1972

We were doing a job in Berlin that year.  It was a big, sprawling, elaborate operation that Phelps told me later was going to be his "masterpiece."  Tell you the truth, I'm not even sure I could tell you what it was about at this point.  There were a lot of moving parts and I never could keep track of them.

What I do remember is the months I spent learning the sewers and tunnels under the city.  All I can compare it to is what happens when you don't coil your garden hose properly:  a mixed-up tangle going in every direction.  And, to make matters worse, there was every chance that you would stumble upon some unexploded ordinance left over from the war, or planted to "discourage" refugees from the wrong side of the wall.

So honeycombed with digging is Berlin that more than once we fell through as the tunnel we were moving through collapsed into a tunnel not used since the war.  And no sooner would we pick ourselves up, get reoriented and back on track then that tunnel would fail and we would find ourselves in a passage that hadn't been used for a century before that.

What a nightmare.

A person of my size is not well-suited to small spaces and that's perhaps why Barney and I made such a good team:  he was Mr. Inside and I was Mr. Outside.  He could fold himself into a suitcase and I would carry it.

Don't get me wrong, I did okay on jobs like Berlin.  We'd done so many of them that I learned how to handle it, they just weren't my favorites.

Paris was a different story.

Phelps sent him to work with us at one point and we had to send him back because he couldn't keep it together.  Turns out, the one disguise he couldn't master was a person who wasn't afraid of bugs.  Never seen anyone go to pieces over earthworms before.

We were months learning the Berlin job and getting ready to do the deal when the plug got pulled.

Munich changed everything.

Nobody likes getting caught with their cheese in the wind and the Secretary least of all.

What did we know and when did we know it?  Most importantly, why didn't we know about something like this before it happened?

Can I just say right here that this was total bullshit.  We were a lot of things, but we were not sneakers and peekers.  The only time we got near a crystal ball was when we were juicing up a mark.

It was up to the tea leaf readers to pick our targets and, once they did, we went to work on them and figured out how to turn their own behavior against them. 

The Cold War was great for our business because we knew what to expect and could plan accordingly.  Dealing with dyed in the wool terrorists is like trying to play with a football made of Jell-o:  it's a whole different game.

Munich was a grad school course in not having our shit together and we are behind in our payments for the lessons we learned.

They pulled everyone off the board.  Everyone.  All operations, even ours, were suspended pending review.

I don't think I ever saw Phelps so pissed off.

To his credit, he was able to get a waiver that allowed Barney and me to delay our return until we could cover the team's tracks.  I just wish he could have also negotiated us some help.

The deal he did make had one additional and unforeseeable consequence.

I never did find out how, but, as a result of trying to save his "masterpiece" Phelps, or someone, broke the firewall that had protected us from being bothered by the White House.

Years later, over our lunch, Rollin told me that those harpies at Langley had sold us out in order to buy some time out of the spotlight.  Certainly seems like something they would do.  They were always quick to take credit for the real workers and quicker to lay blame when one of their projects went sideways.

Whatever happened, once it was done there was no way of undoing it.

Nixon's White House had more spooks and ex-spooks in it than Disney's Haunted Mansion and they had just been given a shiny new tool in their efforts to win a second term.  To the surprise of no one, they were not going to be shy about using it.

Phelps kept telling us that as soon as this got cleared up we were all going right back to Berlin to finish what we had started.  That was easy to say, but it meant that we couldn't do anything else out of not wanting to miss the call.

For most, this was not a problem.  We had legends to go back to, but for Paris it was another story.

1972:  the cabaret business was dead.  Quite literally, nobody was buying his act.  He was one of those guys whose whole life was in his work and to play the part he had several different lives in different cities all over the country.  As a result, he had lot of different hands in his pocket and no way to keep them full.

It was a real shame:  after being so good at playing marks all over the world, Paris had unwittingly made himself into one.

And Liddy knew just how to play him.

Nixon's inner circle was worried about Hunt's loyalty and, through Colson to Liddy, they reached out to Paris.  Word is, they told him a tale about Hunt's wife and some missing campaign money.  His job, we found out much later, was to get close to Dorothy.

They got real close.

They got so close that they were both on United 553 when it went down that December.

Newspapers said they "found" $10,000 in her luggage.  They story quickly developed that they were going to run away together and start a new life.

I don't know who did what.  All I know is that we never did get back to Berlin and I spent the rest of my time chasing mobsters and listening to Phelps whine about his masterpiece.