Philip Kerr - The Shot

Jack Kennedy grinned sheepishly as, for a brief moment, everyone looked at him. Not that he felt in any way embarrassed about any of his cabinet appointments. The country needed men of the calibre of Bundy, Bell, and Cox more than Harvard. Damn it all, he needed them himself. What better way was there to look like a great President of the United States than by having great men — the best brains there were — working for you?

Pusey, who Kennedy thought looked like the building supervisor at Bowdoin Street, except with more hair, spoke for almost half an hour, after which there were votes taken on appointments, honorary degrees, and the policy decisions of the seven-man Harvard Corporation. Kennedy enjoyed his membership of the board. But at the same time he was glad to have been excused two earlier committee reports from the departments of military science and astronomy. And he was also glad to be leaving the meeting before a report from the chemistry department. Chemistry bored him even more than astronomy. Even routine meetings of the board could sometimes last all day, and if there was one thing Jack Kennedy hated, it was a meeting that went on too long. When he was finally in the White House he was going to try and make sure that no meeting ever lasted longer than an hour. Life was just too short to listen to a lot of hot air.

Surreptitiously, he glanced at his wristwatch and saw that it was nearing midday. Only a little while longer, he told himself, and wondered just how many students there were now in the west quad of Harvard Yard. It sure sounded like a lot of people out there. He hoped everything would be okay.

Even at the best of times Jack Kennedy did not like crowds. Most of all he hated to be pawed, like that jerk from the Cambridge police, with his daughter. Privacy and personal space were very important to him. He could smile and shake hands and make a few jokes, but that was it. Ever since Lyndon’s experience in Dallas, when people had spat on him and Lady Bird, he had been wary of large groups of people, preferring to ride in a car instead of walking about. And students. There was no telling what any of them were capable of. His time as a young freshman at Weld now seemed like a lifetime away, but he could still recall that, as a member of the Spee Club and Hasty Pudding, he had displayed some fairly wild behaviour of his own.

At last the meeting was over, and Kennedy caught the eye of John McNally, and then his Secret Service agents. The Ivy League was what he jokingly called them because they were most of them anything but that. Tough sons of bitches was what they were. Sometimes they were a little too cautious of his safety. Like the way they had tried to stop that poor sonofabitch Joe Murphy from coming inside the flat to cook his fucking breakfast. How much of a threat could you pose to the future President of the United States with two hard-boiled eggs?

He stood up from his chair, went on to automatic handshake, and allowed two agents to gently steer him towards the faculty room door. Glancing around, smiling, always smiling, he caught sight of the portrait of Longfellow, and for no reason he could think of, except that he had considered stealing something from The Psalm of Life for his speech to the State Legislature, he found himself remembering one particular verse: ‘Lives of great men all remind us / We can make our lives sublime, / And, departing, leave behind us / Footprints on the sands of time.’ He liked that verse a lot.

They were going down the stairs now. Pusey was saying something about training more Harvard men for policy-making responsibility, and he himself was replying that it had certainly done him no harm. Then the front door of University Hall opened and Kennedy stepped outside into the icy blast. Momentarily dazzled by the midday sun above the rooftops of Hollis and Stoughton, and the enthusiastic roar of the crowd now assembled, he blinked furiously and moved uncertainly down the steps.

Using the window shutter as cover, Tom Jefferson lay stretched out on the desk of Hollis Fifteen and, with the barrel of his rifle supported by one of Chub Farrell’s pillows, took aim at the figure emerging from the front door of University Hall. In the space of a few seconds he pressed the butt of the rifle firmly against his shoulder and, tensing the muscles in his upper arm, curled his forefinger lightly on the trigger.

The scope picture was clear, with Kennedy’s handsome, smiling, tanned face almost filling the eyepiece. Tom made a deeper inhalation and exhalation, the way he always did, and saw the reticle moving slightly on the bridge of Kennedy’s nose. Taking the slack out of the trigger now. Pulling back just to the edge of release. Keeping his whole body absolutely still. The cross-hairs exactly on target. Holding his inhalation as, straight and clean, he pulled the trigger, all the time trying to ignore the curious whirring noise that tickled the air in the room, like the sound of a large mechanical cricket.

The firing pin of the Winchester rifle clicked harmlessly. Tom was only momentarily surprised not to feel the usual recoil that presaged his victim’s death. Calmly, he worked the bolt again for a second shot, and said, ‘One of us had better be loaded. I’d hate to be wasting my time here.’

‘I’ll tell you when to stop,’ said Alex Goldman. He held the Bolex Rex sixteen-mill cine camera steady on Tom’s body for a second longer as once again the marksman squeezed his trigger on an empty rifle.

‘Whatever you say, Mister De Mille,’ murmured Tom, working the bolt again. ‘Just try not to get me in close-up. You’re not on my best side, there.’

Goldman thumbed the switch to work the Bolex’s powerful zoom, smoothly catapulting his camera view across Tom’s head, the barrel of the rifle, and the heads of almost three thousand students as, yelling, shouting, and pushing, they broke through the police line and shoved their enthusiastic way to the future President.

‘Beautiful,’ murmured Goldman. ‘What a great shot. This is real cinema.’

He had an excellent shot of the bemused look on the young Senator’s face. And the look of real alarm on the faces of the Secret Service agents who were trying to elbow a path through the crowd for Kennedy. Such was the scene of near pandemonium that Goldman could see through his viewfinder that it was almost as if Tom had fired a real shot into Kennedy’s head.

The rifle clicked harmlessly a third time.

‘That’s three times, plumb centre of his forehead,’ reported Tom. ‘If this rifle was loaded, Jack Kennedy would now be as dead as swing, for sure. Pity it isn’t.’

Goldman zoomed back off Kennedy and through the window of Hollis Fifteen, coming around Tom’s side to take account of Kennedy’s progress through the Yard. He stopped filming, and turned the clockwork mechanism of the Bolex quickly. Fully wound, it allowed a shot of between twenty and thirty seconds’ duration.

‘Move your head out of the way of the scope a second,’ he directed. Tom did as he was told, and let Goldman take a shot of the view through the Unertl scope. ‘Okay, now work the bolt.’ Tom worked the bolt. Goldman shot a close-up of the trigger as Tom squeezed it again. ‘You’d have done it too, wouldn’t you?’ he chuckled. ‘You really would have shot him, wouldn’t you? Crazy sonofabitch.’

‘Well, you know what they say. In for a penny. ’Sides, he fucked my wife, didn’t he? If that’s not a good reason to kill a man, I don’t know what is. How long do I have to keep doing this? I’m beginning to feel stupid.’

‘Who’s directing this picture? Me or you? One more shot, okay?’ Goldman wound the camera again.

Tom worked the rifle bolt a fourth time, and aimed at the tip of Kennedy’s ear for a second, then at the knot of his blue woollen tie. ‘He doesn’t know how lucky he is,’ said Tom, squeezing the trigger again. ‘Yes, Mister Kennedy, today you were one lucky sonofabitch.’