Killing Kennedy

of the job.
    John Kennedy likes to appear vigorous in public and often risks his life by wading deep into crowds to shake hands. These forays terrify his security detail. Any crazed lunatic with a gun and an agenda can easily take a shot during moments like those. Should that happen, each agent is prepared to place his body between the bullet and the president, sacrificing his own life for the good of the country.
    It helps that the agents truly like JFK. He knows them by name and is fond of bantering with them. Despite this familiarity, the men of the Secret Service never forget that John Kennedy is the president of the United States. Their sense of decorum is evident in the respectful way they address Kennedy, a man whose intimate life they well know. Face-to-face, they call him “Mr. President.” When two agents talk about him, he is known as “the boss.” And when speaking to visitors or guests, the detail refers to him as “President Kennedy.”
    These Secret Service agents are no less fond of Jackie. The agent in charge of her detail, six-foot-tall Clint Hill (code name Dazzle), has become her close friend and confidant.
    Thus it is almost natural that Secret Service protection be extended to the Mona Lisa . The passionate crowds who will surround da Vinci’s painting are similar to the throngs who scream for JFK and Jackie on their travels around the world.
    The painting sails to America in her own first-class suite aboard the SS France , where French agents guard her around the clock. She travels by ship rather than plane to safeguard against the possibility of a crash that would destroy the painting forever. Should the luxury liner go down, the special metal case containing the Mona Lisa is designed to float. Only the captain of the SS France is told that the Mona Lisa is on board, and security is so intense as she is brought on that guests speculate that the metal box actually holds a secret nuclear device. But when word finally leaks out about the box’s true contents, passengers transform the ship into a nonstop Mona Lisa party, complete with special pastry cakes and drinking games.
    Upon docking in New York, the Mona Lisa is driven to Washington, D.C., by a special Secret Service motorcade that does not stop for any reason. Once again, the four-hour drive is chosen over a simple flight, due to fears of a crash. Secret Service snipers are stationed on rooftops along the way, and Secret Service agent John Campion personally rides next to the Mona Lisa in the black “National Gallery of Art” van. The vehicle is equipped with extra heavy springs to absorb road shocks that could chip flecks of pigment from the canvas.
    Upon arrival in Washington, the Mona Lisa is locked behind steel doors in a climate-controlled vault that keeps the temperature at a perfect 62 degrees at all hours. Should the electricity fail, a backup generator will automatically take over. Even in the vault, the Secret Service maintains its vigilance by monitoring her on closed-circuit television.
    Their protection of da Vinci’s masterpiece is extraordinary. Yet there is one huge difference between protecting the president and protecting this precious cargo: the Mona Lisa is just a painting. Angry citizens have damaged her on at least three occasions—a vandal once tried to spray-paint her, another attacked her with a knife, and a third threw a ceramic mug at her—and, of course, she was once stolen. But Lisa Gherardini herself has been in the grave for almost five centuries. There is no way she can be shot dead.
    The same cannot be said of the president.
    That is why the Secret Service never lets its guard down.
    Not yet, at least.
    *   *   *
    “Politics and art, the life of action and the life of thought, the world of events and the world of imagination, are one,” John Kennedy tells the distinguished crowd on hand for the unveiling of the Mona Lisa . The words come out as “Moner Liser” in his clipped Boston accent.
    The president and First Lady have never been more popular than they are right now, and never more synonymous with America herself. Also, they are closer than ever as a couple. The Secret Service has noticed that Kennedy seems less interested in other women. Friends have seen the couple shift their relationship from the professional formality that defined the first two years in office. There is a new tenderness to their time together and, in the way they talk to each other, a transformation that has