staff. And Theresa can bring her friends to stay for weekends and vacations. Think how happy we'll be. And I won't get sick again. I promise. You'll do great things, Francis, I know you will.' She put her arms around him and wept with happiness and love. 'I'll help,' Catherine said. 'We'll walk through all those lovely rooms together and I'll help you make your plans. You'll be the greatest President. I'm going to be all fight, darling, and I'll have so much to do. We'll be so happy. We'll be so good. We're so lucky. Aren't we lucky?'
She died in autumn, October light became her shroud. Francis Kennedy stood among fading green hills and wept. Silver trees veiled the horizon, and in dumb agony he closed his eyes with his own hands to shut out the world.
And in that moment without light, he felt the core of his mind break.
And some priceless cell of energy fled. It was the first time in his life that his extraordinary intelligence was worth nothing. His wealth meant nothing. His political power, his position in the world meant nothing.
He could not save his wife from death. And therefore it all became nothing.
He took his hands away from his eyes and with a supreme effort of will fought against the nothingness. He reassembled what was left of his world, summoned power to fight against grief. There was less than a month to go before the election and he made the final effort.
He entered the White House without his wife, with only his daughter, Theresa. Theresa, who had tried to be happy but who had wept all that first night because her mother could not be with them.
And now, three years after his wife's death, Francis Kennedy, President of the United States, one of the most powerful men on earth, was alone in his bed, fearful for his daughter's life, and unable to command sleep.
Sleep forbidden, he tried to stave off the terror that kept him from sleep.
He told himself the hijackers would not dare harm Theresa, that his daughter would come safely home. In this he was not powerless-he did not have to rely on the weak, fallible gods of medicine, he did not have to fight invincible cancerous cells. No. He could save his daughter's life. He could bend the power of his country, spend its authority. It all rested in his hands and thank God he had no political scruples. His daughter was the only thing he had left on this earth that he really loved. He would save her.
But then anxiety, a wave of such fear it seemed to stop his heart, made him put on the light above his head. He rose and sat in the armchair. He pulled the marble table close and sipped the residue of cold chocolate from his cup.
He believed that the plane had been hijacked because his daughter was on it. The hijacking was possible because of the vulnerability of established authority to a few determined, ruthless and possibly high-minded terrorists. And it had been inspired by the fact that he, Francis Kennedy, President of the United States, was the prominent symbol of that established authority. So by his desire to be President of the United States, he, Francis Kennedy, was responsible for placing his daughter in danger.
Again he heard the doctor's words: 'It is an extremely aggressive strain of cancer,' but now he understood their full implication. Everything was more dangerous than it appeared. This was a night when he must plan, to defend; he had the power to turn fate aside. Sleep would never come to the chambers of his brain so sown with mines.
What had been his wish? To arrive at a successful destiny of the Kennedy name? But he had been only a cousin. He remembered his great-uncle Joseph Kennedy, legendary womanizer, one who amassed gold, a mind so sharp for the instant but so blind to the future. He remembered Old Joe fondly, though he would have been Francis Kennedy's opposite politically if he were alive today. Old Joe had given Francis gold pieces for his early birthdays and set up a trust fund for him. What a selfish life the man had led, screwing Hollywood stars, lifting his sons high. Never mind that he had been a political dinosaur. And what a tragic end. A lucky life until the last chapter: the murder of his two sons, so young, so highly placed. The old man defeated, a final stroke exploding his brain.
Making your son President-could a father have greater joy? And had the old kingmaker sacrificed his sons for nothing? Had the gods punished him not so much for his pride but for his pleasure? Or was it all accident?
His sons Jack and Robert, so rich, so handsome, so gifted, killed by those powerless nobodies who wrote themselves into history with the murder of their betters. No, there could be no purpose, it was all accident. So many little things could turn fate aside, tiny precautions reverse the course of tragedy.
And yet– and yet there was the odd feeling of doom. Why the linking of the Pope's killer and the kidnapping of the President's daughter? Why the delay before stating their demands? What other strings in the labyrinth were there to be played out? And all this from a man he had never heard of, a mysterious Arab named Yabril, and an Italian youth named, in scornful irony, Romeo.
In the darkness he was terrified at how it all might end.
He felt the familiar always-suppressed rage, the dread. He remembered the agonizing day when he had heard the first whisper that his uncle Jack was dead, and his mother's long terrible scream.
Then, mercifully, the chambers of his brain unlocked, his memories fled.
He fell asleep in his armchair.
CHAPTER
3
THE MEMBER of the President's staff with the most influence on Kennedy was the Attorney General. Christian Klee had been born into a wealthy family stretching back into the first days of the republic. His trust funds were now worth over a hundred million dollars, thanks to the guidance and advice of his godfather, the Oracle, Oliver Oliphant. He had never wanted for anything, and there had come a time when he wanted nothing. He had too much intelligence, too much energy to become another of the idle rich who invest in movies, chase women, abuse drugs and booze or descend into a religious viciousness. Two men, the Oracle and Francis Xavier Kennedy, led him finally into politics.
Christian first met Kennedy at Harvard, not as fellow undergraduates but as teacher and student. Kennedy had been the youngest professor to teach law at Harvard. In his twenties, he had been a prodigy. Christian still remembered that opening lecture. Kennedy had begun with the words: 'Everybody knows or has heard of the majesty of the law. It is the power of the state to control the existing political organization that permits civilization to exist. That is true. Without the rule of law, we are all lost. But remember this, the law is also full of shit.'
Then he had smiled at his student audience. 'I can get around any law you may write. The law can be twisted out of shape to serve a wicked civilization. The rich can escape the law and sometimes even the poor get lucky. Some lawyers treat the law the way pimps treat their women. Judges sell the law, courts betray it. All true. But remember this, we have nothing better that works. There is no other way we can make a social contract with our fellow human beings.'
When Christian Klee graduated from Harvard Law School he had not the faintest idea of what to do with his life. Nothing interested him. He was worth millions, but he had no interest in money, nor did he have a real interest in the law. He had the usual romanticism of a young man.
Women liked him. He had a smudged handsomeness that is, classic features just slightly askew. A Dr. Jekyll beginning to turn into Mr. Hyde, but you would notice that only when he was angry. He had the exquisite courtesy attained by the patrician rich in their early schooling. Despite all this he commanded an instinctual respect from other men, because of his extraordinary gifts. He was the iron fist in Kennedy's velvet glove, but had the intelligence and courtesy to keep it hidden from public view.
He liked women, had brief affairs but could not summon up that feeling of true belief in love that leads to a passionate attachment. He was desperately looking for something to commit his life to. He was interested in the arts, but had no creative drive, no talent for painting, music, writing. He was paralyzed by his security in society. He was not so much unhappy as bewildered. He had, of course, tried drugs for a brief period; they were, after all, as integral a part of American culture as they had once been of the Chinese empire. And for the first time he discovered a startling thing about himself. He could not bear the loss of control that drugs caused. He did not mind being unhappy as long as he had control of his mind and body. Loss of that control was the ultimate in despair. And the drugs did not even make him feel the ecstasy that other people felt. So at the age of twenty-two with everything in the world at his feet, he could not feel that anything was worth doing. He did not even feel what many
