The Unwitting (27 page)

“You do know I was on my best behavior that week in Connecticut?”

This time I was not being coy. Elliot did not like drama, and I knew that I could make life a living hell for a man like that, despite my comment about his teaching me temperance.

“Nell, we’ve known each other for fifteen years. I don’t think there are a lot of surprises left.”

I told him I had to discuss it with Abby. He said he knew that.

I HAD EXPECTED
Abby to be in favor of the idea. She hadn’t been entirely facetious when she’d talked about redistributing the wealth in fathers and stepfathers. More than once, I had caught her watching girls and their fathers in museums and movies and restaurants. A few weeks earlier, we had walked up Columbus Avenue behind a girl about thirteen and a man in his forties. They were holding hands, and laughing, and bouncing phrases and jokes and teasing taunts back and forth like tennis balls. My ungenerous heart had shriveled at the sight.

But when I asked her what she thought of my marrying Elliot, she ducked her head so her long hair fell over her face. She had begun doing that when she wanted to hide her face. My lovely daughter was beginning to come up spotty. The British term sounded less ugly than
pimply
, though the terminology didn’t seem to make a difference to her. She also did it when she wanted to conceal her emotions.

“You don’t like the idea.”

“No. I think it’s a good idea. Only …”

“Only what?”

“I wouldn’t have to call him Dad, would I?”

“You do, and I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”

WHEN I TOLD
Sonia the news, she was more girlish about it than Abby. The three of us were having brunch on the sidewalk terrace of an Upper West Side restaurant, and the clattering of dishes mingled
with the gunning of engines and the blare of horns to shatter the soft Indian summer day. Charlie and I had always hated dining outside in New York City. Eat your food before it gets dirty, he used to say. But Abby and Sonia had insisted.

“What are you going to wear?” Sonia asked.

“If I know my mom, a trench coat over a nightgown,” Abby cracked.

“Are you impugning my sense of style?”

“I think she was talking about your sense of occasion,” Sonia explained. “You’re so determined to play this down that you’re probably not even going to buy something new.” She turned to Abby. “What do you want to bet she’s planning on city hall?”

“It’s the city clerk’s office, not city hall, and we’re not going there.”

I had intended to at first. If the city clerk’s office was good enough for Charlie and me, it was certainly good enough for Elliot and me. But that was the point. I hadn’t cared where I married Charlie. The way I’d felt that day, the dusty soulless municipal room was as good as the cathedral at Chartres. But I was clear-sighted about this marriage, or so I thought, and the office of the city clerk was too depressing when seen without a softening scrim of euphoria.

“A judge who’s a friend of Elliot’s is going to marry us in his chambers.”

“I’m the only guest,” Abby said, “besides a couple of secretaries he’ll haul in to act as witnesses. I’m not old enough to bear witness.”

“Don’t forget to take rice,” Sonia said.

“Raw or cooked?” Abby asked.

“I’m glad the two of you are having such a good time with this.”

“Someone ought to,” Sonia said above the roar of a truck going by.

“What do you want me to do, hire a ballroom, wear white, and toss a bouquet?”

“What we want you to do,” Sonia answered, “is to stop acting as if this is some shady undertaking you’re ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed,” I insisted and signaled for the check.

Abby came back to the subject after we had said goodbye to Sonia and were walking up Central Park West.

“You know what I think?”

“What do you think?”

She ducked her head to let her hair fall forward. “I think Daddy would want you to do this.”

I reached my arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. “We’ll never know, but thanks for trying.”

Twenty

A
HANDFUL OF DATES
are etched in my mind.

January 24, 1948: the night I met Charlie.

June 10, 1949: the day I married Charlie.

August 20, 1953: the day Abby was born.

November 22, 1963: the day Charlie died.

March 13, 1967: the night I grew up. How did Elliot put it? In this world, naïveté is irresponsible, but willful naïveté is criminal.

He was wrong about the willful part. I never suspected. I could imagine that Elliot would do something like that, but not Charlie.

I’m not sure what made me turn on the television early that night. I didn’t usually tune in until the eleven o’clock news. I know one thing for sure. It wasn’t a sixth sense. I hadn’t an inkling.

The first thing that caught my attention was the huge prop. Mike Wallace stood in front of three columns of blocks, each block connected to various other blocks in the other columns by a tangle of crisscrossing lines. The camera angle was a long shot to give viewers an idea of just how big the apparatus, and therefore the story, was. The distance of the shot made the lettering on the blocks impossible to read, and since I had missed the first minute or two, I didn’t know what the program was about. Only when it broke for commercials did I find out.

“We return to ‘In the Pay of the CIA,’ a CBS News Special, after these messages.”

As the commercials unspooled, I got up and moved to the foot of the bed to get closer to the screen. Finally Mike Wallace returned.

“This is a report on a fantastic web of CIA entanglements, an almost comical intelligence debacle that reached into every corner of American life—academia, student organizations, labor unions, magazines, newspapers, and more.”

Some laugh. All I could think was that Elliot was wrong.
The Thames Review
had been on the take from the CIA. I had been duped.

Wallace pointed to the first column of blocks and explained that they represented tax-free foundations set up by the CIA. As the camera moved in, I read the lettering and recognized a few names. He followed the crisscrossing black cords to the second column of blocks. Those, he said, represented legitimate tax-free foundations into which the CIA poured money through the first group of foundations. The camera panned down them. The Independence Foundation. The Sidney and Esther Rabb Foundation. The Drinkwater Foundation. I leaned closer to the screen, squinting to make sure I had read the name correctly, but the camera was still panning.

“Go back,” I pleaded.

The camera didn’t go back. It focused on the front of the building where, Mike Wallace explained, the Drinkwater Foundation had its offices, then jumped to the large brass-framed glassed-in index of the firms located in the building and panned to the words
DRINKWATER FOUNDATION
. Under them, in smaller letters, was
DIRECTOR
,
ELLIOT J. MCCLELLAN
.

“Mr. McClellan,” Wallace said, “declined to speak to our reporter.”

The camera showed two other buildings and their lists of companies. Two more men, Wallace said, had refused to speak to CBS reporters.

The program broke for commercials again. I reached for the phone, pulled it onto the bed, and began dialing Elliot’s number. I had no idea
what I was going to say. Perhaps I wanted to hear him deny the story. Only he wouldn’t, because it was true. And it explained everything, the times he had tried to get Charlie to water down pieces in the magazine, the articles he had fought me about over the years. I had thought he was merely cautious. Now I knew he was toeing the Agency line. There was only one thing Elliot’s affiliation did not explain. The world was full of women who wouldn’t mind getting in bed with the devil. Why had he taken up with one who did?

Mike Wallace was back, standing in front of the third column of blocks. I hung up the phone. These, he explained, represented the publishing houses and magazines that received money, considerable amounts of money, from the CIA through the secondary foundations. Their task was to use the written word as a weapon in the battle against Soviet influence.

As the camera panned the blocks, I waited for the words
Thames Review
to appear. Sleeping with one enemy and writing for another. I felt dirtier than when I’d gone to bed with the scatological screamer.

The camera focused on a block. The word
PRAEGER
was printed in bold letters. Wallace explained that over the years the CIA had paid Praeger to publish a variety of books that were nothing more than CIA propaganda. “It is against the law to propagandize the American people,” he explained.

I knew several editors at Praeger. I wondered if they’d been in on the secret or snookered, as I had been. The camera moved to another block. The letters jumped out at me.

COMPASS
.

“
Compass
is a journal of culture, ideas, and politics,” Wallace was saying. “According to tax records, the Drinkwater Foundation has been funneling CIA money to
Compass
since late 1948. We spoke to Gideon Abel, the former publisher of the magazine.”

Gideon sat in a leather wing chair in front of a wall of books. His manner was patrician and impeccable. He explained, with an air of polite regret, that he had left the magazine in late 1952, as soon as he
discovered that the funds from the Drinkwater Foundation came from the CIA.

“And you didn’t know before then?” Wallace asked.

Gideon looked several million viewers in the eye. “I hadn’t an inkling.”

Now Wallace was back on camera, still standing beside the block with the word
Compass
on it.

“In early 1953, Charles Benjamin replaced Gideon Abel as the publisher of
Compass
. During his tenure, the magazine continued to receive CIA funds, channeled through the Drinkwater Foundation. Mr. Benjamin died in 1963, at which point the current publisher, Walter Dryer, took over. Mr. Dryer has denied any knowledge of CIA funding.”

Wally’s face with his big black-framed James Joyce glasses filled the screen.

“For years I’d heard rumors, but I was never able to confirm anything. If I had, I never would have taken the job. If these allegations are proven, I will resign.”

The program was winding down now. Justice William Douglas appeared on the screen.

“What we were doing was aping Soviet methods. The program did irreparable damage to the legal and moral fabric of the country.”

Now Allen Dulles stared out at America.

“As the former head of the CIA, you’re known as a master spy,” a reporter said.

“I don’t like that title particularly.” His smooth smile gave lie to the words.

“Do you feel that by using the same methods as the Soviets, you were undermining America?”

“They weren’t the same methods. The Soviets were trying to destroy. We were trying to build. When you meet a fellow that’s trying to destroy, you have to use techniques that are appropriate for that situation.”

“Even if they’re illegal?”

“Our methods were appropriate for the situation we found ourselves in,” he insisted.

Wallace was back on-screen now, talking about the future of the CIA. I switched off the television, picked up the receiver, and began dialing.

“You lied to me,” I said as soon as Elliot answered.

“I didn’t lie to you. We never discussed it.”

“You mean I was supposed to ask you, ‘By the way, Elliot, is Drinkwater a CIA front?’ ”

“It isn’t a front. It’s a legitimate foundation.”

“It was a legitimate foundation until you went to work for the CIA. But I don’t care about you or Drinkwater. The only thing that interests me is Charlie’s reputation. I’m going to sue goddamn CBS.”

He didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long time. “For what?” he asked finally.

“Libel. Slander. Defamation of character. I don’t know. That’s what lawyers are for.”

“You can’t libel a person who’s not alive.”

“I’ll find something.” I was trying to whisper, because I didn’t want to wake Abby, but my rage turned the intended hush into a hiss.

“Calm down.”

“CBS just called Charlie a CIA agent, and you want me to calm down.”

“They didn’t call him an agent.”

“Close enough.”

“I’ll be right over.”

“I don’t want to see you.”

“I know that. But I think you and I should straighten out a few matters.”

“There is no you and I. Not anymore.”

“I know that too. But there are some things you ought to know.”

“Anything you have to tell me, you can say over the phone.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

The apartment buzzer rang in ten. The doorman had stopped calling up to announce that Mr. McClellan was here some time ago. When I opened the door, I was struck by how disheveled he looked, for him. His coat was misbuttoned. When he opened it, I noticed he was wearing no shirt beneath his crew-neck sweater. His hair was mussed. He pushed back the shock that fell over his forehead with the heel of his hand. It tumbled forward again. He stepped into the foyer and started to take off his coat.