The Redhunter (35 page)

HANBERRY, 1991

“The criticism—”Alex Herrendon addressed his colleague Harry Bontecou—”is generally to the effect that McCarthy did not uncover
espionage—”

“Which is true,” Harry said. “But that doesn’t mean espionage wasn’t going on—”

“I know. I engaged in it.”

Harry leaned back in his chair. “You can imagine, Alex, that I want to know about
that.
I don’t think it’s clear yet whether it belongs in your book about Western innocence/indifference to Communist cruelty. Or
in mine about Joe McCarthy.”

Lord Herrendon cackled. He rang the buzzer for tea. “I suppose we can fight over it, but if you resisted me that would be—what?
Parricidal?”

“Maybe you can shed light on this episode. I learned of it very very late, and only accidentally.”

“Did it have to do with Khrushchev’s ultimatum on Berlin?”

“No. It had to do with Korea.”

The farmhouse nestled in the rolling farmland outside Hanover, two dozen miles from bloody Gettysburg. The little house near
the barn was looking old, though not so old as to disclose its true age. It and the larger building were built just after
the war of 1812. Then it was a dairy farm, and in 1950 it was still a dairy farm, though the efforts of Floyd Dunn to maintain
it were listless, or had become listless since the death of his wife and the departure of his two children, from both of whom
he was estranged. There were six cows and twenty acres of corn, a tractor, a prewar truck, and, in the main house, a kerosene
heater and a winter’s supply of corn liquor. Floyd Dunn kept a picture of Madeleine, none of Bobby and Sara. He tried, every
now and then, to train himself to blot them from memory, but he was cursed by the vision of them playing in the courtyard,
or waiting for the school bus, or toiling over their homework before exams.

Then—it was as if it had all happened in one moment—suddenly Bobby went off to war. According to the letter from a fellow
soldier, also a patient at the hospital, written to Floyd at Bobby’s request, Bobby was not coming home. “Not ever, Bobby
says to tell you. So don’t look out for him.”

Floyd deduced that Bobby had been blinded, because a P.S. had been added by his friend (no name or address given). Bobby,
the amanuensis wrote, had been “badly disfigured” when the explosive
went off at Okinawa. Floyd Dunn figured that Bobby had not seen the P.S. written after the bitter dictation of the short text.

Mrs. Dunn was in the hospital at the time, dying of cancer. Floyd did not show her the letter, or tell her of it. Madeleine,
in turn, had never spoken of Sara, not after Sara left home with “Little Bill,” as they used to call him (son of “Big Bill”)—after
forging her father’s name at the bank and drawing out everything he had saved in ten years.

When Andy, his tenant farmer, died, Floyd was too old and tired to find another hand and start out all over again. He decided
to quit. Floyd asked Cornell, the druggist in Hanover, his friend and everyone’s counselor, if he knew of anyone who might
want to rent the little farmhouse. Cornell suggested Floyd place an ad in the weekly paper, and it was to that ad that Ned
had responded.

Ned Johnson was young and athletically built. He had a brand-new car and arrived in it at the farmhouse to meet with his prospective
landlord in the summer, without jacket or tie. But Floyd sized him up, knew instantly that Ned Johnson was a city dweller.
Ned didn’t disguise this, but said he liked to “get away” to the countryside. Floyd guessed what that meant, and he was right.
After they made the deal, Ned started coming in for weekends, often with the one girl, often with a different girl. But he
came sometimes with a male friend. Sometimes he stayed over the weekend; occasionally he would appear and leave on the same
day: Floyd didn’t care, and they didn’t see much of each other, but the check for forty-five dollars came in regularly, at
the end of every month.

On this cold Monday in December, Ned drove in as Floyd was leaving the cow barn. They waved. An hour later another car drove
in. Floyd looked hard at this friend of Ned’s, a tall, well-built man wearing a thin mustache. He wore a fedora and a heavy
brown overcoat. Floyd’s memory flashed back to 1942, to the head of the draft board, who had checked Bobby in at the post
office in Hanover that day, to catch the bus to the induction center. Wasn’t this man the head of the draft board? If so,
might he know something about Bobby?

Impulsively, Floyd intersected the visitor.

“ ‘Scuse me. Were you, I mean, back in 1942, just after Pearl Harbor. Were you the head of the draft board? I thought I’d
just ask something—”

“Sorry,” the visitor said. “That wasn’t me. I’m—from out of town.”

That was clear. Floyd had addressed someone with an English accent. “Sorry,” he said.

The visitor nodded his head with a quick smile and knocked on the door.

Inside, Ned had fired up the kerosene heater. He was stoking the log fire when Gabe opened the door. Ned greeted him, took
his coat, and motioned him to the chair opposite. Gabe accepted the glass of sherry.

Ned had placed beans and sausage in the skillet and now put sliced bread in the toaster. Gabe moved his chair toward the fireplace.
“You got something for me to read while you cook, Ned?”

Ned left the stove and drew from a briefcase two sheets of paper. They were stamped
EYES ONLY TOP SECRET.
The first was a memorandum from the president of the United States to the secretary of state, the second to the chairman
of the joint chiefs.

The language was spare. Army prose, Gabe thought as he looked down the page. But in an instant his mind was engrossed by what
the spare prose communicated. He was reading a precis of a meeting and decisions made by the president intended as an ultimatum
to the Chinese Communists.

If they did not yield in their offensive against South Korea, the United States would resort to “maximum force, not excluding
the use of a nuclear weapon” to repel the aggressor.

The final page was devoted to the need to keep the president’s decision utterly private.

“The likelihood of success in this major maneuver,” the president instructed the secretary of state,

depends on a direct communication of our ultimatum to the enemy, to whom we’ll speak using our access in Moscow, not our access
in Tokyo. Our strategy here requires that there be no pressure on the White House either from our allies or from the public.
Such pressures would build quickly and undermine the force of the ultimatum.

Gabe poured himself another glass of sherry.

“Jee-
sus
, Ned! I shan’t ask how you got ahold of this … steamer.”

“That’s right, Gabe. Don’t ask.” Ned brought over a plate of sausage and beans, a tomato, and two pieces of dry toast. He
placed them at the end of the little table, getting a second plate for himself. “And
I’m
not going to write down how I got a copy of that memo, except maybe at Sing Sing the day before my execution. Speaking of
which, you think they got the goods on the Rosenbergs?”

The reference was to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, arrested for stealing nuclear secrets as agents of the Soviet Union—a capital
offense.

“Yes. I think they’ll, to use the picturesque American expression, fry. A risky business we’re in. The conviction of Alger
Hiss in January stirred things up, all right, and McCarthy knows how to take advantage of it. The
Meet the Press
program with Lattimore didn’t help. … But the important thing: This memo has to get to our people right away.”

“Gabe,” as he was known to Ned, paused to think about strategy. He spoke as if to himself. “A counter-nuclear-threat campaign
has got to build up
before
this threat is actually issued by Truman. Pressure—publicity—diplomatic pressure. If necessary, public pressure. That’s what
we need to scare Truman off. We need pressure right away,
right away.”

Ned was silent. Gabe would make that decision. Gabe was in his mid-forties. He had years of experience in diplomacy, in the
manipulation of pressure. Ned waited for him to say more.

“What I’m thinking is, Shouldn’t
we
leak it? Like right away. Like—I’m serious—tonight? Moscow would take a day or two to act, and what they’ll do, obviously,
is pass the word around and help crank up world opinion and public pressure. ‘TRUMAN PROPOSES NUKING CHINA.’ ”

Gabe stopped. He thought through alternatives. Ned did not interrupt him. “ … We could—tonight, I’m thinking—leak it to Paris
and London, which is exactly what Bibikoff is sure to do—what Stalin is sure to tell him to do. But that would take two days
minimum. There’s no way of knowing, but it’s possible Truman would deliver the ultimatum in
less
than two days.”

Gabe paused again. He knew that Ned would have to concur in
the decision. Gabe was senior, but in this situation, nothing could be done to jeopardize the man who came in with the secret.
His own security as espionage agent was an overruling priority. But Gabe continued. “On the other hand, leaking it ourselves
does have risks. I put it to you: Are you confident there’s no
way
they can connect you up in this, Ned?”

“To get that memo I took a chance I wouldn’t ordinarily take.”

“Well, on that point: Where are you supposed to be, like right now?”

“I’m theoretically meeting this afternoon with … someone at ECA. I got cover there.”

“Where did you develop the film? Usual way?”

Ned nodded and put a fork to his beans. “I don’t know, Gabe. No point in mailing it on over. It would take three days to arrive.
We
could
radio it using SamVox, delivery tonight. Bigger risk, but it’s an
awfully
big item.”

They were both silent. Gabe spoke up. “My recommendation is that we use SamVox in Brooklyn. I can’t be away for the length
of time it takes to get—him—to make the contact print, get to Brooklyn and back, and give instructions. We’ll have to use
a courier. I can get this to Basil by,” he looked at his watch, “six. He can be in Brooklyn at eleven. SamVox can have it
in Moscow, Moscow time, at dawn.”

Ned agreed. “That’s the way to go. And it gets done outside of Washington, which suits me just fine.”

The beans and conversation were on Monday. On Wednesday afternoon, Her Majesty’s Government announced that Prime Minister
Attlee would fly from London on the following morning to confer with President Truman.

The morning of Attlee’s flight, reports appeared in Stockholm, Paris, and London that President Truman was considering a nuclear
ultimatum to China designed to contain its offensive in South Korea.

There was immediate speculation that the purpose of the unscheduled Attlee trip was to dissuade President Truman from threatening
any use of the atom bomb in the Korean conflict. The whole of the intelligentsia of the Western world mobilized overnight,
it seemed, in a chorus opposing any use of atomic weaponry: “Not
even as a hypothetical threat,” Walter Lippmann, the premier American solon, wrote solemnly in his syndicated column.

Attlee’s plane had taken off from London at noon—seven
A.M.
,
Washington time. At ten
A.M.
the president was asked at his regular news conference to comment on reports that he had threatened the use of the bomb.

Truman said that while his deliberations with his generals were private, he could certainly say that no such alternative had
ever been considered.

AUGUST 1952

General Eisenhower didn’t like it at all when he was shown the speakers’ roster for the 1952 GOP Convention. What he especially
did not like was the positioning of McCarthy for a prime-time speech. He addressed his complaint to the manager of his campaign,
Sherman Adams, governor of New Hampshire.

“General,” the gruff New Englander said to him, “you don’t control the Republican Party. Maybe you will a week from now. But
between now and then you have to defeat Senator Taft for the party nomination. Right now, Taft controls the party—and the
convention, and he okayed McCarthy.”