by Bob Mayer
His thoughts came to an abrupt halt at Hoover’s next two words: “Judith Campbell.”
Kennedy tried to stay relaxed. “Who?”
Hoover gave that sickening smile of his. “Las Vegas. 1960. The filming of Oceans Eleven. Your ‘buddy’ Frank Sinatra. He introduced you to her. Don’t you remember?”
“I can’t recall. I don’t even remember being in Vegas.”
The smile grew wider. “I can assure you that you were,” Hoover said. He opened the folder and on top was the picture of a woman. He slid it across to Kennedy, who didn’t pick it up.
“She’s quite beautiful,” Hoover said. “Interesting timing. You were seeking the democratic nomination at the time. Apparently you were seeking more than that, as you became involved with Miss Campbell.”
“I’m afraid your information is—“
“Incorrect?” Hoover completed for him. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard that? I never share information unless I am certain it is correct.” He grabbed the next picture in the folder and tossed it on top of Campbell’s. Kennedy’s stomach tightened.
“Perhaps unknown to you at the time, but certainly known afterwards, was that Sinatra also introduced Miss Campbell to this man.” He leaned forward and tapped the picture. “Sam Giancana. A criminal. Head of what is called ‘the Outfit’ in Chicago. Since there is no organized crime in this country, the Outfit is a bunch of thieves and murderers.” The sarcasm was dripping from Hoover’s words.
“It wouldn’t surprise you, of course, to know that Miss Campbell is also Mister Giancana’s mistress?”
Kennedy couldn’t tell if it was a question or not, so he remained silent.
“Of course not.” Hoover answered his own question. “Since Miss Campbell calls you here at the White House using the phone in Mister Giancana’s apartment in Chicago.” Hoover picked up a third picture and threw it down. “Your father. Joseph Kennedy. He had dealings with men like Giancana, especially during Prohibition. I believe the Sinatra introduction was at his behest.”
Kennedy had not thought of that, but he knew as soon as Hoover said it that it was true. Chicago. Of course. His father pulling strings.
Hoover pursed his lips as if in thought. “Now this part is not validated, but comes from credible sources. It seems someone from your campaign gave a bag of cash to Giancana back when you were seeking the Democratic nomination. You did win Illinois, mainly because of a huge push in Chicago. Some would say a statistically impossible push. A lot of votes from the grave.”
“What do you want?” Kennedy had had enough.
Hoover picked up the next item in the folder. A thick sheaf of papers. “Come now, Mister President, are you really trying to hire this Giancana fellow and his ‘Outfit’ to assassinate Castro?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Hoover blinked. “You really don’t know about that? Curious. Your precious CIA is keeping secrets from you, too. But, like me, they know your secrets.”
“What do you want?”
Hoover reached over and grabbed the sheaf of papers and the photos, making a large show of putting them back in the folder and shutting it. Kennedy didn’t miss that there was a lot in that folder that Hoover had not brought out.
“It isn’t what I want. It’s what we want.” Hoover lifted the lapel on the right side of his suit jacket, revealing a medallion. “The Society of the Cincinnati, Mister President.” With his other hand he tapped the thick folder. “We have you—and your brother—by the balls, to use a crude but appropriate phrase. If I ask for something, we want it. Do you understand?”
Kennedy just stared back at the old man.
Hoover stood, tucking the folder under one arm. “Right now, all we want it is for your brother to change his mind and sign off on the paperwork on his desk to wiretap Martin Luther King.”
“I don’t—“ Kennedy began, then stopped as Hoover waved the folder, as if fanning himself. “All right.”
5 August 1963
“I love you, too,” President Kennedy said, and then hung up the phone, severing the line to his wife in Hyannis Port.
“How is Jackie?” the only other occupant of his private dining room on the second floor of the White House asked.
Kennedy grimaced, both from the pain in his back and the recent conversation. “Not good. The heat is bad, she feels ill and she’s scared.”
“Of course she’s scared. She already lost one child. I know how she feels.”
Kennedy watched as Mary Meyer took a sip of her drink. He enjoyed her company—one of the few people he felt comfortable being alone with and simply talking, but to be honest, he still missed their affair.
“Graham shot himself,” he said, referring to the Washington Post publisher who had killed himself with a shotgun just two days previously. And who, back in January, had pushed his way to the podium at a conference of newspaper editors in Phoenix—even though he wasn’t supposed to speak—and drunkenly delivered a tirade that included references to the President’s ‘new favorite,’ Mary Meyer. He had been wrong about the ‘new’ part, Kennedy mused. He’d known Mary since college, and she’d long been a staple of White House life.
“I heard,” Mary said. “I feel for his wife. He’d just gotten out of the hospital. They thought he was better.”
“He was out of control,” Kennedy said. He had been intimate many times with Mary, and even though that part of their relationship had ended with the dual pressures of Graham’s publicity and Jackie’s pregnancy, he still felt a tight bond. He’d once smoked marijuana with her, even tried LSD—not his thing—and she’d been there with him through the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Pigs, and many other significant events of his Presidency. Always someone he could confide in and count on for solid advice. “What’s wrong, Mary? Is it Jackie? She’s fine with your being here.”
Mary Meyer shook her head. “I was approached by some men. They wanted me to give you a message and they showed me something.”
“What men?”
She shook her head. “I can’t tell you, except that they are for real. Three high-ranking generals and someone—let’s say he’s on a level with Graham.”
Kennedy frowned. “What did they show you?”
“A document.” Mary got up from her end of the table and sat kitty-corner to the President and took his hand.
Kennedy was surprised at the move and the look on her face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Have you ever heard of the Jefferson Allegiance?”
Kennedy gripped her hand tighter. “Yes. A rumor of it. No one has ever confirmed its existence though.”
“It exists. They showed it to me.”
Kennedy could feel his back tighten, the old injury from PT-109 coming back to haunt him as it always did when he was under stress. “Why did they show it to you?”
“They wanted me to give you a message. And they knew you trusted me.”
“Go on,” Kennedy prompted.
Mary’s tongue snaked over her lips, a sign of how nervous she was. “They said that they respected what you did during the Missile Crisis. That it was important that one man be in charge and handle things. That it was one of those unique moments with high stakes where the responsibility and decision-making had to rest on the President’s shoulders.”
“But?” Kennedy prompted.
“The Bay of Pigs. The Wall being built in Berlin. Your recent speech there worried people. They felt you were continuing to challenge Khrushchev. That it had become personal. And the involvement in Vietnam greatly concerns the military men.”
Kennedy scoffed. “There are only eleven thousand men in Vietnam—all advisers. And the Pentagon has promised they can be withdrawn by the end of the year after they crush the Viet Cong rebels. Vietnam is not an issue.”
“That is not the way the Philosophers see it.”
“The ‘Philosophers?’ So it’s true that they guard the Allegiance.” He stared at her. “Is it as powerful as rumo
red?”
Mary nodded. “If they invoke it, they would remove you from office. And that’s just the beginning.”
The silence in the dining room lasted a long time before Kennedy spoke again. “What do they want?”
“For you to use the National Security Council for advice more often. To back off Vietnam. Back off of pressing Khrushchev.”
“Do they want an answer?”
“They told me they would get their answer from your actions.”
“I don’t like being threatened,” Kennedy snapped. “I get it from both sides. The damn Cincinnatians and Hoover. Now the Philosophers. I’m sick of it.”
“There’s something else,” Mary said.
“What?” Kennedy knew he was being short, but the pain in his back and this information along with Jackie being miserable in Hyannis Port was ruining what he had hoped would be a pleasant evening.
“Did you know the CIA is trying to use the mob to kill Castro?”
Kennedy leaned back in his chair, trying to ease the pain in his back, pulling his hand out of hers. “Hoover said something to me about that. I thought he was bluffing.”
“I asked Cord,” Mary said, referring to her ex-husband, who was high in the ranks of the Agency. “He said ‘of course not,’ which means of course they are.”
“God damnit,” Kennedy slammed a fist onto the tabletop, causing the crystal to jump.
“The Philosophers want you to get on top of that. After the Bay of Pigs, there can’t be another Cuban fiasco. They say it’s very complicated and dangerous and that the Cincinnatians are involved.”
“Who the hell runs this country?” Kennedy demanded.
Mary got up and walked behind his chair. She leaned over and wrapped her arms around his chest. “I’m worried, Jack. Very worried for you. Cord didn’t just lie to me. There’s something going on. Something very dangerous. Promise me you’ll be careful?”
Kennedy was hardly comforted by her touch or her words, but he nodded anyway. “I promise.”
Burns finished reading and leaned back in his seat. He glanced over at Evie. She was making notes on a yellow legal pad. “We need something that isn’t here,” Burns said, startling her. “At least I don’t think it’s here.”
Evie tore her eyes away from the screen. “What?”
“Mary Meyer’s diary. If Kennedy confided in someone, it was her. And her diary is one of the great urban legends of DC. She knew everyone who was important and was intimate with many of them. She knew their secrets. If anyone knew Kennedy’s secrets, it was Meyer.”
Evie nodded. “I’ve heard of the diary.” Her eyes shifted focus slightly, a look Burns was beginning to recognize as accessing her font of knowledge. “She definitely kept one. She asked a friend, Anne Truitt, who was married to a Washington Post reporter, to get it and keep it safe if anything ever happened to her. Unfortunately, when she was murdered, Truitt was in Japan. She called back to a couple of people, one of them Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post to go get the diary.”
“Might as well have told the CIA and the FBI then,” Burns said. “There’s no doubt they had taps on Bradlee’s phone.”
“Exactly,” Evie said. “They went over to Meyer’s house the next morning and guess who they find already there, also looking for the diary? James Jesus Angleton of the CIA and his wife, both of whom were acquaintances of Meyer’s. Which brings up the interesting question of how did Angleton know of the diary?
“According to later reports, they searched the house together and found the diary and some papers. Angleton took all of it under the agreement that he was to burn everything. However, as far as they knew, he only burned the loose papers. He kept the diary. Years later, he supposedly gave the diary to Bradlee’s wife and she burned it in the presence of Truitt. But who knows if that was really her diary? And even if it was, Angleton had years to read and copy it. He was not the sort of man to let go of any potential piece of evidence or something he could use for leverage. He’s quite the legend in the CIA. They even made a movie that was sort of about him with Matt Damon playing his character.”
“So the diary, or a copy of it, could be anywhere?”
“’Anywhere’ is rather broad,” Evie said. “If we analyze the problem, we can narrow down ‘anywhere’ to possibilities.”
“Then let’s do it,” Burns said, “because if Kennedy knew about these Jupiter missiles and warheads being left in Turkey, then there’s a good chance she would have known about it. Since she represented the Philosophers in their approach to Kennedy, perhaps in death she can continue to be liaison to him.” He thought about it for a moment. “You know, the part about Hoover was interesting. He was into everything. No one has ever found his files. His secret files that he used to control almost everyone.” He pointed at the screen. “If he were a member of the Society of Cincinnati, then it’s very likely they have his files. We need to ask Turnbull.”
Evie couldn’t hold back the smile. “Good luck with that.”
Burns understood. “I know, I know. But we’re working together on this. Turnbull wouldn’t have made a deal with us if he didn’t need something. The Senator would have gotten him out of there and he could have dealt with the Turkey issue pretty much on his own.”
“You’re correct,” Evie said. “He wants information from us. And we need information from him. He knows more than he’s letting on. The question is: what does he want from us?”
“If he had a spy on the Ararat expedition,” Burns said, “then he knew something was up in Turkey.”
“That is curious,” Evie said.
Evie picked up her phone. “You go back to DC and sit down with Turnbull. Don’t let him out of your sight. Like Ducharme is going to be with those TriOp guys on the op, you’re on Turnbull. I’ll get the chopper for you.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Find information here,” Evie said. “Because we need to know more, and if we’re going to trade with Turnbull, we need something to trade. He’s not a man who is going to give away information for free. I’ve got a feeling Turkey might just be the tip of the iceberg that is the Sword of Damocles.”
*****
A flash of light and a lance of pain slicing through his head burst Ducharme awake. He scrambled, searching for his weapon, and hit the sides of the cockpit. He was confused for a moment, uncertain where he was, but then the roar of the engines, the steady rumble of the aircraft in flight and the soft glow of the instrument panels oriented him.
“You all right?” Stretch’s voice was low and apparently unconcerned in Ducharme’s helmet.
“Yeah. Why?”
“You were yelling something. Couldn’t make it out.”
Ducharme closed his eyes. He could feel the echo of the pain that had woken him, a throb that would take hours to dissipate. Though he wanted to deny the reality, it was getting worse and more frequent.
“Bad dream,” Ducharme said.
“Yeah,” Stretch acknowledged. “Have had a few myself.”
They flew in silence for a few minutes before Stretch surprised Ducharme by speaking again.
“It ain’t normal, Colonel.”
“What isn’t?”
“What we do. The things we’ve done.”
Ducharme knew exactly what Stretch was referring to. “When I’m in the zone, in action, I do what I’m trained to do. But when things slow down, when I’m not in danger, I wonder what was I thinking. Then I realize I wasn’t thinking.”
“Exactly,” Stretch said. “I flew some missions out of Al Asad, I guess that’s why my brain is wandering. Sorry, Colonel. I’ll get back on task.”
“No problem,” Ducharme said, very much knowing there was a problem.
Moscow
1 August 1961
“No one has any intention of erecting a wall!” German Democratic Council Chairman Walter Ulbricht lied to Premier Khrushchev over the phone.
Over his years in politics, Khrushchev had often wondered how not-s
o-bright people rose to power. Of course, in the case of Ulbricht, he hadn’t risen so much as been picked for this very lack of acuity. A German who’d deserted his country’s army in World War I, he’d spent the years between the wars mostly in exile, escaping the Nazi crack-down on Communists rather than dying like the rest of his Communist German brethren. He’d ended up in Russia during the Second World War and gave a speech at a Communist political rally for the German prisoners at the conclusion of the Stalingrad campaign.
Khrushchev imagined those prisoners had been as keen to listen to this man’s whiny voice as he was. Of course, they were prisoners—the survivors of the most brutal campaign of the Second World War—and most were destined to die in the POW camps in Siberia.
He knew exactly why Stalin had tapped Ulbricht to head up the puppet East German government after the war: he was a spineless man who would sway in whatever direction the winds of power were blowing in Moscow. On the flip side, more than anyone else, Ulbricht was responsible for the ‘brain drain’ of East Germans fleeing to the West that was further crippling his country’s economy.
Frankly, Khrushchev wasn’t too upset that East Germany’s economy was in the proverbial crapper. The last thing any Russian wanted was a powerful Germany, even a powerful half-Germany. The more the Germans suffered, the happier the Russians were. Beyond the ‘brain drain’ to the west, there’d been an ‘factory drain’ to the east as the Russians dismantled large parts of Eastern Europe’s manufacturing infrastructure and shipped it back to the Motherland.
Khrushchev had been part of the fall of Berlin at the end of the Second World War, and he’d felt then, and still did, that the utter devastation wrought by the Russians on the German people was more than justified. One reaps what one sows, and the Germans had sown millions of Russian corpses during Operation Barbarossa, their invasion of the Soviet Union. During the fall of Berlin, it was said that every woman in the city had been raped, and Khrushchev wondered how many erstwhile Berliners coming of age now had Russian blood in their veins.