked grimly ahead, his fingers spread out toward Roger’s chin, and his lips moved in a faint whisper, shaping the words “I have something to tell you!”
Feeling unready for a troubling message, Roger’s foot slid out reflexively to keep the intruder at a distance. Their car lurched again and Roger raised his right knee. Or rather the knee raised itself in an arcane, balletic move to compensate for the jerking of the train. The result was instant contact with the man’s leg. As the train teetered back the trench-coated intruder stumbled and fell sideways into the aisle. When his shoulder struck the floor a gun fired, and the man’s torso, arms, and legs began to tremble.
Roger wanted to scream. The teenage boy pushed himself against the window and grimaced. The young lady engrossed in her computer bit her lips and flinched. The napping woman woke up with a startled expression which quickly turned into shock and then disgust when she leaned away from the aisle. As if he were now a part of their community the man on the floor let out a faint moan. But only seconds later he was silent, the tremors stopped, and the trench-coated gentleman became inanimate inside his clothes.
Roger took charge and called for help. Two people nearby, unfettered by the figure on the floor, jumped up to find someone. Within a minute the train’s conductor and an attendant arrived in their dark vests. A man and a woman. After only a few words with Roger and several others, the conductor rolled the body over. Everyone nearby studied the face looking up at them with an aura of stupefaction. If Roger looked at it a certain way the cold gray eyes and the open mouth still seemed to hold the answer to an unspoken question.
When the conductor rummaged through the trench coat’s pockets, he found a gun as well as two passports, each with “separate identities”—something not uncommon for CIA operatives. With that, Roger felt like he was falling down the proverbial rabbit hole destined not for Alice’s Wonderland but a new ring in Dante’s Inferno. The train ride had brought too much together too fast in a sudden, brutal rhythm. Which made Roger wonder what was really happening? Why was it happening? And why had it centered on him? He wanted to breathe. He wanted to escape. And he wanted a place of refuge.
