In another woman — before the war — she would have written it off to a mid-life crisis, some kind of reaction to an old, tired, failed marriage that neither party had the wit, inclination or energy to terminate twenty years ago, or to straightforward menopausal hysteria. But she had walked away from her unhappy, unfulfilling marriage before the October War, and her ‘time of life’ had come and gone early in her forties. In retrospect that had hastened her divorce although at the time it had all passed her by because she was so immersed in her work; one study after another for the Air Force resulting in a string of widely published reports which had eventually won her the prestigious teaching chair — and tenure — at the School of Medicine at the University of Chicago.
The truth was that she was no longer the woman she had been before the October War; and that the cataclysm had liberated her from each and every one of her former life assumptions. The World had truly gone mad and the old rules no longer applied. How else could she explain that after flying into San Francisco yesterday evening she had been in a near-hysterical emotional flux, hardly able to sleep last night, up stupidly early to bathe and preen like she had not done for nearly thirty years! She had agonized over lingerie like a debutante — selecting a dark lacy brassiere and a chic French-style open girdle — and whether or not to wear nylons on such a warm Bay day.
Oh God, mutton dressed as lamb…
Once upon a time she would have guarded her ‘professional and ethical standing’ with her life; but did any of that stuff really matter anymore? Every time she read the papers or turned on the TV or the radio the World seemed to be crazier!
A couple of months ago they had learned that the Russians had only been playing dead. Now they were in Baghdad!
Yesterday the news had been that President Kennedy had met the British Prime Minister at Cape Cod and sent her away empty handed, declaring: ‘the days when Europe and the Middle East were US spheres of military influence are over. America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.’ Henceforward, ‘I have always been and always will be an America First President!’
Caroline Konstantis’s index finger depressed the bell button.
There was a distant mechanical ringing.
Nathan Zabriski opened the door.
He was a man of slightly above average height, five feet nine or ten, trimly dapper, with his dark hair crew cut and his face closely shaved that morning. He was the sort of man who looked at home in uniform, today he was wearing a check shirt and new blue jeans.
He looked tanned, fit.
In his grey-green eyes nameless agitation played.
He shifted on his feet like a man mystified, or perhaps frightened.
“I missed you,” he said simply, as if he was ashamed.
Chapter 4
Fifty-five year old Lyndon Baines Johnson’s craggy face creased into a welcoming smile as Gretchen Brenckmann-Betancourt was shown into the small conference room. The tall Texan held out his hand.
“I apologies for not being able to accommodate you in my schedule the other week in Philly,” the Vice President began. Six feet three inches — and some — he often towered over an interlocutor but his visitor was only shorter by a few inches in her high heels.
“Please,” the willowy brunette reassured him, “I completely understand, sir.”
Gretchen knew that the Vice President’s ‘schedule’ was anything but crowded. LBJ had begun to disengage from the rest of the Administration several weeks ago, now the talk was that he had broken with it — on less than amicable terms — over the outcome of the Cape Cod Summit. That was not to say that Johnson was any less of an ‘America Firster’ than Jack Kennedy, far from it, just a different sort of America First man. Throughout the spring he had lobbied for a strong line to be taken in the Midwest, to allow the military its head. In the Deep South he had wanted to play the Civil Rights card for all it was worth, hold it over the heads of Southern Democrats like a hammer that could fall at a time and place of his choosing; instead the Administration had tried to be all things to all men and forgotten the first rule of politics: you do what you have to do to win.
Many Administration insiders had suspected that the President’s decision to ditch the alliance with the British would be the last straw for LBJ. Repudiating the ‘special relationship’, and most likely provoking the downfall of Margaret Thatcher’s — vexingly bellicose regime — was probably going to play well with the American people, for a day, a week, maybe longer but who picked up the pieces after the Red Army conquered the Middle East?
As Gretchen’s father had observed: ‘Isolationism sounds like a great idea right up until the day the gas pumps start to run dry!’
Lyndon Johnson retained his hold of the woman’s hand a moment; long enough for them to both make eye contact. When the daughter of the Democratic Party’s East Coast kingmaker paid a house call a wise man acted with due deliberation.
Johnson had known Gretchen Betancourt’s father over thirty years; had it not been for Claude Betancourt's marvelously adroit behind the scenes maneuvering he might have been the man nominated to face down Richard Nixon in 1960. However, that was all in the past. Now that old Joe Kennedy was dead and the Kennedy boys had blown up half the World the old rules, the old allegiances were meaningless. So, when a man like Claude Betancourt sent an old enemy an emissary it behooved him to listen to what she had to say.
“You are a very busy man,” the woman went on, “and I completely understand why your preference was for a low-profile meeting in a confidential location.”
Johnson retrieved his hand and waved for the woman to take one of the two comfortable chairs in front of his borrowed desk. Neither he nor she spoke while aides brought coffee and shuffled out of the room.
The man had noted how stiffly Gretchen walked, concluding that the life-threatening injuries she had sustained at the State Department Building during the Battle of Washington still troubled her more than she was prepared to admit. She had been in the room in which Under Secretary of State George Ball had died, she had been shot the by insurgents and left to die in the burning State Department Building. By the time she was discovered, more dead than alive the best part of a day later, the doctors at the Bethesda Naval Hospital had practically given up on her. Comatose for several days and at one time feared paralyzed; that she was so self-evidently back on her feet only six months later was a minor miracle.
“I’m glad that you seem so recovered, Mrs Brenckmann,” Johnson observed.
Gretchen Betancourt’s marriage had been a hastily organized popular circus that had filled the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, prompting a veritable media fiesta in the surrounding streets and parks despite the inclemency of the weather that day.
She was an American aristocrat and her husband the second son of the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The President and half his Cabinet had attended the ceremony; afterwards Gretchen had been the star of the show and photographs of her hanging on the arms of the great and the good of the Republic had filled the papers and preoccupied the big TV networks for days.