For all its granite grandeur, the U.S. naval hospital at Bethesda had its cramped aspects; its four wings were rather small, and the floors of its impressive, impractical tower provided limited patient space. The air-conditioned, disinfectant-scented sixteenth floor had a modest capacity of thirteen; only ten patients were currently in residence, however, as the former Secretary of Defense occupied 1618, a large, square double room from which the second bed had been removed, with the smaller adjacent room reserved for doctors and orderlies assigned twenty-four-hour watch on their important patient.
After checking in with the Navy medical corpsman who sat watch outside his door, I found Forrestal seated by the window, draped rather elegantly in a burgundy silk dressing gown with a yellow rope-style, fringed sash, legs crossed, exposing cream-color pajamas and brown leather slippers. All he lacked was an ascot. Smoking his trademark pipe, sitting back in a padded wooden chair, iron-gray hair neatly cut, clean-shaven, arms folded, entirely self-composed, he was staring out the window at a view of the hospital’s busy driveway and landscaped grounds.
The room seemed even larger than it was, due to that second bed’s absence, and conveyed a sterile emptiness; the walls were a faint peach color, and the sparse furnishings included a writing desk, a couple chairs, a nightstand and a hospital bed, cranked into upright position. A curtain gathered at the wall indicated where the double room would be divided, when not occupied by such an illustrious guest. Forrestal had been here, what? Seven weeks now? So there were no flowers, though on a small table against the right wall countless “Get Well” cards stood like little soldiers.
I’d stepped just inside the room, hat in hand. “Jim? It’s Nate.”
Still seated, the rather small man glanced my way and his Jimmy Cagney-like face, with its boxing-flattened nose, regarded me blankly for an instant, before the pencil-line mouth broke into the widest smile I’d ever seen him bestow. He almost leapt to his feet and charged over to meet me midway, where we shook hands, his grip as firm as ever.
“Nate Heller,” he said. His eyes were bright, his manner ebullient. “I’d been hoping you’d stop by, at some point, on this pleasure cruise.”
I tossed the paper bag with the poetry book in it on his nightstand, next to another book, Peace of Faith by Fulton J. Sheen.
“You look fine,” I told him. “How much more of this resting up can you stand?”
“Dr. Raines says within a month I’ll be walking out of here.” Forrestal pulled a chair up for me, opposite his, by the window, and we both sat; I noticed the window had been fitted with a heavy steel screen, the security-style that locked with a key. He noticed me noticing.
“That’s to keep me from jumping out the window,” he said cheerfully, teeth tight around the pipe stem. “That and the ’round-the-clock surveillance. Interesting way to treat a man with symptoms of paranoia, don’t you think? Watch him constantly?”
I had to smile. “I hear paranoia is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
His eyes tightened. “True enough, and I have no complaint about the medical treatment I’ve received, but I do resent, bitterly, the nonsensical extremes these restrictions have been carried to … and not entirely for my own benefit, in my opinion.”
“What do you mean, Jim?”
He gestured rather forcefully with the pipe. “This is not paranoia speaking, Nate, nor schizophrenia or any other mental disorder. These psychotherapy sessions, which were on a daily basis until recently, served to inspire me to do my own self-analysis of the feelings of persecution that brought me to this room. Do you remember, at the golf course, when we talked briefly about religion?”
“Sure, that I was a Jew but didn’t follow the faith, and you’d been raised Catholic and had rejected it.”
He sat forward, his eyes intense. “Yes. I believe I’ve long harbored a guilt, however deeply buried, for rejecting the faith my mother worked so diligently to instill within me. I’ve wondered if, perhaps, the root cause of my troubles is my break with the Church, that I’ve been punished … or have punished myself … for being a bad Catholic. Consequently, I’ve found myself working my way back to my boyhood faith.”
I nodded toward his nightstand. “I noticed the book by Monsignor Sheen.”
“I bring this up, Nate, not by way of soul-searching, but to demonstrate that, even with my thinking clear again, I’m more convinced than ever I’m being watched, controlled.”
Until he’d made this statement, I’d been feeling good about Forrestal’s condition; but now my neck was starting to tingle.
He must have sensed that and his smile was somewhat chagrined. “No, not by Russians, or Zionists, Nate-by my own government.”
Now that I could believe.
Folding his arms again, he sat back, took a few puffs of the pipe, then spoke with clarity and confidence. “My brother Henry, who’s been to visit me frequently, cherishes this rekindling of my Catholicism, and consequently has asked my doctors to allow a priest-a Father Sheehy-to visit me. And they have refused.”
“Why in hell?” What sort of doctor denied a mental patient the guidance and solace a visit by a clergyman might bring?
Forrestal arched an eyebrow. “I asked both Dr. Raines and Dr. Bernstein, and their answers were the same: reopening the Catholic issue, at this time, would be too ‘disquieting’ to me.”
“What do you think the real reason is?”
The thin line of a mouth formed the faintest of smiles. “Can’t you guess, Nate? I’ve always admired your shrewd, if unschooled, analytical mind.”
I thought about it for a few moments, then said, “You entering a Catholic confessional would risk disclosure of sensitive national security issues.”
“Bull’s-eye,” Forrestal said, eyes twinkling. His gaze fell upon the steel screen again, beyond which a sunny May afternoon seemed to beckon. “I could never bring myself to jump out a window, anyway-I’ve always had a mild case of vertigo. And slashing my wrists would be entirely too messy. I believe I’d opt for sleeping pills or perhaps hang myself.”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
“A master of the art not recognizing sarcasm?” he chuckled. “Disappointed in you, Nate…. They’re concerned about me attempting suicide? And yet I’m on the sixteenth floor, when most of the mental patients at Bethesda receive treatment in a one-story wing … and they are reluctant to have me rekindle my Catholic faith, a faith that would include the very rejection of suicide as a mortal sin. What do you make of that?”
“There’s no paranoia in those suspicions; you’d be nuts not to think that way.”
He gestured with the pipe again. “They had my house bugged, too, when I hired you.”
“Jim, I had it thoroughly swept …”
“The government knew you were coming, didn’t they? They knew I’d hired you?”
That was true: the Secret Service certainly did.
Forrestal shrugged. “They took them out. And they would’ve put them back again, if I hadn’t … slipped out of control, first.”
“You seem fine to me now, Jim.”
Nodding, he said, “I’ll be all right; I’m pulling out of it. And, to give the bastards credit due them, they are lessening up on the restrictions. I’m allowed to leave this room, visit with other patients, flirt with the nurses … and I have full run of the pantry, across the hall. Here, I’ll show you-let me play host.”
Noting that the Naval medical corpsman was not at his post, I followed the silk-robed Forrestal-who left his pipe behind-across the hall to a much smaller room, a galley-like pantry with a single table, counter and cupboards, and a refrigerator. A pot of coffee sat, steaming fragrantly, on a hot plate.
“Care for a cup?” he asked.
“Thanks. One lump of sugar.”
As he prepared the coffee for himself and me, Forrestal said, “This is a rather nice privilege…. They call this the diet kitchen, and of all of the patients, I alone have been granted its use-I can wander over and fix myself a snack, pour myself a cup of coffee, as I please…. Such are the small pleasures of the incarcerated.”
As I sat at the chrome-legged, porcelain-topped table, which was about half again as big as your average kitchen table, I noticed the pantry’s single window did not have the tamper-proof screen of Forrestal’s room; in fact, of the two hooks that fastened it in place, one was broken.
He was asking, “Can I get you a cup of soup, or a sandwich?”
“No, no thanks, Jim. Just had lunch.”
Sitting with his cup of coffee, he placed it before him, then patted his stomach, just above the yellow sash. “You should have seen the steak I put away, at noon. It’s nice to have my appetite back.”
“You look good. You look fit.”
“I’ve been exercising.” He sipped his coffee, glanced about the tiny room. “There’s nothing wrong with me that not being cooped up here, on the sixteenth floor, wouldn’t cure. How I’d like to be outdoors, with friends, visiting an estate, walking in the sun … soon, very soon.”
“How is Jo holding up under all this?”
The tight line tightened in an unconvincing smile. “Splendidly. She, uh, hasn’t been around much-hospitals depress her. I know she’ll be sorry she missed you, she’s very fond of you.” A quiet sadness slipped into his eyes. “She’s gone off to Europe, on vacation.”
Her husband a mental patient, confined because of his suicidal tendencies, and Jo was off to Europe. Somehow I wasn’t surprised.
“My son Michael’s over there, you know, in Paris,” he was saying. “Mike has a post with the Economic Cooperation Administration. Working for the Marshall Plan.”
“How’s Peter doing?”
“Very well, thank you-you just missed him. He spent half an hour with me, after lunch; he’s living in Morris House, looking after it for me. He’s at Princeton, doing very well-just started a summer job as a copyboy at the Post.”
His pride in his sons buoyed him; this was the most talkative I’d ever seen Forrestal, and I was relieved to see him doing so well. I hated to forge ahead into troubling territory, but I felt I had to.
“Jim, can I ask about something you mentioned to me, when you were-having your difficulties?”
“Certainly, Nate.” He took another sip of his coffee. “I like to think we’ve gone beyond a client/employer relationship. You were at my side when the chips were down.”
Well, that made me feel shitty.
But I asked, “What happened at Roswell?”
His expression froze. Then, slowly, he shook his head. “Nate, I shouldn’t have mentioned that to you. That’s a delicate, and classified, area.”
“I figure it must have something to do with the Air Force,” I said.
He said nothing, expressionless, though his eyes were alive.
I had a sip of my coffee, which wasn’t bad at all, and pressed on. “You seemed to have, well … lost your grip, after Symington rode home with you that last day at the Pentagon. He said he had something important to talk to you about, and, after all, he’s the Secretary of the Air Force-”
Forrestal raised a palm, in a stop gesture. “Nate, I’ll say only that the defense of one’s country sometimes necessitates unfortunate choices.” His gaze fell; he was looking at his own reflection in his coffee cup. “I’ll go to my grave feeling I betrayed my country; all the laudatory editorials in the world, all the psychiatry, a battalion of priests, cannot assuage that singular guilt.”
“I don’t understand, Jim. Does this have anything to do with Majestic Twelve?”
He looked up sharply, brow furrowed. “How did you know about that?”
“Someone’s leaked it to a reporter I’ve done some work for.”
He was shaking his head. “Majic-12 is a top-secret group, Nate, I won’t discuss it. Knowledge of that kind is what makes a … mental case like me … a security risk. Are you asking on behalf of this reporter?”
“No.” And I wasn’t. I was asking for myself. I did not consider myself on the clock with Pearson, now; but I wanted to know if what I’d learned at Roswell was real-if my stay at the Walker base “guesthouse” had been due to my getting close to the secret of the century: the visitation of earth by aliens.
So I kept at it, sitting forward, asking the big one: “Do you believe in flying saucers, Jim?”
He studied me with unblinking eyes. “You know that much, do you? Does your reporter friend know, as well?”
“There’s been no confirmation.”
Now his gaze shifted to that screened window. Rather distantly, he said, “I thought perhaps the Horten brothers had talked.”
“Who?”
“They were the pilots and engineers responsible.” He shook his head. “We were lucky Hitler was a madman-a difference of a few months, and, hell, forget the V-2s … we might have been facing a fleet of saucer-shaped bombers. Imagine a bomber that could take off without a runway! Particularly in a country like Germany, with their runways reduced to rubble by Allied bombing.”
Trying to follow this, I asked, “Are you saying flying saucers are from … Germany?”
A dry smile tickled the thin lips. “Where did you think they were from-outer space?”
I decided it wasn’t prudent to answer that question out loud, anyway not in a mental hospital.
But I did ask, “Then these stories of flying saucers-are they government disinformation?”
“The Communist threat is very real, Nate,” was his elliptical response. “It requires deals with various devils…. And I still believe there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Communist agents and fellow travelers in our government-as I was telling my young friend Joe McCarthy.”
“Who?”
His eyes narrowed as he offered me half a smile. “Young senator from Wisconsin. Keep your eye on him. My ability to fight this battle will be limited, now; the presidency is out of my reach, with a nervous breakdown in my history. But other warriors will come forward. I only hope they don’t have to make the abhorrent decisions I, from time to time, have had to make.”
“What kind of decisions, Jim?”
“You’ve implied it yourself. With the Reds a plague on the world landscape, dealing with Nazis is a lesser evil.” He laughed humorlessly. “Then there’s Roswell. To think the Japanese would have engineering minds better than ours-now that’s insane.”
“Wait a minute-are you saying that there are Japs working at White Sands, along with the German scientists?”
Forrestal frowned. “I’ve said too much. You must promise me you won’t share any of this with your reporter friend.”
I had a last sip of coffee. “He, uh … he’s not exactly my friend.”
“Well, who is he? Arthur Krock? Marquis Childs? Lyle Wilson, maybe?”
I leaned forward. “Listen … Jim … there’s something difficult I have to get into with you. But first, I want to assure you that nothing we’ve talked about this afternoon will leave this room.”
“I appreciate that. It’s been nice to have someone to talk to, someone I can trust, who doesn’t have the taint of government.”
“… I’m afraid I have a worse taint.”
His eyes tightened. “How is that possible?”
“Oh, it’s possible. You just have to understand that I have never betrayed your confidence, and I never will. I’ve never worked a job for this man that had to do with you. No cross-purposes were involved whatsoever.”
And by now the eyes had widened. “You can’t be serious … Pearson?” He popped to his feet, thrust a finger across the table, in my face. “You’re the goddamn traitor!”
“No! No … sit down before someone in the hall hears us. I deserve a fair hearing. Just let me explain.”
Forrestal was trembling, his hands turned to fists.
“Please,” I said. “Hear me out.”
He looked at me for the longest time; then, finally, he sat.
I told him that I’d done a number of jobs for Pearson in the thirties, and that I had stopped working for him, at that time. I had done a few minor jobs since, mostly having to do with the columnist’s rackets expose in Chicago.
“But when we spoke at Chevy Chase,” I told Forrestal, “and you wanted me to see if you were being watched, I knew if I told you about my past relationship with Pearson, you wouldn’t hire me for the job.”
“And you wanted the money?” he asked, bitterly.
“Sure I did. But I knew that if I even mentioned knowing Pearson, you’d read more conspiracy into it, and get even more bent out of shape.”
His expression softened. “That’s probably true.”
“I also knew that I could ascertain the extent of Pearson’s surveillance because I’d go right to his office and ask him about it. And, if you’ll recall, I uncovered his spy in your house, that maid, who your wife fired accordingly.”
Shaking his head, he studied me with dumb-founded disappointment; then he asked, “Why are you admitting this, at this late date?”
“Because I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else. One of your shrinks, Bernstein, said it might undo what they’ve been trying to accomplish here, if your paranoia got fed by finding out I’d … betrayed you.”
His voice seemed steady again as he asked, “And you’re saying you haven’t betrayed me?”
“I haven’t, and I won’t. Listen, maybe I better, uh … leave right now. Let you mull this over. You can decide whether you want to talk to me about this again, ever.”
“Nonsense.” Forrestal sighed, shook his head, even-amazingly enough-smiled. “It took courage for you to admit this … although frankly how you can work for that monster is beyond me.”
“I don’t judge my clients that way. I’m afraid I mostly judge them by whether or not they can afford me.”
He managed to chuckle at that. “I’m afraid that son of a bitch found my Achilles’ heel. I’ve never been able to overcome an acute sensitivity to criticism of a personal sort. Rational attacks-even irrational ones-on my policy decisions, my public positions, have never bothered me. But challenge my integrity, or call me a coward, and I’m afraid it shakes me to the core.”
“Like that lousy lie about the jewel robbery.”
“Exactly. I simply cannot understand this man’s fanatical viciousness. What possesses Pearson to pursue me into my sickroom, when I’m no longer even holding public office?”
“You said it yourself, at the golf course-he’s a crusader. To Pearson, it’s no different than the difficult decisions you’ve had to make.”
“The age-old question,” Forrestal said. “Do the ends justify the means?”
“I’ve always figured it depends on the ends,” I said, “and it depends on the means.”
“You’re a case-by-case sort of individual.”
“Yeah, and it’s been one damn case after another. Look, Jim … you’ve been very understanding about this. And I’ve taken up too much of your time.”
Forrestal stood. “It was a pleasure seeing you again, Nate, despite this rather bizarre revelation of yours … and, while I won’t pretend I’m overjoyed by what you revealed about that bastard Pearson … I am impressed by your courage in owning up to it.”
“Still friends, then?”
“Yes-but no longer a client.”
“Fair enough,” I laughed. “Oh! I have a gift for you.”
“Well, that’s very thoughtful.”
We walked across the hall to his room and I handed him the brown paper bag.
“I really went all out for the gift-wrapping,” I said.
Forrestal smiled, removing the handsome red-leather, gold-decorated volume from the bag, then said, “Why, this is too extravagant!”
“I thought maybe you’d find a book of poetry comforting,” I said.
He held it in both hands, then flipped through some pages, contemplating the volume with a thin smile. “Very thoughtful of you, Nate. Very thoughtful indeed.”
We shook hands and, in an uncharacteristic gesture, he touched my shoulder.
“Thank you for this visit,” Forrestal said, surprising warmth in his voice.
“Good seeing you, Jim. See you back on the golf course.”
“I’ll take you up on that, Nate.”
I left Bethesda in a cloud of confusion. If what Forrestal had told me was true, then the flying saucer at Roswell was an experimental aircraft out of White Sands. To some extent that would even account for the government’s clampdown, if not quite justify death threats and trips to the Walker “guesthouse.”
But how did that explain the detailed, convincing eyewitness accounts I’d encountered in Roswell? And my own, deep sense of conviction that what had happened there did involve a craft from another world, with a crew from the same place? A conviction fueled by recurring dreams of that friendly spaceman …
… who I was for a change not dreaming about, that night in my bed in my room at the Ambassador Hotel, when the phone rang me awake. I’d been sleeping deep and soundly, after seeking escape from my whirling thoughts with a night out that had included the company of the Yugoslavian lass, Anya, the bebop of Louis Jordan and the comic antics of Tim Moore at the Howard Theater, and a late dinner at the Water Gate Inn.
After clicking on the nightstand lamp and blinding me, Anya, blonde hair pleasantly tousled, handed me the receiver. I glanced grumpily at my watch, and said thickly into the mouthpiece, “It’s two-thirty a.m. This better be good.”
“Actually, it’s bad, Mr. Heller,” a businesslike second tenor intoned. “This is Baughman, and I’m over at Bethesda. How quickly can you get here?”
Anya batting her blue eyes at me, I sat up and said to the chief of the Secret Service, “Give me a reason and I’m on my way.”
“James V. Forrestal committed suicide here, forty minutes ago. You were his last outside visitor. Is that sufficient reason?”
I felt it was.