Rip the Angels from Heaven

by David Krugler

  “Hoping the silent treatment keeps me chatty, huh, Voigt? Let me oblige: you talk to Rosario Moreno lately?”

  I took one last drag on my Lucky, crushed the butt hard. Slater dropping that name was bad, bad news. In high school, in Chicago, I’d dated Moreno’s daughter, not knowing for a time he was a union organizer and member of the Communist Party of the United States of America. If the Bureau had his name, that meant the Chicago field office was doing an honors history thesis on my young life, paging through yearbooks, talking to old classmates, scrutinizing the Bureau’s card file on radicals. It also meant Hoover’s boys had a magnifying glass on my eight years in the Navy. Seek and ye shall find. Bureau 101. If they didn’t find what they were looking for, whatever they uncovered would do with a little touching up.

  So I did what an innocent man would do: I stood and walked out. All I could do was hustle back to the Navy Building and find out what Groves had said. If he says no, if he says no … that thought turned and whirled, like metal on a lathe, waiting for me to shape it. But I couldn’t concentrate, not with visions of the Newhursts’ grief and Agent Slater’s parting shot—Enjoy your last breaths of fresh air, Voigt—ringing in my head.

  PART 2

  Confessions

  Los Alamos, New Mexico

  July 13–16, 1945

  TOP SECRET

  WAR DEPARTMENT

  WASHINGTON

  12 July 1945

  MEMORANDUM TO: Chief of Staff.

  The plan to handle the alleged security problem at Site Y is now underway. The adding of O.N.I. is necessary due to fact one of its officers is able to identify suspect. Colonel Latham assures me this action will be conducted separately from the other steps being taken. Providing there are no unforeseen problems, the breach will be sealed prior to the Trinity test in four days. Dr. Oppenheimer assures me there will be no delays. He is fully confident of Trinity outcome and I have no reason to question his expectation.

  L. R. Groves,

  Major General, USA.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE DREAM JOLTED ME OUT OF UNEASY SLUMBER. A LITTLE BOY CRYING, “No, Mommy, no.” She was nudging him, marching him across the concrete floor of an empty factory. “Be a good boy,” she was pleading. I was watching helplessly from the corner, paralyzed, my arms and legs dead weight, my voice gone.

  Awake—disoriented, blinking, wiping slobber from my chin. Didn’t need Freud to interpret that one. Bright light, back aching, right arm numb from sleeping on it. The carriage rolled smoothly, movement barely noticeable. I looked out the window at flat, furrowed fields, the damp black earth shot through with tall rows of corn. Indiana, Illinois? I’d drifted off shortly after the Cincinnati stop. Across the aisle, a few seats up, a young mother was spooning medicine to her toddler. The boy was sick, had a cough, was fussy. “No, Mommy, no!” He squirmed, he kicked; but she got the spoon in, he swallowed—ack, ack—and started wailing. An elderly man leaned into the aisle to glare at the mother. When he saw me dog-eyeing him, he frowned but turned around.

  I was aboard the B & O’s National Limited, bound for St. Louis, where I would switch trains for Santa Fe. Commander Paslett had wanted to put me on an Army transport plane, but General Groves had said no, that kind of arrival would start chatter, draw attention. Better I come in like the junior officer I was, even if it cost us two days. I didn’t mind, not a bit; I needed the time to think, brood, decide. Groves had said yes, had signed orders to post me to Los Alamos to find his spy, but trouble still followed me.

  Trouble like Clayton Slater and the F.B.I. The Bureau hadn’t been able to keep me from going to New Mexico, but it wasn’t going to stop trying to get me pulled from the case. Working Chicago, digging into my past, field agents would snuff and paw relentlessly, interviewing old friends and teachers, my family. No matter how benign the stories told, the memories shared, Slater would find a pattern. I could anticipate the language. As a teenager, Voigt already displayed a disposition to defy authority … there have been received numerous reports that Voigt associated with radical and foreign-born elements as a youth in Chicago, including known communist Rosario Moreno … Add to this the Bureau’s version of the last case I’d worked, and I’d come out looking awful hinky. Slater would make sure Groves’s boys got his report before I even arrived in New Mexico, so I had to watch for Bureau land mines with every step I took.

  More trouble: the O.S.S., which kept turning up like a bad penny. Paslett had told me more than once that the agency was trying to shoehorn into Groves’s operation in New Mexico. What if the general also said yes to the O.S.S.? My operation was dicey enough without also trying to work with O.S.S. officers eager to prove themselves and keep the agency alive.

  Finally, the N.K.V.D. I’d come within a cat’s whisker of being killed the night they tortured me. If I messed up my assignment in New Mexico, the Russians would put a bullet in my head without pausing to ask what had gone wrong. My double-game with Mara wouldn’t save me, Paslett couldn’t protect me; I couldn’t run, I couldn’t hide. The Russians never forgave and they never forgot. Just ask Trotsky.

  ALL THIS MESS, THIS TANGLED, STICKY WEB—KENNY NEWHURST, SHOT; Hoover’s bloodhounds racing to tree me; the N.K.V.D. and Mara—was my making. You made your bed, now lie in it: So my mother had chided my brother Eddie and me when we got into trouble as kids. Never quite understood the adage—wasn’t making your bed a good thing? Time to pay the piper: Pop’s preferred saying, just as obscure. Much clearer, the plain phrase of my high school gymnasium teacher: Own up, own up! Who snaggled the jump ropes, who left the baseball bat at the plate? Own up, boys, own up!

  Time for me to own up, to tell the truth, to be honest with myself.

  And the truth was, I did kill the N.K.V.D.’s agent Henry Himmel.

  I shot him at close range on the grounds of the Jefferson Memorial, which was closed for renovations, on the night of May 9, after confronting him outside the Automat and persuading him to go to a quiet place to talk. I borrowed a rowboat from a camper at East Potomac Park and used stones from the construction site to weight the body. Dumped him into the Potomac, returned the boat, and went home, as if I’d been out for a quick fishing trip. Only what I’d caught was a schematic, a plan, for the weapon being built in New Mexico. The man whom Himmel had met at the Automat was, in fact, a scientist who traveled to Washington from New Mexico. Along with the plan, he’d had Himmel memorize the following: To diffuse the Uranium-235, use uranium hexafluoride and a metal filter with submicroscopic perforations. Do not use a mass spectrometer. But these instructions, whatever they meant, were useless without the blueprint the scientist had also shared with Himmel. By killing Himmel and taking the plan, I’d prevented the Russians from getting the dope on our secret weapon. That plan, a schematic, was now folded into a tiny square and hidden in the works of a mantel clock I’d bought at a junk shop. I’d hocked the clock at a pawnbroker’s on G Street. The stub, hidden in my flat, was now my most valuable possession, truly priceless, because there wasn’t enough money in the world to pay for what that sheet of drawing paper could buy me.

  Redemption. Absolution. Salvation. The unhocking of my conscience. Most of all, a future. Because I hadn’t killed Himmel in the name of national security—I’d killed him to save myself. The Bureau’s bloodhounds weren’t barking up the wrong trail in Chicago. I’d known Rosario Moreno, I’d known he was a Red, I’d dated his daughter Delphine. More than dated—we’d been in love, the stupid, head-over-heels-to-hell-with-the-rest-of-the-world love that only the young are blessed with. Or cursed. I’d watched Delphine die on Memorial Day 1937, when the Chicago police fired on unarmed strikers in a field outside Republic Steel. Rosario had organized the march, Delphine and I had posted flyers all over town, we’d gone. A cop shot Delphine in the back, she died in the dirt, wide-eyed and bewildered, spitting blood, trying to speak, clutching my hand. The cop who murdered her was never identified; no one was called to justice for her or the ten men the police also killed.
I was seventeen, I wanted revenge. Headstrong and hot-blooded, roiled with unspeakable grief and anger, I wanted so much more than to strike back at the cops—I wanted to destroy the men who pulled their strings. The men who owned Republic Steel, the men who owned and traded its stock, all the men who owned the corporations that enslaved the proletariat, all the men who started wars to make even more money …

  No need to spout the commie manifesto, I knew it by heart, and it didn’t matter a bit now if I’d ever believed in it. At my pleading, Rosario had put me in touch with the no-name Reds who ran the Party’s secret apparatus. I passed their tests, they ordered me to enlist; I did, happily. By the time I realized nothing I did for the Party or the Soviet Union would ever change anything or even avenge Delphine’s death, it was too late to drop out. The N.K.V.D. had me by the shorts.

  Which is why Himmel ordered me to kill Logan Skerrill, the naval intelligence officer who had also been a Red spy. And I’d never known it! The Russians were that good, they raised and ran us as lone wolves, nurtured and trained apart from the pack. Skerrill had signed his death warrant by going to the Bureau for a turn as a double agent, and Himmel had selected me as his gunman because he wanted me to investigate the very murder I’d commit. Had to give it to Himmel—he was the best in the business I’d ever encountered. Brass balls, steel nerves. He’d arranged for me to shoot Skerrill on Navy property so that O.N.I. would take the case; and he knew, because of all I’d told him about Paslett, that the commander would order me to go undercover to infiltrate the news clipping service Himmel ran as a front for his espionage. Himmel knew I’d be desperate to frame someone for Skerrill’s murder. Sure enough, I planted the gun I’d used at the flat of Philip Greene, Himmel’s office manager and a loyal commie, so I could “find” it. By going to the Bureau, Skerrill had compromised Himmel’s spy ring, so the Russian didn’t care if one of his underlings took the fall. Meanwhile Himmel used me to feed false discoveries. I didn’t know we were being played until I eavesdropped on Himmel at the Automat. That was his game all along: kill Skerrill, throw O.N.I. and the Bureau off the scent, and take delivery of the package from the scientist from New Mexico.

  The fast-fading bell of a crossing signal brought me back to the here and now. As in, what was I going to do, here and now. Arrive in New Mexico, identify the scientist spying for the Reds. I’d told no one—not Paslett, not Shovel-face—that I’d gotten a long, good look at this scientist from the window in the Automat kitchen door on the night of May 9. Young, thin. Thick, arched brows that gave him an intense appearance. Dark eyes, black hair parted to the side. Delicate features: high cheekbones rising from a narrow chin, thin wrists, slender fingers. His appearance and his voice—surprisingly deep—were burned in my memory. All I had to do was see him once—bingo! Groves would lock him down, put him in total isolation for ceaseless interrogation. I’d return to Washington, get the schematic out of the pawnshop. Modify it, bitch it up. Change the measurements, alter the scale, erase a few lines, anything—then turn it over to Shovel-face, telling him I’d obtained it from the scientist before I told Groves who he was. Once the Russians had the schematic, they wouldn’t care any longer what had happened to Himmel; but by sabotaging the blueprint, I’d keep the Reds from building their own weapon. At the same time, catching the scientist would give me bona fides, the kind that not even Special Agent Clayton Slater and the Bureau could wreck. Sure, they had Philip Greene in custody, he’d convinced them I’d pulled a frammi; but it was still my word against his. Not even J. Edgar could discredit a naval intelligence officer who’d nabbed a Red spy in a top-secret weapons program. And if I had to answer additional questions about my youthful associations with Rosario Moreno, I’d say, sure, I knew he was a Red, that’s why I’d stopped seeing his daughter.

  If everything went according to plan, I’d be fine. I’d have the Russians and the Bureau off my back. If everything went according to plan, I’d look like a hero. I wouldn’t be a hero, of course, but being a fraud sure beat being a traitor. Or being dead. If everything went according to plan. What had Von Moltke, the Prussian general who drafted Germany’s war plans in 1914, once said? Planning is everything, but at the moment of execution, plans are worthless. Anybody who doubted that advice needed to remind himself how that particular war had turned out for the Germans.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE TRAIN WAS RIGHT ON TIME, WE ARRIVED AT SANTA FE A TICK SHY of four the following afternoon. I’d spent a fitful night in my sleeper, the pint of rye I drank after dinner no help in chasing away the anxieties filling my skull. Spent the morning and afternoon gazing out the window at the craggy desert landscape, unable to concentrate on the book I’d brought along. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, by Edgar Allan Poe. What the hell had I been thinking, packing Poe? I knew the answer: Liv had recommended it, in one of the last conversations we had before she left town. Liv … Liv … full name Lavinia Burling but I’d only known her as Liv, ignorant of her family name, just as she had only known me as El. Not truly my “gal,” we’d never “gone steady,” but our infrequent dates in the spring had been a sorely needed refuge from the wreck I’d made of my life, my work.

  So I finished the journey thinking about Liv. Remembering her, us together. How she absently played with a lock of black hair when she talked, how her bracelets slid up and down her slender forearms when she was gesturing. Her quirky greeting. How will you be? Never How have you been? or even a simple Hiya: always How will you be? Her winsome smile, her love of the moment, the way the past appeared not to exist for her. I never learned anything about her family; she never once told a story about being a girl or about her life before she turned up in Washington to work as a typist for a war agency. Live free, and the rest will follow. Her slogan, her mantra. We never set dates in advance, I never knew when I’d see her next. Might come home to find a cryptic note slipped under my door—if I deciphered it correctly (somehow I always did), I’d find her that night. Were we “steadies”? Did we have a future together? I learned not to care about those questions, learned to embrace living free.

  As Liv was doing now. I tried to stay within my memories, tried not to wonder where she was—how could I know for certain? If she had chased her dream, she was in San Francisco, waiting out the war, primed to leave for the South Pacific as soon as the Japs called it quits. But maybe she’d changed her mind, maybe en route to California her fancy had taken another flight. Maybe she’d met someone else. Try as I did, I couldn’t shake that thought. It wasn’t jealousy but envy. A jealous man wants his lover all for himself, but the envious man wishes he could be like her. Live free, and the rest would follow. If only I could, if only I could.

  THE SERGEANT SPOTTED ME RIGHT AWAY, BEFORE I’D FINISHED SCANNING the platform. “Lieutenant Voigt, sir, over here!” Waving like a kid, practically on his tiptoes. He was short, the top of his cap barely reaching my shoulder. Round face with indistinct features, a bit pudgy, Army greens rumpled. “I’m your driver, sir.”

  I snapped off a salute, he lowered his arm and reached for my kit. I gladly handed it over, rubbed my shoulder.

  “Any other bags, sir?” Slight drawl, not quite Southern. Southern Illinois, maybe Missouri. Nametag read mcallister.

  Shook my head. One duffel, that was it. Call it superstition, but I was hoping the less I brought, the shorter my stay.

  “All right then, this way, sir.”

  I followed him across the busy platform and down a short set of stairs to a Chrysler jeep that looked new, the late afternoon sun glinting on the drab olive body. To keep my duffel from dragging, McAllister had to cinch up the strap, but he didn’t let the burden slow him down. He hefted the bag into the jeep and hopped into the driver’s seat. Pressed the ignition, slipped on dark glasses, looked over at me.

  “Did you bring sunshades, sir?”

  “Sure didn’t.”

  “Here, take these, sir.” He reached under the seat and came up with glasses identical to his. “The glare is
something awful.” He gestured vaguely at the horizon. Flat mountains dotted with short, dark green conifers, scattered expanses of reddish soil devoid of foliage. I slipped on the glasses and was immediately grateful for the tint—I hadn’t realized how much I’d been squinting.

  “Nice trip, sir?”

  “Nice enough. Been a while since I spent that much time aboard a train.”

  “It can get boring, I bet.”

  “Been stationed here long, Sergeant? At Los Alamos?”

  “Sorry sir, I can’t tell you that.”

  “For real?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Pretty tight security, huh?”

  “Airtight, sir. General Groves’s orders.”

  “So I can’t even ask where you’re from?”

  He took his eyes off the road to grin at me. “You can ask, sir, you can even order me, but I won’t answer.”

  “All right. How about this: How far to the base?”

  “Nope, can’t even tell you that, sir.”

  “But I can just get that from a road sign!”

  “Not anymore, sir—they took down all the signs.”

  “Jesus H., what can you tell me?”

  Another quick grin. “Just that before you get your billet and orders, sir, you’ll go through inspection and get briefed on security.”

  He didn’t say another word. I’d never been to the Southwest before and marveled at the scenery like a tourist without a care in the world. Flawless blue sky, rolling mountains with swathes of trees, craggy bluffs. I watched a hawk take flight from a conifer, wheeling away. I’d expected blazing heat, but the temperature was tolerable, no more than eighty degrees, I guessed. Not much traffic, just an occasional delivery truck and passenger sedan. After about fifty minutes, we arrived at a nondescript post outside a barbed wire fence. I’d been through my share of gate checks while in uniform—all were perfunctory, the guards bored, going through the motions. Not at the Los Alamos Project Main Gate. Two Army MPs approached the jeep, one to talk to McAllister, the other with his carbine at port arms, his eyes trained on us. If McAllister was a regular driver, then he’d probably presented his credentials any number of times to this corporal, but the soldier acted as if he’d never seen the sergeant before. Nor did he acknowledge the sergeant’s rank. McAllister held out a laminated badge—I was startled to see it had a photograph. Nobody in D.C. carried an identification card with a photograph.