“I understand why you will have many questions, General LeMay,” Jack Kennedy conceded grimly. He glanced sidelong at the Deputy Attorney General and the Secretary of the Interior. “We realize that hard decisions must be taken to contain the rebellion in the Midwest; and harder decisions still may await us in enforcing our will for peace in the Persian Gulf. Please,” he invited, spreading his hands wide, “ask the questions which I know must be greatly troubling you.”
The veteran airman just stared at his President.
He was briefly dumbfounded to the point of incredulity but then his mind started working again and he found his voice. He looked around at the faces of the politicians: McNamara was studiously inscrutable, Udall the Secretary of the Interior was clearly still wondering what he was doing at Camp David and badly wanted to be someplace else.
“This is insane,” he growled almost but not quite under his breath.
Chapter 20
Former Special Agent Dwight Christie did not look like a monster. In fact he was the sort of guy who went unnoticed on a busy street. His dark hair was thinning at the temples and he looked shabby in the dark suit his captors had instructed him to put on prior to being transported, in utmost secrecy, to the Brenckmann’s palatial — shortly to be abandoned — marital home.
The previous evening a detachment of eight FBI men had arrived at McDermott’s Open, searched the mansion and explored every inch of its grounds before establishing a secure cordon — blocking two of the three entrances to the estate — and spreading out to cover any approach from the golf-course side of the property. More G-men had reported for duty at first light.
If Gretchen had not realized what she was getting into before — she had, of course — this morning would have come as a rude, somewhat disconcerting if not positively unnerving experience.
The ground floor reception room, a ‘hall’ by the standards on any normal suburban middle-class home in any of the surrounding states, had been cleared ahead of this morning’s ‘business’. A long table and hard chairs had been brought in, furniture pushed to the walls; and at Gretchen’s request the FBI had brought in a film crew to record the proceedings.
That had been Dan’s suggestion.
‘If this goes badly Justice and the Bureau will wash their hands of us,’ he had said. Moreover, he had said it in that particular, non-confrontational way which told her that he was quite prepared to dig his heels in and have a stand up row with her if that was what it took to get her to pay attention. They had still to have that first ‘scene’ but over the weekend her husband had left her in no doubt that if he ever thought she was doing something ‘really dumb’, he was going to tell her so. ‘We need to be as cast iron as everybody else.’
Associate Director of the FBI Clyde Tolson had started to object to Dan Brenckmann’s presence immediately prior to Dwight Christie being walked into the room.
‘Dan is here in the capacity of my assistant attorney, Mr Tolson,’ Gretchen had viewed J. Edgar Hoover’s gang-busting sidekick from the thirties with imperious haughtiness. ‘If you have a problem with that then our business is at an end and I shall bid you good day, sir.’
Her husband had planned to be a little more diplomatic. He smiled apologetically to the older man as if to say ‘hey, what can I do?’
Dwight Christie was in shackles with two muscular, much younger crew cut G-men firmly gripping his upper arms. His manacled wrists were chained to a metal belt around his waist and a second chain rattled down to his ankles, which were so closely restrained that he could only shuffle forward in clanking baby steps.
The prisoner eyed Gretchen impassively; there might have been a flicker of curiosity in his hooded eyes as he glanced at Dan.
“Nice place you have here, lady,” he observed.
Gretchen noted the man’s nondescript accent; neither Yankee drawl nor southern edge, an absence of any suggestion of a Midwest infection or the attenuation of Canadian vowels. Here was a man who made a virtue out of being forgettable.
Perhaps, he was a spy after all…
She turned to Clyde Tolson.
“By all means chain Mr Christie to a chair or something but I would appreciate it if you would release his hands, Director. I’m sure that Mr Christie understands that his first false move will be his last.”
Clyde Tolson had left the ‘legal’ arrangements for this morning ‘preliminary interview’ in the hands of Frank Lovell, an attorney nominally attached to the State Department who was legendary from his days as the Eisenhower Administration’s ‘go to’ counsel. Gretchen and Dan had encountered him at Administration functions that spring before they discovered that Lovell had been instrumental in resolving the ‘misunderstanding’ in California with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office which had seen Dan’s musician brother Sam facing a murder rap. Although Sam and his new wife and baby daughter had come up to Philadelphia in May for the wedding there had been no real opportunity to get to the bottom of all that. Dan’s mother and father had had no more luck than him; and in any event they had had only had twenty-four hours back in the States, before having to return to England. Neither Gretchen nor her husband had known Frank Lovell was in the ‘FBI–Christie’ loop until that morning.
“I’m sure that would be in order, Clyde,” the graying, elegant man who oozed charm from every pore of his being advised silkily. Frank Lovell smiled deferentially to Gretchen.
The cine camera on a tripod at the end of the table was already running, likewise a big reel to reel recorder wired to the circular microphone positioned in the middle of the table, as the doors to the reception room were closed. Dwight Christie’s minders had unlocked his wrists, sat him at the table and taken one step backwards. Clyde Tolson and Frank Lovell positioned themselves to the left and the right of the prisoner, each some six to seven feet distant. Gretchen and her husband were alone on the opposite side of the table, their backs to the partially draped windows. It was a dull, squally day outside, one of those days when the weather comes in off the Atlantic and produces unseasonal chills and cold quirky, gusting winds familiar to anybody who has ever walked the boardwalks of Atlantic City.
It was just ten-thirty almost to the second.
“I have organized coffee for around eleven o’clock,” Gretchen announced, taking charge of proceedings. She spoke directly to Dwight Christie as if he was the only man in the room. “Do you know who I am?”
Dwight Christie quirked an unlikely half-smile.
“Your Pa was old Joe Kennedy’s enforcer here on the East Coast,” he said. “But Mr Tolson says he wouldn’t take the case.”
Her father was very much ‘silent’ these days in the affairs of Betancourt and Sallis, Attorneys at Law. He was too wrapped up in Administration business, too preoccupied with manipulating the Democratic National Committee to risk being drawn again into the public eye. He described his work with the DNC as ‘herding cats’ and besides, he was still discreetly unraveling the murkier corners of his old friend, Joe Kennedy’s affairs. The President’s father had always intended to ‘clean house’ before he died but then he had had that stroke, and afterwards the first wave of the New England plague had carried him away with his work unfinished.