jabbing a finger randomly at a menu item and hoping for the best.
In his wallet, Oswald carries close to two hundred dollars, a Mexican tourist card that allows him one fifteen- day trip to that country, and two passports—one from his Soviet days and the other brand-new, recently issued by the U.S.government. In his blue athletic bag, Oswald has wedged a Spanish-English dictionary, newspaper clippings that prove he was arrested while agitating on behalf of Cuba, his Russian-language work permit from his time in Minsk, and proof of his marriage to a Soviet citizen. Oswald also carries a pad containing notes explaining that he speaks Russian and is a devoted friend of the Communist Party.
Like all true Communists, Lee Harvey Oswald is an avowed atheist, so he does not pray for his journey’s success. Instead, he puts his faith in that thick stack of documents he now carries.
But Oswald knows that the journey is a gamble. He might get all the way to Mexico City and be denied. If that happens, the precious dollars spent on travel, food, and lodging will have been squandered. But it is a risk he must take.
The bus arrives in Mexico City at 10:00 A.M. Oswald once again drifts, immediately separating himself from his new acquaintances. He checks in at the Hotel de Comercio, just four blocks from the bus station, at a rate of $1.28 per night. And though exhausted after the grueling twenty-hour bus ride, he walks immediately to the Cuban embassy.
* * *
John Kennedy is traveling west. Lee Harvey Oswald is traveling south. And Jackie Kennedy is traveling east. She and her sister, Lee, are off for Greece. There they will spend two weeks aboard the yacht
The swarthy Greek shipping magnate is more than twenty years older than Jackie, and three inches shorter. He’s also one of the richest men in the world. His yacht has been the scene of many a society function, and men such as JFK and Winston Churchill have been aboard it. The last time the First Lady was on board the 325-foot- long
The First Lady would never dare be photographed in a bikini on U.S. soil. The image of her in a revealing bathing suit would be scandalous, and perhaps even politically damaging for her husband. But Greece is half a world away from the restrictions and cares of being the First Lady.
Jackie needs a break from all that. For the next two weeks she wants nothing more than to be pampered and free-spirited. The First Lady has lost all of her baby weight. It would be a shame not to flaunt her newly slim figure in the privacy of her opulent surroundings. So she makes sure her staff puts a bikini in her suitcase before she boards the TWA 707 for Greece on October 1.
It has been exactly fifty-two days since she endured the tragedy of baby Patrick’s death. It is exactly fifty-two days until she will endure another unspeakable tragedy.
17
OCTOBER 6, 1963
CAMP DAVID, MARYLAND
10:27 A.M.
The president of the United States is furious. John Kennedy steers a golf cart to Camp David’s military mess hall for Sunday Mass. The paved path meanders through a thick wood, taking him past the Hawthorn, Laurel, Sycamore, and Linden guest cabins on his three-minute journey. With him are five-year-old Caroline and John Jr., who will turn three next month. But it is not politics that is on the president’s mind—his trip to Texas is set. (After meeting with Governor John Connally two days ago, the much-needed political foray is a done deal.) Nor is it the pressures of the office. And it is certainly not his children who have JFK annoyed—the president is excited to be spending time alone with Caroline and John. He has even asked legendary
No, what’s making the president so angry is the First Lady. She won’t come to the phone.
It’s bad enough that Jackie Kennedy is cavorting around the Mediterranean with Aristotle Onassis, a man whom the president does not trust. But it’s far worse that pictures of her Greek adventures are front-page news around the world, leading many to ask why the president is allowing his wife to spend time with a man who has been investigated for fraud against the U.S.government. Perhaps worst of all, however, Aristotle Onassis is a known philanderer.
A simple phone conversation with Jackie might lessen Jack’s tension. But the First Lady is now unreachable. Even when the president plans ahead and accounts for the time change, the most powerful man in the world cannot speak to his wife. JFK doesn’t know whether she’s avoiding him or if the
The situation is not just making Kennedy angry—it’s making him jealous.
* * *
Four months. Four long months. That’s how long it will take for Lee Harvey Oswald to obtain a Soviet visa, which it turns out he needs before Cuban officials will grant him travel documents.
But Oswald doesn’t have enough money to wait four months. He needs to go to Cuba now.
And so he stands toe-to-toe with consul Eusebio Azcue at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City, arguing with
