The Kennedy Endeavor (Presidential Series Book 2) Read online

  “I appreciate my interpreter translating my German!

  “There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the Free World and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it's true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. ‘Laflt sie nach Berlin kommen.’ Let them come to Berlin! Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last eighteen years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for eighteen years that still lives with the vitality and the force and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin.

  “While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it. For it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.

  “What is true of this city is true of Germany — real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In eighteen years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with goodwill to all people. You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.

  “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one, and this country, and this great Continent of Europe, in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

  “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words:

  "Ich bin ein Berliner."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ducharme reached an intersection. A train was rumbling to the right. The sound of automatic weapons was to the left.

  He turned left and bumped into a man scurrying down the tunnel.

  “Freeze!” Ducharme yelled.

  The one-armed man raised his one arm. “I do not have a weapon.”

  “Where’s the bomb?” Ducharme demanded.

  “I’m Aaron,” the man said. “And you are?”

  “You’re an original Peacekeeper,” Ducharme said. “One of the first two with Bathsheba. Where’s the damn bomb?”

  “Your name, sir?”

  “I’m the guy that’s going to start hurting you if you don’t lead me to the bomb.”

  Aaron gestured with his one hand. “This way.”

  “Quicker,” Ducharme said, shoving the muzzle of his weapon into Aaron’s back.

  *****

  “Mary Meyer received a copy of the message Mrs. Kennedy gave to Mikoyan,” Evie said. She was writing on a notepad, her eyes still on the machine, reading. “It’s in code. Five letter groupings.”

  “Does it say what the message is about?” Turnbull asked.

  “Hold on,” Evie said. “I’m working as fast as I can.”

  *****

  Aaron reached the first door and slowly worked through that. Eventually they came to the inner room.

  00:25:10

  Ducharme stared at the large metal box and the digital countdown. “How do I stop it?”

  “You don’t,” Aaron said.

  Ducharme realized something: there was no more firing. He took a flashbang off his combat vest, stepped into the doorway and tossed the grenade into the tunnel beyond, summoning help.

  Thirty seconds later, the first TriOp man edged in, weapon at the ready.

  “This it?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” Ducharme said. “We need bomb disposal personnel ASAP.”

  “Already en route.”

  “It won’t do you any good,” Aaron said, and then he lunged for the switch in the control room for the poison gas.

  Ducharme shot him twice, the rounds punching him in the side and up against the wall. Still Aaron tried to go for the button again and Ducharme finished him with a round to the forehead as the bomb disposal unit rushed in.

  “We’ve got one, if not three, nuclear warheads in there,” Ducharme said, pointing at the steel box. “And that’s the countdown,” he added, pointing at the monitor.

  *****

  “Oh, no,” Evie whispered. She slowly straightened from looking through the scope at the microdot.

  “What?” Turnbull demanded.

  “Jackie Kennedy told Mary about the message and gave her a copy. It was for Khrushchev to update him on the Sword of Damocles. The Peacekeepers were moving the bombs out of New York City.”

  “To where?” Turnbull asked.

  “Here. DC.”

  “Where here?” Turnbull said, pulling out his phone. “DC is a big place.”

  “That’s what’s in the code,” Evie said.

  “Can you break it?” Turnbull didn’t wait for an answer as he began making calls, getting forces alerted in the area.

  *****

  The whine of a metal saw filled the vault, making it impossible to speak or hear anything else. Ducharme wasn’t optimistic about the bomb squad getting into the container in time. And even then, he wasn’t sure how well-versed the NYPD Bomb Squad was in disarming fifty-year-old atomic bombs. Made in Russia.

  Ducharme made his way to the surface, knowing that walking distance wasn’t going to matter if the bombs went off, but he needed to be able to communicate, and that wasn’t possible underground. As soon as he emerged from the Fulton Station he called Evie.

  She sounded distracted when she answered. “Yes?”

  “We just went under twenty minutes on the timer,” Ducharme said. “The bomb squad is—“

  “The bombs aren’t in New York,” Evie said. “They’re here in DC and I’m trying to figure out where.”

  Then the phone went dead.

  *****

  Evie stared at the five letter groupings. If it was a one time code then she was screwed along with the rest of Washington: a code where the message used something like a specific page from a book that only the sender and receiver knew about and a trigraph transcribed the message.

  But it couldn’t be, she realized. Because it had been sent to Khrushchev and also given to Mary Meyer. She very much doubted that Kennedy had shared something like that with both of them.

  “PT-109,” Evie said.

  “What?” Burns asked.

  Turnbull was still on the phone getting forces moving, ordering a radiological team airborne, although if the bombs gave off a signal, they certainly would have been detected long before now.

  But one had to try.

  “PT-109,” Evie said. She was googling something on her phone. “After they were run over by that Japanese destroyer and swam to shore, Kennedy sent a message via some natives. He carved it on a coconut shell. But after that, the coastwatchers used a code—a very basic code—called the Playfair Cipher. It’s rather simple.”

  “Decode, don’
t explain,” Burns suggested.

  “Explaining helps me,” Evie said, but she had her cell phone next to the piece of paper on which she’d listed the five letter groups. “You use the alphabet in a five-by-five square, removing one letter, usually the J. Then you break the message into two letter blocks and you go over and then down, and you’ve got the letter for the message.”

  And then she fell silent as she rapidly began decoding the fifty-year-old message.

  MOVING BOMBS PEACEKEEPERS REMAIN IN NY AS DIVERSION BOMBS NOW IN WASHINGTON PROPANE TANK ETERNAL FLAME

  Turnbull was looking over her shoulder and shouting orders as the part about the Eternal Flame was scrawled out. He ran from the room, leaving Evie and Burns alone in this corner of the Smithsonian.

  Evie looked at the FBI agent. “I hear they have an excellent new exhibit on Qhapac nan: The Way of the Incas. It’s about their road system. Let’s take a look since we’re here already.”

  *****

  Baths checked her watch. Five minutes. It was time. She got off the bench and walked toward John F. Kennedy’s gravesite. The Eternal Flame flickered in the late afternoon sun. The Flame had been emplaced at the insistence of Jackie Kennedy shortly after his assassination. The Kennedy Clan had wanted their favorite son buried in Massachusetts, but Jackie had brought Bobby Kennedy out here to Arlington, and the two agreed he would be buried here in Virginia, overlooking Washington and the Pentagon. Then the family had objected to the concept of an Eternal Flame, thinking it might be too showy, but once more Mrs. Kennedy had been adamant.

  They put together a hastily improvised flame, consisting of a tiki torch and a propane tank, for Jackie Kennedy to light at the end of the funeral service on the 25th of November 1963. Robert and Edward Kennedy symbolically simulated lighting the flame after her.

  Only Jackie and Bobby Kennedy knew the real reason a permanent flame would be installed. First, though, Mrs. Kennedy had her two deceased babies disinterred and brought to Arlington to be buried near their father. She read that Abraham Lincoln had been buried next to his dead son, Willie, and she knew that her husband had had a strong desire to be buried with his family.

  It took the Corps of Engineers a year to finally complete plans of a permanent flame along with a permanent gravesite. It took another two years for those plans to come to fruition.

  It wasn’t just because of concern about the aesthetics.

  A private firm, one that was composed of Peacemakers, built the terrace on which the permanent site would be completed. They built one nuclear weapon into that terrace, with a control panel underneath one of the flagstones that lined the entire area and an access panel through which they could get to the bomb.

  Baths walked up to that flagstone and knelt.

  Over the years, the Peacekeepers came back every eighteen months in the name of doing an inspection of the grounds and made sure the weapon was still functional. Twice they had to unearth the bomb and replace it with one of the spares, which they took back to New York and cannibalized.

  Each time they did the inspection or work, a detachment of Green Berets from Fort Bragg arrived to form an outer perimeter to keep the site secure. They had no clue what was going on behind the tall white temporary fences that were erected.

  The Peacekeepers were down to one functioning bomb: the one in place.

  Baths put both hands under the lip of the flagstone and used all her strength to lift it and shove it to the side. She checked her watch. A minute and a half. She wondered if the time made any difference now or if she should just initiate. The blast would take out the cemetery and reach the Pentagon, which had been Jackie Kennedy’s main intent.

  Baths reached forward to hit the initiation.

  Just as the sniper hanging on a monkey harness out of the AH-6 helicopter fired. His round hit her in the base of the skull, almost decapitating her.

  12 October 1964

  Mary Meyer looked up and down the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Towpath, but Jesus Angleton had yet to show himself, which was unusual. He was a man of punctuality, among many other qualities.

  A large man came striding down the path and Meyer felt a moment of apprehension as no one else was in sight. But the way he was walking indicated he had a destination in mind and she stepped aside.

  He pulled the gun out of a pocket of his coat.

  “Someone help me!” Meyer cried out, taking another step back and putting her hands in front of her face, a natural reaction.

  The man shot her in the heart.

  As she crumpled to the ground, the shooter showed his professionalism by firing another bullet into the back of her head.

  Then he walked away.

  A quarter mile later, he turned off the path and rushed to a waiting car.

  Angleton was waiting in the driver’s seat as the shooter got inside.

  “Done?”

  “Done,” Racca replied. As Angleton pulled out into traffic, Racca dared to look at his boss. “What did she do wrong?”

  “She simply knew too much.”

  13 October 1964

  “Ah, Anastas,” Khrushchev said, picking up a glass of vodka and downing it. “I am sure you will survive this too, as you have survived so many other purges.”

  Mikoyan stood on the other side of the Premier’s desk. “Meyer was killed in Washington.”

  “Another casualty of the Cold War. A pity.”

  “What was in that message I brought to you from Mrs. Kennedy?” Mikoyan demanded, feeling cocky now that the winds of change were blowing once more in Moscow.

  “Her well wishes for my continued health in light of what happened to her husband,” Khrushchev said. “I'm old and tired. Let them cope by themselves. I've done the main thing. Could anyone have dreamed of telling Stalin that he didn't suit us anymore and suggesting he retire? Not even a wet spot would have remained where we had been standing. Now everything is different. The fear is gone, and we can talk as equals. That's my contribution. I won't put up a fight.”

  On the next day, the 14th of October, the Presidium and Central Committee accepted Khrushchev’s ‘voluntary’ retirement for reasons of ‘advanced age and ill health.’

  It was better than the traditional bullet to the back of the head.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Turnbull put on the diamond-encrusted medallion of the Head of the Society of the Cincinnati. While politics was important, the Society inevitably bowed to practicality. Finally solving the mystery, and danger, of the Sword of Damocles, was a coup that rivaled the best that any Head had ever achieved.

  He sat at the desk that had belonged to Lucius as long as he had been a member of the Society. He noted the false diary of Mary Meyer, abandoned by Evie and Burns in their rush to get to the Smithsonian. He reached out and picked it up. Then he shoved it in a drawer.

  The Philosophers had a new head, too. And Evie Tolliver might be quirky, but she was a worthy adversary.

  She was also a worthy ally, and that thought gave Turnbull pause.

  With a sigh, he got up and headed to the vault that held Hoover’s files. He had to get more familiar with them now that he was Head.

  *****

  “Heavy lies the head that wears the crown,” Ducharme said, looking down at JFK’s grave. They were inside high white fences, alongside a tornado of activity as the bomb was being removed.

  “Actually,” Evie said, “that’s a famous misquote. The original phrase comes from Shakespeare’s Henry the Fourth, Part Two. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’”

  “Right,” Ducharme said. “I got it wrong.”

  “You got the spirit right,” Evie allowed.

  Ducharme laughed. “We’re making progress, Evie. We’re making progress.”

  “Progress toward what?” she asked, truly puzzled, and he gave up on that line.

  “At least the Sword never fell,” Ducharme said, nodding toward the hole where specialists were working on the bomb.

  “I’ve always wondered,” Evi
e began, but fell silent.

  Ducharme walked into it, knowing he was. “Wondered what?”

  “Who really killed him?”

  “Come on,” Ducharme said, leading her away from the grave and into the cemetery. “Back to where it started.” They went to the graves of Charlie LaGrange and his father. The earth was still raw. Ducharme went to one knee and reached into the dirt at the foot of one grave. He retrieved his commando dagger. He took the one Cane had given him and weighed it against his original.

  “Roughly the same,” Ducharme said.

  “Are you going to bury both?” Evie asked.

  Ducharme stood. He held out his dagger to her. “I think we’re going to need both.”

  The End

  Facts Kennedy

  OIeg Penkovsky was a real person. It is uncertain whether he was a traitor or patriot to the Soviet Union, but he was executed either in the manner depicted in this book or by firing squad on 16 May 1963.

  Anastas Mikoyan did represent Khrushchev at JFK’s Funeral. They did talk in the Rotunda and she did mention the Endeavor that her husband and Khrushchev had been involved in.

  Green Berets were flown up from Fort Bragg to be part of the Honor Guard.

  The United States did emplace a battery of 15 Jupiter Missiles in Turkey, well before the Soviets tried to put missiles into Cuba. They were supposedly withdrawn as part of the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

  The Soviet General on the ground in Cuba had authority to use the nuclear weapons under his command, an almost unheard of granting of powers.

  Khrushchev’s son, Leonid, was either killed in action as a pilot or executed by Stalin. The records are unclear.