David Jatney pushed out a space in the crowd that would shelter himself and Irene, who held Campbell in her arms because he would have been trampled otherwise—the crowd kept shifting in waves like an ocean.
They were no more than four hundred yards from the viewing stands when the presidential limousine came into their line of sight. It was followed by official cars holding dignitaries. Behind them was the endless crowd that would pass before the viewing stand in the inaugural parade. David estimated that the presidential limousine was a little more than the length of a football field away from his vantage point. Then he noticed that parts of the crowd lining the avenue had surged out into the avenue itself and forced the cavalcade to halt.
Irene screamed, “He’s getting out. He’s walking. Oh, my God, I have to touch him.” She slung Campbell into Jatney’s arms and tried to duck under the barrier, but one of the long line of uniformed police stopped her. She ran along the curb and made it through the initial picket line of policemen only to be stopped by the inner barrier of Secret Service men. Jatney watched her, thinking, If only Irene were smarter, she would have kept Campbell in her arms. The Secret Service men would have recognized that she was not a threat and she might have slipped through while they were thrusting back the others. He could see her being swept back to the curb, and then another wave of people swept her up again and she was one of the few people who managed to slip through and shake the President’s hand and then was kissing the President on the cheek before she was roughly pulled away.
David could see that Irene would never make it back to him and Campbell. She was just a tiny dot in the mass of people that was now threatening to engulf the broad expanse of the avenue. More and more people were pressing against the outer security rim of uniformed police; more and more were hitting against the inner rim of Secret Service men. Both rims were showing cracks. Campbell was beginning to cry, so Jatney reached into the pocket of his windbreaker for one of the candy bars he usually carried for the boy.
And then David Jatney felt a suffusion of warmth through his body. He thought of the past days in Washington, the sight of the many buildings erected to establish the authority of the state: the marble columns of the Supreme Court and the memorials, the stately splendor of the facades—indestructible, irremovable. He thought of Hock’s office in its splendor, guarded by his secretaries, he thought of the Mormon Church in Utah with its temples blessed by special and particularly discovered angels. All these to designate certain men as superior to their fellows. To keep ordinary men like himself in their place. And to direct all love on to themselves. Presidents, gurus, Mormon elders built their intimidating edifices to wall themselves away from the rest of humanity, and knowing well the envy of the world, guarded themselves against hate. Jatney remembered his glorious victory in the “hunts” of the university; he had been a hero then, that one time in his life. Now he patted Campbell soothingly to make him stop crying. In his pocket, underneath the cold steel of the .22, his hand found the candy bar and gave it to Campbell. Then, still holding the boy in his arms, he stepped from the curb and ducked under the barriers.
David Jatney was filled with wonder and then a fierce elation. It would be easy. More of the crowd were overflowing the outer rim of uniformed police; more of those were piercing the inner rim of Secret Service agents and getting to shake the President’s hand. Those two barriers were crumbling, the invaders marching alongside Kennedy and waving their arms to show their devotion. Jatney ran toward the oncoming President, a wave of spectators piercing the wooden barriers carrying him along. Now he was just outside the ring of Secret Service men who were trying to keep everyone away from the President. But there no longer were enough of them. And with a sort of glee he saw that they had discounted him. Cradling Campbell in his left arm, he put his right hand in the windbreaker and felt the leather glove; his fingers moved onto the trigger. At that moment the ring of Secret Service men crumbled, and he was inside the magic circle. Just ten feet away he saw Francis Kennedy shaking hands with a wild-looking ecstatic teenager. Kennedy seemed very slim, very tall, and older than he appeared on television. Still holding Campbell in his arms, Jatney took a step toward Kennedy.
At that moment a very handsome black man blocked him off. His hand was extended. For a frantic moment Jatney thought he had seen the gun in his pocket and was demanding it. Then he realized that the man looked familiar and that he was just offering a handshake. They stared at each other for a long moment; Jatney looked down at the extended black hand, the black face smiling above it. And then he saw the man’s eyes gleam with suspicion, the hand suddenly withdrawn. Jatney with a convulsive wrenching of all his bodily muscles threw Campbell at the black man and drew his gun from the windbreaker.
Oddblood Gray knew, in that moment when Jatney stared into his face, that something terrible was going to happen. He let the boy fall to the ground, and then with a quick shift of his feet put his body in front of the slowly advancing Francis Kennedy. He saw the gun.
Christian Klee, walking to the right and a little behind Francis Kennedy, was using the cellular phone to call for more Secret Service men to help clear the crowd out of the President’s path. He saw the man holding the child approach the phalanx guarding Kennedy. And then for just one second he saw the man’s face clearly.
It was some vague nightmare coming through—the reality did not sink in. The face he had called up on his computer screen these past nine months, the life he had monitored with computer and surveillance teams had suddenly sprung out of that shadowy mythology into the real world.
He saw the face not in the repose of surveillance photos but in the throes of exalted emotion. And he was struck by how the handsome face had become so ugly, as if seen through some distorted glass.
Klee was already moving quickly toward Jatney, still not believing the image, trying to certify his nightmare, when he saw Gray stretch out his hand. And Christian felt a tremendous feeling of relief. The man could not be Jatney, he was just a guy holding his kid and trying to touch a piece of history.
But then he saw the child in his red windbreaker and little woolen hat being hurled through the air. He saw the gun in Jatney’s hand. And he saw Gray fall.
Suddenly Christian Klee, in the sheer terror of his crime, ran toward Jatney and took the second bullet in the face. The bullet traveled through his palate, making him choke on the blood, then there was a blinding pain in his left eye. He was still conscious when he fell. He tried to cry out, but his mouth was full of shattered teeth and crumbled flesh. And he felt a great sense of loss and helplessness. In his shattered brain, his last neurons flashed with thoughts of Francis Kennedy, he wanted to warn him of death, to ask his forgiveness. Christian’s brain then flicked out, and his head with its empty eye socket came to rest in a light powdery pillow of snow.
In that same moment Francis Kennedy turned full toward David Jatney. He saw Oddblood fall. Then Christian. And in that moment, all his nightmares, all his memories of other deaths, all his terrors of a malign fate crystallized into paralyzed astonishment and resignation. And in that moment he heard a tremendous vibration in the world, felt for a tiny fraction of a second only the explosion of steel in his brain. He fell.
David Jatney could not believe it had all happened. The black man lay where he had fallen. The white man alongside. The President of the United States was crumpling before his eyes, legs bent outward, arms flying up into the air as his knees finally hit the ground. David Jatney kept firing. Hands were tearing at his gun, at his body. He tried to run, and as he turned he saw the multitude rise and swarm like a great wave toward him and countless hands reach out to him. His face covered with blood, he felt his ear being ripped off the side of his head and saw it in one of the hands. Suddenly something happened to his eyes and he could not see. His body was racked with pain for one single moment and then he felt nothing.
The TV cameraman, his all-seeing eye on his shoulder, had recorded everything for the people of the world. When
the gun flashed into sight, he had backed away just enough steps so that everyone would be included in the frame. He caught David Jatney raising the gun, he caught Oddblood Gray making his amazing jump in front of the President and go down, and then Klee receiving a bullet in his face and going down. He caught Francis Kennedy making his turn to face the killer and the killer firing, the bullet twisting Kennedy’s head as if he were in a hammerlock. He caught Jatney’s look of stern determination as Francis Kennedy fell and the Secret Service men frozen in that terrible moment, all their training for immediate response wiped out in shock. And then he saw Jatney trying to run and being overwhelmed by the multitude. But the cameraman did not get the final shot, which he would regret for the rest of his life. The crowd tearing David Jatney to pieces.
Over the city, washing through the marble buildings and the monuments of power, rose the great wail of millions of worshipers who had lost their dreams.
CHAPTER
27
President Helen Du Pray held the Oracle’s one-hundredth birthday party in the White House on Palm Sunday, three months after the death of Francis Kennedy.
Dressed to understate her beauty, she stood in the Rose Garden and surveyed her guests. Among them were the former staff members of the Kennedy administration. Eugene Dazzy was chatting with Elizabeth Stone and Sal Troyca.
Eugene Dazzy had already been told his dismissal was to take effect the next month. Helen Du Pray had never really liked the man. And it had nothing to do with the fact that Dazzy had young mistresses and was indeed already being excessively charming to Elizabeth Stone.
President Du Pray had appointed Elizabeth Stone to her staff; Sal Troyca came with the package. But Elizabeth was exactly what she needed. A woman with extraordinary energy, a brilliant administrator, and a feminist who understood political realities. And Sal Troyca was not so bad; indeed he was a fortifying element with his knowledge of the trickeries of the Congress and his low brand of cunning, which could sometimes be so valuable to more sophisticated intelligences, such as Elizabeth Stone’s and indeed, thought Du Pray, her own.
After Du Pray assumed the presidency she had been briefed by Kennedy’s staff and other insiders of the administration. She had studied all the proposed legislation that the new Congress would consider. She had ordered that all the secret memos be assembled for her, all the detailed plans, including the now infamous Alaska work camps.
After a month of study it became horrifyingly clear to her that Francis Kennedy, with the purest of motives, to better the lot of the people of the United States, would have become the first dictator in American history.
From where she stood in the Rose Garden, the trees not yet in full leaf, President Du Pray could see the faraway Lincoln Memorial and the arching white of the Washington Monument, noble symbols of the city that was the capital of America. Here in the garden were all the representatives of America, at her special invitation. She had made peace with the enemies of the Kennedy administration.
Present were Louis Inch, a man she despised, but whose help she would need. And George Greenwell, Martin Mutford, Bert Audick and Lawrence Salentine. The infamous Socrates Club. She would have to come to terms with all of them, which was why she had invited them to the White House for the Oracle’s birthday party. She would at least give them the option of helping build a new America, as Kennedy had not.
But Helen Du Pray knew that America could not be rebuilt without accommodations on all sides. Also, she knew that in a few years there would be a more conservative Congress elected. She could not hope to persuade the nation as Kennedy, with his charisma and personal romantic history, had done.
She saw Dr. Zed Annaccone seated beside the Oracle’s wheelchair. The doctor was probably trying to get the old man to donate his brain to science. And Dr. Annaccone was another problem. His PET brain-scan test was already being discussed in various scientific papers. Du Pray had always seen its virtues and its dangers. She felt it was a problem that should be carefully considered over a long period of time. A government with the capacity to find out the infallible truth could be very dangerous. True, such a test would root out crime and political corruption; it could reform the whole legal structure of society. But there were complicated truths, there were status quo truths, and then was it not true that at certain moments in history, truth could bring a halt to certain evolutionary changes? And what about the psyche of a people who knew the various truths about themselves could be exposed?
She glanced at the corner of the Rose Garden where Oddblood Gray and Arthur Wix were sitting in wicker chairs and talking animatedly. Gray was now seeing a psychiatrist every day for depression. The psychiatrist had told Gray that after the events of the past year it was perfectly normal for him to be suffering from depression. So why the hell was he going to a psychiatrist?
In the Rose Garden the Oracle was now the center of attraction. The birthday cake was being presented to him, a huge cake that covered the entire garden table. On the top, colored in red, white and blue spun sugar, was the Stars and Stripes. The TV cameras moved in; they caught for the nation the sight of the Oracle blowing out the hundred birth-day candles. And blowing with him were President Du Pray, Oddblood Gray, Eugene Dazzy, Arthur Wix and the members of the Socrates Club.
The Oracle accepted a piece of cake and then allowed himself to be interviewed by Cassandra Chutt, who had managed this coup with the help of Lawrence Salentine. Cassandra Chutt had already made her introductory remarks while the candles were being blown out. Now she asked, “How does it feel to be one hundred years old?”
The Oracle glared at her malevolently, and at that moment he looked so evil that Cassandra Chutt was glad that this show was being taped for the evening. God, the man was ugly, his head a mass of liver spots, the scaly skin as shiny as scar tissue, the mouth almost nonexistent. For a moment she was afraid that he was deaf, so she repeated herself. She said, “How does it feel to be a century old?”
The Oracle smiled, his facial skin cracking into countless wrinkles. “Are you a fucking idiot?” he said. He caught sight of his face in one of the TV monitors, and it broke his heart. Suddenly he hated his birthday party. He looked directly into the camera and said, “Where’s Christian?”
President Helen Du Pray sat by the Oracle’s wheelchair and held his hand. The Oracle was sleeping, the very light sleep of old men waiting for death. The party in the Rose Garden went on without him.
Helen remembered herself as a young woman, one of the protégées of the Oracle. She had admired him so much. He had an intellectual grace, a turn of wit, a natural vivacity and joy in life that was everything she herself wanted to have.
Did it matter that he always tried to form a sexual liaison? She remembered the years before and how hurt she had been when his friendship had turned into lechery. She ran her fingers over the scaly skin of his withered hand. She had followed the destiny of power, while most women followed the destiny of love. Were the victories of love sweeter?
Helen Du Pray thought of her own destiny and that of America. She was still astonished that after all the terrible events of the past year the country had settled down so peacefully. True, she had been partly responsible for that; her skill and intelligence had extinguished the fire in the country. But still …
She had wept at the death of Kennedy; in a small way she had loved him. She had loved the tragedy written into the bones of his beautifully planed face. She had loved his idealism, his vision of what America could be. She had loved his personal integrity, his purity and selflessness, his lack of interest in material things. And yet despite all this she had come to know that he was a dangerous man.
Helen Du Pray realized that now she had to guard against the belief in her own righteousness. She believed that in a world of such peril, humankind could not solve its problems with strife but only with a never-ending patience. She would do the best she could, and in her heart try not to feel hatred for her enemies.
At that moment the Oracle opened h
is eyes and smiled. He pressed her hand and began to speak. His voice was very low, and she bent her head close to his wrinkled mouth. “Don’t worry,” the Oracle said. “You will be a great President.”
Helen Du Pray for a moment felt a desire to weep as a child might when praised, for fear of failure. She looked about her in the Rose Garden filled with the most powerful men and women of America. She would have their help, most of them; some she would have to guard against. But most of all she would have to guard against herself.
She thought again of Francis Kennedy. He lay now with his two famous uncles, loved as they had been. And his daughter. Well, Helen Du Pray thought, I will be the best of what Francis was, I will do the best of what he hoped to do. And then, holding tightly to the Oracle’s hand, she pondered on the simplicities of evil and the dangerous deviousness of good.
In 1969
The Godfather arrived.
Now, The Godfather Returns.
A new novel based on the characters created by Mario Puzo
Available wherever books are sold
Mario Puzo on
The Godfather
I was ready to forget novels except maybe as a puttering hobby for my old age. But one day a writer friend dropped into my magazine office. As a natural courtesy, I gave him a copy of The Fortunate Pilgrim. A week later he came back. He thought I was a great writer. I bought him a magnificent lunch. During lunch, I told him some funny Mafia stories and my ten-page outline. He was enthusiastic. He arranged a meeting for me with the editor of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. The editors just sat around for an hour listening to my Mafia tales and said go ahead. They also gave me a $5,000 advance and I was on my way, just like that. Almost—almost, I believed that publishers were human.