Killing Kennedy

From both a privacy and a security standpoint, renting the home makes perfect sense.
    There is another reason Jackie chose Brambletyde: she doesn’t want any of the press taking photos of her pregnant. She doesn’t even go into town, letting the head of her Secret Service detail, Clint Hill, pick up the tabloids she secretly loves to read.
    Today is Wednesday. Hill is taking the day off. The veteran agent is vigilant in his protection of the First Lady. He works six days a week, sometimes sixteen hours a day. But now Special Agent Paul Landis is taking his place. Landis stands near the riding ring, keeping a trained eye on the First Lady while Special Agent Lynn Meredith, of the “kiddie detail,” hovers nearby to protect Caroline.
    Suddenly Jackie feels a sharp pain in her abdomen. Then another. Soon the pain won’t stop. “Mr. Landis, I don’t feel well,” she says, sensing a crisis. “I think you’d better take me back to the house.”
    “Of course, Mrs. Kennedy.” But there is no urgency in Landis’s movements.
    “Right now, Mr. Landis,” Jackie commands. Her breathy voice has a sharp edge.
    Landis rushes to the car and holds open the rear door. Jackie’s face has a fearful look as she slides into the backseat. The pain is coming from her womb. Her growing panic is caused by painful memories of the two troubled earlier pregnancies that ended in the loss of children. Jackie miscarried in 1955. Her second pregnancy resulted, on August 23, 1956, in a stillborn baby girl, whom she and her husband christened Arabella. The loss of even a single child is staggering. Losing two, even more so. But to lose a third baby, particularly after delivering two healthy children, would be intolerable for Jackie.
    So although the First Lady is just a few short weeks away from a full-term delivery, she takes nothing for granted when it comes to her unborn baby’s welfare.
    Caroline stays with Agent Meredith as Landis drives eighty miles an hour down the narrow road, at the same time radioing ahead to have a doctor and a helicopter on standby.
    The First Lady’s anxiety increases as it becomes clearer that she’s going into labor. “Please go faster,” she commands.
    The time has come to get to a hospital—immediately. Should Landis be unable to get there in time, it’s very likely that the Secret Service agent will be forced to pull over and personally deliver the president’s child in the backseat of a government sedan.
    Agent Landis presses down harder on the gas.
    *   *   *
    In Washington, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy confronts a different kind of problem. Polls show that his popularity in the crucial state of Texas has dipped to an all-time low—and continues to drop. The state is growing increasingly conservative and Republican. Lyndon Johnson has lost all political power there. This hurts not just in potential electoral votes, but in the wallet, too. Texas has long been a major source of Democratic campaign funding, thanks to the deep pockets of its wealthy oilmen and other big-business people. And once upon a time, LBJ could be counted upon to deliver that money. But now Texas governor John Connally, a conservative Democrat, holds the purse strings—and behind the scenes, he is not a big Kennedy fan.
    Therein lies the problem: JFK has been pushing Johnson to arrange a fund-raising trip to Texas. But Johnson knows that such a trip will reveal his lack of clout, making it obvious to the president that Connally will be the man delivering the big donors to the Kennedy campaign. This will further erode any chance of Johnson remaining on the ticket.
    Making matters even more complicated, not only has LBJ deliberately avoided arranging any trip by the president to Texas, but Governor Connally is also trying to prevent Kennedy from coming to the state. Both are Democrats, but the governor knows that any public appearance he makes with Kennedy will cost him dearly with Texas voters.
    But John Kennedy needs Texas and its money. He is determined to make the trip a reality.
    That is the problem hanging over the president’s head on the morning of August 7. In an instant, it will be almost completely forgotten.
    *   *   *
    Secret Service agent Jerry Behn approaches the desk of Evelyn Lincoln. It is 11:37 A.M.
    Special Agent Behn discreetly informs the president’s secretary that Jackie is being airlifted to the hospital at Otis Air Force Base, located near Falmouth, Massachusetts, on the western