After fifteen minutes there was no sign of President Kennedy. Dennis said to George: “Go and make certain Dave Powers knows where we are, will you?” Powers was the president’s personal assistant.

“Sure,” said George. Seven years at Harvard and I’m a messenger boy, he thought.

Before the meeting with Bobby, the president had been due to drop in on a cocktail party for celebrity supporters. George made his way to the main house and followed the noise. Under the massive chandeliers in the East Room, a hundred people were into their second hour of drinking. George waved to Verena’s parents, Percy Marquand and Babe Lee, who were talking to someone from the Democratic National Committee.

The president was not in the room.

George looked around and spotted a kitchen entrance. He had learned that the president often used staff doors and back corridors, to avoid constantly being buttonholed and delayed.

He went through the staff door and found the presidential party right outside. The handsome, tanned president, only forty-four years old, wore a navy blue suit with a white shirt and a skinny tie. He looked tired and edgy. “I can’t be photographed with an interracial couple!” he said in a frustrated tone, as if forced to repeat himself. “I’d lose ten million votes!”

George had seen only one interracial couple in the ballroom: Percy Marquand and Babe Lee. He felt outraged. So the liberal president was scared to be photographed with them!

Dave Powers was an amiable middle-aged man with a big nose and a bald head, about as different from his boss as could be imagined. He said to the president: “What am I supposed to do?”

“Get them out of there!”

Dave was a personal friend, and not scared to let Kennedy know when he was irritated. “What am I going to tell them, for Christ’s sake?”

Suddenly George stopped being angry and started to think. Was this an opportunity for him? Without forming any definite plan, he said: “Mr. President, I’m George Jakes, I work for the attorney general. May I take care of this problem for you?”

He watched their faces and knew what they were thinking. If Percy Marquand was going to be insulted in the White House, how much better it would be if the offender were black.

“Hell, yes,” said Kennedy. “I’d appreciate that, George.”

“Yes, sir,” said George, and he went back into the ballroom.

But what was he going to do? He racked his brains as he crossed the polished floor toward where Percy and Babe stood. He had to get them out of the room for fifteen or twenty minutes, that was all. What could he tell them?

Anything but the truth, he guessed.

When he reached the conversational group, and touched Percy Marquand gently on the arm, he still didn’t know what he was going to say.

Percy turned, recognized him, smiled, and shook his hand. “Everybody!” he said to the people around him. “Meet a Freedom Rider!”