by James Philip
On the subject of the Director of Central Intelligence, it was a mystery to Sorensen – and many DC insiders - why the CIA’s top man was not in prison by now.
“Walter Brenckmann needs you, Ted,” Bobby Kennedy had said. Right out, no beating about the bush. “For what it’s worth, Jack thinks it is best for the Party and the country.”
Ted Sorensen’s loyalty to Jack Kennedy had never wavered. Even now, when asked, he disclaimed responsibility for the line ‘ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country’, maintaining doggedly, that he had advised the President but that JFK had actually written that line in that famous inaugural address.
In retrospect, Sorensen had hesitated to climb into bed with the McGovern people because some sixth sense had told him it simply was not meant to be. It had nothing to do with Claude Betancourt finally coming out of the shadows to assume the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee last fall, or even that at the end of the day money talks and the Betancourt family had a lot of it; no, it had always been a gut feeling that George McGovern, admirable human being that he was, could not possibly beat Richard Nixon.
And politics was about winning elections.
All those years that Sorensen had been JFK’s legislative assistant in the House, and later his special counsel, advisor, confidante and lead speechwriter – the one regret of his life was that, because of illness, he had not been there for his friend when he finally collapsed under the unbearable strain in July 1964 – had taught him to recognise the signs. Some men, a shrinkingly tiny number of men, had it in them to be good presidents, and fewer, Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the capacity to be great presidents. He had never seen George McGovern in either league but…Walter Brenckmann had something indefinable, something he could not quite put his finger on but which gave him hope.
Which was why, as he paid off his cab, against his better judgement, he was looking forward to this latest encounter with the remarkable brunette force of nature that was Gretchen Betancourt-Brenckmann.
They had agreed to meet again when the dust settled from the final tranche of primaries at the end of May and the beginning of June; at a time when Sorensen had had no sense that the momentum of the race was about to shift so dramatically; and not just on the Democrat side of the fence.
In a way, George McGovern’s bravely flagging numbers were almost as inexplicable as what had happened to Richard Nixon’s surrogate’s vote in the GOP primary in California.
A GOP incumbent President of the United States had failed to fight off the challenge of a one-time B movie hack!
And not just in any state; but his home state!
Gretchen had rung him at nine o’clock that morning and asked him if she could buy him lunch. It was a litmus test of how relations between the former JFK stalwart and the Ambassador’s camp had thawed, that he had immediately accepted the invitation.
Walter Brenckmann had – via Larry O’Brien - asked him to ‘run an eye’ over all his important speeches in the last few weeks. Sorensen had made a few diplomatically-phrased suggestions, guessing that many of the original drafts were probably the work of the Ambassador’s son, Dan who had an engaging, fluent style that was sometimes - only sometimes – a little off key with his father’s personality and delivery on stage. Anybody writing a speech for JFK, and to a lesser extent, for Bobby, could get away with literary murder, because both brothers had that unteachable innate gift of making the words flow off the sheet into phrases which resonated with any audience.
Walter Brenckmann was a court room litigator, a bruiser when he had to be, not a ‘shouter’, and in composing his speeches one had to be aware that it was up to the speech-writer to build to crescendos, not rely on his orator to do the work for him.
“California was great!” Gretchen declared, planting a fragrant kiss on Sorensen’s cheek as he waited at the table, booked in an alcove where they could talk and still see who was coming and going around them.
How bizarre was it that in 1968, in the capital of the free world, one’s first instinct was always to remember that the FBI and the CIA might be listening in to every word one said?
“You should have come out to the West Coast with us!”
Sorenson smiled, knowing this was not a criticism and that the young woman arranging herself on the chair across the table from him, had not meant it as such.
“It would have been awkward until Senator McGovern and Ambassador Brenckmann had had their talk…”
Knowing that there had been a second, brief, post-result meeting, he was tempted to ask: “How did that go?”
He bit his tongue because he suspected Gretchen had been dispatched to DC to brief him on the subject, and he hated to be so obvious about his curiosity.
“The Ambassador and Senator McGovern will continue to campaign as per their published schedules until the end of the month. On 4th July they will make a joint appearance at ground zero at Saint Paul, and visit several of the battlefields of the Civil War the next day.”
Sorensen raised an eyebrow.
“The Convention will be an anointment,” Gretchen said, pursing her lips, with no note of triumph in her voice. “Senator McGovern will withdraw from the race.” She hesitated, lowering her voice. “He and the Ambassador spoke by telephone last night.”
“And that’s the announcement they’ll make in Saint Paul?”
Gretchen nodded.
“Senator McGovern will formally endorse Ambassador Brenckmann on the floor of the Convention in Memphis. There will be no vote.”
A waiter approached, both diners ordered mineral water and coffees, Gretchen a Waldorf salad, the man a veal steak. Bread rolls were broken.
“What promises have been made to Bobby and Ted?” In cutting to the chase, Sorensen smiled apologetically as if to say, forget it if you do not want to tell me.
“None. But there is going to be a lot of work to do repairing our government when the Ambassador wins in November. My father-in-law is a very practical man, Ted.” Without warning, she giggled, her eyes sparkling. “Which would be why he fired me in March and I won’t, and just so you know, have an official role in the rest of the campaign, or in his Administration when he wins in November.”
“The polls still predict Nixon wins hands down, Gretchen,” Sorensen reminded her politely.
“Not if we win in California in November,” she responded brightly. “California is big enough to wipe out the Wallace effect, and then it’ll be an even fight.”
“Nixon almost beat JFK in 1960; he did beat LBJ in 1964.”
“JFK had you writing his speeches; LBJ did not!”
“Speeches don’t win general elections.”
“Bad ones lose general elections.”
Ted Sorensen chuckled and shook his head as the meals arrived.
“So, what,” he asked, “you’re the Ambassador’s go-between now?”
“Me,” Gretchen pouted momentarily, “No, no, no. I’m just this hard-working mother of two housewife would-be Congresswoman, who happens to be in DC, catching up with old friends on her way back from California to the battleground of the 4th District in Massachusetts.”
Sorenson nodded.
“How are things going over there? I heard that was one of the districts the GOP hadn’t finished gerrymandering this time around?”
Gretchen thought about the question; knowing her interlocutor would be very, very well-informed.
“Parts of the 3rd and 10th Districts were re-assigned and the 4th lost a couple of counties but it’s still very ‘safe’ Democrat ground. I’ve been waiting to see if the Republicans field a candidate but at the moment it looks like it’s going to stay a write-in District.”
Sorensen took this in.
He was not alone in thinking that in this day and age, for one of the nation’s two leading political parties not to contest every seat in every ward, district and state was ridiculous. In consequence, there were still too many of what the British ha
d once called ‘rotten boroughs’ where, whoever got the respective Democrat or GOP nomination to put their name on the ballot paper was guaranteed to win, with the only opposition coming from voters who ‘wrote-in’ an alternate name on their papers.
“So, you’re not going to be tied up campaigning in Massachusetts for the next five months?”
Sorensen had meant it as a joke and was a little taken aback when his companion’s expression turned serious.
“Yeah, pretty much, I guess. I’m going to represent those people in Congress,” she said, primly. “I can’t do that properly in DC unless I know every inch of every street in the District. I plan to talk to anybody and everybody in the 4th District who is prepared to talk to me. I plan to work for those people from now, even though I won’t have a vote in the House until next January.”
There was always a transition period after an election; in this case the elections were on 5th of November with the Presidential inauguration on Monday 20th January 1969. Similarly, although the 91st US Congress would be elected on the same day as the President, it would not actually sit until 3rd January 1969.
The time delay between elections and successful candidates starting work was a hangover from the eighteenth and nineteenth century, when it took newly elected representatives from the farthest corners of the continent several weeks to get to Washington DC.
“I’m reliably informed that you’ll probably be the youngest member of Congress next January?”
“The youngest woman, certainly.”
Sorensen heard the undercurrent of simmering outrage.
There had been twenty women in Congress at the time of the October War, occupying less than five percent of the four-hundred-and-thirty-eight seats; in the Senate there had been twelve out of a hundred senators. Presently, there were eight sitting Congresswomen, and nine female senators. In Congress, neither the GOP or the Democrats had automatically replaced women killed in terrorist outrages, the Civil War or by illness by other women. Anecdotally, Gretchen had heard both parties were fielding less than fifty female candidates for Congress and only two women were contesting vacant Senate seats this coming November.
It was a disgrace, and she planned to do something about it but first she needed to be sitting in Congress. Undeniably, if by some chance her father-in-law was President at the time, that would probably help.
However, that was counting chickens before they were in the coop.
Not clever!
“Look,” Ted Sorensen said, in between mouthfuls of veal, “I’ve been on the outside, only half-committed to the campaign so far. I need to know what I’m getting myself into.”
Gretchen put down her fork.
“That’s fair,” she conceded. “Ask me any question.”
“Seriously?”
Gretchen nodded.
“Larry O’Brien came on board because President Kennedy asked him to, right?”
Gretchen had not been prepared for the directness of that.
The former Chair of the DNC had become her father-in-law’s Campaign Director within a week of her sacking after previously rebuffing George McGovern several times, on the grounds that he was too closely associated with the Kennedys. Since he had been in charge of JFK’s national campaign in 1960, this was hardly in dispute.
“Yes.”
Sorensen did not let the dust settle.
He changed tack without warning: “People in this town are telling me that Ambassador Brenckmann will be your father’s proxy in the Oval Office?”
Gretchen contemplated her salad.
“That shows how much they know!” She declared with quiet contempt. “Don’t get me wrong, Walter was always my father’s protégé, I think. That worked because Walter was never a ‘yes man’. Walter is nobody’s ‘yes man’, Ted. That’s why my father listens to him.”
“So, a vote for Brenckmann is not a vote for Claude Betancourt?”
Gretchen shook her head.
“I take it that as we’re having this meeting, that you’re on board with the Brenckmann for President Campaign, Ted?”
The man across the table nodded.
“Good,” Gretchen murmured. “You won’t be seeing much of me. Dan will be keeping a low profile, too. We’ll be busy in the 4th District. The Ambassador needs you on his travelling staff from here on in: are you okay with that?”
Again, Ted Sorensen nodded, said nothing.
He could tell that the woman opposite him had something else she needed to tell him.
“What?” He asked gently.
Gretchen seemed to come to a decision.
“You should know that my father is not very well. He’s seventy-seven and he had a cancer before the October War. That almost finished him off, apparently. I didn’t find out about it until recently but Walter knew. So, did Joanne, of course. So, if you are worried about my father attempting to be the power behind the thrown if Walter wins in November, you really don’t have to worry about it.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”
“Father hasn’t told anyone. He hasn’t told my mother, if he still speaks to her. I don’t think he’s told any of my brothers, or my sisters, either.”
Ted Sorensen thought about this.
Gretchen sighed.
“I haven’t even told Dan yet…”
Chapter 33
Monday 10th June, 1968
Ukrainka-Seryshevo Air Base, Siberia
Major Dmitry Akimov had waited until he judged Olga Petrovna to be sufficiently anaesthetised to give him some warning, a split second to duck or to roll up in a defensive foetal ball on the ground and cover his head, before he had asked her to take a walk with him. She had given him an impatient, ‘all men are idiots’ look but followed him into the warm, insect buzzing semi-darkness of the long, post-sunset darkening.
The others watched them go, too drunk to care let alone ask questions. The Amerikanskaya Mechta had been rolled out onto the flight line that afternoon, her four ear-shattering Kuznetsov NK-12s run up, one at a time and worked up to eighty percent power, control surface checks completed and against all expectations, all the dials in the cockpit had stayed within acceptable tolerances. In a couple of days, after several of the checks had been repeated, they would go flying again. So, they were having a party; a private party out on the tarmac next to their beautiful, silver flying machine. This time there had been enough spare parts and boxed components to save her from dereliction and the breakers yard. Next time, they might not be so lucky.
Oh, and they had successfully talked Pavel Onishken out of testing his beloved 23-millimetre autocannons, once, twice and then they had had to sit on him a while until he promised not to climb into the bomber and fire them off, anyway. Had the tail of the Tu-95 not been pointing directly at the hangar doors of Special Weapons Store Number Two, situated some three hundred metres distant, nobody would have objected overmuch.
“There is something I must tell you before Andrei Kirov arrives back at the base.” The First Pilot of the Amerikanskaya Mechta had been dreading this moment ever since, three days ago, Vladimir Zakharov had briefed him.
His own reaction to the news had been: ‘You’re shitting me!’ And it had been some seconds before he added: ‘Sir!’
‘He would have worked out something was going on, sooner or later,’ the base commander had claimed, standing unyielding in front of him, his stare boring into Akimov’s face. ‘I did what I had to do.’
Now, Vladimir Akimov was doing not what he thought he had to do – he had no idea what, in conscience, was the right thing to do – but what he had been ordered to do.
Olga Petrovna blinked at him.
This was the first she had heard about the hulking KGB man was coming back to Seryshevo. She tried not to grin like a schoolgirl. The last thing she wanted was for the others to know how much she had missed the big oaf, and worried about him after his sudden recall to Vladivostok.
“How long have you known he was returning to Seryshevo?”
She demanded, swaying in the gloom, wishing she had not drunk so much that evening.
“A day or two.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me, boss?”
“Orders,” the veteran aviator retorted. “You know, those things we’re all supposed to obey now and then!”
This deflected a little of the woman’s initial angst.
“We think he was called back to HQ to get a bollocking from his boss, a new guy who has just arrived from Sverdlovsk…”
“What the fuck has he done to deserve that? Andrei’s a fucking straight arrow. Or have I missed something?” Olga had not meant to use her lover’s first name; she always called him ‘the Commissar’ in front of the others, making sure she curled her lip in contempt when she uttered the words. Her eyes narrowed: “What?”
“The General caused a complaint to be sent to 37th Air Army about ‘political interference’ and neglect of duty in respect of 182nd Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment. Specifically, that Kirov was failing to perform political oversight over the unit’s operations, and was complicit in blocking your transfer to Chelyabinsk, in return for sexual favours…”
Olga just stared at him.
“Specifically, General Zakharov reported that Kirov failed to nominate officers from his department to be present on long-range flights planned to operate outside USSR airspace. You and I both know that no aircraft flies with politicos on board unless they are carrying special munitions; but that’s not actually what the regulations say, apparently…. Anyway, those bastards at HQ in Komsomolsk must be wetting themselves…”
“Sexual favours?”
“The General described it more as rape...”
The woman just stared at him in barely comprehending horror.
“And,” Akimov went on, in a hurry because he knew that once Olga got her brain back in gear, he was not going to be able to get another word in edgewise for some minutes. “He reported that Kirov had repeatedly boasted about it to him, and to other officers in the Mess…”