A week later they were back in the Big Apple.
Following his suggestion, they arranged their lives so that they would not often be photographed together.
He was right. Public opinion mellowed when the magazines showed her going out alone, and though the powerful and mighty knew they were very much together, the fact that the pair now took great pains not to give that impression pleased them. It confirmed that their concerted action on the pair’s posthoneymoon exclusion had been correct. Slowly the invitations began to roll in.
There was another spin-off that pleased Onassis even more. Privately he thought that many of the photographs published by the newspapers and magazines had been carefully selected so that next to his willowy wife he looked like a small gray slug.
Now the only photographs taken of them together were when
they were seated at dinner. Sitting down, they were of equal height.
Unfortunately the fewer pictures of the newlyweds appearing gave quite a different message to the one woman who would never accept the marriage of Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy.
In her dressing room, whether at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden or at the Paris opera house in the place de l’Opéra, Maria Callas scoured the international press. Whatever her New York friends told her, this lack of togetherness suggested one thing to her, the relationship was already in difficulties.
She thought to herself, He had wanted a trophy, but not any longer.
The opera singer, no stranger to drama, relished the chance of using her artistry to win back her lover.
Her first ruse, summoning him to Paris to discuss her financial affairs, had started well but was over too soon. Disappointingly he had deposited her outside her apartment with nothing more than a chaste kiss on the cheek and three days later took his wife to the selfsame table at Maxim’s.
“Give it time, the man will soon become bored,” was the advice she received from Nikos and Ari’s other Greek friends who also felt uncomfortable around Jackie.
The diva listened and waited.
T
he CIA kept in touch with Jackie but made only one major request during her first year as Jackie O. They wanted Jackie to ask for a gazebo to be built on a promontory overlooking the ocean, a fifteen-minute walk from the house.
Swiftly an elegant, white-painted folly with double glass doors was erected. Apart from the wrought-iron wall lights, heavy white cotton curtains, her easel and a few shelves it was bare.
One week later, the agency telephoned (using the same code, “Lace,” her original codename when she was First Lady) and asked her to have the oak floorboards painted black and to request a very large built-in cupboard in the corner. She made no comment when a few days later she saw the fine outline of a circle had been cut inside its floor. For safety’s sake she scribbled away at some sheets of paper and piled these above it.
As soon as the studio was complete, two men arrived to chisel away at the narrow sliver between the rocks directly underneath. Working steadily, they enlarged the natural chamber to become a minicave with an entrance big enough to take a small motorboat. The mooring, just two iron rings and an incline down to sea level,
was added. Two bunks were fitted into the cavern. The installation of the listening device was simple but it was not yet serviceable. The two scientists that accompanied the machinery had failed to make it work so far.
Early in 1970 the CIA, who had assumed that their fourth agent was dead, had received a photograph of a man resembling their missing operative. It included no details; only a recent newspaper was also in the picture. Langley had implored all their informants in the area to see if they could check if anyone knew of the agent’s whereabouts.
Although convinced that their missing man could no longer be alive, Harry Blackstone knew that he had to take action, if for nothing else then for the morale of the service. Any leads that could help them locate the lost man must be investigated. It would need someone experienced who was fluent in the local languages, Turkish, Greek, and Russian.
Guy Steavenson had no inkling of this when he reported for his first day’s duty at CIA headquarters in Langley.
In the end he had not needed to negotiate himself out of Moscow. He had the prescience to know that the Russians would accomplish this for him. It was only a matter of time before they became too suspicious about just why the handsome, successful senior press attaché seemed to be languishing in the same post for so long.
The agency was expecting this but had delayed taking any action because they were facing a dilemma. They could take the next natural step and promote Guy. Yet a new post would keep him so busy on proper ambassadorial duties that he would have no time for the far more important job of monitoring Soviet infiltration of Europe and the Middle East. They also knew that giving Guy a new job would not necessarily be enough to stop the KGB sniffing around. In the diplomatic corps, the norm was that a new position meant a move to another embassy in another country.
Putting this decision off resulted in two nights of terror for Guy
when he was nearly caught with one of the agents he was handling. The agency had to admit defeat and pull him out.
His arrival in America revealed that he had been right all along about the demise of his marriage. Marie-Helene’s new life had proved even more attractive than she had imagined. Not only had she fallen in love with Florida but also with the local well-to-do garage owner.
He was upset, not so much for the loss of his wife (if he was honest they had been growing apart even before she left Moscow) but for the breakup of the family unit and his injured pride. All of it was rendered more bearable by the joyous reunion that he always had with his ten-year-old. Lucas continued to behave as if they had never been apart, and in Guy’s view, the more important relationship had been maintained. As soon as they could, father and son went off to join Guy’s maternal grandfather for two weeks of fishing and riding in Connecticut.
Moscow was no longer part of his day-to-day responsibilities but Harry had kept close contact with Guy throughout and felt highly sympathetic to him. His own marriage had not survived the long days and nights spent in his last posting.
In his office the two began to discuss Guy’s next assignment.
“As you know, at one stage I just wanted to come back to the States. But now that I know Lucas is fine, I don’t know if I am ready to come here and sit behind a desk yet.”
“Well,” said Harry, “sorting out Lucas was the most important thing.”
His eyes slid to the photograph of his twin daughters, whom he still had difficulty accessing, no matter what the court ordered.
He could not have been more delighted when Guy continued. “I’m forty now and I think I have one or two more foreign jobs in me yet.”
Harry fished a photograph out of his desk.
“Take a look at this.”
It was a fuzzy shot of a man who looked like the missing CIA officer.
“It could be George,” replied Guy after a long, hard look at it.
“We don’t know how real or how old this picture is yet,” Harry continued. “The original is under examination now but we have to check it out. We can’t just do nothing.
“If it is him, we want him back and we want to know what the hell he has been doing all this time. If the experts say that the photo is a fake we could ignore it, but it could be useful for us to find out exactly who, after all this time, is setting a trap, and more importantly, why?”
Guy, keen to take this assignment, asked, “What do you think they want?”
“It’s possible that we have a turncoat on our hands, but either way, the whole thing shouldn’t take long. You’ll meet him and you’ll know.”
Guy agreed on the condition that while he was abroad Harry would work out a career structure for him. He wanted to know what his future role would be; he hated being in limbo.
Last on the agenda Harry mentioned Skorpios.
Harry told him that the listening equipment was still faulty but that the man-made harbor was functional, especially as it had two escape routes, the sea or a narrow stone staircase that led up to a studio above.
“Operating on the notion that these stories and this photograph just might be a trap, the island is quite far from Patras, but if worst comes to worst you could go there for sanctuary.”
Later that evening, with Guy already on the plane to New York to catch the connection to Europe, Harry recalled that the words “Jackie” or “Onassis” had not been uttered once.
Guy looked forward to landing in New York but there was always that pang. No more evenings at “1040.” He had been at one with the rest of the world in his horror at Jackie’s marriage. But he recognized that his disgust was personal.
Consumed by self-pity, he realized that somewhere along the line he had fallen for her. Guiltily he wondered if his wife had sensed it before he had. Had he mentioned Jackie’s name too often or stayed
away for a night too long in order to see her? Had it triggered his wife’s wish to leave Moscow?
Again and again he had cursed Harry for banning him from calling Jackie before she had taken that final step.
Immediately after the wedding Guy could not stop himself going through agonies thinking of her on her honeymoon. Time after time he would logically tell himself that even though he would be very well off one day, he was the sole heir to his grandfather’s wealth, he would not be in the same league as Onassis.
Nonetheless her smile haunted him. Their evenings alone together had been very special. His anguish was spiked with resentment, knowing that it was because of her trust in him that she had become embroiled in the agency in the first place.
During long weekends alone in Moscow, he would constantly recall that last night when she had taken so much time over his problems, over him. He suspected that she felt something too. Hoping that she had married Onassis solely because she felt it was her patriotic duty, he could not condemn her but admire her more.
Raised to behave properly, he had sent her a congratulatory note after the wedding to which she had replied with a very gracious, handwritten thank-you letter. And there it had ended.
Understandably, the intelligence role that she had previously carried out on the agency’s behalf was over. Her new focus was to find reasons for undercover agents to keep coming to the island. For this, gardens were dug up and replanted, rooms redesigned, outdoor seawater swimming pools created, and patios repaved.
Ari was fascinated by her enthusiasm at first but when the budgets started to reach the stratosphere he grew impatient. He asked Nikos Dervizgolou to keep him abreast of the rising costs. As time went on the new Mr. and Mrs. Onassis grew quite content with their separate-but-together lives.
He continued to travel the world on business. When she was free she would join him but his life was too peripatetic to make a base elsewhere, and Jackie was against uprooting the children from their
American schools. Luxuriating in Ari’s wealth, she added more staff to make her feel safer.
For tax purposes Ari maintained his suite at the Pierre Hotel but spent time with her at the apartment.
Gradually everyone could see that behind her perennial sunglasses, Jackie was happy again and the couple began to be feted in the U.S. Everywhere they went they were serenaded with the theme tune from
Zorba the Greek
. The Americans were trying to make him feel at home; it signified their acceptance. Ari often told her that she had brought him everything he had wanted from the marriage.
He only moaned to Nikos about two things, her expensive redecorating and shopping habit and her fascination with reading. Frequently he was abashed that she would prefer to spend the evening quietly at home with the children and an undisturbed hour or two in front of the fire with a new book, rather than go out on the town with him.
But he loved that she loved his island so much. Mindful of the agency’s needs, unless it was deepest midwinter, she was always suggesting they go there. Once again she invited friends and family down to catch the first rays of the summer sun during the spring vacation.
Even though an influx of the superrich created a great deal of welcome work for the locals, Nikos was unhappy. As he sat in his Athenian office and surveyed the latest round of expenses, he was shocked by the figures that were leaping up by hundreds and thousands of dollars. He knew that soon he would have to tell his boss and when he did it usually led to a row. Instead of hollering at his wife, however, Ari took his irritation with the constant refiguring of Skorpios out on him.
Nikos sighed. How much easier his life had been without her.
Although they were distantly related and old, close friends, he worried that during one of these shouting matches Ari would discard him. It was so unfair and so unlike him. If Ari couldn’t stop her, how on earth was he supposed to do so?
The costs, the worry about having everything done in time, the constant demands of this landscape artist or yet another interior designer, were ruining his life. They made mistakes, they blamed the local artisans, it caused bad blood, and then it all started again.
Just handling their travel arrangements needed an army of staff. They wanted to go to Athens,
now,
they wanted to go to New York,
now
. The motorboat and the
Christina
were kept busy ferrying them to and fro. They took up many first-class seats on Ari’s airline, Olympic Airways, and all of this had to be done through interpreters and Nikos had long run out of local ones.
Nikos wasn’t greedy or lazy. About to hit fifty-five, he was worried for his future and nostalgic about the past, for the life he had led until just a couple of years ago. He remembered the old times, the good ones when, whoever they had had on board, whether it be Sir Winston Churchill, Greta Garbo, or Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco, the two of them, himself and his boss, had gone carousing around the ports of the Med. Wherever they stopped, once they had the VIP tucked in for the night, they would please themselves and hop off for an ouzo or a glass of retsina at any taverna they fancied.
They’d bedded women in Piraeus and Paros, Sparta and Spetsai. Not to mention Monte Carlo, Cannes, Italy, and Spain. They had got in and out of trouble with irate boyfriends, angry mothers, and barking dogs.
And always he and Ari had laughed. The older man would bounce his more crazy ideas off him. Or he would talk honestly about what was worrying him, his son and daughter with whom he was not close, his ex-wife Tina, his latest deal, the advantages or the complications of a particular situation. He would enjoy talking through all the angles.
For Nikos this was the time he could fix things for friends and family. With Ari in this mood Nikos could organize a new job here, some medical bills paid there, and he could do all this with a good heart. Not only did it help everyone in the Onassis empire, it contributed to Ari”s happy life. It meant that his boss was genuinely
beloved, often for things he had forgotten about, that Nikos had done in his name. Nikos thought of this as creative work. It was as important as his role of guardian of the Onassis coffers.
Now, since the arrival of Jackie, there was never time. And with his distant cousin looking older every time he saw him, Nikos was beginning to wonder if they would ever besport themselves or even be alone together like this again.
Happy that Ari had secured his trophy wife, at first Nikos had given “the widow” the benefit of the doubt. He knew that his grasp of English was not so good, that he could not follow everything she said, not the jokes, the little asides. But very soon he found that he could not understand her. To him the relationship seemed far too modern. Among Greek men it was understood that a man could continue to have all kinds of friends when he married, as long as it was done discreetly. But the wife, never!
There were men calling Jackie all the time. Nikos knew that many were not the sort of men Ari would count as rivals; they would leave messages about lace this and lace that. Why didn’t she see that the island was perfect as it was? Why did she have to keep changing everything?