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“You have no idea what I’ve done.”
~
February 4th, 1964
“He won’t talk to me anymore.” Morris let out an exasperated sigh and tossed the case file on the table next to him. “And he probably lied about the few things he actually did tell.”
Frank contemplated the motionless figure of Erik Lehnsherr behind the glass panel. His hands and feet were firmly tied to the back and legs of a chair. They had used cable ties, no metal cuffs of course, just as they had cleaned the room of every other metal object, replaced the lock with a provisional wooden door latch, ripped out the electric cables and reverted to candles. Gyrich even insisted on replacing the one-way-mirror with a normal window pane, so Lehnsherr couldn’t dissolve the thin metal coating and mold it into a weapon. A useless effort, Frank thought, as they hadn’t bothered to reconstruct the rest of the building which consisted mostly of steel-reinforced concrete.
So for all they knew it should be easy for Lehnsherr to free himself, without much doubt killing them all in the process. Why didn’t he? It certainly wasn’t out of courtesy to make up for the inconveniences he had caused.
“I don’t think he lied,” Frank finally said, tearing his gaze away from the man.
“Things he said certainly don’t add up,” Morris retorted, reaching for his lukewarm coffee and grimacing at its taste.
“Still… he doesn’t strike me as someone who’d resort to lying.” After all, to Lehnsherr’s mind he was fighting for a righteous cause. There was no need to lie. Especially as long as they weren’t asking the right questions.
“Shall I take over for a moment?” he asked, already reaching for the file.
“If it makes you happy, Lowell. I definitely won’t stop you.”
*
Lehnsherr looked up as Frank entered the small cell. His gaze was as calm as the rest of his demeanor and he didn’t make a sound as he watched Frank sit down opposite him. Frank’s eyes fell upon the glass of water, untouched since the beginning of the interrogation. The man’s hands were tied. Had anyone actually expected Lehnsherr to ask for help when he got thirsty?
“Well, Mr. Lehnsherr, I have a few more things to ask you since there seem to be a few… inconsistencies in your previous statements.” He looked up from the file in front of him just in case the man chose to show any kind of reaction. He did not.
“You said, you didn’t recruit Oswald to kill General Edwin Partridge. Is that right?” His question was again met with a blank stare.
“In fact you stated that Oswald was never recruited by yourself or any member of the Brotherhood. Seeing that at least one member of said group is a known telepath it wouldn’t seem necessary to bother with recruiting, would it?” Lehnsherr wasn’t impressed by this or if he was he had a good way of not showing it. Frank pressed on.
“Oswald held some surprisingly strong beliefs about the mutant movement. Rather strange for someone who wasn’t a mutant himself. And with the existence of mutants and your underground workings generally unknown to the world… it makes me wonder.” He paged through the papers on the table. “According to her file, Ms. Frost has shown an outstanding talent for altering memories and perception. Surely it has been easy for her to make Oswald believe shooting Partridge was his own idea.” He had probably never noticed that his mind had been tampered with. No wonder that Oswald had so readily confessed to killing the man. For all he had known he had done the world a great favor. If they had repeated the scheme for the Kennedy assassination, then-
“Why has Oswald so vigorously denied any involvement?” he mused aloud. He felt Lehnsherr’s unmoved glare upon him but did not let himself be distracted from his train of thought. After Ruby had shot Oswald he had declared he had done it to spare Jackie the pain of a trial. He had revoked that statement later on, instead insisting that he couldn’t remember any of it. Had Frost wiped their minds after the crimes? Or had she maybe even controlled them? He rummaged through the file but it did not contain any information about her ability to control minds. But she wasn’t the only telepath on the planet and for what they knew not even the strongest.
“After you parted in October 1962, did you ever again have contact to Mr. Charles Xavier,” Frank asked and for a split second Lehnsherr’s gaze darted up to his eyes. It was clear he realized just as quickly that he had given himself away.
“Are you going to answer my question, Mr. Lehnsherr?” The man remained silent.
“Hm,” Frank commented this, pretending to busy himself with the papers. “You were arrested near Maybrook, New York, where you turned yourself over to the Project’s operatives. Interestingly, even though Mr. Xavier’s exact whereabouts are unknown, he is assumed to live somewhere in the New York counties.” When he finally looked up again he was glad Lehnsherr’s mutant power didn’t involve actual deadly glares.
“Somehow I can’t believe it was mere coincidence that you decided to travel all the way from Dallas to Upstate New York to get yourself arrested. Did you contact Mr. Xavier?” Frank asked again, his voice low, and to his surprise Lehnsherr answered.
“No.”
“You had no contact at any time whatsoever after you parted in Cuba?”
“No.”
Frank leaned back against the back of his chair. He pondered his next question for a moment, absentmindedly biting his lip.
“Has any other member of the Brotherhood had contact to-“
“No,” Lehnsherr interrupted him, his voice cutting through the air. “No one, at no time, had contact to Mr. Charles Xavier. He has no involvement in this affair.”
Stunned into silence by this sudden outburst of talkativeness, Frank nodded. He had, of course, read the CIA files regarding the ‘Division X’, had read about its untimely end on the Cuban shores. He remembered parts of Xavier’s characterization, jotted down in short bullet points by another CIA agent. Cooperative, but self-opinionated. Strongly attached to the Division members. Next to Lehnsherr’s picture there had been a list of words like erratic and unstable. Personal connection to target subject. Questionable allegiances. While reading he had tried to fill the gaps in the incomplete report (the agent’s mind had been wiped shortly after the incident), had pictured the tragedy unfolding between these two men. Sitting here now he found Lehnsherr’s allegiances to not be as questionable as presumed.
Of course they had been looking for Xavier ever since Cuba. As soon as it became clear that a telepath might have been involved in the assassinations, efforts had been doubled to finally find the mutant. However, when Lehnsherr spoke the truth and Xavier had nothing to do with any of it why had he turned himself over when the operatives had narrowed down Xavier’s position.
“What about your involvement then?” Frank finally continued. “Who are you trying to protect?”
Lehnsherr once again remained silent. So they were back to this. Frank’s gaze swept over the short list of names. Ms. Frost and Mr. Quested had been members of the Hellfire Club. Same went for the Azazel-guy who was killed in July alongside the former Division X member Angel Salvadore. This left Raven Darkholme, Xavier’s sister and later member of the Brotherhood of Mutants. A most likely connection.
There was no hard evidence that she had taken part in the assassinations or in any of the other reported incidents involving the Brotherhood. But being the shapeshifter that she was… There had been contradictory testimonies of witnesses who had claimed seeing Oswald in various locations at the same time. This left the question why they would abandon an embattled approach and do the dirty work themselves instead. Seeing that they had to bring Ruby into play to stop Oswald’s blabbing, it had clearly not been the best decision. Maybe one Lehnsherr hadn’t approved of.
“Did Ms. Darkholme accompany you on your trip to New York?”
If Lehnsherr had been free to use his hands he would have probably run them over his suddenly tired face. “What do you expect me to tell you, Mr. Lowell?”
“Actually, I don’t expect you to tell me anything. I still have to ask though.”
“You’ve got the man responsible for your president’s death. “ Lehnsherr regarded him with a pensive look before his eyes drifted off to something beyond the confinements of the bleak concrete walls. “Rest doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” Frank said.
“Well, I can’t help you with that,” Lehnsherr retorted softly. These were the last words he ever spoke to Frank.
*
“Your opinion, Lowell?” was all Gyrich said, as he’d finished reading the transcript of the interrogation.
“He didn’t do it.”
“Then why did he turn himself over?”
“I wish I knew,” Frank said. He had racked his brain over that detail for the last few hours, to no avail. Lehnsherr had sacrificed his freedom for reasons probably forever unknown. “It seems to me, the President’s assassination is only a fraction of a story we’ll never get to hear. I don’t know who pulled the trigger on that day, but I can assure you, Lehnsherr did not kill President Kennedy.”
“But he was involved in the events?” Gyrich asked.
“Yes. We can be sure of that.”
“Well, there is no way we could let him run loose even if he weren’t,” Gyrich sighed. “Now we just have to find a way to actually prevent him from running loose. We can’t keep him sedated forever.”
“When will the trial be held?” Frank inquired.
“Trial?” Gyrich let out a short, humorless laugh. “What for? Officially, Oswald killed the President. The Warren-Report published tomorrow will not include anything regarding these mutants. No one is interested in letting the public in on this matter. Not as long as we don’t know how to handle it. And besides, he did confess, didn’t he?”
“Well… yes,” Frank admitted grudgingly. “But it’s obviously a false confession.”
Gyrich shrugged his shoulders. “In the end it doesn’t really matter. Mutants were involved. For now, that’s all I need to know.”
With a sharp snap Gyrich closed the folder in front of him and rose from behind his desk. Frank realized he was about to be dismissed. “What about Xavier?”
“What about him?”
“The search for his location keeps quite a number of agents occupied and according to Lehnsherr he’s not relevant for the case,” Frank answered as he got up from his chair.
“And you believe him?”
“He’s not a liar.”
Gyrich contemplated this for a moment as he handed the file back to Frank. “Withdrawing the agents is probably what he wants us to do, you know that.”
“I do.”
Gyrich held on to the folder for a little longer, wrapping his mind around Frank’s unspoken suggestion. “It will require some level of cooperation in return.”
Frank knew Gyrich would have no qualms about exploiting what might be Lehnherr’s only weak spot. He wasn’t so sure about Lehnherr’s reaction. “I have no doubt we can make him agree to that.”
~