Johnson had only met the lucky groom a couple of times, both occasions in passing but all his sources said the guy was ‘rock solid’, a chip off the ‘old block’ unless you talked to anybody close to the Secretary of State. The State Department had fallen out of love with its ambassador in Oxford long before the ‘ructions’ of the first week of April. People close to Secretary of State Fulbright said Walter Brenckmann had ‘gone native’ and intuitively mistrusted Daniel, their troublesome envoy’s second son. Not least because Dan was one of Claude Betancourt’s protégés and he was immovably embedded in Chief Justice Earl Warren’s Office for the Commission on the Causes and the Conduct of the Cuban Missiles War. The kid was a lawyer like his father, cut it seemed, from the same utterly reliable, stoic fabric that had originally earned his old man the patronage of the Betancourt family.
The Vice President had never quite got to the bottom of that.
It had something to do with Walter Brenckmann’s time in the Navy. Claude Betancourt’s people in Quincy had kept his two-bit attorney’s firm alive while he was away during the forty-five war, and during the Korean War the son of one of Betancourt’s buddies had been on Brenckmann’s ship. When Brenckmann had returned home from Korea he had become Claude’s go to ‘quiet man’, the guy he sent for when a thing needed to be resolved amicably, without fuss of bother, because everybody in Boston knew that Walter Brenckmann had a knack of fixing things in such a way that everybody walked away thinking they had won. Or so the legend had it.
Either way Daniel Brenckmann had played his walk on, supporting part at the society wedding of the year with perfect calm dignity. Gretchen Louisa Betancourt, whom everybody had expected to walk down the aisle on crutches had, leaning on her proud father’s arm slowly, hurtfully progressed down the length of the great church; and thereafter Dan Brenckmann had been there to catch her if she fell, as he clearly planned to be the rest of his fairy princess’s life.
That sort of thing mattered a lot to an ambitious young woman like Gretchen Betancourt.
The most profound lesson of Johnson’s own life was that with the right partner by one’s side the sky was the limit, and quite literally, all things were possible. Claude Betancourt’s wealth and political muscle might not always be at his daughter’s back; but Dan Brenckmann would always be there.
“Thank you. I am much recovered, Mister Vice President,” Gretchen declared, careful not to overdo the winning, flashing smile she occasionally unfurled to dazzle and disarm the unwary. None of the normal tricks were going to cut the ice with this man. Her father had known both the President and the Attorney General since they were children; he was still close to both men, rather in the fashion of a fond uncle sometimes despairing of the antics of his nephews but he respected and in some small way, actually feared LBJ. The tall craggy Texan had been the ringmaster of the Senate before he accepted a demotion to become Jack Kennedy’s running mate in 1960. For much of Eisenhower’s presidency Johnson was the master of Capitol Hill and it must have been maddeningly galling for him to have to watch from the sidelines as the rich kids from New England crashed the ‘family car’. “I think married life suits me!”
The Vice President chuckled, charmed before he knew it.
On the day of the ‘great wedding’ he was visiting troops on the front line in Illinois. Every time he thought about what was going on in Chicago he inwardly shivered. Mayor fucking Daley! If that shithead Daley had left the military to do their business in the spring the situation might, conceivably, be under control by now. Left to his own devices the Governor of Washington State, Al Rossellini — granted, with a whole barrel-load of help from neighboring Oregon and Pat Brown in California — had re-asserted control over and pacified all the bomb-damaged parts of his state. But for the President’s infantile meddling the situation the Midwest would now be back ‘under control’.
Johnson had tacitly expected Claude Betancourt to make advances to him before now. Perhaps, the latest bloodletting in Chicago and Milwaukee had set new alarm bells ringing?
“My people told you that this meeting is strictly off the record?” The Vice President said sternly.
“My staff will tell the Press that I came to the DC area on a fact-finding mission,” Gretchen confirmed. “During which I paid courtesy calls on the staff of the Office of Reconstruction.”
Johnson nodded his approbation.
The woman raised her coffee cup to her lips.
She was wearing a minimum of make up; just sufficient foundation to mask the scar tissue on her brow, and to make her lips less pale.
“It can’t be much fun coming back to DC?” The man suggested quietly. “You must have a lot of bad memories?”
Gretchen shrugged.
“Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” she retorted ruefully. “I was lucky. Thousands of others were not.”
“It can’t be much fun being accused of aiding and abetting the enemy either?”
Again, the young woman shrugged.
“Even alleged traitors have a constitutional right to a fair trial, Mister Vice President.”
Johnson had been astonished that Claude Betancourt had allowed his little girl — whom everybody knew to be not so much the apple of his eye as the jewel in his family’s crown — to get anywhere near the Battle of Washington Tribunals. The Justice Department planned to arraign the ‘Washington Twelve’, the surviving ring-leaders of the coup d’état of December 1963 sometime in mid-July. The accused were all dead men, everybody knew that; they were guilty of treason, sedition, mass murder, crimes against humanity, rape, etcetera. To a man they were going to the electric chair and Gretchen Betancourt was the last public defender left standing. In a few weeks time she was likely to be the most hated woman in America.
But LBJ understood exactly why she had put her head above the parapet.
In years to come everybody would know her name and recognize her face.
In twenty years time people would remember that she had stood up for justice; and defended the constitution like a Lioness protecting her helpless cubs from pack of rogue males.
They would remember that she had gone down with all guns firing, that she had stood up for what she believed in even though she had known her cause was hopeless.
Hollywood would make movies about Gretchen Betancourt!
Make no mistake she understood the political and moral calculus as well as anybody. The kid had ambitions and she was taking the biggest gamble of her career, early. She had time on her side. She would be the most hated woman in America for a day; but in twenty years, in say, 1984…
“Nobody will thank you for upholding the constitution,” LBJ observed ruefully.
Gretchen sobered, met the man’s gaze.
“With all due respect, sir,” she countered. “It should not be up to me, or anybody else involved with the Battle of Washington Tribunals to uphold the constitution. The President is the man who is supposed to uphold the constitution, sir,” this she offered while quirking a half-smile to soften the blow. “My clients have been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion and thus far, nobody in the Administration has lifted a finger to uphold their constitutional rights.”
Johnson thought about this.
Claude Betancourt’s little princess had come here to get his attention; the question was: why?
“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind, counselor?” He inquired, swatting aside her carefully placed barb.