The Kennedy Endeavor (Presidential Series Book 2) Read online

  The Kennedy Endeavor

  By

  Bob Mayer

  "Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear Sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.” John F. Kennedy address before the General Assembly of the United Nations, New York City, September 25, 1961.

  Click HERE or on the picture for footage of Kennedy and the Sword of Damocles

  Or go here: http://youtu.be/Xuy_9B1joTE

  “When I read a book

  I like it to kindle the true flame of feeling

  So that, amidst our busy lives,

  It will burn and burn, a constant flare

  To ignite the impulses, the forces of men’s heart,

  So that we can fight against darkness until our death,

  So that our lives do not pass in vain

  For it is my duty, brothers,

  To leave behind at least one fragment of honest labor,

  So that in the black, sepulchral shades,

  Conscience will not nag.”

  Nikita Khrushchev reciting a poem by a Russian miner he worked with fifty years previously: Pantelei Makhinia

  FACTS—The Unending Conflict

  Thomas Jefferson believed in the inalienable rights of the people, a decentralized government and a non-interventionist foreign policy. He stood in fierce opposition to Alexander Hamilton, who feared the people, believed in a strong, central government and believed America’s international might was commerce. The fight has continued unabated to the present day and will continue into our future in order to keep the country balanced and avoid extremism on either side.

  We hope.

  The Historical Facts

  In May of 1783, the Society of the Cincinnati was founded. A leading member was Alexander Hamilton, and the first President of the Society was George Washington, even before he was President of the United States. The Society of the Cincinnati is the oldest, continuous military society in North America. Its current headquarters is located at the Anderson House in downtown Washington, DC. Besides the Society of the Cincinnati, Hamilton founded the Federalist Party, the first political party, which would eventually become today’s Republican Party.

  “Even to observe neutrality, you must have a strong government.” Alexander Hamilton.

  Thomas Jefferson was not allowed membership in the Society of the Cincinnati.

  “Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything.” Alexander Hamilton.

  Strangely, in 1802, President Thomas Jefferson, well known for his strong opposition to a standing army, established the United States Military Academy, the oldest Military Academy in the Americas. In 1819, he founded the University of Virginia, the first college in the United States to separate religion from education.

  In 1743, the American Philosophical Society (APS), the oldest learned society in North America was founded. Thomas Jefferson was a member for 47 years and its President for 17 years. He subsequently established the adjunct United States Military Philosophical Society (MPS) at West Point with the Academy Superintendent as its first leader. The APS has its current headquarters in Philosophical Hall on Liberty Square in Philadelphia. The MPS appears to have disappeared.

  It hasn’t.

  “None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.” Thomas Jefferson.

  Besides the APS and MPS, Jefferson founded the Anti-Federalist Party, which eventually became today’s Democratic Party.

  “Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.” Thomas Jefferson.

  The battle between the Cincinnatians and the Philosophers for the soul and fate of our country and our foreign policy has continued to this day. A battle chronicled in The Presidential series.

  Book One: The Jefferson Allegiance

  Book Two: The Kennedy Endeavor

  At the end of this book, I have a partial list of all the facts used in this book. It’s not complete, but it’s longer than you might suppose.

  The 16th of May, 1963

  The Russian was secured flat on his back to the pallet by piano wire, which cut into his skin. The pallet was on top of a metal conveyor composed of numerous rollers. A 16mm camera was filming the proceedings. The steel door ten feet down the rollers was shut, but everyone in the room could feel the heat being generated by the crematorium on the other side of the wall.

  The reading of the sentence was a formality, more for the camera than the prisoner. “Former Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, you have been sentenced to death by order of the Supreme Soviet for treason against the state.”

  There was no formal asking for last words. Months of imprisonment and torture had produced no words from Penkovsky; it didn’t seem likely imminent death would either. More important, there were very powerful people in the government who didn’t want Penkovsky to speak, and most certainly not on film.

  The senior man in the room, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, Anastas Mikoyan, walked over to the prisoner.

  He wanted Penkovsky to speak, but only to him.

  “Turn the camera off,” Mikoyan ordered. “Everyone leave.”

  The camera was off and the room was emptied in less than fifteen seconds. Fear is an excellent enforced of discipline. In the short term, at least.

  Mikoyan looked down at Penkovsky. “What did you do?”

  Penkovsky glared up, beads of sweat covering his forehead, his lips trembling, but sealed.

  “What did you do?” Mikoyan pressed. “What did you tell the Americans? Who were you really working for?”

  Penkovsky remained silent.

  “What is the Sword of Damocles?”

  Startled, Penkovsky finally met the Deputy Chairman’s eyes. “I worked for the people. I saved the world.”

  Mikoyan snorted. “Doubtful. You are only one man.”

  “Sometimes, Comrade Deputy, a single man can make all the difference. I am content to die. I served the Soviet and I served all of mankind.”

  Mikoyan rubbed his chin as he studied the other man. “Ah well. Then have your contentment. Your GRU friends are going to make a fine example of you. So you will make a difference in that at least. They will show your slow—and very painful—death to every agent. Everyone will think twice before betraying the Motherland.”

  “There is a greater cause than the Motherland,” Penkovsky said.

  “There is no greater cause,” Mikoyan said without much conviction, because he was high enough, and had survived long enough, in the ranks of power to know one’s self-interest had to come before anything else in order to not end up like the man in front of him.

  Penkovsky disagreed. “This is not like the Great War, comrade. We now have weapons on both sides that if used, no one wins. And you know, Comrade, that what we tell the world about our nuclear strength is a lie. The Americans are far ahead of us, but we make them scared with our lies about our nuclear numbers.” The words, after months of silence, were now pouring out of Penkovsky. Not so much an attempt to save his life—he knew that line had been crossed long ago—but to gain understanding. It is the driving force for some people to simply be understood, even in the face of impending death. Especially in the face of impending death. “Scared people are dangerous people. There are many in the American military that desire to launch a pre-emptive strike on us. If they did so, there would be no
Motherland and very likely no world.”

  “Who is your contact in the American military? We know you were talking to someone in their Navy.”

  “Another patriot,” Penkovsky said. “It is the true patriots that serve our countries and protect them not only against each other, but from ourselves.”

  “So you are a patriot?” Mikoyan stared down at the GRU spy. He’d seen many men, women and even children, heading to their execution over the decades. Ever since he was part of the Caucasus Trio with Stalin and rose to power on his coattails. From the Revolution to the present, Mikoyan’s path had bodies littered on all sides; Penkovsky was just another in a long line.

  “I’m a man,” Penkovsky said. “I’m a person.”

  Mikoyan leaned close. “Were you really working for Khrushchev? What is he doing with Kennedy? What is this Sword of Damocles I have heard whispers of and Kennedy mentioned in his speech at the United Nations? And if you were working with Comrade Khrushchev, why has he abandoned you? If you were working for the Americans, why did they abandon you?”

  “You would never believe no matter what I said,” Penkovsky said. “One always has to assume a spy is lying. It is the bane of our trade. A spy tells so many lies; the truth is buried under them. I will never see the light of day again nor will the entire truth. Do you want to know the real reason I acted, Comrade Deputy? I do this for my son. For everyone’s sons and daughters. Even yours.”

  Mikoyan snorted. “Your son. Perhaps he will share your fate? What can the offspring of a traitor expect? Your father died fighting for the Whites. You should have never been trusted. It runs in the blood.”

  “And what runs in your blood, Comrade Deputy?”

  “We know who your British contact is. They promised you a nice little cottage in the English countryside, didn’t they?”

  A tear appeared at the edge of one of Penkovsky’s eyes. It slowly slid down the side of his face and disappeared into his hair.

  “Yes, yes,” Mikoyan pressed, the tear fuel for his sadism. “A nice little cottage with your son playing with a pony perhaps? The British are so sentimental. And so brutal. They pretend to be gentlemen, but look where you are now. They let you get caught, and they couldn’t care less about your fate.”

  Penkovsky didn’t respond to the prodding.

  Mikoyan continued. “Tell me the truth and I will have them give you the mercy of the bullet. We couldn’t care less about the British. Who was your American contact?”

  “Never.”

  “Khrushchev appeased our generals, yet he also got the Americans to back off regarding Cuba,” Mikoyan said. “How did he appease the Americans? What did he work out with Kennedy? Those two are playing a dangerous game.”

  “They built a scale,” Penkovsky said. “A very dangerous and delicate one.”

  “Ah!” Mikoyan leapt at the slip up. “So Khrushchev did appease the Americans beyond turning the ships around?”

  Penkovsky squeezed his eyes shut. “This was inevitable. Do what you have to do. I am done.”

  Mikoyan tapped a finger against his lips, considering the doomed man. Penkovsky had accepted his fate a while ago. Mikoyan had seen it before. The mind snapped and all hope disappeared. It was why people stayed kneeling even as they heard the executioner walking along the line of others kneeling, hearing the shots, seeing out of the corner of their eyes, the bodies falling into the ditch. Often a ditch they’d dug themselves. They dug their own grave, listened to the executions and simply waited for their own to come.

  There is only so much the human psyche can handle.

  It was the person pulling the trigger that Mikoyan always focused on. They were the dangerous ones, the predators. Those who went into the ditch were just part of the herd and not to be feared.

  “Perhaps you are what you say you are,” Mikoyan finally allowed. “But no one will ever know the truth.”

  “I will. And God will.”

  “Ah, God.” Mikoyan smiled. “Marx was right about that drug.”

  Mikoyan had also seen this before. When the victim invoked God, they were finished. He went over to the door and rapped on it. Everyone re-entered and the camera rolled once more. The steel door slid open and slowly, very slowly, the conveyor began rolling Penkovsky toward the flames.

  Mikoyan waited until the traitor’s feet reached the fire and the screams began. Then he left.

  Penkovsky’s cries of agony followed him out of the crematorium, but they didn’t bother Mikoyan in the slightest. He was deep in thought, analyzing the various possibilities of Penkovsky’s betrayal. Or non-betrayal. Or betrayal within a betrayal. And where did Premier Khrushchev fit in all of this? And, most important for Mikoyan, how did it affect Mikoyan?

  It was never easy, this potentially fatal chess game of power.

  The 24th of November, 1963

  Two Days After The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

  “I am sure that Chairman Khrushchev and my husband could have been successful in the search for peace, and they were really striving for that. Now the Chairman must continue the agreed upon endeavor and bring it to completion.” The widow dropped her voice from a whisper becoming almost inaudible. “There are enemies everywhere.”

  Anastas Mikoyan wasn’t overly surprised by Jacqueline Kennedy’s words but his eyes darted about the interior of the Capitol Rotunda, a result of both standard Soviet paranoia and the sensitivity of the subject matter. Just six months earlier he’d heard Penkovsky being slowly burned alive and then watched the film; everyone in the GRU had been forced to watch it, and curiosity had finally gotten the better of Mikoyan and he’d had a private screening. Most impressive and it would make anyone think twice before betraying the Motherland.

  It was much, much worse than the relative mercy of a bullet to the back of the head.

  “You do not think—“ he whispered back to her, leaving what he didn’t know unsaid, hoping she’d step into the opening.

  “I pray not,” Mrs. Kennedy evaded, “but my prayers have rarely been answered.”

  “So the scales must remain balanced?” Mikoyan asked, watching her face carefully.

  Through her veil, Mrs. Kennedy frowned. “The Chairman knows what I am talking about.”

  “The Sword of Damocles?” Mikoyan tried.

  “Do as I ask,” Mrs. Kennedy said sharply.

  Looking past the just widowed First Lady, he saw an American soldier, one of the Green Beret Honor Guard hastily flown up from Fort Bragg, staring directly at him, face as hard as the marble floor on which he stood his post.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Mikoyan murmured as if he understood. “I will relay your words to the Chairman.” He took Mrs. Kennedy’s hand and bending over, deposited a kiss of sorrow a few centimeters short of the glove that covered it.

  “The change,” Mrs. Kennedy said. “Make sure the Premier gets it.”

  Her fingers twitched and he felt a piece of paper drop into his hand. He smoothly palmed it, straightened, and nodded at the First Lady. Mikoyan moved on, as many others were lined up behind him to pay their condolences. As he strode away, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that Mrs. Kennedy, although she had her hand extended to the next diplomat, had her gaze fixed solidly upon him. He hurried past the closed coffin. A smart move by the First Lady to keep the body out of sight; head wounds were the worst, he knew from his World War II experiences and the many bullet-to-the-back-of-the-head executions he’d witnessed over the decades. They were saying it was a lone gunman, but Mrs. Kennedy’s words and Mikoyan’s experiences in high level intrigue, made that highly improbable.

  One of the many guidelines Mikoyan lived by was to always suspect a plot and act accordingly. Better to be ruthless than sorry. One is not paranoid if people are indeed out to get you.

  He left the Capitol Building, taking the stairs as quickly as his old knees would allow.

  The area around the Capitol was crowded with cars and people. His driver had gotten him close, but his car was
still a distance away. While order and decorum reined inside the Rotunda where the President lay in state, the rest of the capitol of the United States was in turmoil. Not just from the assassination. The transition of power to a new administration and preparations for a massive State funeral had the city churning. Not since Lincoln lay in the same place in 1865 had Washington experienced such shock.

  Mikoyan was an old school Soviet, starting as a Bolshevik in 1915. When he was arrested in Baku along with twenty-five others as part of the ‘Baku 26,’ he was the lone survivor as all the others were executed by bullets to the back of the head. Such was his career path in a country where few who were close to power made it to old age. It was whispered in Moscow that Mikoyan was a man who could walk through Red Square in a blizzard and never have a snowflake touch him. This did not mean he was pure; it meant he was cunning and ruthless and chose his friends carefully, knowing that a friend was likely to be the one who would hold that gun to the back of his head at the latest breeze of power change. Which in essence meant he didn’t believe there were such things as friends or loyalty.

  There was only self-preservation.

  He’d tied himself to Stalin from the very beginning, flirted with Beria after Stalin’s death, then smoothly shifted to Khrushchev when it became apparent he would win the power struggles and Beria was executed. Even as Khrushchev gave the ‘Secret Speech—On The Cult of Personality’ denouncing Stalin and his reign, Mikoyan slipped through that round of purges as he’d slipped through many others.

  At the moment, his mind was grappling with Mrs. Kennedy’s words and he was tempted to immediately unfold the piece of paper she’d given him, but he’d learned patience was not only a virtue, it was a life saver. Any change in administration, even here in the United States, meant grabs for power. There was a dark side to Washington, as with any capitol city, which Mikoyan had caught glimpses of and he wished to be back in the relative safety of the Soviet Consulate before dealing with this latest development.