The Fourth K (5 page)

“Otto,” Kennedy said. “Give us the word.”

“Quit,” Gray said. “While you’re only just losing.” Kennedy smiled and the other men laughed. Gray went on. “You want it straight? I’m with Dazzy. Congress shits on you, the press kicks your ass. The lobbyists and big business have strangled your programs. And the working class and the intellectuals feel you betrayed them. You’re driving this big fucking Cadillac of a country and there ain’t even power steering. And you want to give every damn maniac in this country another four years to knock you off, to boot? I say let’s all get us the fuck out of here.”

Kennedy seemed delighted, the handsome Irish planes of his face breaking into a smile and his satiny blue eyes sparkling. “Very funny,” he said. “But let’s get serious.” He knew they were trying to goad him into running again by appealing to his pride. None of them wanted to leave this center of power, this Washington, this White House. It was better to be a clawless lion than not to be a lion at all.

“You want me to run again,” Kennedy said. “But to do what?”

Otto Gray said, “Damn right I want you to run. I joined this administration because you begged me to help my people. I believed in you and believe in you still. We did help, and we can help more. There’s a hell of a lot more to do. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and only you can change that. Don’t quit that fight now.”

Kennedy said, “But how the hell can I win? The Congress is virtually controlled by the Socrates Club.”

Gray looked at his boss with the kind of passion and forcefulness found only in the young. “We can’t think like that. Look what we’ve won against terrible odds. We can win
again. And even if we don’t, what could be more important than trying?”

The room was quiet for a moment, as everyone seemed to become aware of the silence of one man, the most powerful influence on Francis Kennedy. Christian Klee. All eyes focused on him now.

Klee held Kennedy in some sort of reverence, though they were dear friends. This always surprised Kennedy, because Klee valued physical bravery and knew Kennedy had a fear of assassination. It was Christian who had begged Francis to run for the presidency and guaranteed his personal safety if he was appointed Attorney General and head of the FBI and Secret Service. So now he essentially controlled the whole internal security system of the United States, but Kennedy had paid a heavy political price for this. He had traded Congress the appointment of two justices of the Supreme Court and the ambassadorship to Britain.

Now Kennedy stared at Christian Klee, and finally Klee spoke. “You know what worries people most in this country? They don’t really give a shit about foreign relations. They don’t give a shit about economics. They don’t care if the earth dries up into a raisin. They worry in the big and little cities that they can’t walk the streets at night without getting mugged. That they can’t sleep safely in their beds at night without worrying about burglars and murderers.

“We live in a state of anarchy. The government does not fulfill its part of the social contract to protect each and every individual citizen. Women go in fear of rape, men go in fear of murder. We are descending into some sort of morass of animal behavior. The rich eat up the people economically and the criminals massacre the poor and middle class. And you, Francis, are the only one who can lead us to the higher ground. I believe that, I believe you can save this country.
That’s why I came to work for you. And now you want to desert us.” Klee paused. “You have to try again, Francis. Just another four years.”

President Kennedy was touched. He could see that these four men still truly believed in him. And in one part of his mind he knew that he had maneuvered them into saying these things, had made them reaffirm their faith in him, had made them equally responsible with him. He smiled at them with genuine delight.

“I’ll think it over,” he said.

They took this as a dismissal and left, except for Christian Klee.

Christian said casually, “Will Theresa be home for the holidays?”

Kennedy shrugged. “She’s in Rome with a new boyfriend. She’ll be flying in on Easter Sunday. As usual, she makes a point of ignoring religious holidays.”

Christian said, “I’m glad she’s getting the hell out. I really can’t protect her in Europe. And she thinks she can shoot off her mouth there and it won’t be reported here.” He paused a moment. “If you do run again, you’ll have to keep your daughter out of sight or disown her.”

“I can’t. If I do run again, I’ll need the radical feminist vote.”

Christian laughed. “OK,” he said. “Now, about the birthday party for the Oracle. He is really looking forward to it.”

“Don’t worry,” Kennedy said. “I’ll give him the full treatment. My God, a hundred years old and he still looks forward to his birthday party.”

“He was and is a great man,” Christian said.

Kennedy gave him a sharp look. “You were always fonder of him than I ever was. He had his faults, he made his mistakes.”

“Sure,” Christian said. “But I never saw a man control his life better. He changed my life with his advice, his guidance.” Christian paused for a moment. “I’m having dinner with him tonight, so I’ll just tell him the party is definitely on.”

Kennedy smiled dryly. “You can safely tell him that,” he said.

At the end of the day Kennedy signed some papers in the Oval Office, then sat at his desk and gazed out the window. He could see the tops of the gates that surrounded the White House grounds, black iron tipped with white electrified thorns. As always, he felt uneasy about his proximity to the streets and to the public, though he knew that the seeming vulnerability to attack was an illusion. He was extraordinarily well protected. There were seven perimeters guarding the White House. For two miles away every building had a security team on the roofs and in apartments. All the streets leading to the White House had command posts with concealed rapid-fire and heavy weapons. The tourists who came mornings to visit the ground floor of the White House in their many hundreds were heavily infiltrated with Secret Service agents, who circulated constantly and took part in the small talk, their eyes alert. Every inch of the White House that these tourists were permitted to visit behind the ropes was covered by TV monitors and special audio equipment that could pick up secret whispers. Armed guards manned special computer desks that could serve as barricades at every turn in the corridors. And during these visits by the public Kennedy would always be up on the new specially built fourth floor that served as his living quarters. Living quarters guarded by specially reinforced floors, walls and ceilings.

Now in the famous Oval Office, which he rarely used
except for signing official documents in special ceremonies, Francis Kennedy relaxed to enjoy one of the few minutes he was completely alone. He took a long thin Cuban cigar from the humidor on his desk, felt the oiliness of the leafy wrapper on his fingers. He cut the end, lit it carefully, took the first rich puff and looked out through the bulletproof windows.

He could see himself as a child walking across the vast green lawn, from the faraway guard post painted white, then running to greet his uncle Jack and uncle Robert. How he had loved them. Uncle Jack so full of charm, so childlike, and yet so powerful, to give hope that a child could wield power over the world. And Uncle Robert, so serious and earnest and yet so gentle and playful. And here Francis Kennedy thought, no, we called him Uncle Bobby, not Robert, or did we sometimes? He could not remember.

But he did remember one day more than forty years ago when he had run to meet both his uncles on that very same lawn and how they had each taken one of his arms and swung him so that his feet never touched the ground as they went toward the White House.

And now he stood in their place. The power that had awed him as a child was now his. It was a pity that memory could evoke so much pain and so much beauty, and so much disappointment. What they had died for he was thinking of giving up.

On this Good Friday Francis Xavier Kennedy did not know that all this would be changed by two insignificant revolutionaries in Rome.

On Easter Sunday morning, Romeo and his cadre of four men and three women in full operational gear disembarked from their van. In the Roman streets outside St. Peter’s Square they mingled with the crowds attired in Easter finery—the women glorious in the pastel colors of spring and operatic in churchgoing hats, the men handsome in silk cream-colored suits with yellow palm crosses stitched into their lapels. The children were even more dazzling: little girls wearing gloves and frilly frocks, the boys in navy blue confirmation suits with red ties on snowy shirts. Scattered throughout were priests smiling benedictions on the faithful.

Romeo was a more sober pilgrim, a serious witness to the Resurrection that this Easter morning celebrated. He was dressed in a dead-black suit, a white shirt heavily starched, and a pure white tie almost invisible against it. His shoes
were black but rubber-soled. And now he buttoned the camel-hair coat to conceal the rifle that hung in its special sling. He had practiced with this rifle for the past three months until his accuracy was deadly.

The four men in his cadre were dressed as monks of the Capuchin order, in long flowing robes of dingy brown, girdled by fat cloth belts. Their tonsured heads were covered with skullcaps. Concealed inside the loose robes were grenades and handguns.

The three women—one of them Annee—were dressed as nuns in black and white and they too had weapons beneath their loose-fitting clothing. Annee and the other two nuns walked ahead as people made way for them, and Romeo followed easily in their wake. After Romeo came the four monks of the cadre, observing everything, ready to intercede if Romeo was stopped by papal police.

And so Romeo’s band made their way to St. Peter’s Square, invisible in the huge crowd that was assembling. And finally like dark corks bobbing in an ocean of many colors, Romeo and his cadre came to rest on the far side of the square, their backs protected by marble columns and stone walls. Romeo stood a little apart. He was watching for a signal from the other side of the square, where Yabril and his cadre were busy attaching holy figurines to the walls.

Yabril and his cadre of three men and three women were in casual attire with loose-fitting jackets. The men carried concealed handguns, while the women were working with the religious figurines, small statues of Christ, that were loaded with explosives designed to go off by radio signal. The backs had adhesive glue so strong that they could not be detached from the walls by any of the curious in the crowd. Also, the figurines were beautifully designed and made of
expensive-looking terra-cotta painted white and formed around a wired skeleton. They gave the appearance of being part of the Easter decorations and as such were inviolate.

When this operation was completed, Yabril led his cadre through the crowd and out of St. Peter’s Square to his own waiting van. He sent one of his men to Romeo to give him the radio signal device for the detonating of the figurines. Then Yabril and his cadre got into their van and started the drive to the Rome airport. Pope Innocent would not appear on the balcony until three hours later. They were on schedule.

In the van, closed off from the Easter world of Rome, Yabril thought about how this whole exercise had begun.…

On a mission together a few years before, Romeo had mentioned that the Pope had the heaviest security guard of any ruler in Europe. Yabril had laughed and said, “Who would want to kill a Pope? Like killing a snake that has no poison. A useless old figurehead and with a dozen useless old men ready to replace him. Bridegrooms of Christ, a set of a dozen red-capped dummies. What would change in the world with the death of a Pope? I can see kidnaping him, he’s the richest man in the world. But killing him would be like killing a lizard sleeping in the sun.”

Romeo had argued his case and intrigued Yabril. The Pope was revered by hundreds of millions of Catholics all over the world. And certainly the Pope was a symbol of capitalism; the bourgeois Western Christian states propped him up. The Pope was one of the great buttresses of authority in the edifice of that society. And so it followed that if the Pope was assassinated it would be a shocking psychological blow to the enemy world because he was considered the representative of God on earth. The royalty of Russia and
France had been murdered because they too thought they had the divine right to rule, and those murders had advanced humanity. God was the fraud of the rich, the swindler of the poor, the Pope an earthly wielder of that evil power. But still it was only half an idea. Yabril expanded the concept. Now the operation had a grandeur that awed Romeo and filled Yabril with self-admiration.

Romeo for all his talk and sacrifices was not what Yabril considered a true revolutionary. Yabril had studied the history of Italian terrorists. They were very good at assassinating heads of state; they had studied at the feet of the Russians, who had finally killed their Czar after many attempts—indeed the Italians had borrowed from the Russians, the name that Yabril detested: the Christs of Violence.

Yabril had met Romeo’s parents once. The father, a useless man, a parasite on humanity. Complete with chauffeur, valet and a great big lamblike dog that he used as bait to snare women on the boulevards. But a man with beautiful manners. It was impossible not to like him if you were not his son.

And the mother, another beauty of the capitalistic system, voracious for money and jewels, a devout Catholic. Beautifully dressed, maids in tow, she walked to mass every morning. That penance accomplished, she devoted the rest of her day to pleasure. Like her husband, she was self-indulgent, unfaithful, and devoted to their only son, Romeo.

So now this happy family would finally be punished. The father a Knight of Malta, the mother a daily communicant with Christ, and their son the murderer of the Pope. What a betrayal, Yabril thought. Poor Romeo, you will spend a bad week when I betray you.

Except for the final twist that Yabril had added, Romeo knew the whole plan. “Just like chess,” Romeo said. “Check
to the king, check to the king, and the checkmate. Beautiful.”