Christian Klee was a little startled. What the Oracle said was true.
“And all this to save your hero, Francis Kennedy,” the Oracle said. “The man who can do no wrong except when he sets the whole world on fire.” The Oracle had placed a box of thin Havana cigars on the table; Christian took one of them and lit it. “You were lucky,” the Oracle said. “Those people that were killed were mostly worthless. The drunken, the homeless, the criminal. And it’s not so great a crime. Not in the history of our human race.”
“Francis really gave me the go-ahead,” Klee said. And that made the Oracle touch a button on his chair so that the back of it straightened to make his body upright and alert.
“Your saintly President?” the Oracle said. “He is far too much a victim of his own hypocrisy, as all the Kennedys were. He could never be party to such an act.”
“Maybe I’m just trying to make excuses,” Christian said. “It was nothing explicit. But I know Francis so intimately, we’re almost like brothers. I asked him for the order so that the medical interrogation team would be able to do a brain probe. That would have settled the whole atom bomb problem immediately. And Francis refused to sign the authorization. Sure, he gave his grounds, good civil libertarian and humanitarian grounds. That was in his character. But that was in his character before his daughter was killed. Not in his character afterwards. And this was afterwards. Remember, he had already ordered the destruction of Dak by this time. He gave the threat that he would destroy the whole Sultanate of Sherhaben if the hostages were not released. So his character had changed. His new character would have signed the medical interrogation order. And then when he refused to sign, he gave me a look, I can’t describe it, but it was almost as if he were telling me to let it happen.”
The Oracle was fully alive now. He spoke sharply. “All that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you save your ass. If Kennedy doesn’t get reelected, you may spend years in jail. And even if Kennedy gets reelected, there may be some danger.”
“Kennedy will win the election,” Christian said. “And after that, I’ll be OK.” He paused for a moment. “I know him.”
“You know the old Kennedy,” the Oracle said. Then as if he had lost interest he said, “And how about my birthday party? I’m a hundred years old and nobody gives a shit.”
Christian laughed. “I do. Don’t worry. After the election you’ll have a birthday party in the White House Rose Garden. A birthday party for a king.”
The Oracle smiled with pleasure, then said slyly, “And your Francis Kennedy will be the king. You do know, don’t you, that if he is reelected and carries his congressional candidates with him, he will in effect be a dictator?”
“That’s highly unlikely,” Christian Klee said. “There has never been a dictator in this country. We have safeguards—too many safeguards, I think sometimes.”
“Ah,” the Oracle said, “this is a young country yet. We have time. And the Devil takes many seductive forms.”
They were silent for a long time, and then Christian rose to take his leave. They always touched hands when they parted; the Oracle was too fragile for a real handshake.
“Be careful,” the Oracle said. “When a man rises to absolute power, he usually gets rid of those closest to him, those who know his secrets.”
CHAPTER
22
A Federal judge set Henry Tibbot and Adam Gresse free.
The government did not contest that the arrest had been illegal. The government did not contest that there had been no warrants. Gresse and Tibbot’s defense team had exploited every legal loophole.
The people of America were enraged. They blamed the Kennedy administration, they cursed the judicial system. Mobs gathered in the streets of the great cities calling for the death of Gresse and Tibbot. Vigilante groups formed to carry out the justice of the people.
Gresse and Tibbot fled to a hiding place in South America and disappeared into a sanctuary financed by their wealthy parents.
• • •
Two months before the presidential election, polls showed that Francis Kennedy’s margin of victory would not be enough to carry his congressional candidates into office.
There were more problems: a scandal involving Eugene Dazzy’s mistress; the lingering charges that Attorney General Christian Klee had deliberately permitted the explosion of the atom bomb; the scandal of Canoo and Klee using the funds of the office of the military adviser to beef up the Secret Service.
And perhaps Francis Kennedy himself went too far. America was not ready for his brand of socialism. It was not ready to reject the corporate structure of America. The people of America did not want to be equal, they wanted to be rich. Nearly all the states had their own lottery with prizes running high up into the millions. More people bought lottery tickets than voted in the national elections.
The power of the congressmen and senators already in office was also overwhelming. They had their staffs paid for by the government. They had the vast sums of money contributed by the corporate structure, which they used to dominate TV with brilliantly executed ads. By holding government office they could appear on special political programs on TV and in the newspapers, increasing their name-recognition factor.
With the delicate precision of a Renaissance poisoner, Lawrence Salentine had organized the overall campaign against Kennedy so brilliantly that he was now the leader of the Socrates Club group.
President Kennedy studied his staff report, which predicted that his handpicked candidates for Congress would probably not be elected. The thought that he might again be an impotent leader had a physical effect on him. He felt ill. And beyond that he felt a strange rage that was full of a repugnant malice. He was ashamed of this emotion and concentrated on the classified operational plans from Christian Klee.
He noted that Christian had channeled this report directly to the President. And it was just as well. The information was horrifying, but even more extraordinary was Klee’s plan on how to handle the problem.
There would be a sacrifice of moral principle involved, Kennedy thought, and then quite consciously knowing the cost, he scribbled his consent on the memos.
On the third day of September, Christian Klee went to the office of the Vice President unannounced. As an extra precaution, he gave special instructions to Helen Du Pray’s Secret Service detail chief before he presented himself to Du Pray’s secretary and said his business was urgent.
The Vice President was astonished to see him; it was against all protocol that he should visit her without advance warning or even permission. For a moment he was afraid she might take offense, but she was too intelligent to do so. She knew immediately that Christian Klee would breach protocol only for the most serious problem. In fact, what she felt was apprehension. What new terrible thing could have happened now after the past months?
Klee sensed this uneasiness immediately. “There’s nothing to be worried about,” he said. “It’s just that we have a security problem involving the President. As part of our coverage, we have sealed off your office. It would be best that you not answer the phone but deal with your immediate staff. I will remain with you the entire day, personally.”
Du Pray understood immediately that no matter what happened, she was not to take command of the country and that was why Klee was there. “If the President has a security problem, why are you with me?” she said. But without waiting for an answer from Klee, she said, “I will have to check this with the President, personally.”
“He is appearing at a political luncheon in New York,” Klee said.
“I know that,” she said.
Klee looked at his watch. “The President will be calling you in about one half hour,” he said.
When the call came, Klee watched Helen Du Pray’s face. She seemed to show no astonishment; only twice she asked questions. Good, Klee thought, she would be OK, he didn’t have to worry about her. Then she did something that aroused Christian’s admiration; he didn’t think she had i
t in her—vice presidents were noted for their timidity. She asked Kennedy if she could speak to Eugene Dazzy, the President’s chief of staff. When Dazzy came on the phone, she made a simple query about their work schedule for the next week. Then she hung up. She had been checking to see if the person on the phone had really been Kennedy, despite the fact that she recognized his voice. Of the questions she had asked, only Dazzy would recognize the reference. She was making sure that there was no voice impersonation.
She addressed Klee icily; she knew something was fishy, Klee thought. She said, “The President has informed me that you will be using my office as a command post, that I will be under your instruction. I find this extraordinary. Perhaps you will give me an explanation.”
“I apologize for all this,” Klee said. “If I could have some coffee, I’ll give you a full briefing. You will know as much as the President about this matter.” Which was true but a little devious. She would not know as much as Klee.
Helen Du Pray was studying him very intently. She didn’t trust him, Klee knew. But women didn’t understand power, they didn’t understand the stark efficiency of violence. He gathered up all his energy to convince her of his sincerity. When he was through almost an hour later, she seemed won over. She was a very beautiful woman and intelligent, Christian thought. Too bad that she would never become the President of the United States.
On this glorious summer day, President Francis Kennedy was to speak at a political luncheon held in New York City’s Sheraton Hotel Convention Center, which would be followed by a triumphal motorcade down Fifth Avenue. Then he would make a speech near the atom bomb destruction area. The event had been scheduled three months before and had been well publicized. It was the kind of situation that Christian Klee detested, the President was too exposed. There were deranged people, and even the police were a danger in Klee’s eyes because they were armed and also because as a police force they were completely demoralized by the uncontrolled crime in the city.
Klee took his own elaborate precautions. Only his operational staff in the Secret Service knew the awesome detail and manpower that was used to protect the President in his rare public appearances.
Special advance teams had been sent ahead. These teams patrolled and searched the area of the visit twenty-four hours a day. Two days before the visit, another thousand men were sent to become part of the crowds that would greet the President. These men formed a line on both sides of the motorcade and in the front of the motorcade and acted as part of the crowd but actually formed a sort of Maginot line. Another five hundred men manned the rooftops, constantly scanning the windows that overlooked the motorcade, and these men were very heavily armed. In addition to this there was the President’s own special and personal detail, which numbered a hundred men. And then, of course, there were the Secret Service men under deep cover who were accredited to newspapers and TV stations, who carried newspaper photo cameras and manned mobile TV vehicles.
And Christian Klee had other tricks up his sleeve. In the nearly four years of the Kennedy administration there had been five assassination attempts. None of them had even come close. The would-be killers had been crazies, of course, and were now behind bars in the toughest federal prisons. And Klee made sure that if they got out, he would find a reason to put them back in again. It was impossible to jail all the lunatics in the United States who made threats to kill the President of the United States—by mail, by phone, by conspiring, by shouting it in the streets—but Christian Klee had made their lives miserable for them, so that they would be too busy preserving their own safety to worry about grandiose ideas. He put them under mail surveillance, phone surveillance, personal surveillance, computer surveillance. If they spit on the sidewalk, they were in trouble.
All these precautions, all these arrangements, were in effect this September third when President Francis Xavier Kennedy gave his speech at the political luncheon at the Sheraton Convention Center in New York. Hundreds of Secret Service men were scattered through the audience, and the building was sealed off after his entrance.
On that same September third, Annee went shopping on Fifth Avenue. In her three weeks in the United States, she had helped move everything into place. She had made her phone calls, had her meeting with the two assassination teams that had finally made their way to New York as crewmen on one of Bert Audick’s oil tankers. They moved into the two apartments prepared for them. These apartments had already been stocked with weapons procured by a special underground logistics team that had no part of the central plan.
Annee could not know that Christian Klee’s FBI was picking up her phone calls in the very air, that every move she made was covered. And that the teams’ phone calls to her in the public booths had been intercepted and read by Christian Klee.
What she had not confessed to anyone was her decision to turn this into a suicide mission.
Annee thought how strange it was that she would go shopping just four hours before what would be the end of her life.
Sal Troyca and Elizabeth Stone were working hard at the office, piecing together information that would prove Christian Klee could have prevented the explosion of the atom bomb.
Elizabeth Stone’s town house was only a ten-minute ride away. So, at lunchtime, they spent a couple of hours in bed.
Once in bed, they forgot all the stress of the day. After an hour Elizabeth went into the bathroom to take a shower and Sal wandered into the living room, still naked, to turn on the TV. He stood in amazement at what he was seeing. He watched for a few moments longer and then ran into the bathroom and pulled Elizabeth out of the shower. She was a little frightened by his roughness as he dragged her naked and dripping wet into the living room.
There, watching the TV screen, she began to weep. Sal took her in his arms. “Look at it this way,” he said, “our troubles are over.”
• • •
The campaign speech in New York on September third was to be one of the most important stops in President Francis Kennedy’s bid for reelection. And it had been planned to have a great psychological effect on the nation.
First, there would be a luncheon at the Sheraton Convention Center on Fifty-eighth Street. There, the President would address the most important and influential men of the city. The luncheon would raise additional funds to rebuild the midtown area in New York that had been leveled by the atom bomb explosion. An architect, without a fee, had designed a great memorial for the devastated area, and the rest of the acreage was to be a small park with a tiny lake. The city was to buy and donate the land.
After the luncheon, the Kennedy party would lead a motorcade that would begin at 125th Street and go down Seventh and Fifth avenues to place the first symbolic wreath of marble on the rubbled heap that remained of Times Square.
As one of the sponsors of the luncheon, Louis Inch was seated on the dais with President Kennedy and expected to accompany him to his waiting car, thus getting some newspaper and TV coverage. But to his surprise, he was cut off by Secret Service men who isolated Kennedy in a human net. The President was escorted through a door at the rear of the platform.
In the streets outside, huge crowds gathered. The Secret Service had cleared the area so that there was a space of at least a hundred feet around the presidential limousine. There were enough Secret Service men to protect the inner hundred feet with a solid phalanx. Outside that, the crowd was controlled by the police. On the edge of this perimeter were photographers and TV camera crews, who immediately surged forward when the advance guard of Secret Service men came out of the hotel. And then, unaccountably, there was a fifteen-minute wait.
The President finally emerged from the hotel shielded from the TV cameras as he rushed toward his waiting car. At that very moment the avenue exploded into a beautifully choreographed bloody ballet.
Six men burst through the police restraining line, mowing down part of the police wall and running toward the President’s armored limousine. A second later, another group of six men burst through
the opposite perimeter and raked the fifty Secret Service men around the armored limousine with their automatic weapons.
In the very next second eight cars swung into the open area and Secret Service men in combat gear and bulletproof vests that made them seem like gigantic balloons came tumbling out with shotguns and machine pistols and caught the attackers in the rear. They shot with precision and short bursts. In less than thirty seconds, all twelve attackers were lying in the avenue dead, their guns silenced. The presidential limousine roared away from the curb, other Secret Service cars following.
At that moment, Annee, with a supreme effort of will, stepped in the path of the presidential limousine with her two Bloomingdale shopping bags in her hand. The shopping bags were filled with explosive gel, two powerful bombs that she detonated as the car, too late, tried to swerve but hit her. The presidential car flew up into the air at least ten feet off the ground and came down a mass of flames. The force of the explosion blew everyone inside it to bits. And there was absolutely nothing left of Annee except tiny bits of gaily colored paper from the shopping bags.
One TV cameraman had the wit to swing his camera for a panoramic shot of everything that was visible. Thousands of people had flung themselves to the ground when the firing broke out and were still lying prone as if begging some unforgiving God for mercy. From that prone mass issued streams of blood that came from those who had been hit by the heavy fire from the assassination teams or killed by the explosion of the powerful bombs. Many in the crowd had suffered concussions and, when the terror stopped, rose and staggered in confusion. The camera caught all this for television to horrify the nation.
In the office of Vice President Du Pray, Christian Klee jumped out of his chair and cried out, “What the fuck happened!”
Helen Du Pray stared at the TV screen and then said sharply to Klee, “Who was the poor bastard who took the President’s place?”