Prologue: The Letter
On Oct. 10, 1975, in the massive office atop Rockefeller Plaza, Robert F. Kennedy sat behind his neatly arranged oak desk. Reading the President's letter for the umpteenth time, he was shocked that it happened so soon. His relationship with the President, the man who had reached out to him a few years earlier, after he had already become a public figure, was complicated, though cordial. Unlike his famously vitriolic one with Lyndon Johnson. Whenever the late President was mentioned, Robert laughed harshly, and in the words of his protege "was one of the few things which provoked him to intense anger". "The unprincipled S.O.B." was perhaps the most printable. Bobby was not a man to regret decisions, and he did not now. The painful decision he had made many years earlier was now behind him. His visitor was less weighed down. The young Conservative MP, just completing his first eighteen months in Parliament, was jubilant at the rise of the man who became his mentor, and eventually repaid his debts "with interest and extras", Robert gleefully mentioned later. "What's your opinion?" The thirty year-old opposite him had been a transatlantic protege since they had first met in 1966. An Oxford Law graduate, Magna Cum Laude, like Bobby, also valedictorian, participant in clubs, including the Young Conservative Association, where he met the dynamic junior minister who was now Leader of the Opposition and poised to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. "Well, you've gotten everything you could possibly want and more. A first-name relationship with the President of the United States, a large and happy family, great wealth, and membership among all the prominenti clubs. I'd say take it." As he knew, Robert Kennedy had always believed that there was more to life than "adding zeros to bank accounts", or as he once said to an offending reporter: "I could be sitting poolside drinking tequilas all day, being a stay-at-home father. When you've been so blessed, you have to give back. After all, whether I drive another Mustang or Jaguar, will that cure the ills of the country?" He chuckled, then spoke up: "Would you like a light?" As the Cuban cigar ignited, as it did only on special occasions, he thought of Jackie. During May 1962, in a rage, she had forbidden the "contraband" in the house. What did a man have to do to indulge some guilty pleasures? The road he had wished to take had been closed. By an idiotic gaffe committed by a man he had revered, the actions of another with whom he had only recently recovered their former close friendship, and pure bad timing. At the time the President had extended him the initial offer, many were shocked, though not his close friends, including, as of recently, the man sitting across from him. Like Bobby, he had gone through exile, though not the personal sort, rather political. At one point, his protege had referred to Sir Robert Walpole, the Mackenzie King-like first Prime Minister, who would later surpass his record in 1948. Bobby had said then "he was the real Ruthless Robert". As another acquaintance, like Bobby, a lawyer who had graduated from law school Magna Cum Laude, President Ferdinand Marcos, had said: "Robert, as you and I know, ruthlessness is a virtue, not a vice in politics." That man personified it more than most. As he sent his visitor away with good wishes, Robert Kennedy thought back to the day when he made the choice that had narrated his adult life. It was when he was still at Harvard. That day, Feb. 10, 1946. The "most confused, hectic one of my life", as he would write later, after his protege had repaid all his debts "with interest and goodwill".