Jackie had always found it hard to sleep if any light crept in so her lavish bedroom curtains, a glazed cotton floral design by Scalamandré, lined with dense blackout material, were backed up with generously cut window blinds. When all of these were drawn, the bedroom was pitch-black so various side lamps were almost always lit.
She had no chance to be further irritated because the moment she opened the door a large hand gripped her neck and another grabbed her arm and forced it hard behind her back.
“Say nuzzing,” a man with a guttural Foreign accent ordered her. “You are alone.”
She thought of the men on night guard, fifteen floors below.
Guy and the president himself had warned her that the work she was doing might put her in danger and she knew there were madmen everywhere that made threats on her life.
Terrified, she tried to identify her assailant. He was powerful and was having no problem pushing her toward the floor.
He had grabbed her throat so tightly she couldn’t scream.
To break his grip, as he pushed her down she tried to put him on the defensive by dragging him with her.
She kicked out but he was on top of her, holding her down.
“Not so fast, just tell me where money is?”
For a second the excruciating pain in her neck stopped.
“There is no money,” she gasped.
Immediately the hand round her throat stopped her from saying more.
She began to thrash her head from side to side but the pressure on her throat increased.
“Money, money?” He released her for a second.
“My bag…over there.” She nodded toward the round table at the end of the bedroom.
From his pocket he produced a piece of overstuffed fabric; she recognized a corner of her pillow and the fine cotton of her pillowcase that had been sliced off. He forced it into her mouth. When she resisted he pressed so hard on her larynx she thought she would stop breathing. The makeshift gag was embedded between her lips while her assailant knotted one of her scarves round her head to keep it there.
Jackie was strong and fit. She desperately tried to pull away but he hit her so hard with the flat of his hand that for a moment she couldn’t breathe.
He used more scarves to tie her hands together so that any movement hurt her wrists.
Unable to shout or move her hands, she tried to stand, but he pulled her leg so hard that she fell. In seconds he lashed her legs together by her ankles.
He indicated that she should roll over and bury her face in the carpet. When she didn’t move fast enough she felt the tip of something sharp against her cheek. Her eyes nervously flicked up. He had removed a ceremonial sword, a gift from the president of Pakistan, from a wall display in the hall.
While he scoured through her crocodile skin bag she tried again to see who he was.
She could only see black trousers and cheap shoes and large tanned hands.
He vented his anger at having found no more than thirty dollars in her wallet by hurling both across the room.
The bag pushed the bedroom door ajar, allowing a little more light in.
“You richi, richi. Where your safe is?” he asked to her back.
She could smell the remnants of to night’s sea bass on his breath.
He realized at this point that she could not speak or point. She tried to show him with her chin but he could not understand.
Roughly he dragged the pillow and the scarf from her mouth and face. She gagged on the carpet before speaking.
When she tried to look round she felt the pointed edge of the sword on the back of her neck.
“The safe is in the dressing room,” she croaked.
Before she could add that there was nothing in it, he stuffed the wadding back into her mouth and retied the scarf.
With him in the dressing room, she attempted to roll over to reach the panic button that the Secret Service had installed. He raced back.
She lay prone, facedown on the floor.
“Number, quick, quick.” The top of the sword in his hand rested on the carpet by her right eye.
He roughly pulled the wadding from her mouth for a second time. She gave him her father’s birth date.
With the sword he made tiny slashes on the back of her legs. She felt her blood trickling out.
“Move, I will mark you. Shout, I will kill you.”
He stood above her, out of view, and let the sword slowly trace up her arm.
Unsuccessfully she tried to wriggle while he clicked the four numbers into the safe.
The screech, quiet but malevolent, when he discovered that it held just three passports and a few papers, terrified her.
She was going to die, she thought. The thief was a madman.
She tried to think how she could placate him. Her furs were in cold storage and she had no real jewels at home, preferring fash
ionable costume jewelry by Chanel and Kenneth J. Lane. All her pearls were simulated so that they could be replaced when makeup and perfume discolored them, and she found that fake silver was less heavy than the real thing and could be changed according to fashion.
Her real stuff, the brooches and rings that Jack had given her, were in the bank vaults.
But maybe this man wouldn’t know.
When he returned, looking crazed, she pointed her chin toward the cherrywood antique bureau whose drawers contained the small boxes that held her jewelry.
He understood, but when his hands were too clumsy to open the miniature drawers he swiftly cut the bindings from her legs and dragged her kneeling and crying toward them.
She couldn’t move fast enough for him; the shift got caught beneath her knees and because her hands were still tied tight behind her she could not move it aside.
She felt the sword at her throat.
For a second she thought he had slashed her from collarbone to thigh but then she realized it was just the thin fabric of her nightdress that was torn.
He yanked it off her shoulders so it trailed behind her. Now her knees were like the rest of her body, uncovered.
“Open it.”
She looked up at him and shrugged, trying to show her hands were still tied.
“You think I stupid and untie you. Open with mouth.”
Her hauled the gag from her mouth.
Her knees aching from crossing the carpet so quickly, her tears falling, she attempted to open the bottom drawer with her teeth.
At first it didn’t move. He put his hand next to her mouth and tugged but his fingers were too big to grip the tiny handle. With the sharp edge of the sword prodding the nape of her neck, he signaled that she should use her lips to tease one of them out.
Once the first one was opened, he removed the others by grabbing them from the inside.
He picked up the necklaces, there were about twenty, and began looking for silver hallmarks. Failing to find them, he hurled them one by one across the room. One or two hit and flailed her on their way.
In disgust he tossed them and the fake pearls aside. Some broke and exploded. He picked up her briefcase, and finding only papers inside, he hurled them and their container across the room, pushing the bedroom door open wider.
“You think I poor boy, new here, know nothing!”
He looked at her.
She was kneeling, her almost naked body outlined by the incoming light, wide-eyed at the torrential storm of luminous pearls.
Urgently he opened his trousers and signaled that he wished her to use her mouth again.
She tried to resist but he pulled her head toward him. She was reluctant to touch him and thought of biting him hard and racing to the panic button when again she felt the sharp sword stroke her neck.
When he had finished he insisted she continue licking and stroking him all over, and then in the manner of men who had never been able to afford contraception, he forced her to have sex in a way that could not procreate.
By then she had recognized him, a young good-looking waiter, Yugoslav, she thought, who had worked for her once before and who had supposedly been checked out by the Secret Service.
As he entered her for the second time he whispered in her ear, “You richi, richi, if you have money I no do this.”
The whole thing had taken no more than an hour.
He left the way he came, via the staff exit at the back, so as to avoid the doorman.
When she was sure he had gone she staggered up and looked at herself in the mirror. The sides of her lips were bleeding and her
insides ached. Her legs were covered with slashes. Blood was seeping through the worst of them and other places had smaller cuts where he had held the sword against her skin while forcing her to sexually respond to him at the end.
She felt so violated.
As she finally lurched toward the panic button she stopped.
Did she really want everyone to know about this?
As a rape victim she would be named, and if he was caught she would have to be a witness and live through this all over again, in public.
She guessed that he would look very handsome dressed up in a suit and tie. Despite the marks on her body it would be his word against hers.
It would be difficult for any jury to believe that her security was so lax that this could happen.
They might think that as she was alone and ten years older than him, this was a relationship that had gone wrong.
She started to cry.
Eventually she lowered herself into a warm bath and rubbed all the marks that she could reach with ointment. So that no one should know what had happened she crawled around for hours picking up every pearl, making a neat package of them. She would throw them away where her maid would not find them. It was far more than one necklace.
One by one she rescued the silver necklaces and returned them to their rightful place.
She stood in her bathroom and tried to work out how to eliminate the corner of the pillow and the pillow cover that had been wadded into her mouth. Carefully she sliced it into ribbons with her nail scissors and slowly let the fabric and the feathers flush away. As for the damaged pillow, she held it up and pushed a burning cigarette against the corner gash. When the slashed edge had been thoroughly singed she blew the small flame out.
Much better that the staff believed that she had accidentally
burned it because she had fallen asleep while smoking, thought Jackie. She’d done it enough times before. Just as long as no one realized that a man had so crudely vandalized her and her home.
The only stains that remained were on the carpet; some of the blood would not come out, however hard she rubbed.
She would get some carpet cleaner, if only she knew where it was kept. Maybe it would come off when it dried. She would try brushing it before anyone came in tomorrow morning.
Once again she was glad that her first visitors would not be the waking children.
The next day she told her cook to use a different agency in future. She complained that they had been too surly. She insisted that they use older waiters in future and requested only Americans of long-standing should be hired.
“Let’s show these foreign guests our very best,” she told them.
She thought none of her own countrymen would have done this.
All she wanted to do now was to feel safe.
She was either going to have to get some live-in security, an idea she loathed because she would have no privacy at all, or she was going to have to escape.
She canceled everything except her appointments with David Goadshem. At least there she could be honest, but in the end she couldn’t face even telling him.
“I need to get away. I’m fed up being watched, being talked about, being me!”
“There’s nothing wrong with running away from time to time,” he said, in an effort to calm her.
For the first time she canceled Guy.
“This place is too much. The pressure is impossible. I have to find somewhere that I can go where no one is allowed to photograph me or bother me in any way. I’ve had enough. It may mean that I do less for you, Guy, but to keep my sanity I’m going to have to find some way out. Live abroad. I’ve had enough.”
Guy, disappointed he wasn’t seeing her, tried to gently question her over the next few days. He was at a loss as to why she was so upset. A week later she was still adamant.
“I’ve had enough of it now. The years and years of being gawked at, having the children photographed all the time, having everything I do being misunderstood.”
She was so decisive about it that he felt he should pass her views on to his boss when he went to see him at the CIA headquarters in Langley, unaware that there were some who were as keen for her to leave the country as she now was.
They had been so since the beginning of the year.
Desperate to save American lives and American pride, they had a very specific escape route that they wanted her to take.
They had never gone so far as to refer to what they wanted her to do as a plan.
It was far too Machiavellian.
In fact, so unsure were they about it, because of its very personal nature, that officially it had never even been discussed.
Unwittingly Guy’s information arrived on the right day at the right time.
It was time to involve the president to see if he would agree to ask her for the biggest favor of all.
E
ven though the Oval Office contained both the veteran CIA man Harry Blackstone and the president, it was strangely quiet.
Under normal circumstances the two took loquaciousness to a competitive level, never missing a beat, let alone several seconds.
Harry had just finished making his recommendation.
Lyndon Johnson was in shock.
A few weeks ago, while thumbing through that day’s top-secret memo from the CIA, he had been surprised when confronted with information about Jackie Kennedy’s latest dalliance.
LBJ was more than content for the agency to have made special arrangements to keep watch over his predecessor’s widow. Not only did he expect them to extend their protection to someone they now thought of as their own, he also knew that after she had undertaken a job abroad for him last year she had requested it. It was to be expected. She had never got over the fact that her husband had been murdered despite the presence of the Secret Service. As her children grew up and became more adventurous she became more nervous for their safety.
The task he had set her extended her remit far beyond her dinner table. Lyndon Johnson wanted to utilize her talents in order to try to charm the ruler of Cambodia, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who had severed diplomatic relations because of America’s role in the war in Vietnam.
Jackie had always longed to visit the ruins of Angkor Wat. The plan to combine this with a full-fledged state visit to repair the two-year split appealed to her. Like the old days, no expense had been spared. Airline seats were ripped out so that a full-sized bed could be installed to ensure that on her arrival she would wake refreshed. Schoolchildren showered jasmine petals at her feet, even the royal white elephants were brought to ululate at the royal palace.
The prince’s comments that “a very great contribution to a moral and sentimental rapprochement had taken place,” pleased Jackie, who told the agency how safe she had felt with them guarding her while she was abroad.
“When the children were young it was easier, but now that they are ten and seven, it is hard to find the right balance,” she explained. “Some of the men tend to loom over them and almost end up becoming their servants, which is wrong. I want the children to have to deal with their own lives like every other child, have the little adventures that all children have, but when I ask the guys to stand farther afield, I don’t feel sure they could defend them from any madman in the park.”
Although she had asked for this extra security, Lyndon imagined that it was unlikely she had ever imagined it would lead to this. Based on information from those who watched over her, Harry, the agency’s number three, would formally float the most extraordinary idea, the like of which he had never heard before, across his desk.
He understood why Harry had dreamed it up. Faced with the murder of three agents in as many weeks, the man was beside himself with worry.
An enlarged map of the area with three bloodred crosses marking the dates and the places where they had been found was spread across the desk in front of him.
It was because of the serious nature of this proposal that LBJ was still wrestling with the decision whether to take it seriously or to wonder if Harry, one of his closest advisors, had taken leave of his senses. It was such an outrageous proposition that it was hard to divine if it had any merit, or if it contained any resonance that might lead to the achievement of some foreign policy success.
The president’s long fingers cupped his chin as one and then two minutes passed while he tried to decide whether to simply jettison the whole thing as being wildly improbable.
Then again, he thought because it was so over-the-top it deserved further appraisal.
Was this one of those strange and unexpected ideas that just might work?
How improper would it be to ask someone like her for such a sacrifice even though it could save lives?
Where, in the middle part of the twentieth century, were the moral boundaries to deal with a vicious unofficial war, crammed with covert battles being waged daily across the globe?
Despite his guilt at being so self-serving, if she was affronted, just how public might she, or those close to her who were his natural enemies, go? And if it did come out, what would the public think?
Would they see the proposal as an atrocity or as a sensible utilization of the one person in the world who just happened to be in the extraordinary position of being the only one able to offer the nation such assistance?
Did the country have that right?
It might not be the American way but hadn’t her husband memorably once said, “Think not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country?”
The president rose. All that seemed so long ago and certainly this idea was not what John F. Kennedy had had in mind.
“The trouble is that it’s a woman and a civilian,” he muttered.
“If this ever came out!” He decided that it just didn’t bear thinking about.
Johnson took a quick glance at his guest in the Oval Office. He
knew that the idea had only been born out of despair. But wasn’t he, as supreme commander, the very person who should nip it in the bud? Why couldn’t he decide simply to rule it out and forget about it forever?
Once again, as if hunting for the answer on the map, he looked at the three crimson crosses.
He glanced at his companion. The man had distress and embarrassment written all over his face.
“Look, Harry, you don’t need to look like that,” he said gently.
“I know that coming here today, being brave enough to tell me, this whole thing, this suggestion, is the last desperate roll of the dice. No one could blame you for that. It’s what we do next that counts.”
He hesitated: “I don’t know why but I just can’t make up my mind.
“It is obviously very extreme. After all, how would I feel if someone came and asked me to do this? That’s what’s so difficult. Yes, we know she sees Aristotle Onassis, we assume that he wants her, well, we think that he wants to win her, just like another prize.
“But maybe she likes that. The truth is we can bug, we can watch, but we can’t see into their souls. And there are others involved in this, innocent children.
“He has a boy and girl too. The only difference being, his are old enough to object and put the kibosh on it. Imagine that, we get all that way and some poor little rich boy or girl has the power to stop it and humiliate her, this woman who has already suffered so much, just like that.”
He stood and clicked his fingers.
In his usual Texan drawl he continued. “And, before we even get
that
far, just how were you gonna solve the problem of the senator for New York? Strikes me that brother Bobby is likely to have a highly antagonistic view of all this.
“Bobby will forbid it. He needs her to be just the way she is, the perfect, the iconic ‘widow.’
“He uses her to remind people of the Camelot they lost, the
young, handsome president they lost. He doesn’t want her to marry anyone, especially not someone he would regard as an oily, dangerous little foreigner.
“He doesn’t want any of that tarnish to rub off on him. Onassis reeks of greed and money, boats and brilliantine. Of course, the Kennedys have dozens of friends who are as enthusiastic about these things as he is, but in places like Newport they hide it so much better. They are more practiced, they’ve had their money for a little longer—they know when to spend it and, more importantly, when to hide it.
“No, Bobby would stop her. If he needed to do so he’d call on the entire family to help him, especially if he thought that I was in any way involved.”
From the sofa a hesitant voice emerged.
The younger man was nervously rubbing his horn-rimmed glasses.
Shorter than the president, he was usually fastidious about his appearance, over which he took some trouble, but today the black hair looked too curly, his button-down collar lacked its usual crispness. His full lips, usually a healthy pink, were as pale as his skin, except for the greige blush beneath his eyes.
“No, you’re absolutely right, Mr. President,” said Harry. “I should never have mentioned it.
“I don’t know what I was thinking of. It was very good of you, sir, to see me. Let’s just forget it forever. We’ll just have to find another way, we always do.”
The men separated, Harry Blackstone to return despondently to his controller’s desk in the CIA offices in Langley, Virginia, the president off upstairs to the private quarters to seek out Lady Bird. Maybe his wife could give him a better steer on the idea?
He had always admired her intuition. Throughout the thirty-four years of their marriage, through his upward procession through the ranks on Capitol Hill, she had often surprised him with her clever insights on people, especially other women. He knew that although she had often felt sorry for her predecessor they had never been close; they had been too different.
He also knew that as the vice president’s wife, Lady Bird had frequently and uncomplainingly stood in for Jackie and had some understanding about what made her tick.
Fascinated to know that Jackie had been covertly helping the CIA for some time and had spent New Year’s with Onassis, Lady Bird surprised her husband by immediately reassuring him that a woman like Jackie would certainly not feel affronted but flattered by the suggestion that had been made earlier.
“She’s a risk-taker, a high-wire, daredevil type, just look at the way she rides,” said Lady Bird. “I know she misses some of the First Lady pomp even though Rose Kennedy, her mother, and I did a lot of it for her.
“Trust me, she would love to feel so wanted, so special. What woman wouldn’t?”
She promised her husband that she would give the whole thing her undivided attention that afternoon.
After a charity lunch the fifty-five-year-old First Lady tried to put herself in the same position as the younger woman. Being naturally industrious, she found that her best ideas always emerged while doing something else, so she walked around the private part of the White House garden, hunting down the first flowers of spring and pulling and tugging at this bush or that branch.
She came to two conclusions.
The fact that Jackie, who could take her pick of the world’s most attractive consorts and resorts, had chosen to spend New Year’s Eve with Aristotle Onassis was a sure sign that she had already given him serious consideration.
It was Lady Bird’s view that the last night of the year was an emotionally charged date for most women. That noisy, supposedly celebratory time was the outward sign of time passing, of aging, of all the dreams and hopes for the twelve months that had just passed being lost forever. She was sure that this would especially be the case for a sole parent, a survivor, a widow, like Jackie.
It meant that the woman was already quite involved, or certainly reliant on the man.
Lady Bird also knew that Bobby Kennedy’s infinite ambition to step into his dead brother’s role would mean that he would do anything to stop Jackie from spoiling his future political hopes by marrying the small Greek millionaire, a man so much less attractive and popular than the late president.
Lady Bird suspected that he would be ruthless and if necessary would plunder the Kennedy millions to keep Jackie as the asset she was and prevent Onassis taking ownership of a prized piece of the Kennedy mystique.
“And if, as you say, he knew you were in any way behind it, then he would redouble his efforts,” she warned her husband.
Lyndon Johnson listened hard. He concentrated on the first piece of Lady Bird’s assessment.
He had already been having private thoughts about how to deal with the second.
A week later, on March l2, the president only just beat the liberal, antiwar Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Hardly surprising, as the Johnson name was not on the ballot; as the incumbent he had to be a write-in, and he did not campaign in the state. But the result was counted as a defeat for LBJ.
One way or another the voters were influenced by the Vietnam War. They were either against it so they didn’t vote for him or they thought he was too timid in its pursuance, so once again he lost out.
Four days later McCarthy’s weak showing brought Bobby Kennedy into the presidential race.
His statement, “I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies…to end the bloodshed in Vietnam and in our cities,” irked Lyndon. America’s thirty-sixth president felt that he had worked hard on what he had named the “Great Society” and had produced a hefty package of laws that helped the poor and promoted civil rights.
When Bobby continued to attack LBJ, the president decided that indulging in a little backstairs retaliation was irresistible.
At worst, at this critical juncture he reckoned it would slow Bobby Kennedy down and at best it just might help in the fight against the Russians.
To proceed, he invited his oldest and closest friend, General “Mo” Dodsworth, to the White House.
Mo, the president believed, was uniquely qualified to be his facilitator. The two men had been close since they first met in their twenties. Born within a few miles of each other in Stonewall, Texas, they both might have proceeded to have glittering political careers except Dodsworth, after a brilliant war career fighting in Italy and Greece, stayed on in the army until after Korea. By then he was his family’s only surviving son, so he was forced to leave the capital to return to manage the family ranch in Texas.
Later when they both married and began raising children, the friendship deepened. Year after year they frequently entertained each other, at the Elms, the Johnsons’ home in the capital and later at the White House. Equally, Lyndon and Lady Bird relished their trips back to their roots on Mo and Elizabeth’s ranch.
They rarely went more than three months without seeing each other.
Johnson, always distrustful of the Washington elite, often tested out his ideas on his friend. He felt more comfortable with an idea when he had been able to chew it over with Mo, or the general, as he was often called. The man was wealthy but his opinions were down-to-earth and sensible. Lyndon felt lucky to have someone so reliable to use as a sounding board.