31 POLITICS

Heeding the words of the Authentic, Jonathan sold the rural farm, and they moved to the West Coast of America—to the Hollywood Heights area of Los Angeles, living just off Camrose Drive. It was an affluent neighbourhood, and it had been since it was developed, with Frank Lloyd Wright designing a number of the homes. 

They had taken the Authentic’s advice and moved to a vibrant area, to the same region of southern California, as did more than 200 other Devi. The autumn of 1967 was a change for them. The air in September in Los Angeles was warmer than the summer in Quebec.

Evelyn was appointed the Colette of the area, and Jonathan, with the assistance of another Devi, opened a real estate office. With that company, sales were not as crucial as moving people in and out of the city by buying cover houses and blending in with the elite. The neighbourhood was also ideal for people coming and going discreetly but openly at any hour.

“We should have moved here years ago, Eve.”

“The war years would have been interesting, along with the film noir lifestyle just before it.”

“Why stop having yours before then? Wouldn’t you have loved to have partied with Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, Tom Mix, and Theda Bara?”

“Theda Bara? I think we both could have done that,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

Eve walked out to the patio beside the pool, tossing off her shoes and opening the top three buttons on her sundress. “This is too much. I think my head hurts.”

“I could have diagnosed that years ago.”

“No, Jonathan, this is different. All the Devi in the area are noticeable. It is too bad you guys cannot feel the effect; it is like a warm, soft massage in the back of my head.”

“It is your lizard brain, the evolutionary remnants of the amygdala, or lizard brain. It is thought to be a base emotion receptor typically associated with detecting threats and processing fear. Or, I guess with you, female Devi, other emotional and psychological concepts as well.”

“There is something else too. Here we are in a house that would have been a palace at my birth. We are discussing evolution as if it were as common as a sunset. And we both remember the ridicule and religious outrage when Darwin published ' Origins.”

Men will be on the Moon soon. Submarines, nuclear weapons and power, jet airliners, coloured televisions, and even air conditioning and refrigeration—I cannot believe what I have seen.

And you, oh my god. You have four hundred more years of this confusion to process than I do. How do you do that? Keep sane?”

“Well, as you point out, my sanity is often up for debate. But before I met you, the biggest changes I would say the wide spread application of gunpowder. Then the reformation and the discovery and rape and pillage of the new world. Not the pinnacle period of human existence.”

“Surely there were some good times?”

“Well, the Renaissance, I guess, was okay. And the printing press, steam engine, cotton gin, and the beginnings of photography were a bit better.”

“Is that it? Is that how you see your five hundred years? The mumbling of a few words?”

“Oh, I forgot one thing. Calculus. Thank you, Mr Newton.”

“You are an insufferable ass.”

“Thank you, Madame. I love you, too. But I am too gentlemanly to say what I think.”

Their lives in California were busy; there was always someone visiting and someone to visit. A Devi relocation ‘fire’ to deal with. Socially, parties and shmooze-fests with movers and shakers, running into minor actors and wannabes trying to impress them. As they travelled in the mid-upper realms of society circles again, many people mistook them for players in the entertainment industry. 

“I cannot believe the sun. Yes, we had sun in Albury and Lisbon, but here it is different. The beaches, the choice of lifestyles, the amazing American consumer culture. The cars, the money and the people.”

“The sun is like Algiers or Cairo, but I think as the beaches and the sea are to the west, it gives the impression of more sun and a longer day.”

They celebrated Christmas with a beach BBQ with other Devi, and one of the positive topics of conversation was the “image culture” of California. Many well-known actors and actresses seemed not to age. The climate, make-up and even plastic surgery kept the stars burning brightly. No one ever commented on anyone’s lack of aging. For the Devi, it was the perfect location.

1968 started as one of their quietest and least eventful years. They agreed with the laid-back American lifestyle.

Now, they travelled out of choice rather than necessity or duty. In January, they went to Hawaii, where they met with former Australian Colette, Lucy Boudreau. She was now living and organizing Devi' affairs there.

Out of the ten days they spent in the Aloha State, not more than two hours were Devi-related. Lucy and her companion, Oscar Barry, introduced them to their favourite recreational past-times: scuba diving and snorkeling.  

In February, they were invited to attend Richard Nixon's first fundraiser in California since he announced his campaign in New Hampshire.

With a bit of a disquieting look on her face. Eve said. “He is a strange little man, very charismatic, and those eyes, I felt he could see into my soul.”

“If he could do that, I would be bailing my wife out of jail right about now.”

“His wife is pleasant enough, but should we get involved in politics? Remember what Favreau once said about being neutral? Oh, Lord, that was what? Almost forty years ago? No, almost 50 years. This Devi memory recall thing is a blessing sometimes, and other times, not so much.”

“If we write a check occasionally, that is still being pretty neutral.” 

 The American political season or circus ground on for the next few months. And true to Jonathan’s suggestions of supporting both sides, as if it made any real difference. He knew that the contact he made in the White House in 1940 was still operating in the shadows and, to an extent, being a puppet master.

However, to keep things balanced, he and Eve attended the celebration at the Ambassador Hotel, where Robert Kennedy addressed his supporters and celebrated his primary wins the previous day in South Dakota and California. Shortly after midnight on June 5, as Kennedy was about to leave the building. The crowd had shuffled people towards the kitchen area. He stopped to speak with the gentleman beside Eve. Then he shook their hands, thanked them for their support, and commented on her dress, a black and white polka dot dress with ruffles around the neck.

He walked into the crowd, and in a minute, Kennedy was hit three times, and five other people were wounded. An assailant fired into the crowd with a .22 caliber revolver.

Johnathan grabbed her hand and exited the ballroom as quickly as possible, exiting the hotel before security locked down the building.

They left not only to protect their identities, but the feelings and the emotional power of the shock and dread in the building were almost overwhelming.

“Oh my God, John, what happened? What was that?’

“History being made and a dream dying.” He replied.

“I have never felt that kind of a rush. The power swept over me. It was almost sexual in intensity, and just for saying that, I feel ashamed.”

“In war, that feeling is the same, but then you have time and can brace yourself for it. Tonight, the suddenness and the immediacy and proximity were almost crushing.”

“What now, John? What do we do?”

“Go home.”

The FBI, the Secret Service and various California police agencies combed over the images of the assassination. They requested that anyone who had been there with a camera volunteer their prints of the films. All the media pictures and television footage were collected. People in the photos of the melee in the kitchen from that night were questioned dozens of times. They identified their friends, people they did fund-raising with, photographers, and media people who pointed out one another. But no one knew the woman in the black and white polka dot dress.

That dress would never be found. Two nights after the event, it was burned in a small backyard pit, and the ashes were strewn down three miles of Santa Monica Boulevard.

Jonathan thought Eve looked good with her shorter, darker red-dyed hair. Although she looked different, he thought she looked a lot like Ann-Margret.

“They did a great job on my hair. Are you sure this is enough? What is someone recognizing me? We have hundreds of friends in the city.”

“And thousands of young starlets and wannabes live here, all waiting for their big break. The authorities could think Debbie-Lou Cornhusker has left the city and is hiding in a Nebraska farm.”

“Are you sure?”

“We signed nothing, and no one took our pictures. If need be, we can get a dozen or two dozen Devi to say we were at a poolside key party.”

“You are not serious?”

“What about the lie or the party?”

“John, sometimes I think I don’t know what planet you are from.”

Nixon won the election, and through some error of not being omitted from the fundraiser list of five months previous, they were shown as significant campaign donors and invited by Nixon to travel to Washington to attend his inauguration. They were staying at the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue. They had arrived on January 18^, two days before the inauguration.

On the next day, returning to their room after breakfast, just as the elevator doors were closing, a hand reached in to stop the doors.

“Sorry about that; I am in a hurry, too.” 

“Oh, no problem. What floor?” Eve asked.

“Six”

“We are on our way there.”

The stranger looking straight ahead at the blank well said, “Jonathan, a long time since we met, I think the last time we met was with FDR and Frank Knox, the then Secretary of the Navy, just about lunchtime in early March.”

Jonathan instinctively stepped in between the stranger and Evelyn, looking at the man directly. “You, you son of an old dog!

Evelyn, I would like you to meet James J. Calderone, paper-pushing right-hand man to the rich, famous and powerful.”

“You are too kind, John; I am only doing my duty.”

“March 1, it was March the first, Knox was coming in to talk about a bill from some hayseed from Missouri for a Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. And saying that, the Department of the Navy agreed with this Truman fellow.”

The conversation continued in their room.

“It worked out well for me. FDR dropped me in as a special liaison, opening the door for me to work with Leslie Groves.”

Evelyn tapped him on the shoulder, “You worked on the Manhattan Project?”

“Yup, I was in as thick as thieves with Oppenheimer. Fermi, Teller, Bethe, Szilard, Seaborg, Feynman,”

Jonathan shook his head. “That is pretty high-end stuff.”

“What were you doing in England?”

“Just dancing away, my days at the Foreign Office.”

“Dancing how?”

“Cryptography at first, and then using that knowledge to work with Devi in occupied nations.”

“That was a contribution of major importance.”

“Yes, it was. George V made me a member of the Order of Bath, which came with a title, so you, Calderone, should be addressing me as ‘Sir Jonathan’, got that?”

This is America; we tossed that old-titled stuff into the harbour in Boston years ago. And I know it. I was there.”

“Ahh, 1773, I was living it up in St Lucia with LaJade.”

Calderone whipped his head back and pointed back and forth between Johnathan and Eve.

“Evie knows all about that, and we met LaJade a while back.”

“And you lived to talk about it?”

Eve looked at him and kissed him, “I can declaw any black panther.”