by James Philip
Katzenbach knew Blake in passing and by reputation. He hardly knew Rowley. However, both Rowley and Blake had always been viewed by Administration insiders as safe pairs of hands trusted in exactly the way J. Edgar Hoover and to a lesser extent, Clyde Tolson were not.
The Director of the Secret Service, James Rowley reacted first.
“You aren’t the only government agency to have lost people the last few days.”
“No,” Gordon Aylesworth barked in irritable agreement.
The Vice-President was operating on a very short fuse.
For most of the last three years the man who had been the acknowledged ring master of the Capitol Hill circus until he lost out to Jack Kennedy as the Democrats’ nomination for the 1960 Presidential election, had been a sleeping partner in the Administration.
To insiders like Nick Katzenbach it was a mystery why Lyndon Baines Johnson had accepted the Vice-Presidential slot on the Kennedy ticket. LBJ had been one of the most powerful men in the country– arguably the most powerful man – after Dwight Eisenhower for several years; why accept a dead end sinecure? As for being a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, Jack Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected – Theodore Roosevelt had been a few months younger when he became President, but that was only because the incumbent, William McKinley had been assassinated – to the Presidency.
“Enough!” Johnson rasped lowly. “If anybody around this table knows of a single example in the history of the modern world when a country has been as completely caught sitting on the john with its pants down around its ankles you need to tell me now!”
The Acting US Attorney General sat back in his chair with the Vice-President’s words ringing in his ears and surveyed the room with hooded eyes, his fingers unconsciously making a pyramid just beneath his chin. The total failure of the entire United States intelligence community was negligent. It was probably also criminal. In either event it was inexcusable and he did not understand why the three directors; Rowley, Blake and Hoover had not been fired yet. Or rather, he understood it but he did not believe it and it made him as angry as Hell.
The problem – when was it not the problem? – was J. Edgar Hoover. So long as the disloyal, conniving old monster remained Director of the FBI; Rowley, Blake and the rest of the alleged intelligence and security apparatus could not be discarded because they were the only ones who really had any control over Hoover. The thinking was that while the other old stagers were around Hoover knew he could not risk pulling too many of his dirtiest party tricks without completely undermining his own position. It was the curse of having a living legend at the heart of the machinery of government; even when that legend’s substance was twenty years out of date and in retrospect had not actually been that substantial in its heyday. Half the world had gone up in smoke thirteen months ago so what was the President afraid of? Most of Jack Kennedy’s own people thought he was the biggest mass killer in history; what did he think J. Edgar Hoover could possibly do or say that would make him look any worse?
It was achingly predictable that having made his apologies J. Edgar Hoover now attempted to seize the moral high ground.
“If the Agency had not been obstructed in the pursuance of its...”
The Director of the FBI got no further because no matter how afraid of him and his ‘files’ the Kennedy family might be, LBJ was fearless. The Texan glowered at the small, seemingly stunted – Hoover started to curl up into a ball whenever the going got too tough – figure of the sixty-eight year old ‘gangbuster’.
“Your Agency, Mister Director,” the Vice-President said coldly, “has spent most of the last year pursuing people of color engaged on work for Doctor Martin Luther King. If you had dedicated half the resources you have wasted attempting to obstruct Dr King’s legitimate pastoral work in the wider colored community and elsewhere in the South, it is not inconceivable to me that the FBI might have noticed that an ungodly alliance of religious fanatics, backwoodsmen and criminal freeloaders – presumably corralled into line by this communist ‘Red Dawn’ doomsday organization the British warned us about - was preparing an armed insurrection against the lawfully constituted government of the Unites States of America!”
The Vice-President was famous for the ‘treatment’ he gave people who were giving him trouble. That treatment was unsubtle and unambiguous. He would stand toe to toe with his opponent and stare him out and if that failed, edge menacingly closer until he was literally head to head with his unfortunate victim.
Johnson never backed off.
He was starting to lean towards the Director of the FBI.
“There will be,” he promised solemnly, “a reckoning for the crimes committed against the American people, gentlemen.”
Chapter 17
Saturday 14th December 1963
Nob Hill, San Francisco, California
Twenty-five year old Gregory Sullivan was by his own admission the least driven, least ambitious and most easy going of the four Sullivan siblings. He was also the least physically pre-possessing of the four offspring of parents who had been gilded icons of the silver screen in the years before and after his birth. He was, for example, the shortest of the four children, albeit only by an inch or so at five feet nine inches when stood next to his sister, Miranda. Until he was about twenty and Miranda had been about eighteen the two youngest Sullivan Siblings had been close, very much in the shade of their immediate elder sibling, David – the family’s prospective ‘rocket scientist’ who had been head hunted by the Lockheed Corporation in his last year at Caltech – and Ben Junior, the spitting image of Pa and a straight up and down guy who was already an associate at a swanky LA law firm with major offices in New York and Boston. However, in many ways Gregory was perfectly content to be the ‘other Sullivan boy’. Although he regularly fended off his parents’ well-meaning subsidies and offers to pull strings on his behalf, it was nice to know that if he ever fell on his face he had rich, and interested relations with his best interests at heart; otherwise he lived modestly on his teaching salary, topping it up from time to time by running adult evening classes and occasionally providing private tutoring sessions. Basically, he loved what he was doing and he was more worried about being happy than getting on in the world!
That morning when he parked his dented old Dodge pickup on the street two lots down from Uncle Harvey and Aunt Molly’s old wood-frame Nob Hill town house, he whistled cheerfully as he bowed his head against the moist, misty wind blowing in through the Golden Gate as he jogged up the steps to the imposing oak front door.
Gregory and his siblings had lived most summers with the Fleischers and in truth there were times even now when he felt that Aunt Molly was his real mother. It had been the same for Miranda, too; which probably explained why his sister had never returned to Los Angeles after whatever had happened to her up in the Bay Area around the time of the October War.
Odd the way the phrase ‘the October War’ had almost immediately come into common usage all over the United States within weeks of the shooting stopping...
Gregory had majored in History, English Literature and Geography at high school. His teaching degree was in American History and Literature and deep within his soul he hankered to write the great post ‘October War’ novel. He never would, of course because, well, he planned to be far too busy enjoying his life in between now and the next time those idiots in Washington decided it would be a good idea to blow up the world again to sit down and write the ‘great post October War novel’.
He pulled his coat close against the damp chill of the day. There was fog in the Bay this morning; Alcatraz was hidden in the murk and nobody would see the Polaris submarines based at Alameda coming and going on their deadly missions...
“Hello?”
Gregory Sullivan realized he had been day dreaming; that was another thing his high-achieving elder brothers did not do. Miranda was a little dreamy as a kid but that had been knocked out of her in the last few years and he thought that was sad. If he
had any regrets in life it was that he and his sister had drifted apart and thus far, his sporadic attempts to again be her best friend had by and large, run onto the rocks. Miranda worked for the Office of the Governor of California in Sacramento these days; she was operating in a different league to her High School teacher next biggest brother and busy, busy, busy all the time.
“Hi,” Gregory muttered.
The pretty brunette who had answered the door had opened it three, maybe four inches and left the chain on the hook. The young woman was wearing a rubber glove on the hand holding the door ajar, her cheeks were flushed and she had about her a breathless, slightly perturbed bloom.
“I’m Gregory Sullivan,” the man said hopefully but this obviously rang no bells with the woman inside the house whom he judged to be in her very early twenties.
“Oh. I haven’t seen Miranda since I’ve been staying with Mister and Missis Fleischer,” the woman apologised in an unmistakably musical Southern lilt.
“I was in the city so I thought I’d say ‘hello’ to Aunt Molly and Uncle Harvey,” Gregory explained. “I teach High School across the Bay in Sausalito during the week. I like to drive over to the big city every two or three weekends, you know, to take in a show or a ball game...”
The young woman in the door was in a visible quandary.
“I always stay over with Aunt Molly and Uncle Harvey,” Gregory added.
This made up the doorkeeper’s mind.
The portal swung open and she stepped aside to allow the man admittance.
Desperately, she pulled at her gloved hands.
“I’m Darlene,” she blurted, sticking out a hand which had grown moist with perspiration inside its protective rubber house glove. “Darlene Lefebure.”
She was hot and bothered, having spent the last two hours dusting and polishing and generally cleaning; Mrs Fleischer – Darlene had not yet summoned the courage to call her heaven sent mother goose ‘Molly’ – had said, quite emphatically in fact, she did not have to pay her way or ‘any of that nonsense; you are our guest and it is lovely to have you under our roof’, but Darlene did feel very beholden and helping around the big house especially when her benefactors were not around to stop her, went a long way to assuaging her troubled conscience. A sweet old black lady, Mary, came in most days but she had rheumatic joints and she and Mrs Fleischer talked and laughed and drank coffee most of the time she was in the house. Darlene had not figured out exactly how that worked but she knew Mrs Fleischer paid Mary the full rate regardless of whether she got around to doing any cleaning or chores. Mrs Fleischer had explained that a couple of the neighbours’ kids came round when things got ‘too much’ for her and ‘it’s good for them’ to earn a ‘little extra pocket money’.
Darlene had been clutching a mop in her free hand which she now laid down carefully next to the soapy bucket just inside the door.
“Mind where you step, I’ve been...”
Gregory made a theatrical attempt to tip toe across the wet floor.
Instinctively, Darlene giggled.
“Where are you from?” He inquired now that the ice had been broken.
“Tupelo Mississippi first, then Jackson, Alabama,” the woman replied, lowering her eyes. “That’s a way south of Birmingham,” she added. “Mister and Missis Fleischer took me in when I had some trouble. I think that was Miss Sullivan, your sister’s doing. I haven’t seen her since I got here. I feel bad about that. She did her best to help me but I was catty on account of her and Dwayne going together on the night of the war...”
Darlene practically clapped her hands to her mouth.
I didn’t mean to say that!
Too late.
“Dwayne?” Gregory asked, smiling mild curious amusement that turned to instant concern as the first tears trickled down the young woman’s face.
“I’m sorry. You’ve got to forget I said that. Please?”
The man was a chaos of emotions.
This was all his fault and Darlene was quite the most beautiful girl he had met in...
His whole life, actually.
And the first thing he had done was make her cry!
Afterwards, he honestly did not know how it had happened.
One second he was shifting guiltily on his feet and she was...upset.
And the next moment she was in his arms sobbing inconsolably on his shoulder and he knew, he just knew, that this, whatever this was...was meant to be because if felt right...
Chapter 18
Sunday 15th December 1963
The Capitol Building, Sacramento, California
Of all the things that Miranda had imagined might be behind her unexpected telephone summons to attend the Office of the Governor of California on a Sunday she had not anticipated that it would be to meet the Vice-President of the United States of America. She was still trying to make sense of the events of that morning as she sat alone in her shared office on the first floor of the Capitol Building.
She had expected Lyndon Johnson to be taller than he actually was; she looked him pretty much in the eye in that moment before her courage fled and she smiled the debutante smile that she had sworn never to smile again.
‘Miranda is Ben and Margaret Sullivan’s girl,’ the Governor had explained by way of introduction as he led Lyndon Baines Johnson down the relatively short line of senior state staffers, civil servants and political aides.
‘Goodness,’ the Vice-President had smiled. There was a definite twinkle in his eye. ‘You are the spitting image of your mother, Miss Sullivan,’ he observed like a proud grandfather on the day of his granddaughter’s graduation from college.
‘Miss Sullivan has only recently joined my staff but she had already done good work liaising with the Party down in San Diego and with the Mayors of Oakland and San Francisco, not to mention with the Office of the California State Attorney General on behalf of my office in matters where the civil rights of bona fide members of the NAACP and Dr King’s movement were being infringed by certain government agencies.’
This prompted a significantly raised eyebrow from the Vice-President, whose craggy physiognomy briefly reflected the fact that his mind had just switched from third to fourth gear.
And then he had moved down the line.
Normally, once a dignitary got to the end of the reception line he, or more rarely, she, was hustled off and was not seen again until he, or she had concluded his, or her business with the Governor and his inside circle. However, that day Vice-President Johnson and Governor Brown had walked back up the line and claimed the floor in the middle of the room.
Miranda had honestly not realized that she had been admitted to the Governor’s ‘inner circle’ until that moment.
‘I will keep this short and sweet,’ the Vice-President had prefaced. ‘The Federal Government has let California down in the last year. We can belly ache about the reasons why forever and a day,’ he went on, ‘but the thing you need to know is that the President hears you. The President will be coming to the West Coast soon to listen personally to your grievances and to address the urgent needs of the West Coast states. I do not propose to, in fact, I will not apologise for all the things that have gone wrong in the last year. Let’s face it, after the war we were all so surprised we were still alive that it was a while before any of us understood just how much had changed. None of us in DC have a magic wand or some supernatural second sight that enables us to see into the future; the Administration did what it thought was the best for all our people. I freely admit to you now that events have proved that we made a lot of bad calls.’
Miranda was aware that several of her fellow staffers were looking at the Vice-President with their mouths hanging open in disbelief.
‘Words are cheap,’ Lyndon Johnson continued. He had a knack of making random eye contacts which convinced everybody within his hearing that he was talking to them personally. ‘I don’t expect anybody in California to take my word for anything. From this day forward the Administration expe
cts to be judged by what it does, not what it says. Heck, I know as well as all of you that if there was a General Election tomorrow the Democratic Party would get so badly beaten up that this time next year nobody except a few political historians would even remember there had ever been such a party as ‘the Democrats’. That’s where we are now. Rock bottom. Rock bottom politically, and after the Battle of Washington, rock bottom as a country. It is up to us all to do something about that!’
Later Miranda rationalised her reaction to the Vice-President’s call to arms by accepting that her first real, ‘touching’ acquaintance with a genuinely ‘great man’ had made her a little ‘giddy’. For the first time in her life she had shaken the hand of, and stood within the aura of a man who was unlike any other human being she had ever, or was probably, ever likely to meet. Lyndon Johnson radiated calm, measured power. If somebody had thrust an M-16 into Miranda’s hands in the minutes after she had been introduced to Johnson she would have gladly marched off to war without a second thought.
She had been too energised to do anything but go back to her desk, drink coffee and read the reports which had piled up since Friday.
Before the October War she suspected that the Office of the Governor had been a sleepy, mainly dark place at weekend; since the war the office never slept.
A knock at her open door caught her unawares and made her start with alarm. She looked up.
The middle-aged man in the doorway was wearing the ill-fitting uniform of a member of the State Capitol’s security detail. National Guardsmen patrolled the surrounding streets and barred the doors to the huge building, within its walls the pre-war ‘guardians’ survived.
“There’s a black guy down in the main lobby saying he wants to speak to you, Miss Sullivan,” the man complained.
“Does he have a name?”
“John. Mister John.”
Miranda nodded, her calm facade masking her suddenly churning emotions. She pushed aside her papers and got to her feet.