TWENTY-THREE
The clock on the bombed-out Kaiser-Wilhelm Church hadn’t struck eight yet, but the street below it was in full swing. Like some great migration of humanity, the citizens of Berlin were converging on Strasse des 17 Juni, the broad avenue running through the Tiergarten that would carry President Kennedy to his first stop. They wanted to see him in the flesh, maybe shake his hand, but even more than that, I think they wanted him to see them, to reach out and touch them. Spirits were soaring, the atmosphere charged with high expectations.
Horst convinced me to abandon breakfast and join the crowd advancing up Kurfürstendamm. Armed with American flags and homemade signs, they spilled out onto the street—young ones held above the fray by shoulders that would give them a clear view of history, construction workers in hard hats who’d spontaneously downed tools to join the parade, schoolchildren shepherded by anxious teachers, bearded professors expounding on the day’s significance to wide-eyed students, housewives with freshly teased hair, old men in old hats, and young boys in crisp blue jeans. … The whole damn city had declared a holiday and was on its way to greet the American president.
“It’s nuts,” I said to Horst as we were swept up by the sea of euphoric faces. “He’s the president of the United States, not the goddamned Second Coming.”
“I don’t think Berliners would be so interested in the Second Coming,” he grinned. Horst was proud of the welcome his city was about to bestow on Kennedy. “Understand,” he continued, suddenly looking very serious, “we in Berlin have feared more than anything being forgotten by the world. And now comes Kennedy, and the people know that he doesn’t come to tell us that we are on our own. He comes to say that America won’t forget us, even if sometimes our own leaders might like to.”
I nodded and we continued on in silence, letting the surge of happy people carry us forward.
The atmosphere was infectious, but in the back of my mind I was trying to get inside Harvey King’s head. I’d been on the money about city hall—maybe Harvey and I were on the same wavelength. The key to figuring out the operation lay in the fact that the whole world would witness the event and they’d all have to come away believing that one man had pulled the trigger.
It would go something like this:
Kennedy is at the platform, speaking to a rapt audience, when shots ring out—two quick blasts echoing through the plaza. Each volley has been counted down by Radio Control so that the two bursts of three simultaneous shots sound like the report of one rifle reverberating off the buildings that surround the square. Some witnesses say the shots came from the Victoria Hotel, while others claim they emanated from elsewhere—another building or from behind a group of trees. But that would be later, when it didn’t matter anymore. The lone-gunman story would’ve taken hold by then. Now, in the seconds following the shots, a wave of horror and disbelief fans out across the plaza. Some in the back don’t realize what’s happened, while those closest to the stage can’t believe their eyes. Except for one—an individual who is positioned at the front of the crowd or even on the platform itself. He calmly speaks into a hidden radio, sending a damage report back to Control in the form of one prearranged word. If Kennedy has taken a lethal hit, the “all clear” word goes out. If the president has escaped injury or is judged to be capable of surviving his wounds, the “hit him again” word is sent and Control calls for another volley. But with up to nine shots fired by expert marksmen in triangulated, coordinated fire, chances are that the job is done. Kennedy is dead.
All hell breaks loose. Confusion followed by panic on the platform, nobody sure what to do. Secret Service radios are buzzing with “shots fired, the president is down,” but they’re acting like chickens with their heads cut off because the Secret Service has only one mission in life—to protect the president—and they’ve just f*cked up beyond their worst nightmare. Local police go into overdrive. Uniformed and undercover German cops rush to secure buildings in the vicinity and to lock off the plaza, but it can’t be done in less than five minutes, probably more like fifteen—long after three unassuming men have melted away from the scene, never to be heard from again.
Back in the Victoria Hotel, Roy Chase shoves poor old drugged-out Jack Teller into the hallway, where a Secret Service agent puts two bullets in his chest. A pistol is fired into the wall—or better yet, into the agent’s leg—and then placed in Jack’s lifeless fingers so self-defense can be claimed. Who’s going to question this hero’s story when the recently fired Tokarev with my fingerprints on it is sitting in a room registered to me? Then, within hours, the photographs of Josef and me, the Soviet visa in my passport, and who knows what else is made public. Whatever happens after that, as far as the JFK assassination is concerned, it’s case closed. …
We had almost an hour before we had to check in to the hotel and I needed some thinking time, so I was happy to hang back while Horst wormed his way to the front of the crowd, determined to get a close-up look at the Kennedy magic. Once the motorcade passed, I’d bring him down off his cloud, prep him as best I could for the various sticky situations we might find ourselves in.
If we beat the odds by making it past the lobby and into the room, we’d still be up shit’s creek unless we found Chase’s password. I’d convinced myself that it would be waiting for us at the hotel. It would be a needless security risk—one that Harvey was too smart to take—to hand out codes until the last possible moment. If I was right, it was just a question of finding the password once we got there. It might even find us: a message at reception or a note on a complimentary basket of fruit; or it might be harder to find; written on the back of a bar of soap or inside the wrapping of a chocolate bar. It could be in a hell of a lot of places and we wouldn’t have much time.
Then a thought occurred to me: We might not need the password at all. What if we slipped through the lobby, headed upstairs, and opened the door to find the shooter waiting for us in the room? I liked that scenario because it meant I could walk in, kill him, and inform Control what I’d done as we made a fast exit. It seemed like a long shot, too easy, but there was some logic to it. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
I knew that one of the three shooters would be positioned somewhere in the hotel. Looking at it with my Harvey King hat on, it seemed to me that you ran the risk of casting serious doubt on your cover story if you didn’t put your shooter in the room with me. After all, it was a virtual certainty that in a crowd of half a million or more, a fair number of people were going to witness the shots being fired. If they all agreed that the gunman’s window didn’t match up with the room that was registered to me, you’ve got a problem. On the other hand, if it was the same window, those witnesses would be a plus, confirming your story for you. In fact, you could create a series of photos—not obviously directed at the window, but shot from behind the president, so the hotel window would be visible in the background. When blown up and enhanced, the pictures would tell your story: In the first shot, Jack Teller stands at the window as Kennedy takes the podium. He’s gone in the second photo, but moments later the photographer catches the barrel of a rifle protruding from the window—you can’t see the gunman’s face, but you can see the same white shirt that Teller had been wearing. In the last image, the president is down. The series of photographs would make the front page of every newspaper across the planet with a caption that read “The assassin sizes up his target, takes aim, and a president is dead.”
I didn’t see how Harvey could pass it up.
A buzz of excitement ran through the crowd and the ground started to vibrate with the drone of police motorcycles—a distant rumble at first, like rolling thunder, then closer and stronger until you could feel the vibrations under your feet and in the pit of your stomach. Then, drifting in from the west, the muffled chorus of ten thousand voices chanting “KEN-NE-DY … KEN-NE-DY!” building in intensity and growing louder as a wave of unbridled fervor worked its way up the avenue ahead of the motorcade.
I couldn’t see a damn thing, and before I knew it I was hanging off a traffic light, craning my neck for a view of the approaching cortege. In the crisp, clear June air, the scene played out in full Technicolor glory, as if Berlin had been transported from its dull, black-and-white existence to the gates of the Emerald City. The lead car—Stars and Stripes flying on the right fender, the red, black, and gold of the German standard on the left—was a half mile away, close enough that you could see the pandemonium it was carrying with it. People were running along the sidewalk as the open limousine passed, trying to get ahead of the procession and join the crowd again, swelling the number of spectators to the bursting point.
I could see Kennedy now—standing in the back of his car, a wide grin on his tanned face, hair blowing in a gentle wind as he waved to the countless faces calling out, even screaming, his name. As glamorous and charismatic as he was, I don’t think the people lining that avenue were cheering the man. They didn’t know the man. What they knew was his youth, his energy, and his inspiring, sometimes electrifying words. They were cheering the promise that he offered for the future.
You only had to look at Adenauer, standing on the other side of the car, to see what it was all about. The German leader looked stunned, as if he’d been ambushed by his own people. He stood there, stiff and grim-faced, offering a halfhearted salute while he wondered, in God’s name, when he would be able to sit down. He had served his country as head of state for fourteen years and now he was old and tired. He was the past and his people desperately wanted to look forward. Maybe that’s what Willy Brandt was thinking as he stood between the president and the chancellor. Roughly Kennedy’s age, the mayor seemed satisfied, and a bit bemused, by his city’s unrestrained welcome.
Twenty white-jacketed motorcycle cops escorted the president, ten on each side of the sleek Lincoln Continental. Eight gray-suited Secret Service men jogged alongside, two stood on the rear bumper, and a whole carload followed, along with a couple of buses for aides and the press. The convoy was proceeding so slowly and Kennedy was so completely exposed that the thought crossed my mind that it actually wouldn’t be a bad kill zone. I took a quick look around and saw that the only perch a sniper could use on this route would be a tree, and being up a tree with a rifle wouldn’t give you a high degree of confidence in your shot, and even less in your escape route. But on a different road, one surrounded by buildings …
When I turned back to watch the motorcade pass, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, some activity on the sidewalk—a quick flash of movement followed by a figure streaking toward the car, his right arm extended …
“Jesus Christ …” I whispered aloud when I realized it was Horst making the dash across the concrete. He headed straight for Kennedy, weaving successfully between two motorcycles, then giving a Secret Service agent the two-step shuffle and ducking under his arm. He pressed on, calling out what looked like “Mr. President! … Mr. President!!” as he shot forward, his outstretched arm pointing at the president’s midsection. Kennedy, who had been waving to the other side of the road, turned back toward Horst, looked at his hand, then reached out to shake it.
The crowd went wild, releasing a colossal cheer into the atmosphere as the president leaned over to shout something in my crazy friend’s ear. Horst released Kennedy’s hand, then stood there in the street a moment, watching the car move away. A Secret Service agent stepped up and gently led him back into the crowd. Horst acknowledged the applause he was getting with a wave of his hand, then he was swallowed up by the masses.
It opened the floodgates. Two middle-aged women rushed the president next. Four agents pushed forward to hold them back, but Kennedy, who was taking great pleasure in this unbridled adulation, leaned out of the car so far that it looked for a moment like he might fall out. Brandt grinned and grabbed the president’s jacket, holding him in the car while he reached his hand out to the ladies. No sooner were the ladies ushered away than a man carrying a young boy on his shoulders ran forward to touch the hand, then a man in sunglasses, and a woman dragging a young girl, and so on….
“Quite a welcome,” I said to Horst once I’d tracked him down and separated him from a gaggle of admirers.
“I should say so,” he beamed. “People will remember this day for as long as they live.” We’d found a quiet street that would take us most of the way down to Rudolf-Wilde Platz. It was pushing eleven o’clock, when we needed to check in, so I set a healthy pace.
“What did he say to you?” I asked.
Horst grinned broadly, paused a beat for dramatic effect. “He has told me that in his three days in Germany, I’m the only one who has broken out of the crowd!”
It was a badge of honor for Horst, and why not? I couldn’t think of a better compliment than that one.