by Bob Mayer
“Let me ask you this one question: given your background and your expertise with weapons, do you believe a lone gunman, firing from that window in the Book Depository, killed Kennedy? Take out all the conspiracy theories, just look at it from an operational point of view.”
Evie looked over her shoulder, not giving him a chance to answer. “Let me list just a few facts that most people don’t know about the shooting. First, there was an entry wound in his neck. No one focuses on that. That was most likely the same round that took off most of the back of his head, yet we’re to believe that headshot came from above and behind. You know the difference between an entry and exit wound.”
“An autopsy could have confirmed or refuted that,” Ducharme said.
“Yeah, except the autopsy was done by a hand-picked guy here in the DC area after they flew the body back, violating Texas law. By a guy who had never done a GSW autopsy. Why would someone like that get picked for perhaps the most important autopsy of the century? And he burned his own notes afterward. One thing I learned in the CIA is that where there are burned notes, there’s fire.”
“In the neck, out the back of the head,” Ducharme mused. “I’d say a shooter in the sewer system, firing from the curb. Or maybe the grassy knoll. I’ve never been there so I don’t know the fields of fire. Plus I’d need to know the angle of the body at fatal impact. I never understood why the first shot didn’t knock him over.”
“He was wearing a back brace,” Evie said.
“That was bad luck,” Ducharme said.
“And you’ll agree the odds of a lone gunman are very, very low?” Evie asked.
“I always thought it was ridiculous,” Ducharme said. “A moving target with a bolt action rifle at that range and that downward trajectory? Very tough even for a trained sniper.”
“What Texas law was violated?” Burns asked as he drove them across the Potomac and onto Suitland Parkway.
“Removing the body before an autopsy was performed,” Evie said. “They broke so many laws and rules that day on so many levels, it’s pretty much statistically impossible, even given how screwed up the government could be. The usual Secret Service guards who rode on the steps on the rear of the Presidential limo were ordered not to that day. You can see film footage of them at the airport being told to get off and one of them arguing. And the guy who took that footage, David Powers, Kennedy’s Special Secretary and BFF, well, I won’t get into him right now.”
“So more than a shooting,” Ducharme said, not asking about Powers or else they’d end up on highway to information overload. “A conspiracy. And you think it’s linked to these missiles in Turkey?”
“I think it’s linked to something between the Philosophers and the Cincinnatians,” Evie said. “We know from what we read of McBride’s notes on the Jefferson Allegiance that the Philosophers threatened to pull out the Allegiance unless Kennedy backed off just three months before he was assassinated.”
That got Ducharme to sit up straight. “Are you saying we were behind the assassination?”
Evie shook her head. “The Philosophers wouldn’t do that. Not because we’re so noble and good, but because we’ve always had the Allegiance to use.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Burns said. “I’m catching up on the Jupiter thing, but what is this about Kennedy and the Allegiance?”
“I’ll show it to you as soon as Duke is on his way,” Evie said. Then she did what she was prone to, tuning Burns out as if he weren’t even in the car, focusing on Ducharme in the back seat as they approached the main gate to Andrews Air Force Base. “You up for this?”
Ducharme nodded. “Sure. Nothing but a thing.”
“What does that mean?” Evie asked.
“Nothing but a thing,” Ducharme repeated with a weary smile. “I’ll sleep on the flight. What kind of ride did you get me?”
Evie ignored the question. “You were bent on revenge for Charlie LaGrange when you were going after the Allegiance.”
“I do my duty,” Ducharme said.
“This is off the books,” Evie reminded him.
“It’s not the first time I’ve gone off the reservation.”
“You buried your knife.”
“That was a mistake,” Ducharme said. “I’m gonna miss it.”
“It isn’t about the knife,” Evie said as the gate guards waved them through after seeing Burns’ ID and checking their clearance roster. Evie’s phone calls were opening things up for them as the tentacles of the Philosopher’s via General Pegram reached out into the military.
“Where am I going?” Burns asked.
“The tower,” Evie said, without taking her eyes off Ducharme. “I know you’re having a hard time with this as a soldier. But remember that ‘war is a continuation of politics by other means.’”
“Clausewitz?” Ducharme was surprised. “You’re quoting Clausewitz to me?” He seemed caught between the twin rocks of outrage and irony. “’Most intelligence reports in war are contradictory,’” Ducharme quoted back to her. “We studied Clausewitz at the Academy. Charlie LaGrange was in my Section when we had to read Clausewitz. Memorized a lot of his writings. ‘In short, most intelligence is false.’ What Clausewitz called the fog of war,” Ducharme said. “We’re in a pretty dense fogbank right now. Turnbull is holding back something, no doubt about that.”
Burns pulled up to the Andrews Air Force Base tower and turned off the engine. There wasn’t a band waiting to greet them, just a lonely looking full bird colonel wearing a long black coat, braced against the cold weather.
“Clausewitz fought against Napoleon and lost most of the time,” Ducharme said. “Maybe we ought to be following some of Napoleon’s advice?”
Evie raised an eyebrow. “How about: ‘History is a set of lies agreed upon?’”
“I like that,” Ducharme said.
“But Napoleon lost to Clausewitz and his allies at Waterloo,” Evie noted.
“That’s the best you’ve got?” Ducharme shook his head as he opened the back door and stepped out.
“I want you to understand that the lines are blurred here,” Evie said. “Between the political and the military. Between political parties and countries. Between government and industry.”
Evie joined him. The Colonel came up but didn’t introduce himself, obviously unhappy with his assigned task.
“Your bird is inbound and about,” he checked his watch, “five minutes out. We’re going to do a hot refuel and then you’ll be on your way.” He paused, as if expecting some comment. “There’s, uh, well no flight plan filed.”
“Anything else?” Evie asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
The Colonel meandered off to stand out of earshot as if hearing something might get him shot. He’d been at Andrews long enough and seen enough flights depart without a flight plan to know when to walk away.
“Evie,” Ducharme said, “I know you’re into theory and strategy and thinking things out and pithy quotes, but I’d have expected the last couple of days to have shown you the other side of this. The dirty side. Where people die.”
“I’ve seen it before, when I was in the Agency.
Ducharme gave up on that angle of approach. “You have anything more about this Sword of Damocles? I’ve heard that phrase somewhere.”
“Kennedy used it in a speech to the United Nations in 1961,” Evie said. “He basically said everyone on the planet was living under a nuclear Sword of Damocles. The anecdote refers to something from Cicero. He wrote about a court hanger-on of King Dionysius the Second of Syracuse. Trying to suck up to the king, Damocles said that since he was king, Dionysius was a blessed man and quite fortunate. Dionysius turned the tables on Damocles and offered to switch places. Damocles, of course, accepted. Except the king had a very large sword hung over the throne, held only by a single horsehair. As you can expect, it freaked Damocles out to the point where he begged to go back to his position.
“
Dionysius’ point, no pun intended, was to show Damocles that great power came with great danger. A constant fear. Cicero summed it up by saying that a person who lived in great fear could never be happy. Kennedy expanded that to cover everyone on the planet with the sword being nuclear weapons.”
“The Sword is still hanging there,” Ducharme said.
“It’s been there since 1945,” Evie said. “But it has never fallen. Rather remarkable if you think about it. By the way,” she added. “You know how the knife on the US Special Forces crest is a Fairbarn-Sykes commando knife?”
“Yes. That’s also what I just buried at Arlington.”
“The British Special Air Service have a knife in their insignia. But it’s not a Fairbarn-Sykes. It’s the Sword of Damocles.”
“Curious,” Ducharme allowed.
They were interrupted as an F-22 Raptor came swooping down, seemingly way too fast, and touched down at the end of the runway, braking hard.
“How am I going in that?” Ducharme asked as it rapidly slowed down, then turned off onto a taxiway and headed toward them. “I’m not a pilot.”
“You’re looking at the only two-seater F-22 ever built,” Evie said. “The F-22B. For training purposes. But it cost too much, around half a billion a copy, so they discontinued the line. You get the backseat.” She awkwardly put a hand on his shoulder. “Get some rest during the flight.”
“Yeah, I’ll have the in-flight meal,” Ducharme said. He turned to Evie and her hand fell away. “I have a bad feeling about this. And with Charlie and his dad dead, I don’t have much to come back to.”
He waited a moment, then headed for the plane, where a ground crew was pushing a ladder up against it and the canopy was open and waiting. Ducharme climbed up and got in. The plane was moving even as the ground crew pulled the ladder away and the canopy was closing.
“You were supposed to say ‘you’ve got me to come back to,’” Burns said, startling Evie.
“I was thinking that,” she said.
“Thinking ain’t doing,” Burns said.
4 June 1961
Vienna, Austria
The leaders of the two most powerful nations in the world sat in armchairs angled toward each other for their first, and what would be their only, meeting. It wasn’t going very well for the American.
“Force will be met by force,” Khrushchev said. “If the United States wants war, that’s its problem. You must decide whether you want war or peace.”
“Then, Mister Chairman, there will be a war,” Kennedy replied. “It will be a cold, long winter.”
Khrushchev snorted in derision and shook his head dismissively, indicative of his attitude toward the American President since they first entered this room in Vienna. “We have many long, cold winters in the Soviet Union. It is nothing to us.”
Kennedy leaned forward so only Khrushchev could hear. “We need to work something out about the nuclear weapons.”
Khrushchev also leaned forward. “It is too soon and too dangerous. You must learn how to play, how is it you say, the long con because you must not only deal with me, we must both deal with our own generals.” Then he sat back and raised his voice. “Is this all you have for me? The situation in Berlin is not acceptable.”
*****
Kennedy slumped down into the sofa, a hat pulled down low, hiding his eyes. The blinds were shuttered and the room was dark. Kennedy sat awkwardly, the pain in his back throbbing, despite the pills and shots Dr. ‘Feelgood’ Jacobson had been giving him nonstop.
“How was it, Mister President?” James ‘Scotty’ Weston was the only other person in the room, invited to this unprecedented one-on-one with the President, just an hour after the end of the Summit.
“Worst thing in my life,” Kennedy replied. “Khrushchev savaged me.”
Reston was the NY Times Reporter for the Washington Press Corps. Kennedy had been in office only six months, but Reston was getting used to Kennedy’s honesty and bluntness. Still, he was taken aback by this summary, even though it had been obvious to all observers that the summit between the American leader and the Soviet Premier had been a disaster for the younger man.
While he waited for more, Reston jotted a note to himself, a first reaction, a key to writing any article. ‘Not usual BS. There’s a look to a man when he has to tell the truth.’
“You’ve got two duties,” Kennedy said. “Do the job for the Times. And do the job for your friends.”
“’My friends?’” Reston said.
Kennedy tilted his head back slightly, and even in the dim room, Reston could see the President’s bloodshot eyes underneath the brim of the hat. “I’m getting clued in, Scotty. I know you answer to the people in Philly.”
Reston was uncertain how to respond to that, so he didn’t.
“For your readers,” Kennedy said in his distinctive New England accent. “They need to begin to understand things are going to get worse, much worse, before they get better. If they ever do.”
Reston jotted some notes, even though a bead of sweat was sliding down his forehead. Kennedy seemed immune to the stifling heat in the room, but it was more than that.
“Berlin,” Kennedy said succinctly. “I screwed that. That old son-of-a-bitch is going to do something there. Maybe another blockade. Who knows? I thought he’d focus on Cuba, but he brings Berlin up. What does he expect? What’s his angle?”
It was obvious Kennedy wasn’t waiting for an answer from Reston on what Khrushchev expected. “We’d have to run the airlift again. But the game is very different now than it was back in ’48. The Russians didn’t have the bomb until after that was over. They’ve got it now. That ups the stakes. We don’t have the same leverage.”
“They’ve lost millions of people defecting to the west,” Reston said. “Most through West Berlin. And these aren’t just farmers and working class. A lot of the top professionals are leaving.”
“I know,” Kennedy said. “It’s a bleeding wound they can’t ignore. But how can they stop short of attacking West Berlin and starting World War Three?”
Kennedy sighed. His next words were almost to himself. “Do I give up Berlin to keep the peace? Appeasement didn’t work. Can’t work in the long run, but it has a place in the short term.” He stirred as if realizing someone else was in the room. “You know the title of my thesis at Harvard, Scotty?”
“No, sir.”
“’While England Slept,’” Kennedy said. “Wrote it in ’40, before we knew what we later learned.” He chuckled, a good memory intruding. “Bought myself a green Buick with the royalties from the book. Convertible. Nice car.”
The memory was gone just as fast as Kennedy sank back into the depressive hangover of the Summit. “I’ve got to figure out why he came on so strong. I know he thinks he won hand over me with the Bay of Pigs. But something else is going on. He’s got something up his sleeve. He was hostile, as if we were already at war. Why did he even come here, then? To gloat? He had to have had a reason.” Kennedy didn’t wait for an answer. “Not only do I have to figure out what he’s going to do, I’ve got to figure out what we can do about it.”
Kennedy took off the hat. “That’s the official, unofficial version from an unnamed source, Scotty. The rest is off the record and in regards to what we can do about it.”
Reston shut the notebook. “Sir?”
“The Philosophers,” Kennedy said. “What’s their take?”
“The who, sir?”
“I gave you this meeting,” Kennedy said. “I’m giving you headline stuff. I want something in return. I want you to go your buddies in Philadelphia. Tell them hard times are ahead. That there can’t be another Bay of Pigs. They’re either with me—“ Kennedy paused and with great difficulty, got to his feet— “or they’re against me.”
Reston also stood. “You sure that’s the message you want to me to give them?”
“I’m the Goddamn President!”
*****
“Anyone so young and inexperienc
ed that he got his country into that mess in Cuba seems to be a weak man,” Khrushchev told Mikoyan as they rode to the Vienna airport in the Chairman’s limousine.
“He might be, but his Generals are a different story,” Mikoyan cautioned.
“He let the attack in Cuba start, then failed to support it,” Khrushchev said. “Held back the air and naval support they needed. No guts.”
“That cuts both ways,” Mikoyan said. “He might not be able to do what Eisenhower did. Keep the Generals under control.”
Khrushchev shrugged. “He looked anxious. Upset even. What kind of leader is that? I came on strong, the way you must when first meeting another leader. What did he expect? A big hug? A toast together?
“I didn’t mean to push him so hard, but when there is no resistance, the push goes the distance. It would have been better for him to have pushed back. For us to have gone on our ways today in different moods. But that is on him. This business we are in, the wielding of power, is merciless.”
“Remember, Comrade Stalin always said the west would wring our necks like a chicken once he was gone,” Mikoyan warned.
“Comrade Stalin has been gone for some years now,” Khrushchev observed, “and we are still breathing. He is not. Nor is Beria,” he added with a sharp glance.
“True,” Mikoyan said. “Kennedy is a weak man. A weak leader.”
Khrushchev shook his large head. “No. You have him wrong. Strangely, I sense more strength in Kennedy than Eisenhower. Remember, Eisenhower might have been the big commander in the West during the Great War, but Kennedy was one who was in the fight in the Pacific. Who came under fire. There is a difference in such men, as you and I know. It is easy to give orders for others to face the enemy, it is different to face them in person.”
Mikoyan remained silent, a course of action that was a default mode for him when someone with more power told him he was wrong. It didn’t mean he accepted the judgment, it meant he accepted the reality of the scales of power. And even though he resented Khrushchev for drawing him in to that statement, he would not bring that up. It was a strategy of Khrushchev’s to put conflicting statements out to subordinates in order to see how quickly they agreed and then contradicted themslves.
