"What the fuck?" George murmured to himself.
He read it quickly. The report was eleven pages long and devastating. It called Martin Luther King "an unprincipled man." It claimed that he took advice from Communists "knowingly, willingly and regularly." With an assured air of inside knowledge it said: "Communist Party officials visualize the possibility of creating a situation whereby it could be said that, as the Communist Party goes, so goes Martin Luther King."
These confident assertions were not backed up by a single scrap of evidence.
George picked up the phone and called Joe Hugo at FBI headquarters, which was on another floor in the same Justice Department building. "What is this shit?" he said.
Joe knew immediately what he was talking about and did not bother to pretend otherwise. "It's not my fault your friends are Commies," he said. "Don't shoot the messenger."
"This is not a report. It's a smear of unsupported allegations."
"We have evidence."
"Evidence that can't be produced is not evidence, Joe, it's hearsay--weren't you listening in law school?"
"Sources of intelligence have to be protected."
"Who have you sent this crap to?"
"Let me check. Ah . . . the White House, the secretary of state, the defense secretary, the CIA, the army, the navy, and the air force."
"So it's all over Washington, you asshole."
"Obviously we don't try to conceal information about our nation's enemies."
"This is a deliberate attempt to sabotage the president's civil rights bill."
"We would never do a thing like that, George. We're just a law enforcement agency." Joe hung up.
George took a few minutes to recover his temper. Then he went through the report underlining the most outrageous allegations. He typed a note listing the government departments to which the report had been sent, according to Joe. Then he took the document in to Bobby.
As always, Bobby sat at his desk with his jacket off, his tie loosened, and his glasses on. He was smoking a cigar. "You're not going to like this," George said. He handed over the report, then summarized it.
"That cocksucker Hoover," said Bobby.
It was the second time George had heard Bobby call Hoover a cocksucker. "You don't mean that literally," George said.
"Don't I?"
George was startled. "Is Hoover a homo?" It was hard to imagine. Hoover was a short, overweight man with thinning hair, a squashed nose, lopsided features, and a thick neck. He was the opposite of a fairy.
Bobby said: "I hear the Mob has photos of him in a woman's dress."
"Is that why he goes around saying there is no such thing as the Mafia?"
"It's one theory."
"Jesus."
"Make an appointment for me to see him tomorrow."
"Okay. In the meantime, let me go through the Levison wiretaps. If Levison is influencing King toward Communism, there must be evidence in those phone calls. Levison would have to talk about the bourgeoisie, the masses, class struggle, revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, Lenin, Marx, the Soviet Union, like that. I'll make a note of every such reference and see what they add up to."
"That's not a bad idea. Let me have a memo before I meet with Hoover."
George returned to his office and sent for the transcripts of the wiretap on Stanley Levison's phone--faithfully copied to the Justice Department by Hoover's FBI. Half an hour later a file clerk wheeled a cart into the room.
George started work. Next time he looked up was when a cleaner opened his door and asked if she could sweep his office. He stayed at his desk while she worked around him. He remembered "pulling all-nighters" at Harvard Law, especially during the absurdly demanding first year.
Long before he finished, it was clear to him that Levison's conversations with King had nothing to do with Communism. They did not use a single one of George's key words, from alienation to Zapata. They talked about a book King was writing; they discussed fund-raising; they planned the march on Washington. King admitted fears and doubts to his friend: even though he advocated nonviolence, was he to blame for riots and bombings provoked by peaceful demonstrations? They rarely touched on wider political issues, never on the Cold War conflicts that obsessed every Communist: Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam.
At four A.M. George put his head down on the desk and napped. At eight he took a clean shirt from his desk drawer, still in its laundry wrapper, and went to the men's room to wash. Then he typed the note Bobby had requested, saying that in two years of phone calls Stanley Levison and Martin Luther King had never spoken about Communism or any subject remotely associated therewith. "If Levison is a Moscow propagandist, he must be the worst one in history," George finished.
Later that day, Bobby went to see Hoover at the FBI. When he came back he said to George: "He agreed to withdraw the report. Tomorrow his liaison men will go to every recipient and retrieve all copies, saying it needs to be revised."
"Good," George said. "But it's too late, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Bobby. "The damage is done."
*
As if President Kennedy did not have enough to worry about in the autumn of 1963, the crisis in Vietnam boiled over on the first Saturday in November.
Encouraged by Kennedy, the South Vietnamese military deposed their unpopular president, Ngo Dinh Diem. In Washington, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy woke Kennedy at three A.M. to tell him the coup he had authorized had now taken place. Diem and his brother, Nhu, had been arrested. Kennedy ordered that Diem and his family be given safe passage to exile.
Bobby summoned George to go with him to a meeting in the Cabinet Room at ten A.M.
During the meeting an aide came in with a cable announcing that both Ngo Dinh brothers had committed suicide.
President Kennedy was more shocked than George had ever seen him. He looked stricken. He paled beneath his tan, jumped to his feet, and rushed from the room.
"They didn't commit suicide," Bobby said to George after the meeting. "They're devout Catholics."
George knew that Tim Tedder was in Saigon, liaising between the CIA and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the ARVN, pronounced "Arvin." No one would be surprised if it turned out that Tedder had fouled up.
Around midday a CIA cable revealed that the Ngo Dinh brothers had been executed in the back of an army personnel carrier.
"We can't control anything over there," George said to Bobby in frustration. "We're trying to help those people find their way to freedom and democracy, but nothing we do works."
"Just hang on another year," said Bobby. "We can't lose Vietnam to the Communists now--my brother would be defeated in the presidential election next November. But as soon as he's reelected, he'll pull out faster than you can blink. You'll see."
*
A gloomy group of aides sat in the office next to Bobby's one evening that November. Hoover's intervention had worked, and the civil rights bill was in trouble. Congressmen who were ashamed to be racists were looking for a pretext to vote against the bill, and Hoover had given them one.
The bill had been routinely passed to the Committee on Rules, whose chair, Howard W. Smith, from Virginia, was one of the more rabid conservative Southern Democrats. Emboldened by the FBI's accusations of Communism in the civil rights movement, Smith had announced that his committee would keep the bill bottled up indefinitely.
It made George furious. Could these men not see that their attitudes had led to the murder of the Sunday school girls? As long as respectable people said it was all right to treat Negroes as if they were not quite human, ignorant thugs would think they had permission to kill children.
And there was worse. With a year to go before the presidential election, Jack Kennedy was losing popularity. He and Bobby were especially worried about Texas. Kennedy had won Texas in 1960 because he had a popular Texan running mate, Lyndon Johnson. Unfortunately, three years of association with the liberal Kennedy administration had just about destroyed Johnson's cred
ibility with the conservative business elite.
"It's not just civil rights," George argued. "We're proposing to abolish the oil depletion allowance. Texas oilmen haven't paid the taxes they ought to for decades, and they hate us for wanting to scrap their privileges."
"Whatever it is," said Dennis Wilson, "thousands of Texas conservatives have left the Democrats and joined the Republicans. And they love Senator Goldwater." Barry Goldwater was a right-wing Republican who wanted to scrap Social Security and drop nuclear bombs on Vietnam. "If Barry runs for president, he's going to take Texas."
Another aide said: "We need the president to go down there and romance those shitkickers."
"He will," said Dennis. "And Jackie's going with him."
"When?"
"They're going to Houston on November twenty-first," Dennis replied. "And then, the next day, they'll go to Dallas."
CHAPTER THIRTY
Maria Summers was watching on TV, in the White House press office, as Air Force One touched down in brilliant sunshine at the Dallas airport called Love Field.
A ramp was maneuvered into place at the rear door. Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, took up their positions at the foot of the ramp, waiting to greet the president. A chain-link fence kept back a crowd of two thousand.
The aircraft door opened. There was a suspenseful pause, then Jackie Kennedy emerged, wearing a Chanel suit and a matching pillbox hat. Right behind her was her husband, Maria's lover, President John F. Kennedy. Secretly, Maria thought of him as Johnny, the name his brothers occasionally used.
The television commentator, a local man, said: "I can see his suntan all the way from here!" He was a novice, Maria guessed: although the television picture was monochrome he failed to tell his audience the colors of things. Every woman watching would have been interested to know that Jackie's outfit was pink.
Maria asked herself whether she would change places with Jackie, given the chance. In her heart Maria yearned to own him, to tell people she loved him, to point to him and say: "That's my husband." But there would be sadness as well as pleasure in the marriage. President Kennedy betrayed his wife constantly, and not just with Maria. Although he never admitted it, Maria had gradually realized that she was only one of a number of girlfriends, maybe dozens. It was hard enough to be his mistress and share him: how much more painful it must be to be his wife, knowing that he was intimate with other women, that he kissed them and touched their private parts and put his cock in their mouths every chance he got. Maria had to be content: she got what a mistress was entitled to. But Jackie did not have what a wife was entitled to. Maria did not know which was worse.
The presidential couple descended the ramp and began to shake hands with the Texas bigwigs waiting for them. Maria wondered how many of the people who were so pleased to be seen with Kennedy today would support him in next year's election--and how many were already planning, behind their smiles, to betray him.
The Texas press was hostile. The Dallas Morning News, owned by a rabid conservative, had in the past two years called Kennedy a crook, a Communist sympathizer, a thief, and "fifty times a fool." This morning it was struggling to find something negative to say about the triumphant tour by Jack and Jackie. It had settled for the feeble STORM OF POLITICAL CONTROVERSY SWIRLS AROUND KENNEDY ON VISIT. Inside, however, there was a pugnacious full-page advertisement paid for by "the American Fact-Finding Committee" with a list of sinister questions addressed to the president, such as: "Why has Gus Hall, head of the U.S. Communist Party, praised almost every one of your policies?" The political ideas were about as stupid as could be, Maria thought. Anyone who believed that President Kennedy was a secret Communist had to be certifiably insane, in her opinion. But the tone was deeply nasty, and she shivered.
A press officer interrupted her thoughts. "Maria, if you're not busy . . ."
She was not, evidently, since she was watching television. "What can I do for you?" she said.
"I want you to run down to the archives." The National Archives building was less than a mile from the White House. "Here's what I need." He handed her a sheet of paper.
Maria often wrote press releases, or at least drafted them, but she had not been promoted to press officer: no woman ever had. She was still a researcher after more than two years. She would have moved on long ago, were it not for her love affair. She looked at the list and said: "I'll get on it right away."
"Thanks."
She took a last glance at the television. The president moved away from the official party and went to the crowd, reaching over the fence to shake hands, Jackie behind him in her pillbox hat. The people roared with excitement at the prospect of actually touching the golden couple. Maria could see the Secret Service men she knew well trying to stay close to the president, hard eyes scanning the throng, alert for trouble.
In her mind she said: Please take good care of my Johnny.
Then she left.
*
That morning George Jakes drove his Mercedes convertible out to McLean, Virginia, eight miles from the White House. Bobby Kennedy lived there with his large family in a thirteen-bedroom white-painted brick house called Hickory Hill. The attorney general had scheduled a lunch meeting there to discuss organized crime. This subject was outside George's area of expertise, but he was getting invited to a wider range of meetings as he became closer to Bobby.
George stood in the living room with his rival Dennis Wilson, watching the TV coverage from Dallas. The president and Jackie were doing what George and everyone else in the administration wanted them to do, charming the socks off the Texans, chatting with them and touching them, Jackie giving her famous irresistible smile and extending a gloved hand to shake.
George glimpsed his friend Skip Dickerson in the background, close to Vice President Johnson.
At last the Kennedys retreated to their limousine. It was a stretched Lincoln Continental four-door convertible, and the top was down. The people were going to see their president in the flesh, without even a window intervening. Texas governor John Connally stood at the open door wearing a white ten-gallon hat. The president and Jackie got into the rear seat. Kennedy rested his right elbow on the edge, looking relaxed and happy. The car pulled away slowly, and the motorcade followed. Three buses of reporters brought up the rear.
The convoy drove out of the airport and onto the road, and the television coverage came to an end. George switched off the set.
It was a fine day in Washington, too, and Bobby had decided to have the meeting outside, so they all trooped through the back door and across the lawn to the pool patio, where chairs and tables had been set out ready. Looking back toward the house, George saw that a new wing had been built. It was not finished, for some workmen were painting it, and they had a transistor radio playing, its sound a mere susurration at this distance.
George admired what Bobby had done about organized crime. He had different government departments working together to target individual heads of crime families. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics had been gingered up. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had been enlisted. Bobby had ordered the Internal Revenue Service to investigate mobsters' tax returns. He had got the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport those who were not citizens. It all amounted to the most effective attack ever on American crime.
Only the FBI let him down. The man who should have been the attorney general's staunchest ally in the fight, J. Edgar Hoover, stood aloof, claiming there was no such thing as the Mafia, perhaps--George now knew--because the Mob was blackmailing him over his homosexuality.
Bobby's crusade, like so much that the Kennedy administration did, was disdained in Texas. Illegal gambling, prostitution, and drug use were popular among many leading citizens. The Dallas Morning News had attacked Bobby for making the federal government too powerful, and argued that crime should remain the responsibility of local law enforcement authorities--who were mostly incompetent or corrupt, as everyone knew.
The meeting was interrupted when Bobby's wife, Ethel, brought out lunch: tuna sandwiches and chowder. George looked at her with admiration. She was a slim, attractive woman of thirty-five, and it was hard to believe that four months ago she had given birth to their eighth child. She was dressed with the understated chic that George now recognized as the trademark of the Kennedy women.
A phone beside the pool rang and Ethel picked it up. "Yes," she said, and she carried the phone on its long lead to Bobby. "It's J. Edgar Hoover," she said.
George was startled. Was it possible that Hoover knew they were discussing organized crime without him, and was calling to reprimand them? Could he have bugged Bobby's patio?
Bobby took the phone from Ethel. "Hello?"
Across the grass, George noticed one of the house painters behaving oddly. He picked up his portable radio, spun around, and started running toward Bobby and the group on the patio.
George looked again at the attorney general. A look of horror came over Bobby's face, and suddenly George felt scared. Bobby turned away from the group and clasped his hand over his mouth. George thought, What is that bastard Hoover saying to him?
Then Bobby turned back to the group eating lunch and cried: "Jack's been shot! It might be fatal!"
George's thoughts moved with underwater slowness. Jack. That means the president. He's been shot. Shot in Dallas, it must be. It might be fatal. He might be dead.
The president might be dead.
Ethel ran to Bobby. All the men jumped to their feet. The painter arrived at the poolside, holding up his radio, unable to speak.
Then everyone began talking at the same time.
George still felt submerged. He thought of the important people in his life. Verena was in Atlanta, and she would hear the news on the radio. His mother was at work, in the University Women's Club; she would hear in minutes. Congress was in session, and Greg would be there. Maria--
Maria Summers. Her secret lover had been shot. She would be grief-stricken--and she would have no one to comfort her.
George had to go to her.
He ran across the lawn and through the house to the parking lot in front, jumped into his open Mercedes, and drove off at top speed.
*
It was just before two in the afternoon in Washington, one in Dallas, and eleven in the morning in San Francisco, where Cam Dewar was in a math class, studying differential equations and finding them hard to understand--a new experience for him, for until now all schoolwork had been easy.