Red Rag Blues (23 page)

He filled a page, flicked it over, began the next. Luis lost patience. “Well, goodbye, senator,” he said. “Finish that letter to your mother.” The writing stopped. “Red spies in the US can wait.”

The man sat back. He was surprisingly young, certainly under thirty; but Luis reminded himself that McCarthy was the
junior
senator from Wisconsin. The man spoke. He had a scratchy, high-pitched voice. “One: I am not the Senator. Two: you are a horse's ass. Three: get your horse's ass out of my office.”

“Yes, I suppose I could do that.” Luis looked around for a comfortable chair and settled into it. “After all, what do I owe you, a man with no manners and the speech-patterns of a baseball manager? Why should I care if you reject information crucial to the security of the United States? If you decide to blow your career when it's scarcely begun, who am I to stop you?”

“Damn good question. Who the hell are you?”

Luis studied him. He had a narrow face and small features except for his teeth, which were big and very white. His eyes seemed to hold a permanent glare. He was four weeks late for a haircut. “I'm the man who is here to see the senator,” Luis said gently. His heart was pumping hard, a not unpleasant sensation. It was like the excitement of watching horses rounding the last bend in a good race.

“I'm legal counsel for the senator's sub-committee. I can have you tossed out of here in ten minutes flat. Now tell me what you want.”

“Well, now,” Luis said, “that depends entirely on what you've got.”

“I've got a keen desire to bust your chops. I'm sick of finks like you, wasting time, on the take, full of crap.” That was when a green light, mounted high on the wall, began blinking. Counsel was on his feet, grabbing a fresh legal pad. “You're not staying here, mister,” he said.

“Senator McCarthy wants you. Good. We'll go together.”

They had a short staring-out contest. Counsel was shorter and thinner than Luis, and dressed like an undergraduate: tweed jacket, gray pants, white tennis socks, loafers. His tie hung loose. “We can't go in with you looking like that,” Luis said. He rapidly fixed the tie, smoothed the collar, buttoned the coat. Counsel was shocked. No man had ever touched him so intimately. “Get off me, you punk,” he growled.

“During the war, I taught unarmed combat to British Commandos.” Luis took a pencil from the desk. “There are seven ways to break a man's arm without using weapons.” He snapped the pencil. “And I invented four of them.” He tucked the bits into counsel's breast pocket. “Punks like me won the war for kids like you.”

Counsel loosened his tie as they went out. Luis's soft touch disgusted him. He would have relished a healthy knock-down fistfight, but this wasn't the time or the place for a brawl. Later, perhaps.

*

They arrived in the middle of a demolition job.

Two men were in the room: both middle-aged, heavy-set, dark-suited; but Luis immediately identified Senator McCarthy. He was pacing up and down, and using a rich, deep senatorial voice to denounce a man for betraying this country's sacred heritage of liberty and justice for the sake of cheap and sensational headlines.

“Who's the other guy?” Luis murmured.

“Jim Patterson,” counsel said grudgingly. “Canadian reporter.”

“God knows we live in a bleak and bloody world, sir,” the senator boomed, “But you and your grubby henchmen, with your greed for cheap applause, daily make it bleaker and yet more bloody.”

“Uh-huh.” Patterson was sitting on a couch, searching for something in an overloaded briefcase. Luis noticed that he had not shaved well that day.

“Your sweeping condemnation of responsible citizens is the language of the gutter. Your own words betray you.”

“Uh-huh.” He abandoned the briefcase and searched his pockets. “I know I got it here somewhere …”

“Despite your rabid lies, one voice will always survive. The truth remains the truth. I take comfort from that.”

“Uh-huh.” The pockets failed him. “I'll find it. Look, take a drink, for Christ's sake. Bobby, where's that piece from the Milwaukee paper?” Counsel hurried forward.

“Let there be no misunderstanding, sir. I despise and reject you and your policies.”

“Sure, sure. Now for God's sake have a drink, take the weight off… Ah, thanks, kid.” Counsel had found the piece from the
Milwaukee paper, lying on a desk. “Get a copy of that for Mr. Peterson, will you?”

“Patterson,” the other man said.

“Yeah, sure, Patterson, hell of a writer, I read your stuff all the time, now will you for the love of Christ take a drink? I hate to drink alone.”

“If you insist,” Patterson said wearily. “Bourbon and ginger. But it won't alter my—”

“Sure, sure. You write what you like. I got the great people of America behind me and we're fightin' the Red Menace in every crack and corner it dares to show itself. Read what Milwaukee says there. The good voters of Wisconsin want me to run for President. Would that kind of thing happen in Russia? How's your drink?”

“More ginger,” Patterson said.

“Okay, good, now we're comfortable,” McCarthy said. “Fire away.”

Luis sat in a corner and got used to the switch. The well-dressed guy who'd delivered the blast was not the senator; he was the reporter. The guy in the baggy suit who needed a drink and a new razor was Senator McCarthy.

Patterson did the interview. Luis thought McCarthy won without breaking sweat. “Americans don't mess with Russian politics,” he told Patterson, “so what brings Communists to this country except to cause trouble?” Patterson had no answer to that. The session ended. McCarthy gave him a souvenir jug of Wisconsin maple syrup, a signed copy of his book
McCarthyism, The Fight for America,
and a warm handshake. “Any time,” he said. “Ain't just sayin' that. My door is never closed to the gentlemen of the Press.” Patterson left, looking flat. “How about that,” McCarthy said. “Two yards of piss and a Princeton Ph.D, and he never laid a glove on me. Do I know you?”

“I sincerely hope not,” Luis said crisply. “I spend considerable time and money on preserving my anonymity.”

“Claims he had an appointment,” counsel said. “He lied. He's here on false pretenses.”

“Oh, don't be such a sore loser, for Chrissake. Half of Washington is here on false pretenses.” McCarthy boosted his drink and groped for a handful of ice cubes. “This guy says he's a spook, I believe him, the other half of Washington are all spooks, why not him? Got a codename, Mr. Spook? Something we can put in my appointments diary, keep our little friend here happy?”

Luis searched his memory. “Arabel,” he said. “Call me Arabel.” It had been the
Abwehr's
codename for him during the second half of the war. To the British he was Eldorado; to the Germans, Arabel. Eldorado might still mean something to intelligence veterans in Washington but the
Abwehr
was long since dismantled and demolished. And Arabel was a name that Luis could easily remember.

“Sounds like a floozy to me.” McCarthy would never be handsome. Too bulky. Between receding black hair and dark jowls was a job-lot of features: heavy eyes, bulbous nose, slanting mouth. But he had an easy grin. “Not that I got anything against floozies. Well, that ain't true. I got my tumescent genital organ against 'em, every chance I got. Only kidding, Mr. Arabel. I say things like that to give our little friend here a vicarious and illicit thrill, on account of his family never lets him have any fun. Take a drink, Mr. Arabel, and tell me somethin'. You here to buy or to sell?”

“Buy?” Luis was surprised and a little amused. “What should I buy?”

“Oh … well … folks sometimes value my goodwill. My good works. My good nature.” Now McCarthy was amused.

“Senator, this man told me he had crucial information,” counsel said. Not amused. We were not put on Earth to enjoy ourselves.

“I'm here to sell,” Luis said. “You investigate and expose Communists. I can supply you with Reds. Top quality. All fresh.”

McCarthy strolled across the room and straightened a framed photograph of himself shaking hands with Eisenhower in uniform. Ike's grin looked like it had been set in stone. “Mr. Arabel … I've been doing this job for a few years now. Reckon I know as much as any man. How come I missed what you say you found?”

“Maybe we're talking about two different kinds of Communists, senator. There's the kind that goes about like a snail, leaving a trail behind it. And there's the other kind that leaves no trail. Really dangerous Communists don't address meetings, or publish newsletters, or carry membership cards, or get elected to party positions.” He felt the kick of spontaneous creation and knew it was time to take a break before he pushed it too far. He walked to the drinks cabinet and poured a glass of tonic water. He plopped a lump of ice into it. He dried his fingers
on a bar towel monogrammed with the senator's initials. The tonic fizzed against his palate. Everything in the room seemed heightened, the colors, the shapes, even the silence. Especially the silence.

“Well, you got a point, Mr. Arabel,” McCarthy said. “Question is, how d'you catch these snails? The no-trail kind.”

“Do you care how I do it, senator?”

McCarthy laughed. “No, sir. I don't give a damn. Hey … I'm late for lunch. Politics is all food, you know. Steaks are going to kill me. Good to meet you, Mr. Arabel.” They shook hands. “Stop by again, we'll compare slime. Bobby knows how to find me.”

“Bobby?”

McCarthy aimed his glass at counsel. “Bobby Kennedy. Didn't you guys meet?”

“Not formally.”

McCarthy took his drink with him as he went out. “Don't you mess with Bobby Kennedy,” he said. “Medical Science ain't got no antidote to Bobby's venom.”

They listened to his footsteps fade.

“And it's
Bob,
not Bobby,” Kennedy said, in a cracked monotone. “I wish people would get it right, for God's sake.”

The Central Intelligence Agency did not exist. That's why the food there had to be so good. It wasn't like the FBI, where you could set your watch by J. Edgar Hoover and his sidekick Clyde Tolson stepping out to lunch at Harvey's restaurant. The CIA fed its workers on the premises, and fed them well. It says a lot for Mrs. Bailey's dedication to duty that she damn near worked through her lunch break.

Mrs. Bailey was an audio typist. She listened to spools of tape and made transcripts of what she heard: not absolutely everything, not chitchat about the weather or sexual longings or borrowing ten bucks; just serious business. The trouble with audio was people wandered, coughed, mumbled, chewed gum, interrupted. Mrs. Bailey was patient, persistent. She replayed the tape. Even
so, some words troubled her, so she added a query in red ink in the margin.

She did this with
Arabel,
if it really was Arabel. Sometimes it sounded like Annabel. Mrs. Bailey had only ever come across
Arabel
as a girl's name and this was a man talking. She couldn't find it in any of her dictionaries: English, French, Italian, Spanish, German. She was now very hungry. In the margin she wrote
Arabel or Annabel?
and went to lunch.

The CIA operative who read her transcript was not impressed by big talk in McCarthy's office. “Same old stuff,” he said. Then he noticed the red-ink query. It intrigued him. Why would a male use a female codename? There was a reason for everything, and he wanted to know it. He sent a memo to all departments of the agency, asking if the name rang a bell.

Wagner had been a brigadier in the
Abwehr.
German military intelligence. When World War Two ended, he was in a prisoner-of-war camp. At first it was scoured by Allied investigators, picking out individuals to stand trial for war crimes. Wagner was not one. Soon the Soviet Union was building its Iron Curtain, a buffer zone from the Baltic to the Black Sea. That was a lucky break for Wagner and many like him. Some of their
Abwehr
colleagues, unlucky enough to be captured by the Russians, found themselves back at work in East Germany. Wagner's wartime operations involved sending spies into Britain and receiving their reports: exactly what American intelligence now wished to do in East Germany. It made sense to counter one set of
Abwehr
officers with another. The US cherrypicked the best, including Wagner. When the CIA was set up in 1947, Wagner was one of several
ex-Abwehr
men on the strength.

He was still there in 1953, looking at a memo that was all about a name.

“Arabel,” he said aloud. Agent at the heart of the
Abwehr
triumph of the war. Could there be two Arabels? Coincidence? No, he knew this must be the same man. But here, in Washington, dickering with Senator McCarthy? Bizarre. Wagner was quite excited. He must find out more.

Every day the garbage scow went down New York's East River and far out to sea, where one of the crew pulled a lever, the hull opened like bomb doors and another several hundred tons of metropolitan crap got dumped into the Atlantic.

On the way back, midway between the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Navy Yard, a deckhand saw an unusually large piece of garbage drifting with the current. The skipper ordered that a striped buoy be dropped near to it, and he got the Harbor Police on the radio. “It's a floater,” he reported. Let the cops get their hands dirty.

Ten minutes later, a police launch found it. The cops slid boathooks under the ropes and hauled it over the stern and onto a tarpaulin. Nobody got his hands dirty, which was just as well because Sonny Deakin was coated with oil and sewage. At one time there had been a concrete block around his feet, but the salty Atlantic had quickly found so many weaknesses where it could penetrate and degrade that it had nibbled the block down to nearly nothing, and the bloat in the body brought him to the surface.