The crowd went wild, as always. The boys all wore Kennedy straw hats. The girls had a uniform: blue skirt, white blouse and a red Kennedy sash. A band blared a campaign song. Powerful television lights added to the heat in the room. Led by bodyguard Bill Barry, Bobby and Ethel pushed through the crowd, their young supporters reaching out to touch them and pull their clothes, until they reached a small platform. Jostling photographers added to the chaos.
The crowd hysteria was a problem for George and others, but it was Bobby’s strength. His ability to get this emotional reaction from people was going to take him to the White House.
Bobby stood behind a bouquet of microphones. He had not asked for a written speech, just some notes. His performance was lacklustre, but no one cared. ‘We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country,’ he said. ‘I intend to make that my basis for running.’ These were not inspiring words, but the crowd adored him too much to care.
George decided he would not go with Bobby to the Factory discotheque afterwards. Seeing couples dance would only remind him that he was alone. He would get a good night’s sleep before flying to New York in the morning to launch the campaign there. Work was the cure for his heartache.
‘I thank all of you who made this possible this evening,’ Bobby said. He flashed the Churchillian V-for-victory sign, and around the room hundreds of young people repeated the gesture. He reached down from the platform to shake some of the outstretched hands.
Then there was a glitch. His next appointment was with the press in a nearby room. The plan was for him to pass through the crowd as he left, but George could see that Bill Barry was unable to clear a path between the hysterical teenage girls shouting: ‘We want Bobby! We want Bobby!’
A hotel employee in the uniform of a ma?tre d’h?tel solved the problem, pointing Bobby to a pair of swing doors that evidently led through staff quarters to the press room. Bobby and Ethel followed the man into a dim corridor, and George and Bill Barry and the rest of the entourage hurried after them.
George was wondering how soon he could again raise with Bobby the need to make a deal with Gene McCarthy. It was the strategic priority, in George’s opinion. But personal relationships were so important to the Kennedys. If Bobby could have made a friend of Lyndon Johnson, everything would have been different.
The corridor led to a brightly lit pantry zone with gleaming stainless-steel steam tables and a huge ice maker. A radio reporter was interviewing Bobby as they walked, saying: ‘Senator, how are you going to counter Mr Humphrey?’ Bobby shook hands with smiling staff on his way through. A young kitchen worker turned from a tray stacker as if to greet Bobby.
Then, in a lightning flash of terror, George saw a gun in the young man’s hand.
It was a small black revolver with a short barrel.
The man pointed the gun at Bobby’s head.
George opened his mouth to yell but the shot came first.
The little weapon made a noise that was more of a pop than a bang.
Bobby threw his hands up to his face, staggered back, then fell to the concrete floor.
George roared: ‘No! No!’ It could not be happening – it could not be happening again!
A moment later came a volley of shots like a Chinese firecracker. Something stung George’s arm, but he ignored it.
Bobby lay on his back beside the ice machine, hands above his head, feet apart. His eyes were open.
People were yelling and screaming. The radio reporter was babbling into his microphone: ‘Senator Kennedy has been shot! Senator Kennedy has been shot! Is that possible? Is that possible?’
Several men jumped on the gunman. Someone was shouting: ‘Get the gun! Get the gun!’ George saw Bill Barry punch the shooter in the face.
George knelt by Bobby. He was alive, but bleeding from a wound just behind his ear. He looked bad. George loosened his tie to help him breathe. Someone else put a folded coat under Bobby’s head.
A man’s voice was moaning: ‘God, no . . . Christ, no . . .’
Ethel pushed through the crowd, knelt beside George, and spoke to her husband. There was a flicker of recognition in Bobby’s face, and he tried to speak. George thought he said: ‘Is everyone else all right?’ Ethel stroked his face.
George looked around. He could not tell whether anyone else had been hit by the volley of bullets. Then he noticed his own forearm. The sleeve of his suit was ripped and blood was seeping from a wound. He had been hit. Now that he noticed, it hurt like hell.
The far door opened, and reporters and photographers from the press room burst through. The cameramen mobbed the group around Bobby, shoving each other and climbing on the stoves and sinks to get better shots of the bleeding victim and his stricken wife. Ethel pleaded: ‘Give him some air, please! Let him breathe!’
An ambulance crew arrived with a stretcher. They took Bobby by the shoulders and feet. Bobby cried weakly: ‘Oh, no, don’t . . .’
‘Gently!’ Ethel begged the crew. ‘Gently.’
They lifted him on to the stretcher and strapped him in.
Bobby’s eyes closed.
He never opened them again.
45
That summer Dimka and Natalya painted the apartment, with the sun shining through the open windows. It took longer than necessary because they kept stopping for sex. Her glorious hair was tied up and hidden in a rag, and she wore an old shirt of his with a frayed collar; but her shorts were tight, and every time he saw her up a ladder he had to kiss her. He pulled down her shorts so often that after a while she just wore the shirt; and then they had even more sex.
They could not marry until her divorce was finalized, and for the sake of appearances Natalya had her own tiny apartment nearby, but unofficially they were already embarking on their new life together in Dimka’s place. They rearranged the furniture to Natalya’s liking and bought a couch. They developed routines: he made breakfast, she cooked dinner; he polished her shoes, she ironed his shirts; he shopped for meat, she for fish.
They never saw Nik, but Natalya began to establish a relationship with Nina. Dimka’s ex-wife was now the accepted lover of Marshal Pushnoy, and spent many weekends with him at his dacha, hosting dinners with his intimate friends, some of whom brought their mistresses. Dimka did not know how Pushnoy arranged matters with his wife, a pleasant-looking elderly woman who always appeared at his side on formal state occasions. During Nina’s country weekends, Dimka and Natalya looked after Grisha. At first Natalya was nervous, never having had children of her own – Nik hated kids. But she quickly became fond of Grisha, who looked a lot like Dimka; and, not surprisingly, she turned out to have the usual maternal instincts.
Their private life was happy but their public life was not. The diehards in the Kremlin only pretended to accept the Czechoslovakia compromise. As soon as Kosygin and Dimka got back from Prague the conservatives went to work to undermine the agreement, pressing for an invasion that would crush Dubek and his reforms. The argument raged through June and July in the heat of Moscow and in the Black Sea breezes at the dachas to which the Communist Party elite migrated for their summer holidays.
For Dimka this was not really about Czechoslovakia. It was about his son and the world in which he would grow up. In fifteen years Grisha would be at university; in twenty he would be working; in twenty-five he might have children of his own. Would Russia have a better system, something like Dubek’s idea of Communism with a human face? Or would the Soviet Union still be a tyranny in which the unchallengeable authority of the Party was brutally enforced by the KGB?
Infuriatingly, Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary, sat on the fence. Dimka had come to despise him. Terrified of being caught on the losing side, Brezhnev would never make up his mind until he knew which way the collective decision was likely to go. He had no vision, no courage, no plan for making the Soviet Union a better country. He was no leader.
The conflict came to a head at a two-day meeting of the Politburo starting on Friday 15 August. As always, the formal meeting consisted mostly of polite interchanges of platitudes, while the real battles were fought outside.
It was in the plaza that Dimka had his face-off with Yevgeny Filipov, standing in the sunshine outside the yellow-and-white palace of the Senate building among the parked cars and waiting limousines. ‘Look at the KGB reports from Prague,’ Filipov said. ‘Counter-revolutionary student rallies! Clubs where the overthrow of Communism is openly discussed! Secret weapons caches!’
‘I don’t believe all the stories,’ Dimka said. ‘True, there is discussion of reform, but the dangers are being exaggerated by the failed leaders of the past who are now being pushed aside.’ The truth was that Andropov, the hardline head of the KGB, was fabricating sensational intelligence reports to bolster the conservatives; but Dimka was not foolhardy enough to say so out loud.
Dimka had a source of reliable intelligence: his twin sister. Tania was in Prague, sending carefully noncommittal articles to TASS and, at the same time, supplying Dimka and Kosygin with reports saying that Dubek was a hero to all Czechs except the old party apparatchiks.
It was almost impossible for people to get at the truth in a closed society. Russians told so many lies. In the Soviet Union almost every document was deceitful: production figures, foreign policy assessments, police interviews with suspects, economic forecasts. Behind their hands people murmured that the only true page in the newspaper was the one with the radio and television programmes.
‘I can’t tell which way it’s going to go,’ Natalya said to Dimka on Friday night. She still worked for Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. ‘All the signals from Washington say President Johnson will do nothing if we invade Czechoslovakia. He has too many problems of his own – riots, assassinations, Vietnam, and a presidential election.’
They had finished painting for the evening and were sitting on the floor sharing a bottle of beer. Natalya had a single smudge of yellow paint on her forehead. For some reason that made Dimka want to fuck her. He was wondering whether to do it now or get washed and go to bed first when she said: ‘Before we get married . . .’
That was ominous. ‘Yes?’
‘We should talk about children.’
‘We probably should have done that before we spent all summer screwing our brains out.’ They had never used birth control.
‘Yes. But you already have a child.’
‘We have a child. He’s ours. You’ll be his stepmother.’
‘And I’m very fond of him. It’s easy to love a boy who looks so much like you. But how do you feel about having more?’
Dimka could see that for some reason she was worried about this, and he needed to reassure her. He put down the beer and embraced her. ‘I adore you,’ he said. ‘And I would love to have children with you.’
‘Oh, thank God,’ she said. ‘Because I’m pregnant.’