The Willard (25 page)

“I believe you’re right Miss. . .”

“Parker. My name is Catherine Parker.”

“Miss Parker. Thank you very much for speaking to me. I was about to change my mind about sending the note, but you have bolstered my resolve,” said Mrs. Grant.

She summoned the waiter and asked him to take the note to a messenger and have it delivered to the White House right away. Catherine watched as Mrs. Grant carefully placed the note in the waiter’s hand. The missive was small, barely four inches square, and it was addressed in a fine hand. The waiter placed it on a silver tray and left the dining room in search of the messenger.

“I’m so pleased to have made your acquaintance, Miss Parker. I’m going to go and finish my packing. I have high hopes the general and I will be on the six o’clock train, thanks to you.” Julia Grant smiled and started to walk away, but turned back to say one more thing to Catherine. “Thank you again, my dear. I believe you have saved me from a most disagreeable evening.”

Her thanks felt like a dagger to Catherine’s heart. Mrs. Grant left the dining room and just beyond her Catherine saw the messenger leave the lobby with her note in hand. She
watched him turn right and start toward the White House and kept watching until he was lost in the crowd on the street. She kept watching because she couldn’t stand, couldn’t walk. She could only stare; stare and tremble with the knowledge she had surely signed the death warrant of the President of the United States.

C
HAPTER 56

TOM KELLY

1962

There it was. Tom now knew the message that threatened to plunge the world into nuclear holocaust. Somewhere inside his own government someone, or some group, was looking to take advantage of an already dangerous situation to take out an old enemy. The fate of the world had come down to one man. Missiles were in place, the country was at DEFCON 2, recon planes were being shot down, and now someone was interjecting a poison pill into the negotiations.

There was no way Khrushchev could agree to take out Castro. He would look like a puppet of the West, and he would hand his biggest foe a victory they had been unable to achieve on their own with Operation Mongoose. It was the potential for a second attempt on his life that had persuaded Castro to go along with Khrushchev’s plan to put missiles in his country in the first place. Castro had the worldwide distinction of being the little dictator who had repelled the big, bad, American wolf. How would it look now for the head of the Communist world to appear to bow before the Americans and remove from their hemisphere the thorn in their side? It was a proposition that was sure to stall peaceful negotiations, or worse, escalate the conflict beyond repair.

Tom had to find out where this was coming from and how to stop it. He went to the White House and told an assistant it was urgent that he see the president. He waited in the
outer office for two hours until the president returned from the Situation Room. The attorney general was with him, as usual. Tom addressed both Kennedys.

“Someone in your administration is proffering a second option,” Tom said without preamble.

The attorney general spoke first. “Tom, I spoke with the Soviet ambassador an hour ago. He doesn’t know about Khrushchev’s second letter addressing the missiles in Turkey. We offered to accept the premier’s conditions in the first letter, which proposed removal of his missiles and personnel in exchange for our pledge not to invade Cuba. The hope is that he will agree and not press the second letter.”

“I’m not talking about the Jupiter missiles, sir.”

“How did you know there are Jupiter missiles in Turkey?” the president asked.

Tom realized he knew the type of missiles from studying the crisis in school. The name had just popped into his head, but he couldn’t say that to the two Kennedys. “It must have been in one of the Back Channel messages, sir.”

Both Kennedys seemed satisfied with his answer. They weren’t sure how deep this Back Channel went and they knew if they survived the current crisis they would have to find out, but for now all of Tom’s information had been solid and this wasn’t the time to question it.

“What second option are you referring to if it’s not the second letter?” asked Robert Kennedy.

“Someone is proposing that to reach an agreement the Soviets must also remove Fidel Castro from power. Specifically, sirs, they want him killed.”

There was silence in the room. There was nothing in the world that John Kennedy wanted more than the removal of Fidel Castro from Cuba. The problem was, he hadn’t asked for it as part of the negotiations. Who was doing this?

Tom explained all that he knew and showed them a copy of the teletype he had obtained from Volkov. The president picked up the phone on his desk and within two minutes the men of the ExComm were seated around the room. Tom stood off to one side as the president stood to address them.

“Gentlemen, we have a new problem. I don’t know if it started with one of you or not, but nobody is leaving this office until we find the hole and plug it.”

C
HAPTER 57

CALVIN WALKER

1963

Calvin, Captain Perry, and the two officers walked through the crowd during the remarks of the next two speakers and a song by a gospel choir. So far they had seen nothing, no duffel bags and no Fish. Perry had Calvin and his group concentrating near the stage since Fish had been seen there last. A rabbi took the stage to offer a prayer and the men continued searching.

In the meantime, the men with the duffel bags had entrenched themselves in strategic spots. There were six around the reflecting pool, one at each corner and one on each side in the middle. One was in the area closer to Constitution Avenue where the police would come running through when the chaos began. The final bag was still with Fish. He had it slung over his shoulder and was watching from his perch in the tree line near the area that would one day become the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He had actually climbed up into the lower branches, but he didn’t look out of place because many others had done the same. In fact, he had a Kifo brother there all morning holding the spot until he could get there. He wasn’t about to miss the show and this would give him a bird’s eye view.

While he waited in his elevated position he took in the sea of people who were looking with such rapture at the stage. Most couldn’t even see the participants from where they stood, but they were nonetheless enthralled with what they were
hearing. Fish thought they looked pathetic, like peasants who would dance for the king to make him laugh just to get the crumbs from his table. He thought about how they would panic and trample each other in their attempt to get away from the fake bombs. He planned it that way so they would literally crush the life out of any who were too slow to get out of the way. He wouldn’t need the slow ones for the movement he planned to start from the ashes of this one.

The disdain he felt as he watched them was palpable. They weren’t his people. They had ceased being his people when he had gotten radicalized years before. That Fish came to be at this place with murderous intent was a tragic twist of fate. He wasn’t a son of the South with firsthand experience of the atrocities of prejudice. Fish, born Henry Dockins, had been raised in arguably the most diverse city in America. He was the son of educated, upper-middle-class parents in Brooklyn, who gave him every advantage. They stressed education and raised him to believe that even though their struggle was hard, nothing was truly out of reach. He had an outgoing personality with plenty of friends and plenty of girlfriends. Nothing about him suggested he wouldn’t follow along in the footsteps of his proud parents and achieve all that he could imagine.

The break with the life he had known came five years ago. At the tender age of seventeen he had watched as his father became increasingly involved in the quiet, non-violent actions of the early civil rights advocates. It was nothing major, no speeches or long bus rides to the Deep South to sign up voters. He went to a few meetings and offered his reasoned thinking to their collective development. For two years, everything had moved along quietly until a business rival learned of his involvement. Although it wasn’t something he wore on his sleeve, his activism wasn’t secret either. But his rival saw it as a chance to paint the man as a subversive troublemaker bent on forced equality. The myth that racism was just a Southern
problem could be easily debunked in 1950s New York. It was in this environment that a group of “colleagues” of this rival showed up at the Dockins apartment. They said they had come to talk to Mr. Dockins, but they brought baseball bats with them. Fish’s father and younger sister weren’t home when his mother answered the knock at the door. He heard the men demand to see his father and his mother’s insistence that he wasn’t home. They didn’t believe her and forced their way inside. Fish came out of his room and saw the terror-stricken look on his mother’s face. That was the last thing he remembered until he woke up in the hospital. One of the men had bashed him over the head with a bat and while he lay unconscious on the floor his mother was repeatedly raped and then beaten to death. His father and sister had arrived home to find the carnage and believed both to be dead. The fact that his son had survived only strengthened Mr. Dockins’ devotion to non-violent protest, but it had been the breaking point for young Henry.

After his recovery, his father moved the family to a new home several blocks away, but Fish was repeatedly drawn back to the scene of the crime. He walked the streets for hours on end, stoking his rage with every step. He drifted away from his father who could see the hate taking over his beloved son’s life. It wasn’t long before he was venturing beyond the confines of his privileged neighborhood to the darker and seedier parts of the city. It was on one of these long walks that he met up with a group of like-minded men. They believed answering violence with violence was the only path to equality. In truth, they were more interested in exacting revenge than in equal rights and none had more cause to want a bloody battle than the young man whose last memory of his mother was the look of terror on her face.

His mother had given him the nickname, Fish, when he was a child because he loved the water and was an excellent swimmer. It had always been a sweet name, one that conjured
up thoughts of a happy childhood and loving family. Now it would become a sinister moniker for a man filled with hate—one who vowed to avenge the mother who had given him the name, and avenge her in blood.

Five white men had spilled the blood of his innocent mother. Today he would spill the blood of innocents in pursuit of a larger goal—full-scale race war. He knew his mother would not be proud, but he had enough pride for all of them.

C
HAPTER 58

OLIVIA FORDHAM

1913

Olivia left Victoria at the office working diligently alongside the other women. She returned to the Willard with plans to speak with Chase about the morning’s events. On the sidewalk in front of the hotel she noticed a disheveled James leaning against an iron rail. As she got closer she smelled alcohol and noticed he was weaving slightly.

“Mr. Asher, I see you’ve been imbibing rather early today.” She wondered briefly if there was a legal drinking age in 1913. He looked embarrassed to see her.

“I have, Mrs. Fordham. I do beg your pardon.”

“Why are you here? You’re not a guest at the Willard as I understand it.”

“I was hoping to run into Victoria.”

“In your condition? I don’t think she would be impressed with you under the circumstances.”

James blushed. “No, I don’t suppose she would. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“Would you like to come into the lobby for a cup of coffee?”

“No, thank you, ma’am. I have to be going. I just wanted to see her one more time.”

“You’re leaving town?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m going back to Middleburg tomorrow afternoon and I don’t plan to be at the parade.”

“I believe you were clear in your feelings about the parade. I don’t think Victoria is expecting to see you there.”

“But that’s just it, Mrs. Fordham. I had decided to go and to make sure she stayed safe and to see her again and maybe talk to her even though the things she says make me furious.” He was rambling.

“If you decided to go to the parade why have you changed your mind?”

“You wouldn’t believe the beating I took this afternoon from my brother and his friends. They were teasing me about liking a girl like that who would want to wear the pants and not let me wear pants and harpies and harlots.” He wasn’t making sense.

“I beg your pardon? I understand you are impaired at this moment, but I hope you do not expect me to stand here and allow you to speak of Miss Webster as a harlot.”

“Oh, no, ma’am, I didn’t mean Miss Webster. No, ma’am, she’s a lady for sure. Why, you can just see that she’s a fine lady from a good family. But they were calling the suffragists those names and saying they like each other in the boy-girl way.”

“And you let them say those things about a respectable lady like Miss Webster?”

“I couldn’t say anything! Maybe they’re right. I couldn’t take a girl like that home to meet my mother. And the other girls in Middleburg would think I’d gone crazy when they’re so docile and ‘yes, James’ and ‘of course, James’ and all that.”

Olivia was livid and forgot about this being her grandfather and any implications it might have for her personally.

“If that’s the way you feel, Mr. Asher, then I suggest you catch the next train home to your mother and your docile imbeciles and leave a strong and vibrant young woman like Miss Webster alone. She is clearly out of your league. And do sober
up. It’s terribly unbecoming for such an
upstanding
Southern gentleman. Good day, sir!”

Olivia left James standing there with his mouth gaping as she stormed into the Willard. She hadn’t noticed Edward Chase on the sidewalk, but he had heard every word. He caught up with her as she was angrily crossing the lobby and he grabbed her by the elbow.

“Olivia! What have you just done?”