by James Philip
That all this was happening on Independence Day; the day when the March on Philadelphia reached City Hall, the temporary home of the US House of Representatives was...surreal.
Not to mention very, very frightening.
Caroline met her younger lover’s gaze.
Her life was chaos and she had embraced that chaos. She had returned to California and every night since she and Nathan had slept entwined in each other’s arms; the most unlikely Romeo and Juliet in town. He was a few months younger than her son. He had been through Hell. She was turning grey and to look at had never been any kind of movie star and yet, she did not want to be anywhere else and if she left she knew it would destroy him.
And now they were listening to the prologue to the end of the World, again. They had been through this before in October 1962 and the only thing that was different was that this seemed much more dangerous, and it was happening much faster.
They had expected to listen to the President’s reassuring drawl.
But the voice on the radio was not that of JFK.
Lyndon Johnson could not have sounded any graver.
“I hope and pray that in the days, weeks and years to come that Americans will remember this day as the dawn of a new age. An age in which no American’s character will ever again be judged on account of the color of his or her skin, religion or origin. This event was planned as a celebration of everything that we share in common in this great land; but we meet on a day when the future of Mankind hangs again in the balance.”
The transistor radio on the table between the man and the woman buzzed, static filled the void for some seconds.
“This morning President Kennedy collapsed at the Philadelphia White House. His doctors tell me that he suffered a seizure of some kind. At this time the President is fighting for his life in hospital and it is too early to know if he will make a full recovery.”
“Oh, my God,” Caroline sighed.
Without conscious volition Nathan had taken her left hand in his right hand.
“Earlier today I consulted with Chief Justice Earl Warren and Congressional Leaders, informing them that until such time as the President is able to resume his duties the heavy burden of the Presidency of our nation must fall upon my shoulders.”
More static.
“In the coming hours and days you will hear many rumors, half-truths and lies broadcast in good faith by the nation’s newsmen. Franklin Delano Roosevelt once talked about having ‘nothing to fear but fear itself’. Never was that more true than now. I have told the Russians and the British that America does not want war. The United States has not used nuclear weapons in the Middle East, nor will it use nuclear weapons against any foe unless the North American continent is attacked by such weapons.”
“Did he just say what I thought he just said?” Nathan muttered, stunned.
Caroline nodded jerkily.
“At the time US naval forces in the Persian Gulf came under attack the Governments of the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were on the verge of signing an unconditional non-aggression pact. Under this pact both parties undertook to take the steps necessary to end hostilities in the Persian Gulf and to respect each other’s legitimate commercial and strategic vital interests in the region. Peace remains the only policy of the American Government...”
There was a sound like muted thunder through the static.
Lyndon Johnson broke off in mid-stream.
“Are those explosions?” Caroline asked numbly. “And is that gunfire?”
People in the crowd in front of City Hall were screaming.
Lyndon Johnson’s voice, grimly unflustered broke through the ether.
“Please stay where you are!”
When this failed to have the desired effect the Acting President bawled commands.
“STAY WHERE YOU ARE! SOMETHING IS HAPPENING SOMEWHERE ELSE IN THE CITY! RIGHT NOW THIS IS THE SAFEST PLACE IN PHILADELPHIA!”
The damage had been done.
The background noise might have been thunder; it was not.
The man and the woman stopped listening. They hugged each other close because that was the only safe thing to do.
“If we’re still here in the morning will you marry me, Caro?” The man whispered in the woman’s ear.
“Yes, of course I will...”
The new President was appealing for calm.
Nobody in Philadelphia was listening and neither were the lovers.
“STAY WHERE YOU ARE! YOU ARE SAFE HERE...”
The man and the woman were in the bedroom by then.
Chapter 59
Saturday 4th July 1964
Wister Park, Philadelphia
It did not take a rocket scientist to work out that when Dwight Christie was handcuffed to a bench near the back of the first bus, and then left alone in that bus, driven by a wild-haired kid who seemed high on something, that whatever Galen Cheney had planned for him was not going to end well.
The rain had dried up overnight and in the morning ‘the gang’ had brewed coffee on gasoline soaked wet logs. Nobody had brought Christie a mug, just like nobody had unchained him so he could go to the John in the night. He would have worried about why Cheney had not just shot him or cut his throat; but at least the bastards had chained him twenty feet away from the puddle of piss he had been working on during the night.
If he had smoked a last cigarette would have been nice. As for famous last words well, his throat and mouth were so dry it was likely his voice would fail him. Everybody else had piled into the second school bus. The ancient Blue Bird was rolling and smoking along behind Christie’s ‘lift’ keeping fifty to a hundred yards separation along the back roads.
Why no roadblocks?
Maybe they were too far from the city.
Wherever they were headed it had to be somewhere in Philadelphia, nothing else made sense.
Christie was light-headed from thirst and hunger, a little feverish he guessed. If he closed his eyes, drifted away from consciousness for a moment crazy dreams swirled across the front of his mind.
One bus in front, one driver, and one passenger who was a problem?
All the men you trusted in a second bus, following on behind?
What did that add up to?
Still no roadblocks.
Today was the Civil Rights movement’s big day; everything was going on in downtown Philly. Maybe that was where all the cops and National Guardsmen and the troops which had to have been brought into the city would be; a ring of steel around the part of the city which mattered.
But there ought to have been roadblocks out her in the suburbs.
Dwight Christie was still mulling this when the first volley of bullets smashed the windscreen and all the windows down the left hand side of the old bus. Glass showered down upon him as he instinctively dove for the floor; in the heat of moment forgetting that his hands were chained at waist height to the bench. He was brought up agonizingly short of the filthy floor with his hands flapping about in the breeze of ricocheting bullets. Something tugged his left hand and wetness splashed his face.
The bus’s engine was roaring; revving so high it was starting to tear itself apart. The vehicle took a bend, threatened to topple onto its left side before rolling back to the horizontal with a bone-shaking crunch and bouncing forward, faster and faster.
The bus was clanging and juddering, there was burning, smoke in the cab and the engine was suddenly dying.
When it came the crash was like a bomb going off.
The bus ran into something at full tilt, perhaps sixty or seventy miles an hour and kept on going on its right hand wheels. There was a terrible rending noise, the sound of masonry shattering, a deafening, grinding deceleration as all four wheels slammed down on broken ground as the bus slewed sidelong to a halt in one final collision that halted the crash in a fraction of a second.
Dwight Christie blinked uncomprehendingly at a patch of blue sky high over his head.
H
e did not know where he was just that he was no longer in the bus.
There was a heavy explosion somewhere to his right, followed by small whiplash detonations; grenades, and the burping and rattling of automatic weapons. And in the background screams and whoops of animal rage.
The next moment he was curling into a fetal ball as people stampeded past him, on top of him in a frenzy that might have been panic or the madness of the chase.
A stray boot knocked him senseless.
Chapter 60
Saturday 4th July 1964
City Hall, Philadelphia
With hundreds of others who had been seated in the VIP stalls Gretchen and Dan had been ushered into City Hall and through to the open air quadrangle within the great fortress. Within the monumental castle keep the distant explosions and gunfire were muted, whispers on the wind drowned out by the bullhorns of the soldiers who had taken charge of the situation inside City Hall.
“THERE IS NO CAUSE FOR ALARM!”
“THE AREA AROUND CITY HALL HAS BEEN SECURED!”
“THE WELCOMING CEREMONY FOR THE MARCHERS WILL CONTINUE IN A FEW MINUTES!”
Gretchen leaned on her husband’s arm. Standing for long periods wearied her and made her feel like an old woman. Her doctors had said that she would get stronger as her recovery continued; they had put her back together again and now nature needed to take its course.
“Are you okay, honey?” Dan asked, extending his arm around his wife’s waist and guiding her towards where he had spied a low wall where she could rest.
“Yes, just fine.”
But he guided her to the thigh-high brick wall surrounding a rather anemic looking sapling. The small tree had probably been a gift to the municipality from visiting dignitaries and would have been better planted out along a street than inside the courtyard. Despite her protestations Gretchen was clearly grateful to take the weight off her feet.
“It looks as if we’re not going to have to wait for the British or the Russians to blow up the World,” she observed irritably, “we’ve got plenty of home-grown idiots in this city!”
“Ah, there you are,” Claude Betancourt guffawed with relief as he and his entourage navigated through the press of bodies. “I lost sight of you in all the excitement.”
“Heck of a day, sir,” Dan Brenckmann observed.
His father-in-law had known that the young man would not be more than an inch from his daughter’s side at a time like this. Gretchen was looking a little hot and bothered; for all her bravado and unquenchable ‘can do’ spirit she was still only partially recovered from the life-threatening injuries which had seen her in a coma in the days after the Battle of Washington in December.
“I’m all right, Daddy!” She informed him tartly, reading his thoughts.
The old man glanced to Dan.
“That’s good then!”
The men swapped conspiratorial smiles. Right up until the night of the October War Claude Betancourt had fretted about who – when he died – would take up the great project of his latter days; Gretchen.
Who would there be to watch over her?
To catch her when she fell?
For whom would she become the centre of the universe and the hope for the future?
Inevitably, Gretchen had treated her knight in armor a little shabbily to begin with. Her father had wondered if she had just been testing him in some way but discounted this; young people – even one so driven as his daughter – were simply not that calculating. They had too many hormones at work, too many hopes and fears jostling for attention at that age. But then there had been those scandalous rumors that bastard Hoover had put out about a non-existent, an implausible affair between Gretchen and Nick Katzenbach, Bobby Kennedy’s deputy at Justice. The whole Brenckmann family had rowed in behind Gretchen and the rest was history. Gretchen had formerly been engaged to the heir to a great New York banking fortune; but Dan Brenckmann had been the man who risked his neck searching Washington DC while the fires were still burning in a score of great buildings of state and the streets were blocked with detritus and uncounted bodies. It was Dan who had found their girl more dead than alive at Bethesda, and Dan who had held Gretchen’s hand when she fought for her life in the days that followed.
And here he was now ready to catch Gretchen if she fell as he would be for as long as he lived.
“Does anybody actually know what’s happening?” Gretchen asked.
“LBJ’s people say that as soon as things quiet down they’ll restart the ceremony. Most of the marchers have just sat down in the street. Doctor King and the Vice President have gone outside to reassure people.” The old man chuckled. “LBJ’s Secret Service detail thought he was joking when he said he was going outside!”
Dan took this opportunity to ask the question that was burning on every American’s lips.
“What news is there of the President, sir?”
“They think he had some kind of seizure. A stroke or a heart attack. They say he was sick then he just keeled over. The last I heard he was still unconscious. LBJ’s running the show. He’s got the nuclear football.”
Gretchen got back to her feet, looked around at the milling crowd.
“Is somebody talking to the British and the Russians, Daddy?”
Claude Betancourt thought about it.
“I hope so...”
Chapter 61
Saturday 4th July 1964
The British Embassy, Bellfield Avenue, Philadelphia
“Stay in this room!” Rachel Piotrowska commanded when the first explosion rocked the building. She had reached inside her handbag and pulled out the Browning automatic pistol she had been carrying around the last few days. With her free hand she retrieved the two spare magazines in the bag and dropped them in her jacket pockets, discarding her handbag on the floor.
The Ambassador, Lord Franks and his wife tried not to stare wide-eyed at Rachel. The elegant, charming spy mistress had morphed into a stranger; as if a switch had been clicked.
“I suggest you get down on the floor. Preferably behind something solid, like you desk, sir,” she put to the Ambassador. “When I leave the room please barricade the door and don’t let anybody in.”
The first floor office was not an ideal ‘safe room’ but moving the Ambassador and his wife to another part of the building when she had no idea what was waiting for her in the corridor was out of the question.
In a moment she was outside, the door slammed shut at her back.
Nobody shot her; that was probably a good sign.
The Embassy was still secure although not for much longer.
Her ears were beginning to decode the mayhem outside. Everything was confused by the chanting and screaming of the crowds in Wister Park. She recognized the discharge of pump action shot guns. The mob in the park had surged forward and broken the police cordon; killers seeded in the crowd would be scaling the seven foot walls of the compound in the next minutes. But that was not the immediate threat. Something was going on along the Bellfield Avenue frontage of the Embassy; there were long magazine-emptying bursts of automatic gunfire and grenade detonations. All around her there were running feet and shouted warnings.
The Embassy’s protection squad was gathering in the ground floor lobby. There were five or six men in uniform with Sten Guns and pistols, and two of her own people.
“We’re breaking SLRs out of the Embassy gun room!” She was told breathlessly.
Everybody was crouching low behind whatever cover they could find.
Bullets were whistling through the front entrance lobby of the building.
“Spread out!” She yelled. Any second now a grenade or a gas canister was likely to fly into the lobby. “Cover the corridors to each wing of the building. If we get over run retreat to the first floor! Nobody goes below ground! Nobody!”
There were too few of them to dissipate their strength defending basements in which they would be trapped like rats in a trap.
The front of the building m
ust have blown in because everything was dust and buzzing quietness. Rachel coughed violently. Pulverized brick and shards of glass fell off her back as she raised herself off the floor to her knees.
She began shooting at the dark shapes moving towards her in the virtually impenetrable dust fog. The bark of the Browning kicking in her hands sounded like it was coming from the other end of a mile-long tunnel.
She saw the muzzle flash of an automatic weapon.
In the ungodly deafened hush a tall, broad form emerged out of the smoke.
The giant was hefting an old-fashioned Tommy gun.
Rachel, still on her knees was only six feet away from the man.
He stood like a statue in the ground floor lobby as the atmosphere began, very slowly, to clear. He seemed alone, unhurried, his gaze systematically surveying his surrounding as blood ran down the left side of his face.
Rachel blinked the dust out of her eyes.
She had leveled her browning at the centre of the man’s chest.
He was so close she could not miss.
He knew it; she knew it.
Her right index finger closed on the trigger, squeezed it.
And the hammer came down on an empty chamber...
[ THE END ]
Author’s Endnote
Thank you again for reading Timeline 10/27/62 – USA Book 4: Ask Not Of Your Country. I hope you enjoyed it - or if you didn’t, sorry - but either way, thank you for reading and helping to keep the printed word alive. Remember, civilization depends on people like you.
* * *
These days I get asked quite a lot about my plans for Timeline 10/27/62; which is a bit tricky because obviously, one is always at pains to avoid putting inadvertent spoilers ‘out there’.
However, without offering ‘spoiler hostages’ I think I owe it to my readers to level with you as much as possible about my plans.
