Clandestine

Chapter 9 - On the Run

My first call was to Simon von Hammersfield which, in retrospect, was a foolish move. Fortunately the phone numbers Simon had given me were now all disconnected, as the last thing I needed to do was identify my whereabouts. If I had been able to contact him he would have told me to hide in the nearest theatre, and we all saw how well that worked for the “real” Oswald.

I returned to the rooming house -- another foolish move -- and did not wait another instant to check out of the hotel. I moved quickly to the “L” train and once at the station purchased a ticket for the 7:00 am train to Minneapolis. I stayed in the station that evening but never slept. In the morning I rode to Minnesota and contemplated my next move.

I knew from my time in New York City that these cursory CIA contract agents were manipulating me. Von Hammersfield, Eduardo, and the rest of the associates I met plied me with money and women over a 2-year period, eventually setting me up to be an actor in the plot to assassinate the U.S. president, and I had let it happen. I was now officially a loose end, and men who assassinate a President do not get nervous about eliminating a few loose ends, which made me wonder who the so-called Harry Johnson from Chicago really was. It was time for me to get lost.

I checked into the Ambassador Hotel in Minneapolis under the name Malcolm Gould and proceeded to watch the television coverage with interest. I was shocked to see live footage of the transfer of Lee Harvey Oswald from the Dallas Sherriff’s office, yet less surprised when he was shot dead. The fact that the perpetrator was Simon’s old friend, Jack Ruby, was even less of a shock at this point.

It was while in Minneapolis that I decided my next move. The upside of my two-year hiatus in America was that I had earned approximately $25,000 and banked just about the entire amount, so I was not without money to travel. I contemplated flying back home to the U.K. but thought that might be too predictable a pattern and therefore ruled out that course of action. Instead, the one ally I had in North America was my roommate from Berlin, Robert Carling, who had immigrated to Canada to work for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. As much as I needed home, I also needed a friend.

I was able to track down Robert in Ottawa and left a message for him to call me at the hotel in Minneapolis. He got back to me later in the evening. I asked him if I could visit him in Ottawa and if he might be able to help me find work in Canada for a few months. I did not mention anything about the previous two years in the U.S. or any trouble that I might be trying to avoid. Fortunately Robert’s radar was intact and he sensed that there was something afoot. He told me to catch a plane from Minneapolis to Montreal where he would meet me the next evening. I thought I might have trouble entering the country with my British passport and U.S. visa but there was no issue. Robert had become well connected with the RCMP and I’m sure he pulled some strings to make sure that there were no issues at the border.

I arrived in Montreal on November 29th in the middle of a snowstorm. It seemed as though the dark cloud over my head had followed me to Canada but nothing could be further from the truth. Robert met me at the airport and drove me back to his home in Ottawa. On the drive we got caught up and it felt like we were back in Berlin. Robert was engaged to be married and was very busy with his position with the RCMP. The Canadian government was creating an intelligence arm, which would, over the course of 20 years, grow out of the national police department’s control and into CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Robert knew that I was working in the intelligence community in the U.S. and never asked me any direct questions about my time there.

Robert was living in a nice flat just off Bank Street in Ottawa. It was the ultimate bachelor’s pad, with cereal in the cupboard and milk and beer in the fridge, not much else. He insisted that I stay on his couch for as long as it took to get settled. I let him know that I intended to change my name while in Canada to Malcolm Gould.