The Willard (10 page)

“Mr. Kelly?”

Tom realized both Kennedys were staring at him and waiting for a response.

“I’m sorry, I was thinking about, um, something I read. What was your question?”

The president responded. “We’re just wondering about your initial response to the report. I know you’ve only had a few minutes to look it over, but your insight is likely to be different from everyone else’s in this room and we’d like to hear what you think,” he explained.

Tom hadn’t read the report but he knew enough about what was happening from history classes that he decided he had no choice but to try and BS his way through until he could figure a way out of this room.

“I think the Russians doubt your resolve, Mr. President,” he answered with false confidence.

“Doubt his resolve?” responded the attorney general. “How can they doubt it with all those American ships parked off the coast of their island launch pad?”

Tom was not shaken. He had no idea where the bravado was coming from.

Why yes, White Rabbit, I believe I will have tea at the Mad Hatter’s table. Two lumps please
.

“They think you’ll blink,” Tom responded. That’s what this was about, right? Brinkmanship? Who blinks first? The world’s most dangerous game of chicken, only he already knew the outcome.

Queen? What queen? I like my head right where it is, thank you very much
.

The two Kennedys whispered together for a moment and Mrs. Lincoln tapped Tom on the shoulder and handed him a folded sheet of paper. The note read:

Mr. Kelly,

A very urgent matter of a personal nature requires your attention at the Willard at once. Please return at your earliest convenience. (The rabbit says it is not tea time.)

Edward Chase, concierge

Tom stared at the note in his hand in stunned silence.
I am really, really high
.

Just then the Kennedys turned back to Tom. “The problem, Mr. Kelly, is that somebody has to blink first. The question is, how many will die if it’s us?”

The room began to spin and Tom heard his own voice.

“Mr. President, I sincerely apologize. Something has come up that I must deal with at once. I beg your pardon but I need one hour for . . .um. . . .further research.”

“Of course,” said the president. “Take the hour. As you know, Mr. Kelly, we cannot afford to be wrong.”

C
HAPTER 17

CALVIN WALKER

1963

Calvin was having a terrible time trying to get his head around what Chase was telling him. Chase decided to take him for a walk around the area to help him come to grips with where he was. As they walked up 14
^th
Street, Calvin felt like he was in a dream state. The vehicles, the way people were dressed, the items in the store windows, even the way people spoke to each other. . .it was all different than the day before. He had been to Washington many times and there had always been a cosmopolitan air about the city, but now he noticed there was no mingling of the races and no trace at all of anyone of obviously foreign descent. Most of the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen in this area so near the White House were white. Groups of black men and women moved about, but they kept to themselves and Calvin cringed when he noticed most would put their heads down and step aside for the white citizens to pass on the sidewalk. He couldn’t remember enough Jim Crow era history at the moment to know whether or not Washington D.C. establishments were truly segregated in the early 60s, but from his observation it didn’t seem to matter what the law said. The races were separating themselves from each other.

Calvin thought about his company, Diagnosis Digital, and the members of his leadership team. He was the founder and CEO, a black man with a good education and no personal
frame of reference for discrimination other than some redneck boys in high school. His team was made up of men and women of different races and ethnic backgrounds. Their tech staff was like a melting pot. Every area of the world map was represented plus they had gay and straight staffers, religious and non-religious people, and a couple of leftover counter-culture hippie types from the peace and love generation. His company was well known for recognizing people for their merit and hard work and nothing about where they came from or what they looked like had any bearing on their ability to succeed. Sure, he had grown up in the South, but he was born in 1969 and his upper-middle-class parents plus above average surroundings insulated him from the more gritty aspects of Southern race relations. Everything about what he was hearing from Chase and seeing on the streets of Washington was unsettling him. It was one thing to read about it in a history book, but another thing entirely to see it with your own eyes.

Chase continued talking, but Calvin was becoming lost in his own thoughts. Here he was walking down the street with a hotel concierge explaining to him that he had traveled back in time to 1963, that he had met the real Dr. Martin Luther King outside an elevator this morning, and that the famous March on Washington was in literal danger and he was the only person who could help. It was all so ludicrous and yet Calvin hadn’t packed his bags and changed hotels. It had happened the moment he handed that newspaper to the man at the elevator. In spite of the sheer impossibility of the situation, something in Calvin’s very being had told him he was talking with the real Dr. King. It might have been the presence the great man exuded or the sound of his voice that Calvin had heard so many times over the years when the famous speeches were played. Those were possibilities, but he felt there was something else and then it came to him. It was color. He almost laughed out loud. The key to him accepting that he was currently in 1963 Washington
was all, ironically, about color. Both his meeting at the elevator and the sites he was seeing on the streets were so different than in his mind’s eye. Everything was alive, breathing and teeming with unspent action and hope. He realized that everything he had ever known of this time had come from black and white photographs in books. Now he was seeing everything in full color and three dimensions. These people were real and they were walking and talking in a real environment where he could walk and talk with them. He could feel the slight breeze that eased some of the oppressive August heat and he could smell the bacon cooking as they passed a restaurant. He had felt the grip of the handshake Dr. King had offered him and he had seen with his own eyes the way the races interacted with one another here in public. He even believed he’d be able to taste the bacon that was cooking except that, as a black man, he would likely not be welcome in the restaurant. Despite all common sense and the laws of nature, Calvin knew what he was experiencing was real. With that established, he turned his attention back to the conversation.

While they walked, Chase explained to Calvin that there were a lot of different groups within the black community who were against the march because they felt it didn’t go far enough for the cause. They thought the policy of peaceful protest was weak and the practice of teaming up with white advocates was selling out to the very people who had kept them in bondage for so many years. These groups took a militant stance and they felt that if the march was successful with its even-handed tactics it would set them back further. They weren’t willing to petition for changes. They weren’t interested in
asking
the government that had enslaved them to come to their aid now. To them, the time had come for
action
, not words. They wanted to take the rights they were due by force and to make those who would consider them less than equal pay at any cost. Some of the groups were well known and the FBI was monitoring their movements to
prevent violence. It was the smaller and lesser-known groups that Chase was concerned about, particularly one that called itself Kifo, which was short for
nyeupe kifo
.

“It means
white death
in Swahili,” Chase said.

“Sounds like a fun group,” Calvin said sarcastically.

“They’re more dangerous than any of the groups you’ve heard about. They only want one outcome and that’s the one their name espouses. They want blood, Mr. Walker. Blood for blood, in their estimation. Anything less, to them, is giving in to the white man.”

“So they have plans for this march?” Calvin asked.

“Big plans. They’re holed up here in the city with plans to disrupt the proceedings.”

“I don’t understand the rationale,” Calvin said. “How can they go against their own brothers?”

“They believe their ‘brothers’ have gone soft and are begging at the white man’s table for scraps. If the march is successful, as we know it was when it initially happened, it will show that non-violent protest and multi-racial cooperation are viable means to an end. Kifo doesn’t want that message to get out. They want a race war and their offensive begins tomorrow.”

“What am I supposed to do about it? Look at me, Mr. Chase. I’m the kind of guy they’re fighting against. I don’t believe in violence and bloodshed. I don’t know what you think I can do with people like that,” Calvin said.

“Unfortunately, I’ve told you all I know about the situation. The
how
is for you to figure out. I have two addresses where they might be gathering. Both are in very dangerous parts of the city. I have arranged a change of wardrobe for you so you’ll fit in better with where you’re going. It won’t do for you to come walking in wearing wingtips,” Chase told him.

“I don’t think it’s my shoes that’ll make me look like I don’t belong.”

They arrived back at the Willard and Chase walked Calvin to the elevator.

“The clothes are in your room along with some currency of the proper era and a brief identity I wrote up for you. Basically you keep your own name, but you tell them you come from the streets of Chattanooga, not the suburbs. The fact that you come from a Southern state should help you. Think of all the atrocities you’ve read about in the history of the civil rights struggle and use those kinds of examples to describe your background. Just don’t claim to have been part of any organized group or present at any famous event like the Greensboro sit-ins. They may be able to trip you up and find out you’re lying if you go with big name events. Keep it generic, but wear a chip on your shoulder. If you can find out what they’re planning, perhaps law enforcement can take it from there. You won’t know until you get inside,” Chase said.

“I imagine it takes a long time to gain the trust of a group like this. What makes you think they’ll warm up to me and share information in a single night?” Calvin asked.

“I think they will because whatever they’re planning is imminent. They need as much help as possible to pull it off. If you give them the impression you’re ready to do battle they may let their guard down a little. Remember, they’ll be on the lookout for informants who may be trying to stop what they’re planning.”

“What you mean is that I’m walking into a trap,” Calvin stated.

“You could be. I don’t want you to have any misunderstanding about the stakes here. If they think you’re against them they will kill you without a moment’s regret.”

“Remind me again why I’m doing this, then?”

“Someone has to stop this group. You have a decision to make. You have to decide if the future you know, the freedoms you enjoy and the world your children live in, is more important
than your own life. I did some research on you, Mr. Walker, and I know the kind of man you are. I believe you are the perfect person for the job and that’s why we’re here,” Chase answered.

Calvin was silent while he considered what the man had told him.

“There’s just one problem with your theory, Chase. If they kill me I won’t be able to be that man for my children.”

“That’s why you can’t fail, Mr. Walker.”

Chase pushed the button for the elevator and the doors opened. Calvin walked inside and Chase stayed on the lobby side of the doors.

“You have to sell them on the idea that you’ve come to Washington to kill the people they want dead. In the end, it’s the only way to save them.”

C
HAPTER 18

OLIVIA FORDHAM

1913

Chase had to do something he had never done before. He had to start his explanation at the beginning of everything he knew about traveling through history. A woman with Olivia’s intelligence and worldliness who also feared she was losing herself to a brain tumor was not going to be convinced any other way. By the time Chase had told her about his experience in college and all the things he had been party to since coming to the Willard, Olivia had a monster headache. She was teetering between the absurdity of what he was saying
(wouldn’t this make him hundreds of years old?)
with the burgeoning hope that maybe there was another explanation for what was happening that didn’t mean her lucid time was coming to an end.

Olivia confided that the planned endowment for the Fordham Museum was to be her final act in the public eye. She was planning a graceful retirement once the center’s future was secure. She envisioned herself becoming a mysterious hermit who would live out her life in her New York City penthouse enjoying any good days she had left and keeping her declining health from public view. She had it all planned out and now this man was telling her she had another purpose to fulfill before any of that could happen. He kept talking about tears in the fabric of history. Tears she could understand. Hadn’t she been having
tears in her own mental capacity for three years now? She was willing to grant that it was possible because she was inexplicably excited by the idea. Her life over the past thirty-six months had been in a type of limbo, never knowing when her reality would be upended. She rarely went anywhere without Jane just in case things began to get hazy or she found herself in a full-fledged episode.

The longer Chase talked, the more excited she could feel herself becoming. He explained why she was here and how important it was for her to do what was needed. It appealed to her sense of service and, more importantly, her unquenchable desire for extraordinary experiences.

Her mind couldn’t make sense of everything he was telling her. He even admitted such a thing was impossible.