The Kennedy Endeavor (Presidential Series Book 2)

by Bob Mayer

  “They won’t risk a nuclear war over it,” Meyer said.

  “Probably not,” Angleton allowed. “But in my world, we know the Russians hate the fact that we have a base in their backyard. It would be like them having an outpost in Hawaii. A place where their spies can come and go pretty openly. They’re going to do something about it.”

  “Jack won’t let West Berlin fall.”

  “Probably not, but he’s going to have to give in on something there and it won’t be pretty.” Angleton shook his head. “And then Hoover is all over him and his brother. I might be able to help there.”

  “Hoover’s a pig.”

  “Absolutely,” Angleton agreed. “More than most people suspect.”

  “Is that what you have on him?” Meyer asked. “What everyone whispers about? Him and that fellow that’s always with him.”

  “Hoover survives by having more dirt on others than they have on him. Which is a scary thought if you consider what Hoover does in private.”

  Angleton turned and began walking again. Meyer followed suit.

  “When you talk to Jack, suggest he not go to Vienna,” Angleton said.

  Meyer noted he said ‘when,’ not ‘if.’ “Why?”

  “He’s not ready to face Khrushchev. That old man came up with Stalin, who chewed up Roosevelt. Ike didn’t do too good with Khrushchev either. You think Jack is ready for someone like that?”

  “Jack’s tough.”

  “I know, but—“ Angleton hesitated.

  “But what?”

  “That doctor he sees,” Angleton said. “Jacobson. He’s got him on a lot of medication. For his back. Jack can’t be thinking straight. He needs to clear his head if he’s going to face Khrushchev.”

  “All right,” Meyer said, thinking of Leary sitting on his couch, rolling a joint. “I’ll talk to him about it. But he can be stubborn.”

  They walked a little further in silence. They came to the walkway where they’d entered the path.

  Angleton halted. “So, I’ll see you on Saturday? What time would you like me to pick up the boys?”

  “Ten will be fine.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  They didn’t shake hands nor did they hug. It wasn’t Angleton’s way.

  Meyer nodded and walked up the path, heading toward her car. As soon as she was out of sight a man came up the towpath. He wore a long trench coat and a hat pulled low over his eyes. His hands were stuffed into his pockets.

  “Yes?” he asked as he came up to Angleton.

  “Put a tap on her phone,” Angleton said, staring off in the direction Meyer had gone.

  The man nodded.

  Angleton turned toward his operative. “We’re in a wilderness, Mister Racca. Do you understand that?”

  Racca knew better than to answer. He’d served with Angleton long enough to know his boss was thinking out loud, something he rarely did. He was giving insight into his thought process and there was a reason for that, one that Racca knew he would have to spend hours trying to unravel. And often couldn’t.

  A flash of light flickered across Angleton’s face, a reflection of the sun off a window in a distant building. “Yes. A wilderness of mirrors. We don’t know what the real object is, it’s reflected so many times.”

  “You can break mirrors,” Rocca said.

  Angleton frowned, a furrow crossing his narrow forehead. “But then you can’t track them back to the source.”

  Rocca knew he’d made a mistake. “True, sir.”

  “She’s important, Mister Rocca. Very important. Your life now is her life. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter Four

  The Present

  “What’s the message?” Ducharme asked.

  “Have a seat,” Turnbull said.

  “It’s my interrogation room,” Burns said.

  “Turn off the recording devices,” Turnbull ordered. “This stays in the room.”

  “Listen—“ Burns began, but Evie put a hand on his forearm.

  “Do what he asks,” she said. “If he wants us to know the contents of the message, it must indeed affect us.”

  “It does,” Turnbull said. “As I said, it could possibly affect everyone on the planet.”

  Burns went to the observation room and shut down the cameras and the mikes. Throughout all this Ducharme was silent, but his hand was pressed against the side of his head, an indication of the pain that was spiking through his brain from his injuries. Pain that would always accompany him—sometimes more, sometimes less.

  “How’s the TBI?” Turnbull asked as Burns came back in the room.

  “I managed well enough to shut you down,” Ducharme said as he and Evie and Burns took chairs across the table from Turnbull.

  Turnbull tapped the side of his head. “Got hit a lot boxing. You have that constant ringing in your ears?”

  “We’re not friends,” Ducharme said. “The message.”

  “One of our operatives has discovered something in Turkey,” Turnbull said. “Some relics from the Cold War that could be rather dangerous in the wrong hands.”

  “The Jupiter missiles,” Evie said. “Where?”

  “Whoa,” Burns said. “Slow down. The what?”

  Ducharme was the only one who didn’t seem surprised by her leap in logic after having spent several days with her and listening to her litany of history and arcane facts. Evie Tolliver was a walking font of seemingly useless information until that information was needed. She’d tried to explain it to him. She didn’t have a photographic memory, but rather an eidetic one, where she could recall things with great detail by putting them in context. Turnbull had given her three pieces: danger, Cold War relics and Turkey, and she’d lined them up in an instant.

  “She’s right, isn’t she?” Ducharme asked Turnbull.

  He nodded. “How did you come up with that?” he asked Evie.

  “The warheads,” Evie said. “Are they still with the missiles? There’s no way they’d work after all these year. The missiles or the warheads. But the plutonium. That’s a problem. Is it still with the missiles?”

  “Yes, it is,” Turnbull said, confirming her guess. “At least some of it.”

  “I’m still back at Jupiter,” Burns said.

  “How many warheads?” Evie asked.

  “My man just checked radiation levels,” Burns said. “The reading was more then sufficient to indicate there were at least several.”

  “Is the dosage fatal?” Evie asked.

  Turnbull shrugged. “Message didn’t say, but those warheads were shielded. He got out of there and has taken up a surveillance position.”

  “I assume we’re talking about nuclear weapons?” Burns said.

  Ducharme ignored the FBI agent. “Who else knows?”

  “No one.”

  Ducharme got to his feet. “We have to alert the National Command Authority. That material has to be secured. Your operative is all alone?”

  “He is now,” Turnbull said. “But one of the Kurdish porters from the group he was with escaped.”

  “Shit,” Ducharme said. “The Kurds would love to get their hands on some plutonium.”

  “Never mind the Kurds,” Turnbull said. “The border with Iran isn’t that far away.”

  “Jupiter?” Burns asked plaintively.

  “Evie,” Ducharme said. “The short version.”

  Evie rattled the facts off. “Developed in the late ‘50s, the Jupiter was the first medium-range ballistic missile the United States developed, with a range of about fifteen hundred miles. Thus it wasn’t exactly an ICBM. Intercontinental. Those came later. Thus, in order for it to be an effective weapon against the Soviets, it had to be based within range of Moscow for its nuclear warheads to be a valid threat. So we forward deployed two squadrons of fifteen missiles each in Italy and the one squadron in Turkey.” She paused and glanced at Turnbull. “Did your man—I assume he’s a man unless you have another Surgeon working for you—
find all fifteen?”

  Turnbull shook his head. “Six. One upright. Five on trailers. Again though, we don’t know how many warheads.”

  “The missiles were supposed to have been cut to pieces and shipped back. The warheads flown back.” Evie closed her eyes for a moment, accessing her remarkable memory. “They had megaton warheads. Just over one, I believe. The missiles were emplaced where they could hit Moscow at their maximum range.” She opened her eyes. “And their deployment in Turkey, and before that Italy, is a big reason the Russians put their own missiles in Cuba. A little historical footnote few people remember. In essence, one could say we initiated the eventual Cuban Missile Crisis by taking that first step.” She looked at Turnbull. “How did your man find them?”

  “We received some intelligence,” Turnbull said. “We checked it out. Turns out the intelligence was correct.”

  “Intelligence from where? Who?” Ducharme asked.

  Turnbull gave him a deadeye stare. “Let’s get real.”

  “Why should we believe this guy?” Burns asked. “He’s a murderer and a liar. He’s not even who he pretends to be.”

  “Let us see the message,” Ducharme said.

  “No.”

  “It’s a ploy for him to get out of here,” Burns insisted.

  “I don’t need a ploy to get out of here,” Turnbull said. “And I assure you, this—“ he held up the phone—“is real. Lucius should have gotten it over forty minutes ago. It was forwarded to me because Lucius can’t answer his phone thanks to Mister Ducharme. We’re wasting time.”

  “Where in Turkey are they hidden?” Evie asked.

  “Near Mount Ararat. A bunker built into one of the foothills.”

  Evie nodded. “Perfect hiding spot. But near a lot of borders.” She suddenly stiffened as something else occurred to her. “The Sword of Damocles.”

  “The what?” Ducharme asked, but he noted that Turnbull didn’t seem surprised at the phrase.

  “It was something McBride talked about one time,” Evie said. “We were discussing the Cuban Missile Crisis and he mentioned it. I thought he was referring to Kennedy’s speech at the UN, where the President used the term to describe the nuclear standoff of the Cold War. At the time I thought it was a throwaway line, but perhaps he was revealing something to me. It‘s something I need to check on.”

  “It’s a code name,” Turnbull said. “The Sword of Damocles.”

  “Where did you hear it?” Ducharme asked.

  “We picked it up,” Turnbull said vaguely.

  “And it stands for?” Burns asked.

  “We didn’t know, but now we do now,” Turnbull said. “The warheads.”

  “So you sent someone to check it out and they found it,” Ducharme said.

  Turnbull shook his large head. “No. We were investigating something else and the term came up. We found out that someone was going to Turkey to investigate this Sword. So we sent our man along.”

  “Just like that?” Ducharme wasn’t buying it. “What, someone walk into Anderson House and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to check out the Sword of Damocles just because it occurred to me’, and you sent someone with him?”

  “Again,” Turnbull said, his voice taking on an edge, “don’t trivialize me or the situation. Intelligence is an active, ongoing system. You know that. Lots of pieces. It takes time to fit the pieces into a pattern.”

  “So you poked into something,” Ducharme said. “What?”

  “Not relevant right now.”

  “The lack of intelligence in an operation can be fatal,” Ducharme said. “You’re withholding those pieces that we need for the pattern.”

  “Let’s deal with the immediate problem,” Evie suggested.

  “All right,” Ducharme agreed. “Enough history. We have to notify the National Command Authority about this and they need to get those warheads with their plutonium secured.”

  “No.”

  Ducharme blinked at Turnbull’s succinct rejection. “This isn’t politics. This is weapons grade plutonium sitting there for the grabbing.”

  Turnbull nodded toward Evie. “What supposedly happened to the Jupiters?”

  “They were withdrawn from Turkey as part of the deal Kennedy made with Khrushchev to defuse the Cuban missile crisis.”

  “Correct,” Turnbull said. “Except now we know they weren’t. Not all of them. Think about the implications.” He leaned forward. “Most people don’t even know the public history of the crisis. They think our blockade turned the Russian ships carrying the missiles around. Yeah, the ships carrying their medium range missiles, ones that could reach DC, did turn around. But the Russians already had R-12 tactical nuclear missiles on the island. And the launch authority had been granted to the Soviet general on the ground, which was unheard of before and since. If we’d have invaded Cuba with ground forces—as the Pentagon was insisting—it would have started a nuclear exchange.”

  Burns had been listening to this, a spectator up until now. “If all the Jupiters weren’t withdrawn, perhaps all the Russian missiles weren’t either?”

  “Give the man a cigar,” Turnbull said. He pointed at Ducharme and Evie and then tapped his chest. “There was some deal brokered between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Supported by your Philosophers. We believe it’s this Sword of Damocles thing. We, the Society, have been trying to figure it out for over half a century. Well, we just found one of the pieces. Maybe you need to check your own archives. You probably have a lot more in there about this than we have in ours. All those questions you’ve been asking me, I think you’ve already got a lot of the answers.

  “This situation is a lot bigger than just those missiles on Ararat. We need to proceed carefully in the big scheme of things or else we could blow the lid off something that could be very, very bad. Both our groups have secrets those of us in this room don’t even know about. But one thing I’m sure of is that these are secrets that can never, ever, see the light of day.”

  Burns slapped the table. “Oh, fuck you people. Fuck you! Fucking secrets. You’re gonna get us all killed with your damn secrets.” He put his fedora on and stormed out of the room.

  The three left behind were at a loss for a moment. Ducharme had his hand against the side of his head, pressing hard, as if pushing in could act against the pain pushing outward. He was tired, the adrenaline rush of the previous evening’s combat had long ago worn off, and he could use a shower, a good meal, and a couple days of sleep.

  None of that looked to be likely in the immediate future.

  “That was effective,” Turnbull said dryly. “Now—“

  The door opened up and Burns came back in. He carefully took off his hat and placed it on the table. “I apologize for my outburst.”

  “Perfectly understandable,” Evie said.

  “Listen,” Turnbull said, his low, gravelly voice grabbing everyone’s attention. “These secrets. This supposed ‘game’ we’re all playing. It’s kept things in balance for centuries. Since World War Two it’s kept the world from blowing itself up. It’s pretty amazing we haven’t. So it might not be perfect, but it’s what we’ve got, so we have to deal with it and work with it.”

  Evie glanced at Ducharme and took point. “I agree this is very sensitive. But we can’t sit still and do nothing about what your man’s discovered. We have to get that plutonium secured while we try to figure out what really happened back then.”

  Turnbull nodded. “My man is on top of the target site. If you allow me, I can get assets moving. But I’ll need your help. We need to work together on this.”

  “Whoa!” Burns said, having apologized but not been placated. “An hour ago we were reading you your rights and charging you with murder.”

  “Catch up,” Turnbull said.

  The door to the interrogation room swung open and a tall man everyone immediately recognized filled it, with a cluster of lackeys behind him.

  “Tom, everything all right?” the man asked.

  Turnbull stood up. “Yes,
sir, Senator. Everything’s fine. Just discussing some strategy with my colleagues here.”

  The Senator raked Burns, Evie and Ducharme with a look that indicated what he thought of the colleagues. “I received a call that you’d been mistakenly apprehended over some misunderstanding. I thought you might need my assistance.”

  “I very much appreciate it, Senator,” Turnbull said. “But everything has been worked out. Hasn’t it, Agent Burns? Colonel Ducharme? Ms. Tolliver?”

  Evie once more took the lead in making peace. “Everything is fine, Senator.”

  “Well.” The Senator looked disappointed that he didn’t get to chew up and spit out someone. “I’ll go back to the Hill then. Give me a ring if you need anything, Tom. You have my personal line.”

  “I’ll do that, sir.”

  And just as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.

  “Good timing,” Ducharme said. “Except our guy got here first.”

  “If I’d still been in cuffs,” Turnbull said, “things wouldn’t have gone well for any of you.” He tapped his phone once more. “I’m going to get things moving. I can access guns and the men who use them. People who will never speak about what happens. I’ll need a way to get them into Turkey and do the extraction. Our best shot is to go in from Iraq. I can also get in touch with our contacts in the State Department and get us some cover for the operation.”

  “Mercenaries?” Ducharme asked, the disgust evident in his voice.

  “Would you rather use soldiers and start a war?” Turnbull said. “There’s plenty of contractors on the ground already there.”

  “I don’t trust them,” Ducharme said.

  “I don’t trust you,” Burns added, pointing at Turnbull.

  “TriOps?” Ducharme asked, the name of the contractors he’d already run into here in the States working for the Cincinnatians.