Gordon Stevens - Kennedy’s Ghost

‘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.