The Kennedy Endeavor (Presidential Series Book 2) Read online

  “Because it’s close to Cuba.”

  “I believe Cuba has more to fear from the United States than the opposite. You have, after all, attempted to invade its sovereign territory.”

  “Some exiles attempted a coup,” Kennedy said. “We have no intention of invading Cuba. If we had, wouldn’t we have given at least air and naval support to those exiles? I can tell you this, though. We will not tolerate any offensive weapons being placed in Cuba by your country.”

  “We have advisers in Cuba,” Gromyko allowed. “Much like you have advisers in South Vietnam. You have many troops stationed overseas. Throughout Europe. In South Korea. We have made no protest about that.”

  “My advisers in Vietnam are to help a democratically elected government stay in power.”

  “Our advisers in Cuba are there to help train the Cubans on defensive armaments only. They are by no means offensive. Even if requested, the Soviet government would never become involved in rendering such assistance.”

  Kennedy stared at the Foreign Minister who returned the gaze without blinking. They remained like that for almost a minute, then Kennedy nodded. “So be it. It’s good we have an understanding.” He stood and Gromyko lumbered to his feet.

  Kennedy walked Gromyko to the door and saw him off. As soon as he was gone, Robert Kennedy came in from another door.

  “That lying bastard,” the President said.

  “Why didn’t you tell him we know about the emplacements being built for the missiles?”

  “That’s my hold card,” Kennedy said. “There is no way those missiles are being emplaced to defend Cuba. If, God forbid, the Russians already have nuclear warheads in Cuba, they can deliver them defensively via aircraft and artillery. They don’t need missiles with the range to hit here. There’s only one reason Khrushchev would be putting missiles into Cuba and that’s for offensive reasons. I have no doubt he wants to use them as leverage to get us to give up West Berlin.”

  “LeMay just phoned me while you were Gromyko,” Robert Kennedy said. “He feels, and I quote, ‘a naval blockade is the equivalent of appeasement at Munich.’”

  The President slammed a fist onto his desk. “Who does that son-of-a-bitch think he is? That he can talk to you like that, knowing you’d bring it to me? He’s been itching to use his planes and drop nuclear bombs as long as I’ve known him.” Kennedy shook his head. “Isn’t he afraid of a nuclear conflagration?”

  “I don’t think he’s afraid of anything,” Robert Kennedy said.

  “We go with the blockade,” Kennedy said. “We keep those missiles on those ships from making it to Cuba.”

  “And if the Russians don’t honor the blockade?”

  “I’ll deal with that when we get to it.”

  Chapter Nine

  The men Ramsay hired were the best private detectives in New York. He’d used them before on various missions, usually corporate espionage. He’d also used them on and off over the years to look into the Peacekeepers, but they’d always drawn a blank.

  But now that they had a name, Joseph Penkovsky—a name that existed in various databases because Jonah had needed a passport and money to travel overseas—they were able to do more in two hours than in the past decade.

  It turned out that Penkovsky had been preparing to leave the Peacekeepers for a while. His name change from Pensky had occurred five years ago. The passport under the new name had been applied for two years ago. He’d withdrawn money from an ATM just this past week prior to leaving the country.

  It was this last tidbit that allowed them to zero in on his trail. They found his bank account, his account number and the last ATM he’d used. Then they examined the ATM’s camera and uncovered his image. Using his image, they were able to access New York’s fledgling, but growing, system of surveillance cameras that dotted Manhattan, and using facial recognition technology they searched the databases.

  They were rewarded with over a dozen positive hits. Using those hits, they tracked Penkovsky from the ATM along the streets of lower Manhattan until he went down into the Fulton Street Subway station.

  Then it became interesting. Surveillance inside the station showed that he didn’t board a train. Rather, he waited until a train had just pulled out and the platform was clear of people before he slipped off the platform and disappeared into the dark tunnel.

  Finally, Ramsay had good news to call in to Turnbull.

  *****

  The Blackhawk hovered nearby as the Halo slowly lowered the truck to the tarmac at Al Asad. The F-22 had already landed and was now parked near the hangar where they’d staged out.

  Sure the truck was safely down, Cane had the Blackhawk land. As the engine powered down, Ducharme got off the chopper, Cane at his shoulder.

  “That was fun,” Cane said.

  “’Fun?’” Ducharme said.

  “I know you think I do it for the money, but I’d do it if they didn’t pay me,” Cane said. “For a lot of my boys, the regular army is too boring.”

  “But they take the extra pay,” Ducharme said.

  “Yeah, we take it.” Cane halted and put an arm out. “See my team sergeant over there?” he pointed at the man directing the TriOp men offloading the chopper.

  “Yes.”

  “He donates almost all this money to a cancer research facility. Where his wife died. He has nothing to go back to. A lot of us have nothing. Some who do have something know better than to go back. You got what, ten, twenty vets killing themselves every day back in the States, right?”

  Ducharme didn’t say anything.

  “Ever occur to you that maybe some of us want to do something useful at least? We hold the true front lines in the war on terror.”

  “And fight for the corporations,” Ducharme added.

  Cane dropped his arm and gave a conciliatory smile. “Yeah. That too.” They began walking toward the truck as the Halo punched the cable and moved a hundred meters away to land. “But what makes you think the US Army isn’t ultimately fighting for the corporations, too?”

  Ducharme acknowledged that with a nod. “You should talk to my friend Evie. She’d give you the entire history of all the banana wars, the wars for oil, for empire. All of it. I know the history and it isn’t pretty.”

  “But today,” Cane said as they reached the truck, “we did something good. If the Iranians had gotten hold of this plutonium, God knows what they would have done with it.”

  Ducharme nodded once more. “Your men did a good job.” He grabbed the door handle and gave it a tug. With a screech of protesting rust, the driver’s door came open. Ducharme climbed in. He looked around the cab. An old thermos rested on the passenger seat, awaiting an owner who’d died more than five decades ago.

  Ducharme flipped down the visor and a yellowing piece of map fell out.

  It was a map of Moscow.

  Ducharme turned the paper over and an eight-digit grid coordinate was scrawled in pencil, the numbers so faded as to be almost illegible.

  Almost, but not quite.

  “I need—“ Ducharme turned to face the muzzle of Cane’s pistol. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “You weren’t supposed to make it out of Turkey alive,” Cane said. He had the gun just out of arm’s reach. A professional. “A casualty of the mission.”

  “So why am I here?” Ducharme asked.

  Cane sighed and lowered the pistol and holstered it. “Because we did do good and you were part of it. This part, killing you, is politics. I’m not playing.”

  “Won’t you lose your Christmas bonus or something?”

  “Funny guy,” Cane said. “There’s a good chance they’ll send someone after me. But I like to think I’m too valuable. Of course no one is too valuable.” He nodded at the piece of paper. “Find something?”

  “Grid coordinates. I think they’re in Moscow.”

  “The missing bombs?”

  “A good chance that it is. I need a Satcom link to Turnbull. I’ll also mention that I overpowered you.�
��

  “You wish,” Cane said. He hopped off the running board of the truck. “Come on.” He led the way toward the Forward Operating Base in the hangar. “You also need to call your people and get some official US Military here to take control of that box. This is as far as we’re taking it.”

  *****

  “Here you go,” Turnbull said. He’d just spun the combination on a large steel door deep in the bowels of the Anderson House. There was a loud click and Turnbull turned the metal wheel and then pulled open the door. “What we have of Hoover’s files.”

  The vault beyond was jammed full of cardboard filing boxes.

  “You don’t have them inventoried?” Burns asked.

  “They’re stacked exactly the way Hoover had them stacked in his outer office,” Turnbull said. “The information is too valuable to allow just anybody to know what’s contained in these files. Lucius knew exactly what was in here and where it was, but unfortunately, your friend Ducharme took that knowledge away when he took Lucius’s life. The new Head of the Society will have to spend several months in here going through everything. His brain will be the inventory.”

  “Not very efficient,” Burns said.

  “Lucius was Head for decades,” Turnbull said. “It might not be efficient but it’s very secure. And you can have the best inventory in the world, but someone still has to know exactly what it’s an inventory of. Information that can’t be accessed is useless.”

  “You expect me to dig through all this?” Burns asked.

  “No,” Turnbull said, walking down the narrow space between the stacks of boxes. He reached up and pulled one off a shelf. “I believe this is what you want.” He took off the lid and extracted a leather-bound journal. “Mary Meyer’s diary.”

  His Satphone buzzed.

  Turnbull pulled it out of his pocket. “Yes?”

  “It’s Ducharme. I don’t appreciate you trying to have me killed.”

  Turnbull sighed. “It didn’t take so let’s let bygones be bygones. How is Cane?”

  “He’ll live.”

  “What do you have for me? I assume this isn’t just to bitch about the realities of our business?”

  “You prepared to copy?”

  Turnbull extracted a pen and pad from his breast pocket. “Go.”

  Ducharme rattled off eight numbers.

  “This is a grid for…?” Turnbull asked.

  “I think it’s where our three missing nukes are.”

  “Any idea where this is?”

  “I’d say somewhere in Moscow, probably close to the Kremlin. You might want to let your Russian friends know.”

  “That I will do.”

  “I’m coming back,” Ducharme said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Have a safe trip.”

  The line went dead.

  *****

  Evie was back in the main office of the APS with the folder and the book. The phone on the desk rang and she picked it up. “Yes?”

  “Evie, you need to get General Dunning to send some forces to Al Asad to secure this plutonium.”

  “Will do. I just got a text from Burns. He’s got Mary Meyer’s diary, so I’m going to head to DC. I have a feeling it isn’t as easy as this.”

  “It never is. Turnbull tried to have me killed in Turkey after we recovered the nukes. So be careful.”

  “I will.”

  There was a pause. “Are you happy I’m still alive?” Ducharme finally asked.

  “Of course!”

  “I can’t read your mind, Evie.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ducharme’s sigh echoed through the phone from the other side of the world. “And I found a map of Moscow and some grid coordinates. I have a feeling that’s where the other three are.”

  “Fail Safe,” Evie said.

  “What?”

  “I found something in the Archives here. A piece of paper mentioning Peacekeepers in New York City. All it said was quote: Peacekeepers—New York City—initial roster two: code names Aaron and Bathsheba—contact: Groves. End quote. But there was also a copy of Fail Safe. At the end of Fail Safe, after an American bomber gets through to Moscow and destroys it, the President has another American bomber destroy New York City. I think Kennedy and Khrushchev put bombs in both cities as their own form of Fail Safe.”

  “The Sword of Damocles,” Ducharme said.

  “Yes,” Evie said.

  “I relayed the info about the Moscow location to Turnbull. I think we let the Cincinnatians take care of that. They’ve got contacts there.”

  “And New York City?”

  “I imagine Turnbull is on that, too. But you need to sit on him. Let Burns know he’s got to be on alert and to cover your back.”

  “I don’t think it’s this simple,” Evie said. “I think there has to be more to this.”

  “Isn’t hidden nukes in Moscow and New York enough?”

  “I just have this feeling we’re missing something.”

  “Let’s deal with what we have. I’m going to take the F-22 and fly back. I’ll meet you in DC.”

  *****

  Burns was seated in a corner of the office, leafing through Meyer’s diary searching for something—anything—that would shed some light on the current situation. Turnbull was back at his desk, listening to Ramsay’s report. When his New York agent was done, Turnbull issued his orders: “Get the NYPD to provide a perimeter. I’m sending in a special team to go into that tunnel and track down the Peacekeepers.”

  “Going to be hard to keep a lid on that,” Ramsay said.

  “You’re wrong,” Turnbull said. “It’s going to be very easy. The Peacekeepers are deep underground, some place where no one has found them in decades. So taking them out will go unnoticed. And the police will be more than happy that we’re most likely removing nuclear weapons from underneath the city. A win-win all around. Clear?”

  “Clear, sir.”

  “Pull in some markers. There’s plenty of people high in New York who owe us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Turnbull turned the phone off and looked up to see Burns standing in front of his desk, his pistol in his hand, although the hand was hanging at his side.

  “You tried to kill Ducharme?”

  “It was a thought,” Turnbull said. “He’s a very dangerous man, and he did kill my boss. I have some allegiance to those I serve with. Just as you do.”

  “So how about I shoot you right now?”

  “How about we do what we set out to do? This is bigger than you or me.” He tapped a folder he’d taken from the vault while Burns took the diary. “There’s a record here of a team from the Philosophers, some of the Green Berets who stood in the honor guard for Kennedy’s body, killing three of the Society’s agents right here in DC.”

  “When?”

  He opened the folder. “The twenty-fourth of November, 1963. Our agents intercepted the Soviet Ambassador, Mikoyan, as he was leaving Kennedy’s lying in state at the Rotunda. Mrs. Kennedy had passed something to him. A piece of paper. We believe it was part of this Sword of Damocles. We tried to get it, but your people intercepted our interception. Killed our agents. So you can get down off your high horse, Burns. This is a bloody business we’re in. And remember, you’re inside my house right now. I could make you disappear and no one would be the wiser.”

  “Evie would.”

  “That’s true,” Turnbull said. “And that’s part of the reason I’m letting you live.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “I don’t think we have all the pieces of the Sword yet.”

  “And when we get them?”

  “Let’s cross that wall when we get to it.”

  “What was on the paper?” Burns asked.

  “That’s a good question,” Turnbull said. “Too bad our men were killed before they could get it.”

  “I’ll ask Evie if she has any record of this.”

  *****

  Ducharme took off in the F-22 as soon as th
e Air Force transport landed at Al Asad and two teams of Special Forces exited, taking over security for the lead box from Cane’s men. He didn’t swap spit with Cane upon departing, but he did shake the man’s hand.

  “Thanks for not killing me.”

  Cane laughed. “Actually, I think Turnbull knew I wouldn’t. It was as much a test of me as it was a mission.”

  “So you failed?”

  “Actually, I think I passed.” He held out a Fairbairn commando knife. “Noticed you don’t have a knife. Take one of ours.”

  Ducharme then got in the back seat of the fighter and they were airborne in seconds, gaining altitude as fast as the powerful engines could get them. The classic knife, with a TriOp crest on the handle, was now on Ducharme’s belt.

  “You good to make this trip?” Ducharme asked Stretch over the intercom.

  “We don’t do crew rest like the airliners,” Stretch said. “I took a happy pill and will take another about halfway back. I’ll get you back to the States. Then I’m going to sleep for a couple of days.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” Ducharme said, rubbing his forehead.

  “Those were nukes you recovered?” Stretch asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Fuck. That’s not good.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “This over?”

  “Nope.”

  22 October 1962

  Click HERE or the picture to view JFK Cuban Missile Crisis Speech

  Or go here: http://youtu.be/WYVPx3x3oCg

  Mary Meyer was alone to watch this Presidential news conference. She was often alone. Despite her reputation, both real and rumor-earned, she valued the privacy of her home. With her insider knowledge, she wanted to see how much Jack leveled with the American people as her TV set flickered and then the picture resolved to show the newscast.

  “Good evening, my fellow citizens.” Kennedy sat behind a table, a small podium with two microphones set in front of him. He was in the Oval Office, facing an array of cameras.