“What’s the secret? How to make Coca-Cola?”
“No. He’s an ex-Marine from a high-security base in Japan. He’s only a kid. Says he’s going to tell them all he knows about our codes, our methods, the lot.”
“What does a Marine know anyway? I thought they spent all their time stamping their boots on parade grounds and trying to bed the local girls.”
“I’m afraid not, honey. He knows a lot that could be useful to our friends up the road.”
“A funny attitude for an ex-Marine to take.”
“Yes. And even odder in one way.”
“What way?”
“When he said his little piece it was almost as if he had been tutored by someone … seemed to be using words he had learned but didn’t really understand.”
“What do you think the Russians will do with him?”
“They’ll certainly suck out all that he can tell them, but I doubt if they’ll make a song and dance about him. They’ll probably be suspicious.”
“Why?”
“Well, like you said, it’s abnormal behaviour for an ex-Marine. When they want servicemen to spill the beans the KGB do it deliberately. Sex, money, whatever works. Volunteers, they don’t trust.”
It was a good sized sitting-room in what was one of the older buildings in Minsk, and apartments had been bigger in those days. But despite its size it was crowded that day, the last day of April. Both children and adults were enjoying themselves, and the dining table was piled high with zakuski, caviar, salami, fish in aspic, and bowls of fresh fruit.
Vanya Berlov rose unsteadily to his feet. “Valya, what is wrong with your cooking today? Things are always so tasty at your table but today they are bitter.”
The other guests smiled and shouted “Gorko, gorko,” and looked meaningfully at the young groom and his bride. The old Russian custom was that all food and wine tasted bitter until they were sweetened by the newly married couple’s first kiss in public.
The young girl blushed but eventually submitted to her groom kissing her full on the lips. From time to time someone would shout “Gorko” and the couple would kiss again.
It was after midnight when the celebrations ended and the young couple, Alik and Marina, walked the few blocks to their new home, the young man’s small apartment. It was on the fourth floor and she was a well-built girl, but her new husband gallantly lifted her up and carried her up the stairs.
While her husband was preparing for bed Marina looked at the marriage stamp in her passport and idly picked up her husband’s passport to look at his stamp. And with a shock she saw that his year of birth was 1939. That meant he was only twenty-one, and he had told her that he was twenty-four. She wondered how much of the rest of what he had told her was true. At least he hadn’t lied about his name. It was there in the passport: Lee Harvey Oswald.
The two brothers sat side by side, directly opposite the hard-faced man and his legal advisers on the other side of the long table. They were both handsome men, the brothers; stylishly, but not ostentatiously dressed, their eyes intent on their adversary’s face. Jimmy Hoffa, boss of the Teamsters Union, despised and hated the two young men who relentlessly pressed their questions for the Senate committee investigating corruption in the unions.
Hoffa’s bull-neck was thrust forward aggressively as he spoke.
“The fact is this is a strike-breaking, union-busting Bill. In my opinion.”
Hoffa leaned back in his chair, a defiant, self-satisfied smile on his face. The elder of the two brothers leaned forward towards the microphone in front of him, the TV and film lights emphasizing the white cuff of his shirt as his hand jabbed up and down to emphasize what he was saying.
“Mr. Hoffa, the fact is that this is not a strike-breaking, union-busting Bill. You’re the best argument I know for it. Your testimony here this afternoon … your complete indifference this afternoon to the fact that numerous people who hold responsible positions in your union come before this committee and take the Fifth Amendment … because an honest answer might tend to incriminate them.”
Hoffa sat there, his eyes angry, closing his thin mouth to hold back his violent temper as his lawyer whispered in his ear to keep quiet.
Ten minutes later that session of the hearing was over, and as Hoffa walked with his hoodlums towards the big doors he said loudly, “That SOB. I’ll break his back that little sonofabitch.”
And the next day the first question to Hoffa from the committee’s chief counsel, Robert Kennedy, was typical of the implacable determination of the two Kennedys to expose the Teamsters Union.
Kennedy gestured towards Hoffa’s entourage. “While leaving the hearing after these people had testified regarding this matter, did you say, ‘That SOB—I’ll break his back?’ ”
“Who?”
“You.”
“Say it to who?”
“To anyone. Did you make that statement after these people testified before this committee?”
“I never talked to either one of them after testifying.”
Kennedy pressed on. “I’m not talking about ‘to them.’ Did you make that statement here in the hearing room after the testimony was finished?”
“Not concerning him as far as I know of.”
“Well, who did you make it about?”
“I don’t know … I may have been discussing someone in a figure of speech.”
“Well … whose back were you going to break, Mr. Hoffa?”
“Figure of speech. I don’t know what I was talking about, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
To most of the onlookers it seemed a small incident, but in front of his henchmen it was yet another humiliation at the hands of the Kennedys. And in that moment he was determined to smash them both. He would fire the first shot that night.
The man sitting opposite John F. Kennedy in the hotel room had been in the US Navy with the Senator.
