After leaving the shopping bags and her mink coat in the ladies’ cloakroom, Anastasia crossed the lobby of the hotel and made her way to the Oak Room.
Maxim saw her come in and rose as the captain escorted her to the table, beaming at her.
How handsome her husband looked in his dark grey pin-stripe suit and pale blue shirt. He was the best-looking man in the room. And she could tell from the brilliance of his dark eyes that he had had a very successful morning, that his meetings in Wall Street had gone well. And why wouldn’t they? Her husband was a genius. Everyone said so; he seemed to have the Midas touch. Whatever business deal he went into, he always made money, lots of it, and came out the big winner. Her father said he was the most brilliant and gifted businessman and entrepreneur he had ever known, and coming from Alexander Derevenko that was praise indeed.
Still smiling, Maxim kissed her on the cheek as she arrived at the table. They both sat down, and he said, ‘You look fabulous. You should wear red more often, darling, it really suits you.’
‘Why thank you, kind sir,’ she answered, giving him a flirtatious look. ‘And obviously you charmed your business associates and the bankers, got your own way in Wall Street this morning, from the look on your face.’
He leaned towards her, dropped his voice. ‘As long as I get my own way with you, that’s all that matters, Stassy, my love. In case I haven’t told you lately, I absolutely adore you. I have great plans for this afternoon… for us. My work is finished for the day, so I’m all yours. After lunch we’re going to meander back to the hotel and—’ He leaned even closer, whispered in her ear, ‘Make wonderful love together. And who knows, perhaps we might even make another baby.’
She laughed, and a slight flush tinted her face a pretty pink. Her luminous eyes grew more luminous than ever. ‘What a gorgeous idea. And I adore you, too.’ Reaching out she squeezed his hand, then eyed his glass. ‘Is that a drink?’ she asked, sounding surprised.
‘It is. I know it’s not like me to drink during the day, but I ordered a bottle of Sancerre. I thought it might be nice to celebrate my little deal. It’s only worth about twenty-one million dollars, but it’s just the beginning.’
‘Oh darling, how wonderful! Congratulations! And what do you mean, just the beginning?’
‘Of West Investments in America. Will you have a glass of white wine with me, drink to that?’
‘I certainly will.’
Maxim motioned to the waiter hovering a few feet away, and the man hurried over, lifted the wine bottle from the bucket, filled her glass. As he replaced the bottle he asked if they wished to order lunch.
‘In a few minutes, thank you,’ Maxim said, swung to face Anastasia, raised his glass. ‘Here’s to the big adventure we’re going to have in New York.’ He touched his glass to hers.
Anastasia looked at him curiously. ‘Adventure?’
‘I want to spend more time in the States, eventually open an office here, perhaps even take an apartment on Fifth Avenue or Park or Sutton Place. Wherever you wish. Would you like to live in Manhattan part of the year?’
She hesitated only momentarily, then said, ‘If you want to, then yes, of course. New York is a most exciting city. But… look, what about the children? About their schooling? Things like that?’
‘Darling girl, they’re still babies! We’ve lots of time to worry about schools and the like. And you’re correct, it is an exciting place, and in many different ways. It’s especially exciting in business. This is where the future is… in my opinion. That’s what I meant when I used the word adventure.’
‘Everyone says you have great vision and wisdom, and I know you do.’ She paused, gave him a small smile. ‘So I am with you all the way.’
He grinned at her, his expression one of happiness and genuine delight. ‘Thank you for that marvellous vote of confidence, my love. You’re the best wife I’ve ever had.’
‘And the only one you will ever have!’ she shot back, laughing with him.
‘Perhaps we ought to look at the menus,’ Maxim suggested, handing her one.
‘Thank you.’ She put it down in front of her, said, ‘Actually, I know what I’m going to have. Clam chowder and then grilled Boston scrod.’
‘I’ll also have the soup, but I think I’d enjoy a bit of that roast beef the waiter is carving on the trolley. It looks delicious.’
After Maxim had given the order, Anastasia said, ‘You’ve been very secretive about your new deal. Can’t you tell me what it is, now you’ve closed it?’
‘Of course I can. I’ve bought a company called the Allandale Group, based here in New York.’
‘What is that?’ She stared at him blankly. ‘It doesn’t mean a thing to me.’
‘The Allandale Group is a company with rather diverse holdings. For example, it owns Marianna Monteveccio, a small cosmetic company, real estate in Manhattan and Long Island, a tool and die company, and a large bakery, one that supplies half the stores in the city and suburbs. As I said, it is rather diverse, and that’s its basic problem. I plan to sell off the non-profitable bits, keep only the divisions that make money.’
‘Which ones are they?’
‘The real estate division and the cosmetic company. Those are the two I’m going to reorganise. I plan to launch the Monteveccio cosmetic line in England and Europe next year. I know it will do well, the product is superior.’ He gave her a little smile, one that was full of confidence. ‘That’s the art of the takeover, knowing what to sell and what to keep.’
‘You like these little takeovers of yours, don’t you?’
He stared at her. ‘Little. They’re not so little, Peach Melba.’
She threw him a sharp look. ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that,’ she chastised.
‘Why it’s the perfect name for you. After all, you’re good enough to eat.’ His charming, lopsided smile flashed and he leaned over, kissed her cheek, then went on: ‘The takeover is the most marvellous invention. It’s such a fabulous shortcut, saves all those years of slowly building a company, and it yields wonderful profits. It’s also very exciting, finding the right company to take over, and then pursuing it.’
‘I suppose that’s the part you love the most.’
He shook his head. ‘I admit it’s thrilling, but I like wrestling with the financial problems, and then reshaping the company, being creative, making it into something bigger and better. I’m not a paper-chaser, I don’t want to build an empire out of paper. Nor am I an asset-stripper. I prefer to keep the companies I’ve bought and run them, once the fat’s been trimmed. Anyway, I—’
Maxim broke off, as the waiter served the soup, placed a bowl of clam chowder in front of each of them.
‘And you think that this cosmetic company has a future?’
‘Very much so, here as well as in Europe, actually. You see, it’s been mismanaged, and it also needs new packaging, a fresh marketing approach. The product is excellent and—’ Maxim stopped abruptly, his attention caught by a small commotion near the entrance to the Oak Room. Two waiters were speaking to the captain. One was gesticulating excitedly, the other was openly weeping, and Maxim noticed that the captain seemed dazed, had turned as white as chalk.
‘How very odd. I think something’s wrong,’ he said to Anastasia, his brow furrowed. ‘Look at the captain. He appears to have had a terrible shock. The waiters don’t seem to be helping either.’
‘Perhaps someone’s been taken ill in the restaurant.’ Anastasia swung her head, glanced around. She caught the attention of a waiter hurrying out of the service entrance from the kitchen and beckoned to him.
The waiter came to a halt at their table.
Anastasia could not miss the expression on the man’s face. It was grave, and there was a stunned look in his eyes.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked in a low voice. ‘Is there something wrong? We couldn’t help noticing the—’
‘He’s been shot,’ the waiter told her, his voice shaking, and it broke as he adde
d, ‘The President’s been shot.’
‘The President,’ Maxim repeated, peering at the waiter, noting his acute distress. ‘You don’t mean President Kennedy, do you?’
The waiter nodded, unable to speak. His eyes filled with tears and his face twisted in a terrible grimace of pain, and he turned on his heels and fled back into the kitchen.
Maxim and Anastasia sat gaping at each other, for a moment not comprehending what they had just been told.
But the news was spreading fast through the Oak Room. People were turning to each other worriedly, leaning across to other tables, speaking to strangers. In an instant the room was a babble of voices.
Maxim threw his napkin on the table, pushed back his chair and leapt to his feet. ‘Come on!’ he cried, and moved across the room with such speed Anastasia had to run to keep up with him.
When he reached the captain, Maxim demanded in a quiet but rasping voice, ‘Is it true? Has President Kennedy really been shot?’
The captain’s face was grief-stricken. ‘In Dallas. At about one-thirty. Bulletins are coming in over the radio in the kitchen.’
Maxim and Anastasia were both speechless, horror-struck.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, Maxim pulled out his wallet, extracted two one-hundred-dollar notes and gave them to the captain. ‘This should take care of my bill,’ he mumbled, and taking hold of Anastasia’s hand he reeled out of the Oak Room, dragging her in his wake.
***
Maxim and Anastasia stood in the middle of the sitting room of their suite at the Pierre, just across the street from the Plaza, staring at the television set.
Incredulity, shock and disbelief were written all over their faces and they were rooted to the spot as they listened to the famous newscaster Walter Cronkite delivering all of the facts about the shooting of the President.
A muscle in Cronkite’s face twitched, and his voice was shaken, solemn, as he repeated what he had just said, apparently recapping the news for viewers who had just turned on their sets.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was dead. The back of his head had been blown off by an assassin’s bullet as he had ridden in his motorcade through the streets of Dallas. His body lay in Parkland Memorial Hospital in the Texas city.
Maxim still found it hard to accept. The facts would not quite sink in, and he kept changing the stations, going from CBS to NBC and ABC, and back again, wanting to glean bits of additional information from the other newscasters, who were as stunned and grieving as Walter Cronkite.
At one moment Anastasia glanced down and the skirt of her brilliant red dress caught her eye. She thought: Oh. Oh God! It’s the colour of blood! And she clapped her hand over her mouth and fled into the bedroom as the tears began to flow again. She was almost sobbing as she unzipped the red dress, stepped out of it, and quickly put on a dark blue cashmere sweater and matching skirt, and returned to the sitting room.
So absorbed was Maxim in the news on television, she realised that he had not even noticed her brief absence. Moving across to the sofa, she lowered herself onto it. After a moment Maxim joined her, and they sat together watching the ongoing broadcast, holding hands.
He suddenly turned his stricken face to hers and said in a hoarse voice, ‘I can’t believe it. We just saw him in Berlin this summer, speaking outside the Schoneberg Town Hall. It hardly seems possible that he’s dead.’
Anastasia’s attention was riveted on Maxim, and she saw that his eyes were full of tears, and she pressed her hand against his. Maxim groped for his handkerchief and wiped his eyes, leaned back against the sofa, feeling suddenly wrung out.
She said softly, ‘He looked so young that day in Berlin, and so handsome with his reddish-blond hair glinting in the sunshine. “Ich bin ein Berliner,” he said…’
‘I remember… I remember it very well.’
‘Why, Maxim? Why? Why was he killed?’
Maxim shook his head. He had no answer, at least not one which would make any sense.
‘Why would anybody want to kill Jack Kennedy?’ she asked again, more insistently, baffled and frightened by such violence.
‘I don’t know, Stassy, I just don’t know.’
‘What a foul and horrible world we live in today!’ Anastasia cried.
‘It always has been,’ Maxim mumbled.
‘Yes. Yes, I know, darling,’ she whispered, thinking instantly of the way his parents had died, and of the Holocaust.
Maxim and Anastasia sat together in front of the set for many more hours. They did not say very much to each other through their long vigil, caught up as they were in the news, straining to hear every detail of this senseless killing, the most horrific murder in the history of the United States.
Lyndon Johnson appeared on their television screen at six-fifteen that evening of Friday, 22 November. As the new President he made his first statement to a grieving nation reeling from the incomprehensible act of violence in Dallas.
‘He’s dead,’ Maxim muttered, more to himself than Anastasia. ‘John Kennedy is dead.’ And he sighed heavily, finally accepting it.
***
‘Ich bin ein Berliner. Ich bin ein Berliner. Ich bin ein Berliner.’
Maxim awakened with a sudden start, Kennedy’s words and voice reverberating in his head. He blinked in the darkness of the bedroom, adjusting his eyes to the gloomy light, glancing at Anastasia, who was on her side, sleeping peacefully, her breathing even. He lay for a moment, trying to go back to sleep. When he realised that he was wide awake, he slid his legs out of bed and padded to the living room, closing the bedroom door behind him.
The sitting room of their suite overlooked Fifth Avenue, and he walked over to the window, stood staring out at the trees in Central Park. He moved his head slightly to the left, focused for a brief moment on the Plaza opposite. The lights from the hotel shone brightly, illuminating the square in front of the wide steps. The streets were deserted, looked bleak and wintry in the pale lamplight.
Maxim sighed under his breath and turned away from the window, walked over to the sofa and lay down, a multitude of thoughts running through his mind.
The assassination of President Kennedy did not make sense, not to him or anyone else, if the television commentators were anything to go by. Had it been the act of a single man working alone? A crazy man? Or had it been a conspiracy? Fascists? Communists? Who could really say for sure? Who would ever really know? But evil had run amok in America earlier today, and the country had been savaged by an insane act of the most terrible and senseless violence.
He had always known that evil lurked around corners, even from being a little boy. Somehow he had understood this after Teddy had told him that bad things were done to Jews in Nazi Germany. Teddy was ambivalent about the Germans. But he had no particular feelings, certainly not hatred. Only an insatiable curiosity about them. Furthermore, even as a Jew, whose parents had been victims of the Third Reich, he did not believe this generation should be blamed for the crimes of the last.
Often when he went back to Germany to see Irina Troubetzkoy he would look at people in the streets, or in cafes and stores, filled with bafflement, and wonder how it was that such a strong and noble people as the Germans could have been deluded into following a man like Hitler. Of course that megalomaniac had blinded them with the power of his personality, his high-flown rhetoric, his promises of economic security, a better life, a strong and stable Germany free of Communism. The majority of Germans had followed him unquestioningly, seeing not the charlatan that he was but a charismatic leader who would lead them to prosperity and glory.
After mathematics and languages, history had been his favourite subject at St Paul’s. He had studied it well, had come to understand that Hitler had been the embodiment of pure evil, had created the most evil regime in the entire history of the world, a sinister regime of bigotry, racism, brutality, oppression and murder. For twelve years and four months the Third Reich had trampled over, intimidated and dominate
d Europe in a reign of terror which had hitherto been unknown to man before. It had been a machine of destruction and death, operated by ruthless and cruel men with evil intent in their hearts and the minds of criminals,—gangsters, thugs, murderers, degenerates.
When the criminals take over the prison then chaos and bloody murder reign, he thought. He wondered how it had come to pass… he would never know. That was not strictly true. Diabolical men such as Hitler and his cohorts always played on the ignorance, weakness and fear of people. The Germans were such a cultured and civilised race, and yet they had espoused Hitler’s policies of anti-Semitism. Maxim sighed under his breath and continued to lie on the sofa in the darkness, his mind racing. Evil men can soon engender hatred and prejudice in others, he thought. He knew that from his history books, which he had studied so diligently and carefully at school. Atrocities had leapt off those pages… the Spanish Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, the Turks slaughtering Armenians. Atrocity had been around for centuries, perpetrated by supposedly civilised men against other men.
Who will be next? he asked himself.
Maxim rose, went over to the small sideboard where several bottles of liquor were standing on a tray. He poured himself a brandy, carried it back to the sofa. As he sipped it he acknowledged, with a terrible sadness, that nothing had changed since the beginning of time. And nothing would ever change. There would always be men of evil out to dominate and subdue others. Until one day one of them, caught in the grip of insanity, would push a button and blow the world to smithereens.
As for Jack Kennedy, a young and brilliant man had been cruelly struck down in the prime of his life, and all the world would mourn as America mourned. As he mourned now. Maxim got up and went and turned on the television set. The network was running a film of Jack Kennedy made in Berlin this past June.