Just Jackie (20 page)

“Regardless of whether she was right or wrong,” Liz Smith wrote, “Jackie was not escaping from the highly publicized [Manchester] controversy unscathed. From now on, she would never again appear in the limelight with quite all that queenly dignity intact. Things were being said, innuendos repeated, the very deletions from the book itself being magnified and publicized to the point that it had all badly tarnished the Kennedy halo.”

Like Liz Smith, many people were puzzled by Jackie’s behavior. Why had she risked her spotless reputation to suppress a book? The answer was quite simple: It had never occurred to her that
The Death of a President
was William Manchester’s property. After all, it was she who had thought up the idea for the book, she who had chosen the author, she who had given him the most important interviews, and she who had made other witnesses available to him. She had put it all together.

In her eyes, Manchester was merely a tool for expressing her vision. When the manuscript of the book failed to reflect her version of things, she felt that she had no choice but to destroy it.

In the end, Jackie hurt herself far more than she hurt
the book. It was one of the rare instances in her life when she acted alone, not through the instrument of a powerful male figure.

Women gain power by affiliating themselves with powerful men, her father had taught her.

She would never forget that lesson again.

E
ven as her affair with Warnecke was cooling down, another man with connections to Jackie’s past had been doing his best to woo the former First Lady. His name was Aristotle Onassis.

From the instant he learned of John Kennedy’s assassination, Onassis had lost interest in Lee Radziwill and become obsessed by thoughts of Jackie. As far as he was concerned, she was not only the most famous woman in the whole world, she was the Mount Olympus of women, beyond the reach of mortal men.

Among Greeks, it was considered altogether natural and proper that powerful men should use marriageable women as a way to keep score, and that they should compete with each other to marry these women. If Onassis could win Jackie, he would be elevated in the eyes of his Greek rivals into the pantheon of modern gods. He would also command the world’s spotlight, which was his very favorite place to be.

Onassis had first met Jackie at a dinner party in Georgetown in the 1950s, when Jack Kennedy was a senator.
The Greek shipowner and the Senator’s shy wife only exchanged a few words. A year later, when Jack and Jackie were visiting Jack’s parents in the South of France, Onassis invited them aboard the
Christina
, which was docked in Monte Carlo, to meet Sir Winston Churchill.

“Churchill and Kennedy immediately flung themselves into a politically nostalgic conversation that revolved around some of the stories that JFK’s father had told him about his experiences as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s from 1937 to 1941,” wrote Frank Brady, an Onassis biographer. “… While the two men talked, Onassis gave Jackie a personal tour of the yacht.”

Jackie found the
Christina
vulgar. The dining-room walls were covered with murals of naked girls that had been painted by Vertez, a fashionable muralist of the 1930s. The china was bad and the flowers were overdone. Everywhere, there was tacky French reproduction furniture in the Napoleonic style.

“Mr. Onassis,” Jackie fibbed as she and Jack left the
Christina
, “I have fallen in love with your ship.”

Several years later, when Jackie was First Lady, she and Lee visited Greece, and Onassis was present at a cocktail party given in their honor. But Onassis spent most of his time talking to Lee—with whom he was by then sexually involved—and showed little romantic interest in Jackie.

The turning point came after the death of the infant Patrick Bouvier Kennedy. Lee informed Ari that her sister was in a deep depression. He suggested that Jackie come to Greece for a recuperative cruise.

“Tell Jack that Stas and I will chaperon you,” Lee told Jackie. “It will be perfectly proper and such fun. Oh, Jacks, you can’t imagine how terrific Ari’s yacht is, and he says we can go anywhere you want. It will do you so much good to get away for a while.”

Jackie was enthusiastic about the idea. She loved
Greek history and mythology, and she saw the opportunity to visit legendary places that she had only read about. In her usual methodical way, she began making notes for the trip on a yellow legal pad: “October 2 arrive Athens by plane … Afternoon October 2 depart Athens for boat….”

But Jack Kennedy was dead set against her going.

“For Christ’s sake, Jackie, Onassis is an international pirate,” he said.

Kennedy had a vivid imagination, and nobody had to tell him what went on during these cruises. In his womanizing days before the White House, he had chartered yachts, and had sailed the Mediterranean with his “girling” companions. They had turned those boats into floating bordellos, ferrying women back and forth, and passing them around freely.

He doubted that things would be any different on board the
Christina
. After all, hadn’t Onassis flaunted his affair with Maria Callas? Nowadays, Kennedy might occasionally frolic in the White House swimming pool with a couple of young female assistants, but that was nothing compared to Onassis’s life as a sexual predator. Or, at least, that was how Kennedy imagined Onassis’s life to be.

Kennedy’s objections went beyond mere jealousy, however. He was worried about a political backlash when it became public knowledge that Jackie was cruising the Mediterranean in the lap of luxury with the notorious Onassis. Such a trip could not come at a worse time. In the summer of 1963, Kennedy was laying plans for his reelection campaign, and what he really feared about his wife’s proposed trip on the
Christina
was that
he
would be tarred by the brush of Aristotle Onassis.

He ordered the FBI to check into reports that Onassis was violating the American embargo against Cuba by shipping oil to Castro. And he reminded Jackie that during the Eisenhower Administration, Onassis had been indieted
on criminal and civil charges of fraud in connection with United States surplus ships that he had acquired. The criminal charges were dropped, and Onassis settled the civil suit by paying a hefty fine. But the scandal continued to plague him for years, and he never quite lived down his reputation for being an amoral businessman who routinely skirted the law.

Nonetheless, Jackie insisted on going on the trip. And rather than fight her about it, Kennedy relented. But he was so concerned about the potential for negative publicity that he personally took charge of drafting a White House press release. The draft, which did everything possible to disassociate the trip from Onassis himself, said that the
Christina
had been “secured” by Prince Stanislas Radziwill from Onassis, and suggested that Jackie would be Stas’s guest, not Onassis’s.

“If asked, we should state that Onassis is not expected on the trip, at least not in the beginning,” Kennedy wrote.

In order to spare Jackie any embarrassment, Onassis told Lee that he would be more than willing to stay on shore. But when Lee conveyed this offer to her sister, Jackie said that she would not think of it.

“I could not accept his generous hospitality and then not let him come along,” Jackie explained to Lee.

For weeks Lee continued to act as a mediator between Ari and the Kennedys. To be helpful, Ari suggested to Lee that the White House issue a press release stating that his yacht had been “arranged” by Prince Radziwill, rather than “secured.”

“Mr. Onassis thought that ‘arranged’ was even vaguer,” Lee wrote Kennedy’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln. “Please check with the President.”

Finally everything was settled, and Jackie flew to Athens accompanied by Kennedy’s choice of chaperons—Undersecretary of Commerce Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. and his wife Susan. On October 4, 1963, Captain Costa
Anastassiadis, the master of the
Christina
, set sail from the port of Piraeus and headed for the island of Lesbos.

The
Christina
, a converted 2,200-ton Canadian frigate, consumed thirty tons of fuel a day, and cost nearly a million dollars a year to run, including its insurance and crew of sixty. As usual when there were guests on board, the vessel was stocked with rare vintage wines, and had a sommelier to serve them. There were two chefs—one for French cuisine, the other for Greek dishes, including Ari’s favorite,
papatsakia
, eggplant baked with onions, cheese, celery, tomatoes, and peppers. A Swedish masseur and two hairdressers were on call twenty-four hours a day. There were nine double guest cabins, each decorated in a different style and named after a different Greek island. Jackie was given “Ithaca,” which was the most lavish, and had been occupied at various times by Lady Pamela Churchill, Greta Garbo, Maria Callas, and Lee Radziwill. Her bathroom was done in solid pink marble.

Late on her first night out at sea, Jackie retired to her cabin and wrote a long, rambling letter to Jack. She began by describing her visit to the palatial villa of Greek shipowner Markos Nomikos and his wife Aspasia, and ended the letter by trying to tell Jack how much she missed him. When she finished, she read it over, and was dissatisfied. She tore it into small pieces, threw it away, and started all over again.

She wrote for the next couple of hours, filling seven pages. It was an unabashed love letter, the most passionate letter of her life. She poured out her heart, telling Jack how much she missed him, how she knew that he had suffered from the death of Patrick, how their relationship had been deepened and transformed by the baby’s death. She said that she felt there was a new, stronger bond between them. She loved him more than ever before. She
promised to be a better wife, to campaign with him whenever and wherever he wanted. She wrote:

The next morning, she handed the sealed letter to the
Christina’s
purser and asked him to mail it at their next port of call. The love letter would be postmarked October 6—six weeks and six days before her husband’s assassination.

From Lesbos the
Christina
made its way to Crete. Still, none of the guests had laid eyes on Onassis. He had decided to remain below decks in his cabin, discreetly out of sight, as a concession to Jackie’s reputation, and to John Kennedy’s political ambitions. Finally, after they had docked at Smyrna, the birthplace of Onassis, Jackie sent Franklin Roosevelt Jr. to implore him to join the others. To everyone’s delight, their host sent back word that he would act as their guide.

And with that, Aristotle Onassis made his entrance.

H
e was a short man, not even five feet six, with a barrel chest, thick forearms, and the face of a gangster. He gave off the impression that he was both dangerous and disreputable, and this sinister aura was enhanced by the tinted glasses he wore to protect his weak eyes.

Jackie had heard all the rumors about Onassis—how he was a skirt-chaser, a star-fucker, and a loud vulgarian. He might not be the richest man in the world, people said, but he was second to none when it came to fraud, deceit, and double-dealing. It therefore came as a great surprise to Jackie to discover that Onassis was nothing like his reputation.

He turned out to be the most completely sociable person she had ever met, not excepting Jack Kennedy, who was no slouch in that department. Ari struck her as a man with a conflicted personality, as insecure and vulnerable as he was egotistical and grandiose. One moment, he could be brash, exuberant, and effervescent; the next, he was plunged into a mood of deep melancholy. He was like a chameleon, constantly changing to adapt to his surroundings.