And you said they had a tape of her and Kennedy.' Goldman shrugged. I took no pleasure in it. But what choice did I have? She was compromised. You said so yourself. Close to being blown. And, therefore, so were you. We couldn't risk that. Not with what we're planning for Christmas.'
After. Monday, January the ninth, to be precise.'
Whenever.' Goldman found his pipe and began to fill it with tobacco. I'm sorry, Tom. Really I am. But there was no alternative.'
Was it your idea, Alex, or did the Russians tell you to do it?'
Tom, I did what I had to do. It wouldn't have made any difference if I'd asked them. The result would have been the same. You know that. I liked that little girl. I liked her a helluva lot.' Goldman gulped the rest of his drink down and got up to help himself to another. But I did what I had to do.'
Tom nodded sombrely and watched Goldman carry his refreshed drink over to the big window. The view from there of New Jersey was worth a look.
Just like I had to get rid of that guy down in Mexico. Shit, he was a friend of mine. But he'd fallen under suspicion, and when he found out what we had planned for Kennedy, that was it for him. He had to be killed.'
I thought you'd just get her out of the country or something,' persisted Tom. A new passport. Maybe even Russia. She always wanted to go to the Soviet Union.'
It was nothing personal, like I said.' Goldman frowned. Come on, Tom. What can I say that I haven't said?'
Tom shrugged and lit a cigarette.
She wouldn't have liked Russia at all. Nobody does. Not even the Russians.'
Tom just kept on smoking.
Look, Tom, are we okay? I don't see how we can do this job if you and I are not okay.' Alex held out his hand. What do you say?'
After a long moment, Tom stood up and grasped it.
Yeah,' he growled. We're okay.'
Good. By the way, where's the broad?'
Edith? At the beauty parlour.'
What's she like?'
Good. She'll be fine.'
Goldman nodded. LA3pez Ameijeiras speaks vA
We'll need another girl.'
Same deal?'
Tom nodded.
Want me to fix it?'
No, Edith is going to speak to Ameijeiras. She reckons she knows someone who fits the bill.' He took a deep draw on the cigarette and blew the smoke towards the Jersey coastline. She thinks you're going to kill her when this is done.'
Whoever gave her that idea?'
Not me. It was Ameijeiras told her about Mary.'
Goldman tutted loudly. Bastard. Why'd he want to do a thing like that?'
I imagine he has some very old-fashioned ideas about party discipline.'
Sounds like.'
Anyway, I told her that you had no intention of killing her.'
Good.'
And that's what she believes.'
Goldman nodded.
I am right, aren't I? You don't intend to kill her when this is all over?'
Of course not.'
Tom held out his hand.
Your word?'
Goldman grinned and took Tom's hand. Sure. Why not? I give you my word.'
Chapter 17
Giving Thanks
In 1621 Captain Miles Standish, the leader of a group of religious fanatics from England, who believed in the imminent arrival of Armageddon in Europe, invited a local tribe of Algonkian Indians, the Wampanoag, to join them for a dinner celebrating the good fortune that had seen their immigrant community established in New England. Since this had more to do with the charity of the Indians than the Christian God, or happy accident, it would have been churlish not to ask them. Especially since it was the Indians who supplied the food. Two years later, things looked even more secure for the New Englanders, and Mather the Elder's Thanksgiving sermon included a special thanks to Almighty God for the plague of smallpox that had destroyed the tribe of Wampanoag who had been their immediate benefactors.
For these Indians, Armageddon turned out to be rather closer to home, and Americans more or less forgot about the destruction of the world until 23 September 1949, which was the day when Joe 1, the first Soviet atomic bomb, was successfully detonated. Since then, and since 29 December 1955, when Bulganin announced that the USSR had developed a rocket that could carry the H-bomb four thousand miles, Thanksgiving has had perhaps as great a meaning for Americans as it has ever had in the three hundred and forty years since the Pilgrim Fathers sailed across the Atlantic Ocean.
Not that this holiday, traditionally the last Thursday in November, has ever lost its meaning. The importance of the holiday in the American calendar is evidenced by the fact that George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation was the first presidential proclamation ever issued in the United States. This proclamation, mislaid for 132 years and rediscovered in 1921, says nothing about those Wampanoag Indians, which is a pity. No more does it mention family food, or football, or the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade, sponsored by the Lionel Corporation and Ideal toys, and watched by Jimmy Nimmo, in colour, on NBC television, at his home in Keystone Islands.
He was alone. Reluctantly he had conceded that there was little of practical investigative use that could be achieved on a public holiday. Except perhaps one thing.
And so it was that, after watching the parade on his new television set, followed by the game - the Green Bay Packers versus the Detroit Lions - and a TV dinner, and then a nap in his favourite chair that took him through Edge of Night, and Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in West Berlin, followed by a couple of beers and a sandwich during the Seven o'Clock News and Bat Masterson, he got into his car and drove back to Palm Beach.
It was after eleven by the time Nimmo got there but, according to Jack Kennedy's schedule, he was early. So he had a drink at the popular Bradley's Saloon on Royal Poinciana Way, near the intra-coastal waterway, before driving across Lake Worth to the airport in West Palm Beach. He was still early when he joined the crowd of reporters and well-wishers who were there to see Kennedy fly in from Washington National Airport. Nimmo wanted to see if the airport in West Palm Beach was the kind of place Tom Jefferson might choose to make an attempt on the life of the President-elect.
With no jet aircraft, and only turbo-prop planes, mostly private, flying in and out, it was not a large airport, so there was not much to see - just a landing strip and a building handling passengers and air traffic control. Looking around, Nimmo decided that the best place to position himself would be where Tom Jefferson would probably choose, and with all the people and cars around, he figured that would be somewhere higher up.
Getting out on the roof of the airport building proved easy enough, and he might have been more alarmed at the excellent potential it offered a marksman, had it not been for the two Secret Service agents who were up there already. The square jaws, right-angled haircuts, buttoned, lozenge-shaped coats and sensible black shoes gave their game away in less time than it would have taken them to show Treasury badges and Big Brother attitudes.
Who are you?' asked one of the agents. You're not supposed to be up here.' Both men walked quickly towards Nimmo as, somewhere in the deep purple sky, a plane began its final approach to the runway.
I thought I'd get a better view up here,' Nimmo explained. But what he really thought was that it might be awkward to be detained and questioned by these two bozos, who looked as if they had every intention of searching
