The Hour of the Cat (22 page)

“And Mrs. Roosevelt's,” Donovan said.

“But the threat arising out of Germany dwarfs any differences between the political parties in this country. You cannot make peace, because the present regime's whole existence is predicated on waging war.”

“Not according to John Foster Dulles. Are you aware of the articles he's written on the subject?”

“Aware, yes, but I haven't read them.”

“He contends that the National Socialists are ‘wild in word but conservative in deed.' Twenty years from now, he says, the Nazis will be nothing more than a German version of the Tories.”

“Possibly, I suppose, if in twenty years the Tories have become a mass movement of fanatics led by homicidal gangsters.”

“Which is pretty much what the Labour Party thinks, no?”

“Democracies are perpetually rife with rhetorical excess.” Anderson put down his cup and lit his pipe. “However, I'm not employing politically inspired exaggerations. I've been to Germany. What is unfolding there is of a different order.”

“The Germans have a legitimate grievance. The Sudetenland as a German majority. Self-determination was one of President Wilson's Fourteen Points, remember?”

Anderson shifted in his chair, as if in search of a comfortable position. “If only the world were so neat, in which borders are perfectly congruent with ethnic groups. Few borders, however, are so clear. Listen, the Sudetenland is a prelude rather than a conclusion, a confirmation of the naïveté of his opponents. No offer by the Czechs, however generous, will be acceptable.”

“If the British and French won't fight, the Czechs will. They've built their own version of the Maginot Line.”

“Not alone, they won't.”

“Stalin will never allow Hitler a free hand in the East.”

“Russia has no direct access to Czechoslovakia, nor any treaty obligation to defend it unless the French do so first.”

“Your government seems not to share your bleak opinion. According to the newspapers, Britain and France might press the Czechs to make concessions.”

“Quite right.” Anderson puffed on his pipe.

Donovan brushed away the smoke. “If you're seeking some insights into the position of the American government, I'm afraid I can't be of much help. I'm a Republican, and the Democrats are calling the shots, at least until the next election. We're the last to know what's on the mind of the present administration.” During his business trips to Chicago and Detroit, Donovan had found unanimous agreement against American involvement in the unfolding crises over Czechoslovakia. At dinner with a group of corporate lawyers in Grosse Point, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury under Hoover said loudly, “If Roosevelt tries to take the country to war, he'll be removed, by hook or by crook!” His colleagues nodded in agreement.

“I admired you as a soldier, Colonel.”

“And I you.”

“It seems far longer than just twenty years ago. I suppose you've forgotten everything we discussed.”

“I remember your pessimism,” Donovan said.

“I'm known to some of my acquaintances as ‘Reverend Gloom.' They think I'm a frustrated theologian, clothing the ordinary contests among nations and men in the motley of good and evil. Perhaps they're right. Do you believe in prophecy, Colonel?”

“Can't say I've been to any fortune tellers lately.”

“That's not the kind of prophecy I had in mind.” Anderson's eyelids fluttered, as if calibrating the thinking going on behind them. “The last day before the armistice I was posted with a regiment of Welsh Fusiliers. We knew the war was about to end and the men were relaxed. Toward dusk, one of the subalterns, a devout Methodist chap and biblical scholar, decided to sit atop the parapet. He was working on his own translation of the Bible. Been at it for several years, having mastered Hebrew and Greek. He worked in the quiet twilight, eerie in its quietness, when a sniper drilled him in the eye, a marksman's shot. He was among the very last of the ten million killed in the war. I was smoking my pipe only a few feet away when he was hit. I retrieved the papers he'd dropped. There, splattered with blood and brains, was the last verse he'd translated.”

Anderson took out of his pocket what at first appeared to Donovan to be a business card. But printed on it, instead of a name and address was a biblical verse:

Donovan went to his desk, put Anderson's card in the drawer and picked up one of his own, touching the intercom button as he did. He handed the card to Anderson. “We should stay in touch. Perhaps we could continue this conversation over dinner sometime.”

The intercom buzzed. Donovan reached and flicked it on. His secretary's voice had a helpful hint of urgency: “Colonel, it's almost time for your next appointment.”

“Do you suppose my friends are right?” Anderson said. “Maybe I'm straying into theology. If that be the case, I suppose what I'm really interested in is your soul.”

“It's not for sale.” Donovan leaned back on his desk, half-sitting.

The grin on Anderson's face no longer reminded Donovan of Leslie Howard but of other faces from another time: the antic smile of men who'd been in combat too long. Concussed by incessant shelling, overwhelmed by the ubiquity of death, they went slowly mad, holding it in until that expression of perpetual amusement impressed itself on their lips, the imprimatur of a man whose mind had become unhinged. Some threw themselves into an attack, inviting certain death. Others dissolved into shaking, weeping invalids and were shipped to the rear before their insanity turned infectious. A few simply carried on, jumpy, isolated, grinning.

“I wasn't intending to buy your soul,” Anderson said. “Merely borrow it.”

“‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.' Advice I've always followed, especially when it comes to souls.” Donovan pushed off from the desk and moved to the door, positioning himself to show Anderson out.

Anderson slouched deeper in the seat. “Have you followed the
Yezhovschina
in the Soviet Union, the purges, confessions, executions? The latest estimates I've seen are that the number of executions is approaching a million, with another five million confined to labor camps.”

“The Bolsheviks are barbarians,” Donovan said.

“Quite the contrary. Barbarism is personal and inefficient. Stalin has created a highly oiled machine, the type only civilized men could create, men with the organizational skills required to carry out their plans efficiently.”

“One man doesn't make a system.”

“That's the point. In a henchman such as Nikolai Yezhov, Stalin has found a homicidal gnome who can read his master's mind and anticipate his wishes without even being told. But it's not the individual lackey who matters. Once the machine is in place, the parts are movable, thousands and thousands of apparatchiks who will perform their assigned roles as though working on an assembly line.”

Donovan's impatience had turned into annoyance. He gripped the doorknob. Anderson seemed to take the hint. He knocked the smoldering remnant from his pipe into the ashtray and stood. “I hope we can continue our conversation some other time,” he said. But instead of moving toward the door, he veered to the far wall and began to examine the bookshelves.

“There's nothing of interest there, only law books,” Donovan said.

Anderson took a book from the shelf and paged through it idly. “I've sent you two books, Colonel. They should arrive soon. A present for your library. Something besides legal tomes to read in your spare time.”

“
Time
is the one thing I can't spare.”

“And I've already taken too much of it.” Anderson snapped the book shut and returned it to the shelf. “The Germans have put in place even more efficient machinery than the Russians,” he said. “They have both the motive
and
the method.”

“You spoke earlier about their military prowess, if you remember.”

“I'm not speaking exclusively of the armed forces. Their ambitions go beyond the battlefield to a wider struggle against
Lebensunwertes Lebens,
‘life unworthy of life,' a radical cleansing of Germany, Europe, wherever the Reich can extend its influence.”

Donovan's secretary pushed the door open and was slightly startled to find him directly in front of her. “Colonel, you're next appointment has been waiting.” She smiled at Anderson, apparently believing the grin on his face was for her.

“You see,” Anderson said, “the combination of eugenic theory, industrial efficiency, and political tyranny endows Germany with a unique advantage when it comes to murder on a mass scale.”

“I didn't mean to interrupt your discussion.” Minus her smile, she retreated into the outer office and pulled the door shut behind her.

Donovan immediately opened it again. “Even the bitterest critics of Hitler and his regime haven't leveled such a charge.”

“I'm merely raising certain possibilities. Hear me out. Step A, let's say, is the theoretical identification of ‘unworthy types'; both the categories of ‘degenerate individuals'—the feebleminded, retarded, insane, epileptics, cripples—and of ‘degenerate races,' beginning of course with the Jews.”

“No civilized person endorses the current treatment of the Jews in Germany.”

“Yes, but few seem terribly interested in doing much to stop it. Step B is the legal isolation of these people, stripping them of their legal rights and exposing them to ‘treatments' not applied to the general populace. This is a crucial step because it indicates the willingness of the citizenry to endorse, or at least not oppose, the application of medical theories on entire categories of people who are, by definition, lacking in human status. Step C entails following this course of treatment until the ‘diseased elements' are eliminated. A trickier proposition.”

“Eugenics is a medical question. My business is the law, and I'm afraid I can't avoid attending to it any longer. We'll continue these discussions some other time.” Donovan stepped into the outer office.

“Quite right. I've been shamefully self-indulgent in taking up so much time.” As Anderson walked past, he muttered something that Donovan had trouble hearing. Anderson stopped and repeated it. “How,” he asked, “would you recognize a murderer?”

Standing behind Anderson, Donovan's secretary pointed her finger at her head and made wide circular motions.

“Murderers here in New York are the concern of the district attorney,” Donovan said in a soft, reassuring voice. “Our present one, Mr. Dewey, has developed quite a reputation for not only identifying them, but bringing them to justice.”

“What if the murderer doesn't look like one of the villainous thugs Mr. Dewey and his fellow racket busters are continually bringing to justice?” Anderson asked. “What if he belongs to a group of professional men, reasonable, serious, intelligent? And what if he's motivated to murder not by ordinary passions, greed, revenge, lust, but by cold, impersonal theories? Moreover, suppose he doesn't think of himself as a murderer but as a scientist eliminating a threat to the future of the racially fit and wellborn. What would it take to see such a person for what he is?”

“An interesting theory. You should write about it.”

“There's plenty written already. You can read for yourself in the books I've sent. Superstition dressed up as science and made a basis for murder. Better yet, I've some friends I'd like you to meet. They've recently arrived here from Germany. If I could bring them here to talk with you, I believe . . .”

“The Colonel's calendar is jam-packed for the immediate future,” Donovan's secretary interrupted. It was obvious that if she still saw in Anderson a resemblance to a British actor, it was Boris Karloff, not Leslie Howard.

“There are decent men within Germany, as there are here,” Anderson said. “But unless they act together to stop it, the world will be dragged into the abyss.”

“I'll have to check and see when I have some time available.”

“I'm no longer at my previous location. I'm officially retired now and been tossed out of my office altogether. Soon as I'm resettled, I'll call and let you know. Thanks for your time. Sorry to have imposed on your hospitality.”

His secretary poked her head into the corridor outside her office, making sure their guest was truly gone. “What rock did he crawl from under?”

“The worst wounds can be to a man's mind. Some never heal.” She held the books Anderson had sent. “He's not a Nazi, is he?”

“Quite the opposite.”

“I took a peek at these books. They belong in the garbage.”

“I think I owe it to my guest to give them a look.”

Donovan waited until after lunch to leaf through the smaller of the books Anderson had sent, the one he'd previously ignored, an English version of
The Nazi Primer: Official Handbook for Schooling the Hitler Youth
. He flipped to a section titled “Heredity and Race Fostering,” where Anderson had placed a bookmark. Several paragraphs were underlined. He glanced at one: “The more serious of the hereditary diseases, especially the mental diseases, make the carriers completely unworthy of living. Those so afflicted have neither the capacity to reason nor any feeling of responsibility. They contribute nothing. Yet these worthless ones are allowed to multiply without restraint and spread their sickness everywhere.” There was a special section devoted to the Jews, entitled “Not Different in Quality but Kind? Our Greatest Menace.”