Jack's Widow (28 page)

At that moment her husband and the Swiss group appeared, and Jackie had no choice.

The evening seemed to drag by. She knew that she was looking
across to check on her mother-in-law and her children too often. Once or twice she went over to the other table ostensibly to see that her guests were enjoying themselves.

Her tiredness fed her fear. She hardly touched her food, supposing the Russians were intent on poisoning or drugging them all.

Finally the meal was over and the band struck up some of Ari’s favorite Greek tunes. He was attempting to persuade some of the guests to join him in the Greek peasant dance traditionally done by Greek men. From time to time she looked behind her into the pleached hornbeams and the oleander bushes. Was Guy there somewhere? Would she recognize him if he were?

When the music ended the small orchestra struck up a Beatles ballad and Ari encouraged her to lead the dancing with Pierre while he swept onto the floor with Rose.

At the end of the dance Pierre did not relinquish her until a young John F. Kennedy Jr., excited to be staying up so late, raced up to her. “Mommy, Mommy, we’re having fireworks. It’s all because of Pierre. He told me he asked because they don’t often have them in their country because of avalanches.”

“I told you they would learn something sitting next to those men,” Rose said, smiling, as she waltzed past.

Jackie knew that fireworks had not been planned. When she was arranging this evening she had vetoed them because no one knew when Rose would go to bed. It would be very inhospitable if their noise woke her up.

Intuition, instinct, and frayed nerve endings all suggested to her that the man had requested a fireworks display for a reason.

Jackie looked around; if only she could warn Guy. She tried to calm herself; perhaps she was being silly. She could see Pierre, smiling, cutting Ari’s cigar. But as she peered across the lawn she could not see his sidekick or either of their wives. The frills of her dress swished against her legs as she walked around searching for them among the arrangements of deep wicker chairs on the lawn, on the dance floor, or by the bar where coffee and postprandial drinks were being dispensed.

In the guise of a concerned hostess, smiling at this one, having a brief chat with someone else, she spent several minutes hunting for them. The three of them were absent.

And, she suddenly realized, so were her children.

She called their names, first quietly and then louder, over the band, as she went through the crowd. Two or three times. Ari, in the center of things, finally heard her and told her that both they and their nanny were with Nikos’s son. Apparently the boy had been out on the motorboat yesterday and had handled it so well, he had asked if he could take all the children, including hers, for a ride to get a better view of the fireworks.

“I don’t want them out there in the dark,” she shrieked.

“Relax, Jackie, what can happen? They can all swim.”

He returned to the dance floor, now throbbing with disco music. The moment she left the melee she slipped off her shoes and automatically raced toward the promontory. If she could look down from there and see the children out at sea, she would tell them to come back.

As she ran she heard the first explosion.

A profusion of color, with stars shining red, white, and blue in honor of the late president’s mother, lit up the sky. It was rapidly followed by another and then another.

Jackie was nearly above the promontory now. As the fireworks illuminated the landscape she saw Nikos’s son, the nanny, and the children bobbing about in the boat below. Madly she started to use her arms to indicate they should come back. She shouted but her voice was drowned in the next explosion and the one after, which didn’t come from the sky but from somewhere deep below her feet. She could feel the vibration. The other party guests, much farther away, did not yet realize the difference.

It took her some minutes to reach the edge of the hill to signal to the children again. The motorboat had vanished. She could see no children, only bits of wood on the sea. She had to get down there. She ran to the studio, forgetting it was locked. Frantically she ran
back to the crowd. They were laughing and dancing, unaware of the extra explosives that had been used.

“Ari, Ari, something terrible has happened, the motorboat, the children’s motorboat…it’s broken.”

Followed by a few others who had overheard, they raced to the shore. Now pieces of burning debris were visible.

From behind her Nikos appeared and Ari shouted, “Get the other boat, now!”

As they raced around to the port only the
Christina
was at anchor. The other motorboat was gone.

“My God!” cried Nikos.

“Get on the
Christina,
now,” shouted Ari.

The three of them and two of the waiters who had heard her and been right behind them raced aboard. The engine roared to life.

No one spoke; they just scanned the sea for any sign of the motorboat or its occupants.

Jackie thought that hours passed but ten minutes later, as the yacht finally nosed around to where the hidden harbor had been, they could see a large gaping hole in the rock face.

Then they heard voices.

On a wide ledge, some two hundred yards from the hole that had been gouged out by the gelignite, sat the nanny and the children, all of them. Some shouting, some crying. Alive.

Nikos and one of the waiters jumped into the sea and brought them, one by one, down to the water’s edge and swam alongside them until they reached the yacht’s stairway.

T
he adults devoted themselves to calming the children. While waiting for dry clothes to be brought to the ship, the youngsters told Ari, Jackie, and Nikos how their great adventure had begun just as the fireworks were about to start. Two American sailors and an “old, smelly man who spoke American” drew alongside. They suggested that everyone would have a far better view if they went aboard their larger vessel.

“They were very polite and friendly, and because they knew our names,” said Nikos’s son, “I thought they were friends of yours and that you wouldn’t mind if we went aboard their boat.

“The trouble was that even though they promised to tow our boat, the minute the first fireworks went off they drew away from the shore in such a hurry that our boat got left behind.”

Ashen-faced, Jackie assured him that they had done the right thing.

Ari, so relieved that the hidden mooring with its American technology was gone, thought that this was not the moment to try and discover how deeply his wife was involved. What mattered now was that the whole thing remained secret.

Of course the Swiss were really Russians. Only the U.S.S.R. would want the minicave destroyed. It was possible they would try to unmask him and Jackie as part of a propaganda coup. Ari thought it unlikely. The Soviets knew that the Americans would emerge looking good. Not only had they got closer than anyone else to monitoring everything that was moving around the Mediterranean, but with President Nixon working on détente in both Moscow and Peking, it just might backfire.

Above all else, Ari was a pragmatist. If this story did become public, he would lose his ongoing trade with the Iron Curtain countries, but revelations about the secret mooring would succeed in making him, and especially Jackie, very popular in some quarters. The West would clamor to do business with him.

However, if the Russians didn’t talk, the next twenty-four hours were vitally important if this caper was to be contained. It was up to him to see that this story didn’t spread. One glance at Jackie’s strained expression convinced him that she too wanted an information blackout. Ari guessed that she would wish to distance herself, and more importantly her children, from the whole affair.

He was right, but he had no idea how involved Jackie had been. She was nervous. Did the Russians have any inkling how long the secret mooring had been planned? She was not worried if they denounced her as a spy. She knew that her own country and the rest of the West would applaud her. But how would Ari take it? Did she care? He had betrayed her with Callas anyway. Still, she was in no position to sermonize. She waited for his accusations and was surprised when he broached the subject of the night’s events with reserve and affection.

Standing on their private deck, he poured her a glass of warm Turkish coffee and gently said, “It would surely be in everyone’s best interest to minimize this episode?”

Exhausted with relief, Jackie sank down on a couch and asked for a minute or two to think.

“Unless someone wants to make mischief”—she shivered as she remembered how long ago it had been since the Skorpios drawings
were first spread on her New Jersey table—“this story will probably only get out if the children think it is fascinating. We can swear the older ones to secrecy. But we have to give the younger Kennedy cousins, and that includes my two children, something much more enthralling than a boat ride to talk about.”

She looked up at her husband and whispered, “Ari, please ask the chef to come to the yacht’s galley and have him make pancakes, flapjacks, cookies, anything the little ones want. He should cook in front of them and they should be encouraged to help him. Then let them all sleep on the yacht. Let them have the full
Christina
experience, Ari,” she said. “By tomorrow these treats will have made their great adventure on the other motorboat recede. I can’t ask Caroline, John, and the others to lie to Rose and Janet, but it would be preferable if they bored them with how many pancakes they ate rather than the wild boat ride.

“Both my mother and my mother-in-law already worry too much about my children traveling around Europe. If they hear about this they’ll unite to stop me taking them out of the country.”

Jackie knew that her fears about Rose’s and Janet’s attitude to the children’s safety were well founded. Both grandmothers made no secret of their desire for Caroline and John to spend more time at Hyannisport or Newport. In this they underestimated her. One of the plusses of being Jackie O was her ability to travel when and where she liked. She was determined that the events of last night should not hinder her freedom. One of her pipe dreams with Guy had been to settle down in Paris or Rome.

As the adrenaline subsided, Ari felt guilty about his part in the evening’s drama. He was very fond of his stepchildren and was godfather to Nikos’s son so he felt bad that his greed had nearly brought disaster to them. Jackie’s idea was right. If the whole thing remained unexamined, he would never have to explain how two phony Swiss businessmen had fooled him.

As night turned to day the pair warily created the best story for public consumption. The rock-face explosion was caused by a firework that ignited a gas tank housed beneath the studio. The Swiss had been recalled to Zu rich for urgent business reasons.

In the morning as many of the guests, unaware of the real action, left the island, Ari pursued the rest of Jackie’s plan. A day cruise with the relatives would not only give all the in-laws something to do, it meant that the children would be busy with their cousins swimming and diving off the boat rather than chatting to the older ladies, who took up their positions beneath large hats on the upper deck.

Jackie guessed that “the old, smelly man who spoke American” was Guy. Caroline had told her that after he had carefully deposited them on dry land, he and his companions had headed swiftly out to sea. So he had been watching over them all along.

As soon as she had a moment, she put a call in to Guy at Langley. It was unsuccessful, as were the six that followed. She knew enough not to push it. He could be anywhere. She decided to wait until everyone was gone. Within a week she was alone on the island. The children accompanied her mother to Newport, Rose and the other Kennedys were Paris-bound, and Ari returned to his Athens office.

Finally, she called Harry Blackstone. When she could not reach him either she paced around the island. She even took the motorboat out to see the result of the explosion. Their bunk bed, the tiny mooring, their haven had been ripped apart. There was no trace of it. She felt doubly bereft.

When Nikos returned from attending to his master’s business affairs in the Greek capital she read his cool politeness as subtle hostility. She could understand that he might blame her for the near-death of his son but wondered what else he knew. Her nervous ness grew when she was sure that she heard two staff members talking in what sounded like Russian.

It seemed like Skorpios was telling her that it was no longer a safe sanctuary.

She wanted to leave, to get to America. Suddenly she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts and memories. Even though her intellect told her that Guy was probably on one of his typically complex and dangerous missions and couldn’t call her, her emotions were shattered. Hadn’t it been only a fortnight since they had declared
undying love for one another? What was the point in waiting here for a man who did not even return her phone calls? Maybe she had just been useful to him while the agency needed the island and it was his way of telling her that this was it. It was over.

Her self-esteem at rock bottom, she found she couldn’t bring herself to challenge Ari over Callas. All she wanted from her husband were his boats and planes to give her privacy as she returned to the security and love of her family and Hammersmith Farm.

As time passed and the Communists remained silent, Ari was delighted that his deals with Russia’s allies were no longer in jeopardy, so he became more caring toward his wife. He could understand how extra precious the children were to her. If he was away he phoned her every night, long loving calls, promising her that during the fall he would spend as much time as possible with the three of them in New York.

Ari had never asked Jackie how culpable she had been in the covert American spying operation. After the initial shock subsided he found it easy to excuse his wife for her implication in the ruse. His ego convinced him that it was inevitable. Giving it some thought, he had assumed that after their marriage the CIA had, in the nicest possible way, put pressure on her. Arrogantly Onassis presumed that as a mere woman she would not have known how to negotiate her way out.

By mid-September Jackie had tried to write Guy off and was attempting to heal her broken heart with activity. So when the call finally came, from Harry Blackstone, under orders from Guy to apologize for his absence, she was, for once, overcome with emotion. Her cool demeanor shattered after Harry asked, as Guy was somewhere he couldn’t phone, if he could write to her. She began to shake and emit soundless sobs while still holding the receiver.

For security reasons the agency arranged to have Guy’s letters hand-delivered to the former First Lady. They were long, literate, ardent outbursts. Guy explained that for the next few weeks, maybe months, these weekly missives would be all they could have together.

“But, my darling,” added Guy, “I’ve never forgotten that night at 1040 and your face when you told me how important letters are. How exciting it is to read the words of someone who is committed to you totally and longing for you every minute of every day.

“I shall be no slouch about writing and breathing love all over these pages.”

These adoring tributes made her feel more relaxed about her husband’s sexual infidelity. Instead of feeling a failure, as she had with Jack, she related Ari’s behavior to that of her father’s.

She realized that Black Jack had always exuded such an air of sexual danger and mystery, even to his daughters, that she had grown up thinking that adulterous misbehavior was the inalienable right of the attractive man in society. It had even made her more capable of understanding Jack when he first strayed, even though the thought of him in another woman’s arms had made her jealous. Her father had successfully brainwashed her into thinking, This is what men do.

Always highly disciplined herself, she realized that she began to hate Jack when he failed to follow the rules that allowed a man his mistresses. They were very clear. For a man to deserve a secret life it was essential that he be adroit in its management. Jackie loathed Jack for not understanding that as commander-in-chief this was impossible. Agreeing to this role automatically relegated clandestine affairs off-limits. Jack couldn’t postpone his adultery until such time as he was not in the White House because he was simply out of control.

Guy’s passionate letters buoyed her up as did regular visits to the psychoanalyst David Goadshem, who with professional grace and generosity helped her accept happiness.

This joy made her a better wife. With Ari she could afford to be at ease, good-humored. Without sensing why, Telis began to spend more time with her. For a marriage without trust it worked well. From Rome to Capri, from Cannes to Naples, the couple continued to fascinate the press and each other.

Jackie kept away from Paris. She did not mention Callas but regularly reminded Ari how lucky it was that the loss of his “Swiss
deal” had not embarrassed either of them because Ari had been so discreet about it.

Her comments acted as a cautionary restraint on him. He now met the diva more privately.

Jackie enjoyed being open in her letters to Guy. Honestly she told him about her fears for herself and the children, how just hearing Russian spoken still made her anxious. He told her about his son, his grandfather, and his ex-wife’s financial demands, but remained quiet on where he was and what his current commission was.

In 1971 she and her children were invited by President Nixon to return to the White House to unveil the official portraits of her husband and herself. After the disastrous evening back in 1964, Jackie had promised never to go back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but Caroline, now fourteen years old, and John, eleven, were keen to revisit their famous old home. After some debate they persuaded Jackie that tourists should see a picture of their father.

Richard Nixon, his wife Pat, and their two daughters went out of their way to make the day very special. After the official business was over, Jackie and the children joined the family for lunch. With trepidation they entered the private presidential quarters. She was happy to see the Nixons’ other lunch guests included Harry Blackstone, ex-President Johnson and Lady Bird, General Mo Dodsworth, and Hugh Mitchell.

As they sipped their drinks a six-foot man in his seventies accompanied by a tall teenager, obviously his grandson, arrived pushing a man in a wheelchair. It was Guy. Jackie was dumbstruck. He stopped right in front of her and smiled. She wanted to cry, to reach out to him, but in the presence of two U.S. presidents and her children she summoned every ounce of self-discipline. Courteously Guy shook her hand. She leaned over and kissed him on both cheeks.

“So your children thought I was smelly, did they? Old, yes, smelly, never!”

The group laughed and Caroline and John were introduced to their savior.

“I’d no idea, no idea at all, that you’d been hurt,” said Jackie.

“Sorry, Jackie,” interrupted President Nixon, “we’ve got a little piece of unfinished business here.” The president then informed the gathering that Guy was being honored as he had been badly wounded by the Russians while chasing them to their freighter. He had been in one hospital after another ever since.

After lunch Jackie and Guy finally had the chance for a more intimate chat.

They rapidly realized that their feelings hadn’t changed since their last night together on Skorpios.

“Why don’t I help you recuperate? You can come and stay with me in New Jersey. There’s no risk. Now that his Greek chanteuse isn’t performing her sensual arias en route, Ari sticks to the city.” Cautiously Guy decided it would be advisable to rent a farm nearby.