Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 11 (23 page)

“I do. And that’s the funny thing.”

“What is?”

“I’m absolutely convinced that these creatures exist, that a saucer crashed—and yet my instinct is, you shouldn’t go with this story.”

Someone behind us honked: my chauffeur, this hot-rodder in a homburg, had been sitting through the green light.

Pearson got moving again, not driving so rapidly, now. “But we have testimony from multiple eye-witnesses—”

“None of whom will come forward. None of whom will allow themselves to be identified as anything more than a ‘source.’”

Pearson was shaking his head. “You said it yourself: this could be the biggest story of the millennium—and if it isn’t, why did the Air Force try to shut you up?”

“Me and how many others, back in Roswell? I wasn’t the first one in that ‘guesthouse.’”

“You have to talk to Forrestal about this.”

“What? Have you gone mad?”

We were rounding the spherical lawn of the temple-like Lincoln Memorial, now, and endlessly circled it for the rest of our talk, like a plane never coming in for its landing.

“No,” Pearson said emphatically, “you’re going to talk to the madman. It comes back to Majestic Twelve, the group Forrestal and Truman created after the Roswell saucer crash.”

“Do you have proof that group exists?”

“I have photostats of briefing documents, indicating it does, but I haven’t been able to verify them—they’re marked ‘Majic-12, Top Secret,’ which limits my ability to do that.”

I smirked at him. “You mean, ’cause you could go to Leavenworth for possessing them?”

A small facial tic, in his upper lip, kicked in. “They may be forgeries. This still may all be an elaborate hoax designed to discredit me …”

“Are you important enough, Drew, even in your own mind, to imagine that all of those people in Roswell are part of a government disinformation campaign to make a sap out of you?”

He frowned, the tic jumping.
“What
kind of information, did you say?”

“Disinformation—government lies posing as the truth. Sort of like when you published that story about Forrestal’s cowardice in that jewel robbery.”

His eyebrows rose, and so did his homburg. “Then let’s suppose it’s not misinformation … disinformation, as you put it, black propaganda—let’s say you and your Roswell witnesses are right: a saucer crashed in the desert, with a crew consisting of beings from another planet….”

“Let’s say.”

Pearson’s voice grew hushed, like a scoutmaster telling his boys a ghost story around a campfire; he was driving slowly now, as we circled Honest Abe, as if the Buick were running out of gas—but Pearson sure wasn’t.

“Now let’s think about Jim Forrestal’s behavior,” he said, “from July 1947 until today, a frazzled individual already suffering from the civilian equivalent of battle fatigue, saddled with a wife herself ill with alcoholism and schizophrenia. Put in the hands of that ticking time bomb of a man—a man charged with the safety of his country—such momentous new information, such a consequential new responsibility …”

I laughed, once. “You mean, picture Jim Forrestal as one of the few key members of government who knows we’ve had a visit from outer space.”

He nodded emphatically; the facial tic jumped. “Yes, from creatures whose intentions are unknown to us, and, coming out of this recent devastating war as we have, wouldn’t it be natural for Secretary of Defense Forrestal to consider hostile objectives a likely possibility? Suppose … just suppose now, Nathan … that Jim Forrestal’s paranoia isn’t really directed at Mother Russia.”

“Maybe he’s spooked not by the Reds, but the Red Planet Mars, you mean?”

“Precisely. Maybe the ‘they’ he thinks are out to get him are little gray or green or silver men. Maybe the invasion he’s running in the streets announcing is not from the Soviet Union, but from beyond the stars?”

“Yeah, put that in your column. Go with that. And I’ll be visiting
you
at Bethesda.”

Suddenly he pulled over, almost opposite the steps up to the memorial. “Nathan, you’re going to see Forrestal today, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, never mind the poetry, man! Ask him about Roswell. Ask him about Majic-12.”

For all its granite grandeur, the U.S. naval hospital at Bethesda had its cramped aspects; its four wings were rather small, and the floors of its impressive, impractical tower provided limited patient space. The air-conditioned, disinfectant-scented sixteenth floor had a modest capacity of thirteen; only ten patients were currently in residence, however, as the former Secretary of Defense occupied 1618, a large, square double room from which the second bed had been removed, with the smaller adjacent room reserved for doctors and orderlies assigned twenty-four-hour watch on their important patient.

After checking in with the Navy medical corpsman who sat watch outside his door, I found Forrestal seated by the window, draped rather elegantly in a burgundy silk dressing gown with a yellow rope-style, fringed sash, legs crossed, exposing cream-color pajamas and brown leather slippers. All he lacked was an ascot. Smoking his trademark pipe, sitting back in a padded wooden chair, iron-gray hair neatly cut, clean-shaven, arms folded, entirely self-composed, he was staring out the window at a view of the hospital’s busy driveway and landscaped grounds.

The room seemed even larger than it was, due to that second bed’s absence, and conveyed a sterile emptiness; the walls were a faint peach color, and the sparse furnishings included a writing desk, a couple chairs, a nightstand and a hospital bed, cranked into upright position. A curtain gathered at the wall indicated where the double room would be divided, when not occupied by such an illustrious guest. Forrestal had been here, what? Seven weeks now? So there were no flowers, though on a small table against the right wall countless “Get Well” cards stood like little soldiers.

I’d stepped just inside the room, hat in hand. “Jim? It’s Nate.”

Still seated, the rather small man glanced my way and his Jimmy Cagney-like face, with its boxing-flattened nose, regarded me blankly for an instant, before the pencil-line mouth broke into the widest smile I’d ever seen him bestow. He almost leapt to his feet and charged over to meet me midway, where we shook hands, his grip as firm as ever.

“Nate Heller,” he said. His eyes were bright, his manner ebullient. “I’d been hoping you’d stop by, at some point, on this pleasure cruise.”

I tossed the paper bag with the poetry book in it on his nightstand, next to another book,
Peace of Faith
by Fulton J. Sheen.

“You look fine,” I told him. “How much more of this resting up can you stand?”

“Dr. Raines says within a month I’ll be walking out of here.” Forrestal pulled a chair up for me, opposite his, by the window, and we both sat; I noticed the window had been fitted with a heavy steel screen, the security-style that locked with a key. He noticed me noticing.

“That’s to keep me from jumping out the window,” he said cheerfully, teeth tight around the pipe stem. “That and the ’round-the-clock surveillance. Interesting way to treat a man with symptoms of paranoia, don’t you think? Watch him constantly?”

I had to smile. “I hear paranoia is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

His eyes tightened. “True enough, and I have no complaint about the medical treatment I’ve received, but I do resent, bitterly, the nonsensical extremes these restrictions have been carried to … and not entirely for my own benefit, in my opinion.”

“What do you mean, Jim?”

He gestured rather forcefully with the pipe. “This is not paranoia speaking, Nate, nor schizophrenia or any other mental disorder. These psychotherapy sessions, which were on a daily basis until recently, served to inspire me to do my own self-analysis of the feelings of persecution that brought me to this room. Do you remember, at the golf course, when we talked briefly about religion?”

“Sure, that I was a Jew but didn’t follow the faith, and you’d been raised Catholic and had rejected it.”

He sat forward, his eyes intense. “Yes. I believe I’ve long harbored a guilt, however deeply buried, for rejecting the faith my mother worked so diligently to instill within me. I’ve wondered if, perhaps, the root cause of my troubles is my break with the Church, that I’ve been punished … or have punished myself … for being a bad Catholic. Consequently, I’ve found myself working my way back to my boyhood faith.”

I nodded toward his nightstand. “I noticed the book by Monsignor Sheen.”

“I bring this up, Nate, not by way of soul-searching, but to demonstrate that, even with my thinking clear again, I’m more convinced than ever I’m being watched, controlled.”

Until he’d made this statement, I’d been feeling good about Forrestal’s condition; but now my neck was starting to tingle.

He must have sensed that and his smile was somewhat chagrined. “No, not by Russians, or Zionists, Nate—by my own government.”

Now that I could believe.

Folding his arms again, he sat back, took a few puffs of the pipe, then spoke with clarity and confidence. “My brother Henry, who’s been to visit me frequently, cherishes this rekindling of my Catholicism, and consequently has asked my doctors to allow a priest—a Father Sheehy—to visit me. And they have refused.”

“Why in hell?” What sort of doctor denied a mental patient the guidance and solace a visit by a clergyman might bring?

Forrestal arched an eyebrow. “I asked both Dr. Raines and Dr. Bernstein, and their answers were the same: reopening the Catholic issue, at this time, would be too ‘disquieting’ to me.”

“What do you think the real reason is?”

The thin line of a mouth formed the faintest of smiles. “Can’t you guess, Nate? I’ve always admired your shrewd, if unschooled, analytical mind.”

I thought about it for a few moments, then said, “You entering a Catholic confessional would risk disclosure of sensitive national security issues.”

“Bull’s-eye,” Forrestal said, eyes twinkling. His gaze fell upon the steel screen again, beyond which a sunny May afternoon seemed to beckon. “I could never bring myself to jump out a window, anyway—I’ve always had a mild case of vertigo. And slashing my wrists would be entirely too messy. I believe I’d opt for sleeping pills or perhaps hang myself.”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

“A master of the art not recognizing sarcasm?” he chuckled. “Disappointed in you, Nate…. They’re concerned about me attempting suicide? And yet I’m on the sixteenth floor, when most of the mental patients at Bethesda receive treatment in a one-story wing … and they are reluctant to have me rekindle my Catholic faith, a faith that would include the very rejection of suicide as a mortal sin. What do you make of that?”

“There’s no paranoia in those suspicions; you’d be nuts not to think that way.”

He gestured with the pipe again. “They had my house bugged, too, when I hired you.”

“Jim, I had it thoroughly swept …”

“The government knew you were coming, didn’t they? They knew I’d hired you?”

That was true: the Secret Service certainly did.

Forrestal shrugged. “They took them out. And they would’ve put them back again, if I hadn’t … slipped out of control, first.”

“You seem fine to me now, Jim.”

Nodding, he said, “I’ll be all right; I’m pulling out of it. And, to give the bastards credit due them, they are lessening up on the restrictions. I’m allowed to leave this room, visit with other patients, flirt with the nurses … and I have full run of the pantry, across the hall. Here, I’ll show you—let me play host.”

Noting that the Naval medical corpsman was not at his post, I followed the silk-robed Forrestal—who left his pipe behind—across the hall to a much smaller room, a galley-like pantry with a single table, counter and cupboards, and a refrigerator. A pot of coffee sat, steaming fragrantly, on a hot plate.

“Care for a cup?” he asked.

“Thanks. One lump of sugar.”

As he prepared the coffee for himself and me, Forrestal said, “This is a rather nice privilege…. They call this the diet kitchen, and of all of the patients, I alone have been granted its use—I can wander over and fix myself a snack, pour myself a cup of coffee, as I please…. Such are the small pleasures of the incarcerated.”

As I sat at the chrome-legged, porcelain-topped table, which was about half again as big as your average kitchen table, I noticed the pantry’s single window did not have the tamper-proof screen of Forrestal’s room; in fact, of the two hooks that fastened it in place, one was broken.

He was asking, “Can I get you a cup of soup, or a sandwich?”

“No, no thanks, Jim. Just had lunch.”

Sitting with his cup of coffee, he placed it before him, then patted his stomach, just above the yellow sash. “You should have seen the steak I put away, at noon. It’s nice to have my appetite back.”

“You look good. You look fit.”

“I’ve been exercising.” He sipped his coffee, glanced about the tiny room. “There’s nothing wrong with me that not being cooped up here, on the sixteenth floor, wouldn’t cure. How I’d like to be outdoors, with friends, visiting an estate, walking in the sun … soon, very soon.”

“How is Jo holding up under all this?”

The tight line tightened in an unconvincing smile. “Splendidly. She, uh, hasn’t been around much—hospitals depress her. I know she’ll be sorry she missed you, she’s very fond of you.” A quiet sadness slipped into his eyes. “She’s gone off to Europe, on vacation.”

Her husband a mental patient, confined because of his suicidal tendencies, and Jo was off to Europe. Somehow I wasn’t surprised.

“My son Michael’s over there, you know, in Paris,” he was saying. “Mike has a post with the Economic Cooperation Administration. Working for the Marshall Plan.”

“How’s Peter doing?”

“Very well, thank you—you just missed him. He spent half an hour with me, after lunch; he’s living in Morris House, looking after it for me. He’s at Princeton, doing very well—just started a summer job as a copyboy at the
Post.”

His pride in his sons buoyed him; this was the most talkative I’d ever seen Forrestal, and I was relieved to see him doing so well. I hated to forge ahead into troubling territory, but I felt I had to.

“Jim, can I ask about something you mentioned to me, when you were—having your difficulties?”

“Certainly, Nate.” He took another sip of his coffee. “I like to think we’ve gone beyond a client/employer relationship. You were at my side when the chips were down.”

Well, that made me feel shitty.

But I asked, “What happened at Roswell?”

His expression froze. Then, slowly, he shook his head. “Nate, I shouldn’t have mentioned that to you. That’s a delicate, and classified, area.”

“I figure it must have something to do with the Air Force,” I said.

He said nothing, expressionless, though his eyes were alive.

I had a sip of my coffee, which wasn’t bad at all, and pressed on. “You seemed to have, well … lost your grip, after Symington rode home with you that last day at the Pentagon. He said he had something important to talk to you about, and, after all, he’s the Secretary of the Air Force—”

Forrestal raised a palm, in a stop gesture. “Nate, I’ll say only that the defense of one’s country sometimes necessitates unfortunate choices.” His gaze fell; he was looking at his own reflection in his coffee cup. “I’ll go to my grave feeling I betrayed my country; all the laudatory editorials in the world, all the psychiatry, a battalion of priests, cannot assuage that singular guilt.”

“I don’t understand, Jim. Does this have anything to do with Majestic Twelve?”

He looked up sharply, brow furrowed. “How did you know about that?”

“Someone’s leaked it to a reporter I’ve done some work for.”

He was shaking his head. “Majic-12 is a top-secret group, Nate, I won’t discuss it. Knowledge of that kind is what makes a … mental case like me … a security risk. Are you asking on behalf of this reporter?”

“No.” And I wasn’t. I was asking for myself. I did not consider myself on the clock with Pearson, now; but I wanted to know if what I’d learned at Roswell was real—if my stay at the Walker base “guesthouse” had been due to my getting close to the secret of the century: the visitation of earth by aliens.

So I kept at it, sitting forward, asking the big one: “Do you believe in flying saucers, Jim?”

He studied me with unblinking eyes. “You know that much, do you? Does your reporter friend know, as well?”

“There’s been no confirmation.”

Now his gaze shifted to that screened window. Rather distantly, he said, “I thought perhaps the Horten brothers had talked.”

“Who?”

“They were the pilots and engineers responsible.” He shook his head. “We were lucky Hitler was a madman—a difference of a few months, and, hell, forget the V-2s … we might have been facing a fleet of saucer-shaped bombers. Imagine a bomber that could take off without a runway! Particularly in a country like Germany, with their runways reduced to rubble by Allied bombing.”

Trying to follow this, I asked, “Are you saying flying saucers are from … Germany?”

A dry smile tickled the thin lips. “Where did you think they were from—outer space?”

I decided it wasn’t prudent to answer that question out loud, anyway not in a mental hospital.

But I did ask, “Then these stories of flying saucers—are they government disinformation?”

“The Communist threat is very real, Nate,” was his elliptical response. “It requires deals with various devils…. And I still believe there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Communist agents and fellow travelers in our government—as I was telling my young friend Joe McCarthy.”

“Who?”

His eyes narrowed as he offered me half a smile. “Young senator from Wisconsin. Keep your eye on him. My ability to fight this battle will be limited, now; the presidency is out of my reach, with a nervous breakdown in my history. But other warriors will come forward. I only hope they don’t have to make the abhorrent decisions I, from time to time, have had to make.”

“What kind of decisions, Jim?”

“You’ve implied it yourself. With the Reds a plague on the world landscape, dealing with Nazis is a lesser evil.” He laughed humorlessly. “Then there’s Roswell. To think the Japanese would have engineering minds better than ours—now
that’s
insane.”