Kennedy’s Ghost

At seven he took breakfast, at eight he checked out, ignored the cabs waiting outside the hotel, walked to Plaza San Martin, let the first two cabs in the side street behind the Bolivar Hotel go, and took the third.

The city was already hot, and the cardboard slums which covered the foothills outside stretched for miles. No cars following him, he noted, but there wouldn’t be. The cab dropped him, he paid the driver and stepped into the terminal building. The departure lounge was cool, the queues already forming at the check-in counters, and the gorillas were waiting for him.

Sometimes you needed to look for them, other times their presence was deliberately obvious and menacing. Today it was somewhere between. Two of them, plus Ortega himself. The boss man wearing a smartly cut suit and seated at a table in the coffee bar. Dark glasses, though everyone wore dark glasses, plus a copy of La Prensa.

The business class check-in was clear. He lifted his bag on to the weighing belt and gave his passport and ticket to the woman behind the desk. She smiled at him, then saw the two men, saw the way they were looking at him and knew who and what they were.

‘Smoking or non-smoking?’ She fought to control the tremor in her voice.

‘Non.’

She punched the computer and gave him his seat number.

‘Thank you.’ He picked up the passport and ticket.

‘Have a good flight.’ She was mesmerized, like a night animal caught in a beam of light.

His rules, he reminded himself, his game.

The tails were between him and the departure gate, possibly more inside when he was out of view of the most of the public, and Ortega watching, amused. He walked past them, deliberately close, turned into the coffee bar, ignored the other tables and sat at Ortega’s.

‘Two espressos,’ he told the waitress.

Ortega was smiling, arrogant. What are you playing at, mother-fucker, what are you telling me? My country, my patch. So you don’t fuck with me. You know the routine, you know what happens to people who fuck with the likes of me.

Haslam sat back slightly, not speaking. Right hand on the table top, the third finger of his right hand tapping only slightly but enough to draw attention to it.

Why so relaxed, Ortega wondered, why so confident? Why the hand on the table? Why only one hand? Why the right? Gold ring on the third finger, symbol on it, but he couldn’t see what. So what game are you playing, cock-sucker, what are you trying to tell me?

The waitress placed the coffees nervously on the table. Haslam shifted slightly and picked up the cup with his right hand, fingers round it rather than holding the handle, the gold of the ring sparkling and the image on it clear.

Ortega knew who Haslam was and what he was. Where he had come from and what Haslam was telling him.

Three of you and one of me. The third might be interesting, the second no problem, and you’re first. No problems, my friend. I did my job, you did yours, and we both got paid. Next time will be the same. Unless you have problems with that, unless you want to call in your goons. But you’re number one, and you’re sitting next to me.

‘Sorry I missed you at the Abarcas’.’ It was Ortega who spoke first. ‘I thought I’d come to see you off.’

‘It’s appreciated. I’d hoped we wouldn’t miss each other.’

Ortega snapped his fingers at the waitress. ‘Dos cognacs.’ The shake of the head calling off the dogs was barely perceptible, little more than a movement of the eyes. ‘A good job, getting the girl back.’

‘It wouldn’t have been possible without your cooperation.’

* * *

The lights of Washington sparkled to the north and the dark of the forests of Virginia spread to the south. The Boeing banked gently and settled on its approach. Fifty minutes later Haslam cleared immigration and customs and took a cab in to DC.

Coming back from a job had always been strange.

The adrenalin that still consumed you mixing with the relief that you were normally in one piece. Depending on the sort of job, of course. Sometimes there were just a couple of you, sometimes a patrol. Sometimes, as in a terrorist scare, there were so many of you trying to get a piece of the action that you wondered if there was anyone else anywhere else. Sometimes you came back fit, other times slightly battered, occasionally torn to hell. It had happened to him twice, the medics waiting but one of his own always there first, staying with him and slipping him a cigarette or a beer when the doctors were looking the other way. A couple of times he himself had waited for an incoming flight, most recently in the Gulf. Inconspicuous, of course, lost in the crowd just as the lads would wait till everyone else had cleared the plane, which was part of what it was all about. Then the telephone call to the family, but that again was different.

Except that was when you were regiment, and now he was by himself.

Because gradually the years sneaked up on you, so that although you did your ten miles a day and worked out whenever you could, you knew the time was coming when you would no longer be running up mountains, when instead of being out there you were the one doing the briefings and sending other guys out. Which was when you sat down with your wife, knowing that when she was alone she would cry with relief. Which was when you emptied your locker, had your last party in the mess, then went off to look for the rest of your life.

Sometimes you did private work, bodyguard stuff, except who in their right minds wanted to stop a bullet or a bomb meant for someone else? Sometimes, and especially if you had Haslam’s record and reputation, you joined one of the select companies run by ex-regiment people, even tried to set up your own.

The travel helped, of course; occasionally you were still in the thick of it, even though your presence there was coincidental, like the guys doing the jobs in the former Soviet Union. Sometimes you struck lucky, like the bastard whose people were doing some protection work in a certain African state at the time of an attempted coup, the British ambassador caught in the middle and Whitehall sending in the regiment to get him out. Except they needed someone who knew the ground, so while his wife thought he was supervising a job in Scotland he was really running out the back of a Herc into five thousand feet of velvet African night.

Because none of you could ever quite shake it off, none of you wanted to come off the edge, none of you could resist still looking for that last mountain. Even now he could see the words from James Elroy Flecker’s ‘Golden Journey to Samarkand’ on the clock at Hereford:

We are the pilgrims, Master, we shall go

Always a little further; it may be

Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow …

Which was probably slightly literary, and the only words of Flecker’s which he hadn’t found boring, but it was also probably true. Which was why he’d gone his own way. Why he’d come to DC. Why he’d singled out people like Jordan and Mitchell. Why, in his way, he was still on the edge. Why he had still not given up on his own last mountain.

The condominium was on the eighth floor of one of the modern blocks near George Washington University, looking south-west towards the Potomac River. Most of the other people were university or government, there was a security system on the main entrance, a porter on duty twenty-four hours a day, and laundry facilities plus lockups in the basement. The furniture he had installed was comfortable rather than expensive, there was a Persian carpet on the floor, and the desk in the corner of the sitting-room was antique. On the walls were the reminders of his past: a Shepherd print of the battle of Mirbat and a Peter Archer of The Convoy in the sitting-room, plus a cut-glass decanter with the regimental badge – what others called incorrectly a winged dagger – the same as on the gold ring which had warned Ortega in Lima. Two photographs of D Squadron next to the basin in the bathroom and the letter from the White House on the back of the door.

It was almost midnight.

He let himself in, skimmed through the mail he had collected from the box in the foyer, laughing at the joint letter the boys had written him and enjoying his wife’s, then put the rest aside till morning and went to bed, deliberately not setting the alarm. When he woke it was almost ten, the morning warmth already penetrating the flat. He showered, made breakfast, and began the telephone calls.

The first was to the company for whom he had done the Lima job, the next four were to companies for whom he worked in Washington, informing them that he was in town again, and the sixth was to the office in Bethesda. The call was answered by a receptionist. He introduced himself and asked for Jordan.

‘I’m afraid Mr Jordan is at a meeting downtown.’

One of the government bodies for whom the company worked, Haslam supposed.

‘Can you tell him I called and ask him to phone back when convenient.’

Jordan telephoned twelve minutes later, told Haslam he had to get back into his meeting, and suggested lunch. When the calls were finished Haslam booked a table at the Market Inn, unpacked his travel bag, and left the flat. The restaurant was fifteen minutes away by metro rail and a little over an hour if he walked. He ignored the station and turned toward the Mall.

The grass was green and freshly cut, and the late morning was hot. The Vietnam Memorial was sunk into the ground to his left and the Potomac was to his right, the Memorial Bridge spanning it and Arlington cemetery rising on the hill on the far side, the Custis-Lee Mansion in the trees at the top, and the memorial to John Kennedy just below it. Even now he remembered the first time he had come to Washington; the night, pitch black and biting cold, when he had stood alone at the Lincoln Memorial and stared across the river at the tiny flicker of light in the blackness. The eternal flame to the assassinated president.

The following morning he had taken the metro rail to Arlington and walked up the slope of the hill round which the cemetery was formed. The ground had been white with frost, and it had been too early at that time of year for the tourist buses, so he had made his solitary way across the polished granite semicircle of terraces, then up the steps and on to the white marble surrounding the flame itself. And after he had stood staring at the flame he had walked back down the steps and stood – again alone – at the sweep of wall which marked the lower limit of the memorial and read the quotations from Kennedy’s inauguration speech. Seven quotations in total, three either side and the one he remembered in the middle:

In the long history of the world

few generations have been granted

the role of defending freedom

in its hour of maximum danger.

I do not shirk from this responsibility

I welcome it.

He lay on the grass and imagined Kennedy speaking, the voice fading as the sun relaxed him. Two months on any kidnap took their toll, two months on a kidnap in South America took more than they were entitled to. No more jobs for a while, he thought; he would go home, spend some time with Megan and the boys.

He picked up his jacket and walked on.

The morning was hotter, DC shimmering in the heat and the humidity already building. The White House was three hundred yards to his left, the needle of the Washington Memorial to his right, and the brilliant gleaming white stonework and exquisite outline of Capitol Hill half a mile in front of him. There were other parts of DC, there were urban ghettoes and unemployment and homelessness, often violence and murder. But today DC looked good.

By the time he reached the Market Inn it was one o’clock and the restaurant was already filling. The manager escorted him to a table in the room to the left and a waitress poured him iced water.

Most of those present wore suits and almost all were on what Haslam thought of as the computer break. He’d forgotten how many times he’d sat in offices and seen it done: the telephone call, incoming or outgoing, then the swivel of the body to the computer and the telephone hooked on the shoulder, Yeah, let’s do lunch … The diary called up and the name entered for 1.00 PM. Arrive at five past the hour and leave fifty minutes later, the next computerized appointment at two. Washington Man, in which he also included Washington Woman, at work.

Jordan arrived three minutes later. He was dressed in a suit, the jacket over his arm. The pager was on his belt and the shoes were a give-away to anyone who knew: smart but soft-soled. He dumped his briefcase under the table, hung his jacket on the chair, shook hands, and sat down.

‘Good trip?’

‘Eventually,’ Haslam told him.

‘When did you get back?’

‘Last night.’

They ordered salad, blue cheese dressing, swordfish steaks and iced tea, and updated each other. At every table in the restaurant the process was being repeated: not the same words or details, but the same thrust. Nothing confidential: even though the voices were low, it was not the place for security. Occasionally someone would glance at another table and nod at a colleague or an acquaintance.

The two men were seated near the front wall. When Haslam had arrived he had nodded to the one he knew; when Jordan had sat down he had acknowledged them both.

‘Who’s with Mitch?’ Haslam asked.

Mitchell was mid-forties, fit-looking, hair thinning and cut short, his body size deceptive and making him appear shorter than his five-nine. The man seated opposite him was a similar age, slim, dark hair neatly combed, an energy about him, and even in the heat of early summer he wore a three-piece suit.

‘Ed Pearson.’ Jordan did not need to look across.

‘Who’s Ed Pearson?’

‘Donaghue’s AA.’

AA, Administrative Assistant; what some called a Chief Executive Officer.

‘Jack Donaghue?’ Haslam asked.

Donaghue nearing the end of his second term as Senator after two successful terms in the House of Representatives.

Jordan nodded. ‘A lot of people in this room would like to be where Ed Pearson is at the moment.’

‘Why?’

‘Like I said, Ed’s Jack Donaghue’s AA. November next year the country votes for its next man in the White House. Barring accidents, the president will run again for the Republicans. If he enters, Donaghue will get the Democrat nomination. If he does, he’s the next president.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ Haslam glanced at Pearson.

‘You’ve seen Donaghue, heard him, read about him?’ Jordan asked.

‘I know about Camelot if that’s what you mean.’ The words used to describe the thousand days of John Kennedy’s presidency before he was gunned down in Dallas. The mantle many had passed to Robert Kennedy until he had been assassinated in Los Angeles five years later.

Jordan nodded again. ‘Whichever way, a lot of people think Donaghue’s the new Kennedy.’

Funny how even now the name had an aura, Haslam thought. How even now people linked it not just to the past but to the future.

It was as if Jordan understood what he was thinking. ‘Donaghue’s father grew up with John Kennedy, the families are still part of the Boston mafia. Donaghue’s as close as you can get to a Kennedy without actually being one.’

‘But he hasn’t declared.’ Because I’ve been away, therefore I’m out of touch.

‘No, he hasn’t declared yet.’

‘You’d vote for him?’

‘Yes,’ Jordan said firmly.

It was fifteen minutes to two, time for the restaurant to start emptying.

‘If Donaghue made the White House where would that leave Pearson?’ Haslam shook his head at the dessert list and asked the waitress for coffee.

‘As I said, Pearson is Donaghue’s right-hand man. If Donaghue was elected Pearson would be his chief of staff, the alternative president.’

‘So what’s Mitch doing with him?’

Jordan laughed. ‘Not just having lunch.’

‘Who’s that?’ Pearson asked.

Mitchell did not need to look. ‘The one farthest from the door is Quincey Jordan.’

A long journey for the skinny runt who wasn’t tall enough to play basketball and who’d got his ass kicked – as Jordan himself would have put it – because he’d therefore had to spend his evenings hunched over his school-books. Because in America in die sixties and seventies, in America today, sports scholarships were the normal way up if you were poor and black.

‘I know Quince,’ Pearson told him. I know that he used to work the Old Man, as they say in the trade; I know that before he left the Secret Service, Jordan was on the presidential detachment; that now he runs one of the select companies providing specialist services to both government and private organizations, as well as to people like me. ‘Who’s the other?’

‘A Brit. Dave Haslam.’

‘Tell me about him.’ Who he is and what Jordan’s doing with him.

‘Haslam’s a kidnap consultant. Ex British Special Air Service. Worked with our Special Forces people in the Gulf.’

‘What did he do there?’

‘He doesn’t talk about it much.’

‘But?’

‘I gather he’s got a letter from the president stuck up in his bathroom.’

‘Why?’ Pearson asked.

‘Why what?’

‘Why’s he got a letter from the president?’

A waitress cleared their plates and brought them coffee.

‘One of the great fears during the Gulf War was that Israel would become involved. They didn’t because for some reason which no one’s ever explained, Saddam didn’t launch his full range of Scud missiles against them. Saddam didn’t do that because someone took them out. That’s why Haslam’s got a letter from the president stuck on his bathroom door.’

It was ten minutes to two, the restaurant suddenly emptying. On the other table Haslam paid the bill, then he and Jordan rose to leave.

‘Ed, Mitch.’ Jordan crossed and shook their hands. ‘Good to see you both.’

Haslam greeted Mitchell and waited till Jordan introduced him to Pearson.

‘Join us for coffee,’ Pearson suggested.

‘Thanks, but we’ve had our fill,’ Jordan told him.

‘You’re from England.’ Pearson looked up at Haslam.

‘How’d you guess?’ It was said jokingly.

‘Working or visiting?’

‘Working.’

But you know that already, because you’ve already asked Mitch about me.

‘Next time you’re on the Hill, drop in.’

It was Washington-style, part of what the politicians called networking.

‘Which room?’ The reply was casual, no big deal.

‘Russell Building 396,’ Pearson told him. ‘Make it this afternoon if you’re passing by.’

He watched as Haslam and Jordan left, then turned back to Mitchell. ‘You have much on at the moment?’

The first frost touched Mitchell’s spine. ‘Nothing I couldn’t wrap up quickly.’

‘Jack and I would like you on the team.’

‘Anything specific?’

‘Jack might want to announce a special investigation, but before he does he wants a prelim done to make sure it will stand up.’

‘What on?’

‘Something the man and woman in the street can identify with and understand. Something like Savings and Loans, perhaps.’ The financial scandal in the eighties in which many people had lost their money. ‘Banking and the laundering of drug money are also front runners.’ But it could be anything Mitchell chose – it was in Pearson’s eyes, Pearson’s shrug. As long as Mitchell could deliver.

Why? someone else might have asked. ‘When exactly would Jack like to announce the results?’ Mitchell asked instead.

Pearson finished his coffee and reached for his napkin. ‘Possibly next March or April,’ Pearson told him.

The party would choose its candidate at its convention in the August, but the votes at that convention would be governed by each candidate’s share of the vote in the primaries three months before. The right publicity at that time, therefore, and a candidate might leave his rivals standing.

‘If not in the primaries, then when?’ Mitchell asked.

Because if a candidate’s bandwagon was already rolling, his team might hold back certain things till later.

‘October of next year,’ Pearson said simply.

A month before the people of America voted for their next president.

‘When do you want me to start?’

‘As soon as you can.’

‘And when does Jack want to announce he’s setting up an investigation?’

Because then he’d be in the news. Because then he could use it to help launch his campaign. But only if he was guaranteed of delivering.

‘A precise date?’ Pearson asked.

‘Yeah, Ed. A precise date.’

There was an unwritten law among politicians running for their party’s nomination: that in order to win the primaries, there was a date by which a candidate must declare. That day was Labour Day, the first Monday of the first week in the preceding September. This September. Three months off.

Pearson folded the napkin slowly and deliberately, placed it on the table and looked at Mitchell, the first smile appearing on his face and the first laugh in his eyes.

‘Labour Day sounds good.’

The heat of the afternoon was relaxing, which was dangerous, because he might think he had unwound. And if he thought that then he might accept another job before he was ready.

Haslam sat on the steps of Capitol Hill and looked down the Mall.

Thirty-six hours ago he’d been dealing with Ortega, and thirty hours before that he’d been praying to whatever God he believed in for the safe delivery of the little girl called Rosita.

He left the steps and walked to Russell Building.

The buildings housing the offices of members of the US Senate were to the north of Capitol Hill and those housing members of the House of Representatives to the south, the gleaming façades of the US Supreme Court and the Library of Congress between. Two of the Senate offices, Dirksen and Hart, were new and one, Russell, was the original. Five hundred yards to the north stood Union Station.

Haslam entered Russell Building by the entrance on First and Constitution Avenue, passed through the security check, ignored the lifts and walked up the sweep of stairs to the third floor. The corridors were long with high ceilings and the floors were marble, so that his footsteps echoed away from him. He checked the plan of the floor at the top of the stairs and turned right, even numbers on his left, beginning with 398, and odd on his right, a notice on the door of 396 saying that all enquiries should be through 398.

The reception room was pleasantly though functionally furnished, the window at the rear facing on to the courtyard round which Russell was built. There were two secretaries, one female and in her mid-twenties and the other male and younger, probably fresh out of college and working as a volunteer, Haslam thought. He introduced himself, then looked round at the photographs on the walls while the woman telephoned the AA.

Some of the prints were of Donaghue, which he expected, others were of the Senator’s home state, which he also expected, and one was of President John F. Kennedy.

Pearson came from the door behind the secretary’s desk and held out his hand. He had taken off his jacket, but still wore a waistcoat.

‘Glad you could make it. Coffee?’

‘Milk, no sugar.’ Haslam shook his hand and followed him through. The next room was neat, though not as large as Haslam had expected, with two desks, each with telephones and computers, leather swing chairs facing the desks, and more photographs on the walls. The bookcases were lined with political, constitutional and legal texts.

‘So this is where it happens.’ Haslam glanced round.

‘Sometimes.’ The secretary brought them each a mug. ‘Let me show you round.’ Pearson led him back through the reception offices to the one on the far side, then to those on the opposite side of the corridor, identifying rooms and occasionally introducing people. It was the PR tour, albeit executive class. The sort visiting dignitaries from the Senator’s home state might get.