Memorial Bridge (28 page)

The baby broke them free by beginning to cry. Cass automatically took him back from Sean, and Richard became quiet again, nestling on his mother's heart. Cass asked directly and simply, "Is your son all right, Mr. Crocker?"

His pain was long since fused into place. It wasn't himself he was thinking of, but them. How he hated to have intruded like this, but Crocker was incapable of the greater offense it would be now to deflect these two good people. "My son was killed in February. There was a battle for a bridge on the Rhine. My son was one of the first Americans across the river."

"Oh," Sean said, a gasp. Then, "I remember when he came through Omaha Beach all right."

Crocker nodded. "If we made a mistake, it was in thinking that by surviving D day, he had survived. Strange, isn't it? How we arrange our perceptions according to little check-off boxes in our minds that have nothing to do with reality."

Tears had come into Cass's eyes, even as she pressed her infant child closer. "I am so sorry, Mr. Crocker."

"Thank you." Crocker swung toward Dillon. "You look awfully well, Sean." Then he lifted his eyes toward the low ceiling. "Are we allowed to talk in here?"

"You mean is it secure?" Sean grinned.

"No, is it respectful." But Crocker was grinning too.

"Come back with us to our apartment," Cass said. "We have a ham."

"I wish I could, but thank you." He leaned and kissed the baby, a farewell. Then he said to Dillon, "I have something in the car. Could you walk out with me?"

"Certainly."

"Goodbye, Mrs. Dillon. I'm very happy for you."

Cass dammed the corner of her eye with her gloved knuckle. "Could I write to Mrs. Crocker?"

"My dear wife died many years ago. That's why I'm a man with no manners. My Hillary would be horrified at my showing up uninvited like this. But at least I brought something."

"Could I come out with you?"

"Of course, but I"—Crocker looked toward the chapel—"I hate to take you—"

"It's all right." Cass glanced back quickly. Her aunt and mother were laughing at something the monsignor had said.

They left the hall and took the stairs up to the street. Crocker's car, a big black Chrysler, was by the curb near the entrance. His driver had been leaning against the front fender, enjoying the bright afternoon. When he saw his boss, he dropped his cigarette, moved to the door and opened it. Crocker retrieved from the seat a package wrapped in silver paper tied with white ribbon. He turned back to the Dillons with it.

The driver moved away discreetly.

"I hope this is all right." He gave it to Cass, whose hand dropped with the unexpected weight.

"May we open it?" Cass gave it over to Sean, who unwrapped it.

A black leather-bound Bible, a new one, with gold-leafed pages, a far finer edition than either Cass or Sean had ever held. Sean opened it and saw that the registry page had been filled out in formal Gothic script: his name, Cass's, Richard's and the date, May 19,1945.

"It's beautiful," Sean said.

"It's the Douay-Rheims version," Crocker said, "which I'm told is the preferred translation." He meant for Catholics, and Sean knew it. The man had thought of everything. "In my family," Crocker added, "everyone gets his Bible at his christening."

Cass impulsively stepped forward and kissed his cheek, an act which parted the curtains on all her lost affection. Jostling her baby made him cry. She managed to say, "I should feed him," then turned and almost ran back into the hulking unfinished church.

The two men stood looking at the door into which she had disappeared.

"I apologize," Crocker said at last, "for intruding with my personal circumstances. I'm not myself."

"But your coming here honors us, sir."

"I've upset your wife."

"No, it's a confusing time. The baby, and our other baby, and her mother and aunt ... Cass's feelings are all jumbled up, I guess."

"I think the women have a lot more to handle than we men do." Crocker flashed his kindly smile. "We take care of the world. They take care of the people who live in it."

Dillon sensed what a façade Crocker's equanimity was. Crocker might admit to stress or fatigue, but he would not show it. He had himself, even his grief, perfectly under control, and he would until one day he simply died. The compensating fitness of a crippled man.

"Do you know what I think?" Crocker took a step back toward his car, his leg clicking. Dillon realized that he often covered that sound by talking over it. "I think we're all damn near shot with this war." He slammed the flat of his hand against his car. "This goddamned war which has left Europe a charnel house! The dead! Christ, you wouldn't believe the dead! Now that it's over we're beginning to see what it's been."

"It doesn't feel over to me."

"Well, of course, with Japan it isn't yet. But the Japs will settle now. They don't want to be ravaged like Germany was. You wouldn't believe what Hitler's done..." Crocker paused, thinking of photographs he'd seen that week of what GIs were finding in the death camps. "I was thinking of Europe."

"I'm thinking of Europe too. I'm no military man, but I have to admit it looks to me like we
should
have gone in through the Balkans. Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Hungary, Poland, maybe Austria, most of Germany. If this war began when no one challenged Hitler over a few hundred square miles in the Rhineland, what will come of not challenging Stalin over half of Europe?"

"What do you want us to do, Sean? Set Patton loose?"

"As I say, I don't know strategy, but I will tell you what I do know." Dillon was aware of the transition they were making, back to the world, away from the people who lived in it, including themselves. "Encrypted
cable traffic out of the Soviet embassy on Sixteenth Street, back to Moscow, has increased in volume fiftyfold over the last four weeks. Cipher clerks transmit around the clock now. We can't read it, but it's hard not to think they're clearing the decks. They are sending back everything they can get their hands on. They are still our ally, of course. So all we can do is watch. We're watching them pound stakes down the middle of Europe. And we're watching them loot Washington for information."

"What else are you seeing?"

"That isn't enough?"

"I have the impression there's more."

"Perhaps I've said too much already, sir."

"My clearances are in place, Dillon." Crocker's authority thinned the air suddenly.

"It was the founding meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco last month that started things. The Russians used it as a justification for flooding us with NKVD agents."

"Beyond the usual delegation?"

"
Twice
the usual. They sent men as typists who couldn't type. They sent men as chauffeurs who haven't touched the wheel of an automobile. Every member of their delegation was an agent. The State Department granted their every request: double-length visas, freedom to travel, unrestricted telegraph, accommodations requiring the use of an entire hotel. Claiming some connection to the UN, they applied for and got credentials to triple their staffs in New York and Washington. Eighty-two agents with free access to every point in the country, and they are using it. The UN conference is over for weeks, but none of them have left the country. We have them spotted in Seattle, Atlanta, New Mexico and Maine. They pretend to be sightseeing, although they assume they're being watched and so they make a show of collecting road maps and phone books and photographing National Guard armories and police stations, as if they are after general intelligence."

"And they're not?"

"They're doing it so openly that we have to assume they are up to something else. They pretend to be inept, but when they want to shake us they do. The guess is they're making last contacts with members of a deep-cover network already in place, preparing to activate it when the diplomats are expelled if the U.S. and Russia break off relations. They
are getting ready for war with us, and the State Department is helping them."

"The State Department would probably say it is helping them get ready for war with Japan. The Russians have to carry our water in Manchuria, Sean."

"But why can't we restrict their travel in the U.S.? Why can't we limit their use of transmission cables? Why can't we send their UN delegates home with every other nation's? They're playing us for saps."

Crocker, who had listened with such sobriety, smiled as he realized that, though he had practically ordered Dillon to brief him, he had played into Dillon's hands. "You're telling me all this for a reason."

"Just small talk, Mr. Crocker."

"You want me to go to Stimson."

Dillon shook his head. "I've heard you're acquainted with the President."

" 'The President,' to me, is still a phrase that refers to Roosevelt."

"But you supported Truman when Roosevelt was thinking of naming him vice president. Truman owes you."

"How do you know that?"

"Didn't I read it in
Time
magazine or someplace?"

"No, Sean, you didn't."

"My point, sir, is that President Truman should be getting assessments from somebody besides the State Department."

"J. Edgar is surely making this information available, isn't he?"

"I'm afraid with Mr. Hoover it's like the boy who cried wolf. He has sounded alarms about the Reds before. This time it's real. They are getting ready for war with us. The cable traffic alone warns of something. Mr. Truman should hear that from somebody besides the Bureau. What is Donovan saying? Or General Strong?"

"You can imagine what they
would
say if I went to Truman with intelligence provided by the FBI. I'm War Department, remember? You want me to make war on State. As for Donovan, forget it. His standing depended on FDR. Truman has no use for OSS, not that I did. But it's a disgrace how these generals chew each other up, not to mention the admirals. You've probably heard that General MacArthur refused to allow OSS in his theater, and Truman backed him up. Score one for General Strong. No one is in charge over there. That's the biggest problem we've had in this war, competition between army and navy
fiefdoms, all those goddamn geniuses, and intelligence is the worst of the lot, a bunch of hot-rodders, and all they want to do is drag-race with each other. If Truman asked my advice, which he hasn't, I'd tell him to get the whole operation out of the Pentagon altogether, maybe give it to you people, but someone should be in charge. Someone/"

"It would never be Hoover," Dillon said matter-of-factly. "Not if Truman's doing the appointing. The President has, shall we say, old friends who are old enemies of ours. That's another reason the director can't get Truman's ear on what the Soviets are up to."

"What are you talking about?"

"Pendergast in Kansas City. Truman's sponsor. He's the one who lined up Frank Hague from Jersey City and Ed Kelly from my own Chicago. Among the three of them Truman was launched. I know how machines like those operate, and they always call in their chits eventually. I make certain assumptions, in other words, even about the President."

"Truman is a bigger man than that."

"He is now. Now he's the President. But once he was a ward boss. He's a politician." Dillon didn't bother to hide his disdain.

Crocker sighed with discouragement. "Well, I'm no politician. I've often thought I should be, that maybe with a little more deviousness and a lot more compromise I could have gotten things to work better where I am. No politicians in the damn army or navy, just virtuous men of principle who refuse to give an inch. Given the crap I've seen flying between the services, we're damn lucky to have beaten Hitler. And don't ever forget something, lad, and if it cost us the Balkans, so be it: we would not have won without Stalin. And we still need him."

"Was the war worth it, though, if all we've done is replace one monster with another?"

Crocker shrugged. "Worth it? I can't answer that. I don't know."

"We should know, Mr. Crocker, with all due respect. Isn't that what government service is about? If we can't justify what's happened, who can? And how do we do that if we lose half of Europe?"

" 'Government service'? Christ, it seems like years since I heard that phrase."

"I don't mean to sound pompous."

"And I don't mean to deflate..." Crocker laughed and slapped Dillon's shoulder. "You remind me of my boy. Did I tell you that? He was a great believer."

"In what you taught him."

"I guess that's right. Maybe it's a function of age, though. My brain has more trouble than it used to with the great abstractions, the noble ideas men fight wars over."

Was that the difference between them? Age? Abstractions? Dillon didn't think so. "In any case, Mr. Crocker, the recent activities of the Soviet diplomats inside the United States are not abstractions. Will you approach the President with what I've told you?"

"Does Hoover know you're asking me this?"

"I didn't know myself. Did I know I'd be seeing you?"

Crocker's silence was pointed, then he said, "It hasn't been announced yet, but Truman is meeting Stalin in two weeks in a suburb of Berlin. It will be a game of bluff, and knowing Harry, he'd like to have an extra card or two to play. He probably hasn't answered Hoover's phone calls because people like me keep telling him the action is all overseas."

"It isn't, not by a long shot."

"Can you give me exact numbers and dates on the upswing in cable traffic? Can you give me exact records on the diplomats' travels and a paragraph on what it might mean? And I want you to give me every detail you have on their interest in New Mexico, don't ask me why."

"I'll have it for you tomorrow. But I have to tell Hoover I'm doing it."

"He'll object to your going through me."

"I can handle Mr. Hoover. I just can't do this behind his back. What I hope is that Truman will take what you give him and want to talk to Hoover then."

"You've been learning how it goes in this city, haven't you?"

"I've had good teachers, Mr. Crocker."

"I guess you have." Crocker absently pulled his pipe out of a pocket. In the silence he notched its stem with his thumbnail. Then he said in a more personal tone of voice, "A minute after midnight on V-J day, my suitcase comes down from the shelf in my closet. I'm going back to New York to practice law. Wall Street will seem straightforward and honest after this place." He fussed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.