Johnson accepted the compliment at face value.
Making a fuss of the ‘Christopher Party’ — had gone down a storm with the networks and in the press despite the general background of virulently anti-British bullshit — had indeed been his doing. The British consular mission to the West Coast Confederation states, headed by the hero of the Battle of Malta and his Maltese wife had been welcomed like movie stars wherever they went; it was like the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson all over again except without any taint of dishonor and infidelity. LBJ had been sorely tempted to invite ‘the Christophers’ down to Stonewall but that would have burned his boats prematurely with the White House. Instead he had told Wernher von Braun to ‘pull out all the stops’ at Huntsville, suspecting that in the years to come the US was going to need every friend it could get in the old world.
“There are still over forty people at the Embassy,” Rachel explained. “The Ambassador is most keen to ensure that business as normal continues. Lord Franks is most insistent about that. I think some of the things that have been going on in this city,” she waved a dismissive hand, “must be breaking his heart. Not that he’d let it show. Not for a single minute.”
Lyndon Johnson let this pass unremarked as he motioned for his guest to precede him into the parlor. Lady Bird took this as he cue to smile and step back into the shadows, leaving the players to get on with their game.
“My Secret Service boys say you’re a dangerous woman?”
Rachel shrugged.
“All women are potentially dangerous, Mr Vice President,” she replied languidly arranging herself in the chair the man indicated.
“Were you one of Jack Kennedy’s girls back in the day?”
The woman smiled, shook her head.
“No. He had plenty of other mistresses ‘back in the day’,” she went on, her eyes twinkling with wry amusement but her expression impenetrable. “I was more focused on,” she paused, “other clients and it was advantageous to me to keep the President, and his little brother, at arm’s length. Rather in the fashion of particularly endearing puppies with,” another pause, attended with a glacial smile, “shit on its paws.”
Lyndon Johnson laughed. He did not want to laugh; he simply could not help himself.
“Is it true,” Rachel continued, “that when you were Senate Majority Leader you had better dossiers on all the other senators than J. Edgar Hoover?”
“Damn right I did!”
The woman nodded thoughtfully.
“Nobody will tell me what the Secretary of State and the Attorney General are talking to the Russians about,” she confessed, as if she was making polite conversation just to avoid an awkward silence.
“Maybe that’s because it’s none of your goddamned business.”
Rachel let this pass.
The man had a point, after all.
“Okay,” she decided. “I’m here because in the aftermath of the Hyannis Port debacle your government and mine have stopped talking to each other. Oh, I know Secretary of State Fulbright and Lord Franks still have regular bilateral contacts but that’s not talking. Given what’s going on in the Middle East and the fact that Admiral McDonald, your Chief of Naval Operations has recently been absent from his normal haunts, it is not unreasonable to speculate that he has been, or still is in the process of visiting that troubled region.”
Lyndon Johnson raised an eyebrow.
“Ah, you didn’t know about Admiral McDonald’s secret meeting with the commander of the Kitty Hawk’s squadron at Bombay?” The woman queried. “Oh dear, you really are out of favor, Mr Vice President.”
She was good!
Really good!
“Shouldn’t you be doing spy work?” He inquired archly.
“I’m an intelligence officer. I don’t spy on anybody.”
It was a measure of how messed up the World was that spies were the last diplomats standing.
“So you’d have had nothing to do with the stories out there bad-mouthing the President?” The Texan retorted.
“Dr Feelgood, the President’s lobotomized sister?” Rachel asked rhetorically. “Addison’s disease? The American media have known about all that stuff and much, much worse for years and been too spineless, not to mention complicit in the conspiracy of silence, to tell ‘the people’ about it. That’s changing now. Not before time. Don’t you think the American people have a right to know that the President — and his little brother, now and then — used to treat any woman unwise enough to step into the White House as if they were no better than a common harlots in their own personal harems before the Cuban Missiles War?”
Lyndon Johnson did not react.
“You’ve heard all the stories, I’m sure,” his visitor continued. “I thought the one about JFK fucking Marilyn Monroe in Bobby’s love nest in the loft of the Department of Justice Building was a real hoot. The Secret Service claim to have destroyed the recording of Marilyn Monroe’s call to the First Lady; the one in which she threatened to marry the President and to move into the White House. I’m sure they’ve got a copy locked away somewhere, I would if I was running the Secret Service. Apparently, Jackie said ‘that’s great, you'll assume the responsibilities of First Lady, and I'll move out and you'll have all the problems’. How classy is that?”
“What would you have done in her position, Miss Piotrowska?”
It was the woman’s turn to arch an eyebrow.
“Ms Monroe would probably have encountered an unfortunate accident,” she smiled coldly, “as in fact she did shortly before the war. But I’m sure that it was just a tragic accident,” she smiled saturninely. “One hears the oddest rumors. In any event, I am not here to try your patience with tittle-tattle, Mr Vice President.”
Johnson got to his feet, turned towards the door. He hesitated and swung around as the woman rose. For a moment she wondered if she was going to be subjected to the legendary ‘Johnson Treatment’. Six feet and over three inches tall the Vice President towered over her, his stare boring into her face.
“You British don’t get it,” he grunted. “We don’t owe you a goddam thing. You think you’ve got it bad? We saved your asses the night of the war. It didn’t work out nice and clean and tidy but if we hadn’t hit the fucking Soviets when we did we’d all be dead now!”
Rachel decided she was only getting a diluted version of ‘the treatment’.
Even so it felt a little like she was standing under a waterfall and there were rocks in the water falling on her from above.
Johnson has moved a step closer and his gaze was relentless.
Rachel shut her eyes for moment, re-focused on the man.
“I killed the last man who attempted to bully me, Mr Vice President,” she said softly.
“With a fucking Kalashnikov!” He growled instantly. Suddenly he was no longer looming over Rachel and his expression was wry. “They say that’s a Hell of a gun?”
The woman frowned.
“Yes,” she agreed dully.
Especially if you need to kill everybody in the room!
“What do you want, Ms Piotrowska?” Lyndon Johnson demanded before adding. “Whoever the fuck you are!”
“Want?” She echoed. “I don’t want anything. But you’re wrong. You owe us — the Brits — more than you can imagine and if you make peace with the Soviet Union behind our backs you need to know that bad things will happen.”