As his hand touched her shoulder she looked up at him, her face tear-stained. “They’ve killed him, Andrei.”
“Killed who, honey?”
“They killed Jack Kennedy in Dallas. They shot him.”
For a moment he was silent, then he said softly, “Are you sure?”
“It was on the radio. They’ve stopped all the normal programmes.”
He took her arm and led her into the living room, easing her onto the couch as he turned and switched on the TV. He sat down beside her, his arm around her shoulders as he saw the pictures that they would see a hundred times again. The motorcade in Dallas, the Texas School Book Depository building, Jackie cradling her husband’s bloody head in her arms. The hospital entrance with police, doctors and people from the President’s team. A newsman giving the latest details and the news that a Dallas policeman had been gunned down by a man he had stopped for questioning. Finally, the sad group mounting the steps of Air Force One and Lyndon Johnson, now President Johnson, making a brief statement at Andrews Field. And still they couldn’t believe that it had really happened.
The next few days passed like a bad dream that didn’t end despite the coffin on Pennsylvania Avenue with its horse-drawn caisson led by a riderless horse with reversed boots in the stirrups. A commentator, David Brinkley, came near to summarising an assassination that was beyond understanding when he said, “The events of those days don’t fit, you can’t place them anywhere, they don’t go in the intellectual luggage of our time. It was too big, too sudden, too overwhelming, and it meant too much. It has to be separate and apart.” With the news of Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder by a Dallas night-club owner named Jack Ruby it seemed only to add a bizarre twist to the already unbearable tragedy.
Sad as she was herself at the killing of John F. Kennedy, Tania was aware that its effect on her husband was disturbing. He seldom left the apartment and he seemed to have lost all his energy. When she spoke to him he often didn’t answer. Not out of rudeness but because his mind was a long way away. Never a communicative man, he now seemed mentally cut off from the world. And from her.
Finally she talked to Bill Malloy on the phone and suggested it might help if he casually called in and talked with Andrei.
Malloy came after lunch, ostensibly to talk about their position in the White House now that Johnson was President. He sat facing Aarons whose eyes avoided him and who seemed not to be listening as he talked.
“Johnson has always disliked Bobby and there’s going to be no close relationship there. I don’t see much chance of Johnson wanting to know about you and me.”
Aarons looked at him, taking a deep breath. “How could they do it, Bill? What kind of people are they?”
“You mean Oswald?”
“Yes. But there must have been others. How could they bring it all to an end?”
“Lots of people hated him, Andrei. And hated what he was doing. Some people would talk openly of wishing him dead.”
“What kind of people? They must have been sick.”
“People like Jimmy Hoffa. Some Republicans. There were even people who swore he was a communist in the pay of Moscow. The powerful people who fought against racial integration. The same kind of people who hated Roosevelt.”
“But why? Why did they hate him?”
“Because they wanted to preserve their power, or hated all Negroes. The people who want Martin Luther King dead. Union people who were being investigated about corruption. The Mafia. Hoover kept a personal file on Jack and his relationships with various women. Hoping that he could use it to control the President of the USA.”
“Hate him enough to kill him?”
“Yes. I’m afraid they would.” He half-smiled. “And although Lyndon Johnson is almost the opposite on everything to Jack there are just as many people who hate him.”
“So why the thousands of letters they say that Jackie gets every day sympathising with her?”
“They’re just ordinary people, Andrei. They loved the dream. But they don’t have power or wealth to lose.”
“And they didn’t care about the man and the dream?”
“Oh yes. They cared all right. But like I said, they don’t count except every four years. And when the chips are on the table with the big boys you’re playing Texas hold-’em and the stakes are mighty high. Killing someone who gets in the way is just a way to make sure that you keep whatever it is you have. Or whatever it is you covet.” Malloy shrugged. “The Mafia kill people every day who get in the way. Politics and Cosa Nostra are very alike.”
“So Jack Kennedy was an indication that what America needs is an aristocracy.”
Malloy smiled. “I don’t see how you get that far.”
“Because Kennedy was a politician but he had all that he wanted. Great wealth, power, a good mind, a family. He had no axe to grind in politics for himself. What he did, he did for other people. Citizens who were being despoiled by the barons.”
“That’s going too far. They, the two brothers, are human beings. They have their faults. They make mistakes. All Presidents do.” He laughed. “Someone asked Truman what it was like to be President and he said, ‘It’s great. For the first two minutes.’ ”
Tania was pleased to see that as the two men talked Andrei seemed to be coming out of his shell but once Malloy had left Aarons walked over to the window and stared out across the square. As if to wash out any memory of what had happened Aarons no longer watched TV or listened to the radio.
In
