Ezra Prentice's symphony of chaos, so brilliantly composed and flawlessly executed, had an immediate and unintended side effect. The city of Dallas, on the morning of November 22nd, 1963, was a city on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The delicate, carefully managed security apparatus responsible for protecting the President of the United States had been stretched to its absolute limit, not by a single, coherent threat, but by the dozen phantom fires Ezra himself had set.
The Dallas Police Department was in a state of controlled panic. Their night had been a nightmare of exploding restaurants, high-level mob arrests, and running gun battles between warring factions of armed, fanatical Cubans. Every available detective was working the mob cases. SWAT teams were on high alert, monitoring the Cuban neighborhoods. Communication lines were swamped with frantic reports and conflicting jurisdictions between local police, the FBI, and the Treasury Department. The entire law enforcement ecosystem of the city was overwhelmed, its attention and resources dangerously diverted by the very incidents Ezra had created to protect the President. He had created a perfect fog of war.
It was in this fog that the first, crucial piece of his own plan quietly and tragically failed. The police dispatcher who had taken the anonymous tip about the "suspicious individual" at the Texas School Book Depository had dutifully logged the call and sent a patrol car, unit 251, to investigate. But just as the car was turning towards Elm Street, a priority-three call came over the radio: "All available units, officer down, shots fired," stemming from a violent confrontation during the arrest of a Marcello enforcer.
Unit 251's mission was instantly re-tasked. The vague report of a "suspicious individual" was downgraded in the face of a confirmed officer-down emergency. The dispatcher, drowning in a flood of high-priority calls, made a note in the log: the rifle tip was likely a prank, another piece of the bizarre chaos that had plagued the city all night. The order to investigate the Book Depository was lost in the shuffle, an insignificant whisper drowned out by the roar of Ezra's orchestrated mayhem.
In their hotel room, the men of Team Charlie watched the street in front of the Book Depository. They waited for the police car that would never arrive. Their leader, a man who lived by timetables and probabilities, felt the first, cold prickle of unease. Their clean, simple neutralization plan had failed, not because of a strategic error, not because of an enemy counter-move, but because of the mundane, unpredictable friction of bureaucratic chaos. Lee Harvey Oswald, the man they believed was either the designated patsy or the primary threat, remained in the sixth-floor window of the Book Depository, completely unaware that he had ever been a target, a ghost left on the battlefield by a system that had become too overwhelmed to see him.
While Ezra's meticulous plan was being undone by a simple, random accident, the true, unforeseen variable was moving into his own final position. The KGB sleeper agent, the man known only by his codename "Orion," was the ultimate professional. He was a ghost, a man without a past, his legend meticulously crafted over a decade of deep cover. He had no connections to the local Mob. He had no ties to the Cuban exiles. His name was not on any watch list. He was, for all intents and purposes, invisible.
Orion had been in Dallas for a week, observing, planning, preparing. He had watched the chaos of the preceding night unfold not with alarm, but with a cold, professional appreciation. He did not know who was responsible for the arsons and the gunfights, but he recognized the signature. It was the work of a sophisticated intelligence agency, a classic disruption operation designed to distract and overwhelm local security forces. He realized, with a grim irony, that some unknown player on the field was inadvertently providing him with the perfect operational cover.
His own pre-planned perch was not the obvious, six-story Book Depository, a location he had already dismissed in his planning as a "sucker's nest," too exposed, too likely to be monitored. His chosen location was the nearby Dal-Tex Building, a less conspicuous, more defensible position that offered an equally perfect field of fire onto Dealey Plaza.
He had entered the building an hour earlier, posing as a telephone repairman, his rifle disassembled and hidden in a toolbox. In a vacant, dusty office on the third floor, he reassembled his weapon, a high-powered, custom-built sniper rifle. He was calm, his movements economical, his heart rate steady. He was a surgeon preparing for a delicate operation.
He moved to the window, opened it a crack, and looked down at the scene below. He saw the expectant crowds, the fluttering flags, the Dallas police officers looking hassled and distracted. He saw the chaos his unknown benefactor had sown, and he knew that it had given him the one thing a professional assassin craves above all else: an environment of absolute confusion, a stage where his own quiet, singular act of violence would be just one more scream in a chorus of mayhem.
The motorcade appeared, a gleaming river of chrome and steel. The presidential limousine, a dark blue Lincoln Continental, turned from Houston onto Elm Street, slowing for the sharp, hairpin curve. The crowds were cheering, their faces bright with adoration. The sun was shining. It was a perfect, beautiful day.
In the Kykuit command center, Ezra Prentice watched the live, black-and-white television broadcast, a rare sense of grim satisfaction settling over him. He had faced a terrible threat and had met it with a brilliant, proactive strategy. The city was in chaos, but it was his chaos, a chaos he had designed and controlled. The threats he had identified were neutralized. He believed, with the full force of his formidable intellect, that his intervention had worked. He had saved the President.
The camera zoomed in on the limousine. We see the smiling President, his hand raised in a wave to the cheering crowd. We see the First Lady, a vision of grace in her pink suit.
The scene cross-cuts, a rapid, heart-stopping montage.
The oblivious Lee Harvey Oswald, watching the parade from the sixth-floor window of the Book Depository, a pawn who never knew he was in the game.
And the calm, professional ghost, Orion, in the Dal-Tex building, his breathing slow and steady, his eye pressed to the scope of his rifle, the crosshairs settling with a final, deadly stillness on the back of the President's head.
The first shot rang out.