Gordon Stevens - Kennedy’s Ghost

GORDON STEVENS

Kennedy’s Ghost

Kennedy’s Ghost is a work of fiction. All of the events, characters, names and places depicted in this novel are entirely fictitious or are used fictitiously.

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1994

Copyright © Gordon Stevens 1994

Gordon Stevens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780006490029

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008219352

Version: 2016-09-21

To Art Kosatka,

for introducing me to Washington DC

through the back door

and without whom this book

would not have been possible

Cover

Title Page GORDON STEVENS Kennedy’s Ghost

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Keep Reading Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

It was the sort of day you remembered. Where you were when you heard and what you were doing; who you turned to and who you telephoned.

The assassin was in position at eleven, the cars which would steer the Lincoln into the killing zone at eleven-five. The truck which would break down in the left lane of the traffic lights, ensuring that the Lincoln would move to the right-hand lane, at eleven-six. The yellow sedan which would stall in front of the Lincoln by eleven-seven.

The senator’s flight from Boston was on schedule; his Lincoln, plus the man who would accompany him, already waiting. Twenty-five years before, Donaghue and Brettlaw had been undergraduates together at Harvard.

At eleven-fifty Donaghue would join his wife and daughters in his room on the third floor of the Senate Russell Building on Washington’s Capitol Hill. At one minute to twelve he would walk with them along the marble corridor to the historic setting of the Caucus Room. And at midday exactly, with his wife at his side and Brettlaw in the wings, Senator Jack Donaghue would formally announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America.

It was eleven-fifteen. In the Caucus Room the television cameras were in place and the lights ready, the cables running to the scanners outside. The walls of the room were marble, the slim Corinthian-style columns rising to the ceiling, and the ceiling itself was exquisitely decorated with four large chandeliers hanging from it. The windows on the side of the room facing the dome of Capitol Hill were wall-height, arched at the top and draped in purple. On the wall opposite them, on either side of the door leading into the hallway beyond, two plaques listed some of the events to which the Caucus Room had born witness: the 1912 enquiry into the sinking of the Titanic , the 1941–42 commission into the World War Two National Defense programme, the 1966 Fulbright hearings on the Vietnam War, the 1973 Watergate enquiry and the 1987 commission on Iran-Contra.

The platform from which Donaghue would declare was against the right-hand wall, flanked on the right by the Stars and Stripes of the Union and on the left by the flag of his home state of Massachusetts, two massive black and white photographs hanging on the wall behind and dominating the room.

‘Why the Kennedy photos as backdrop?’ the NBC reporter asked the Donaghue press secretary. ‘Why John and Robert?’

‘Because they also declared in this room,’ she told him.

The floor was packed with supporters, already excited and some singing. Most such crowds were the same, the CBS reporter knew: young and preppy, a blaze of hats and banners. Not this one, though; this one was different. Young and old, a range of ages, creeds and colours. As if they not only stood for what the country had struggled for in the past, but also represented the dream it still clung to for the future. Blue-collar and white-collar, men and women, youthful students and gnarled veterans. Three of them in the second row talking about a Swift boat in ’Nam and laughing about the way The Old Man had bellowed into a bullhorn for the boats they knew didn’t exist to follow him in.

The woman in the front row was young, the radiance of youth on her face, her blond hair falling on to her shoulders and her child in her arms. The man next to her was in the dress blues of the Marine Corps, the eagle, globe and anchor on the collar, the sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeves, and the medal ribbons across his left breast, the top row the most important and the ribbon on the wearer’s right of the top row the most important of all. The ribbon next to it was the Silver Star, after that the Bronze Star, three stars on it indicating it had been won three more times and the ‘V’ indicating they had been won for heroism in battle. The service ribbons at the bottom, the Vietnam service ribbon in the middle.

‘Mind if I take a close-up of the decorations?’ one of the cameramen asked.

‘No problem,’ the marine told him.

‘What was that all about?’ the reporter asked as he and the cameraman moved on.

‘You see what he was wearing?’ The response was tight, almost angry. ‘Top right, next to the Silver Star. The Congressional Medal of Honor.’