Rip the Angels from Heaven

by David Krugler

  “Destination?” the corporal asked. He was tall, wide-jawed, broad-shouldered, trim-waisted. Born to be a right tackle, a doorman, or an MP. Maybe all three, eventually.

  “H.”

  “Stops?”

  “None.”

  “Him?” The corporal eyed me over.

  “Intake.”

  “Okay.” To me: “Step out and come to the post. Bring your kit.”

  I’d never been stopped by the police while driving, but I imagined this was just what a pull-over was like—if the cop thought you were Pretty Boy Floyd. I clambered out, shouldered my duffel, followed the corporal. Gravel crunched under the boots of his partner as he turned to watch me, his weapon still at arms. I followed Notre Dame’s future star recruit into a small wood-framed structure. The interior was striking for all the things it lacked. Cheesecake calendar, base map, wall clock, clipboards dangling from nails, overflowing ashtrays, hot plate on a cluttered counter—the standard fixtures of sentry posts everywhere were nowhere to be found here. This sentry post was as barren as a surgery, and almost as clean, featuring only a broad wooden table in the center, no chairs, and a small wooden desk in the corner.

  “Your orders,” the corporal said.

  I handed the sheaf over, he read them carefully, every page, the onion skin rustling in his hands.

  “Okay.” He returned the packet. “You armed?”

  “No.”

  He studied me. Then his eyes drifted to my duffel.

  “My sidearm’s in there, sure,” I said.

  “Loaded?”

  “A’course not.”

  “Okay. Empty your duffel on the table.”

  “Empty it?”

  “Take everything out for inspection.”

  I wasn’t a stickler for rank, but taking orders from a corporal was a new, and unpleasant, experience. But I did what I was told and didn’t speak as he went through my clothes, shaving kit, shoes—every item in the duffel. He even riffled the pages of my book and shook it by the spine to see if anything came out. He removed my Colt M1911 from its holster and expertly checked the magazine. Reholstered the pistol and set it to the side, along with the unopened cardboard box of ammunition I’d packed.

  “You’ll get these back when you leave.”

  “That’s an authorized weapon, Corporal.”

  “Not here it isn’t, Lieutenant.”

  “All right.”

  “You can put your kit back together.”

  As I repacked, he filled out a custody form for my weapon and ammunition. I signed it, took my carbon; he chin-nodded toward the jeep.

  At any other post, McAllister and the other MP would be jawboning, smoking, telling jokes. But the sergeant sat ramrod straight in the jeep, the MP was still at attention. I tossed my duffel into the back, got in; McAllister fired up the jeep. Only then did the MPs open the gate topped by barbed wire, and we entered the post.

  “They enjoy that?” I asked.

  “If they did, they’d be reassigned,” McAllister said. “Them ignoring rank, sir—they’ve got orders to do that. From the top.”

  I nodded, getting it now. “Security matters more than anything else, so everyone gets treated the same.”

  “That’s right, sir. You see them when they’re not at the gate, they’ll ‘sir’ you.”

  “Destination H” turned out to be the administration headquarters, an irregularly shaped wooden structure in the center of the base. At first glance, Los Alamos looked like any other army base. Unadorned rectangular wooden structures; winding interior roadways; dusty parked cars; sheds, garages, and outbuildings strewn about like autumn leaves. But two features were unique: massive brick chimneys, at least six, attached to several buildings; and watchtowers with armed guards. The prior year, the Washington papers had run stories about camps the Nazis had built in occupied Poland. According to an escaped prisoner, the Nazis were gassing Jews in those camps and burning their bodies in massive crematoria. I was pretty sure the Los Alamos chimneys had a very different purpose, but the similarity, however invalid, was still unsettling.

  McAllister stopped the jeep in front of Building H’s main entrance, left the engine running. “I’ll take your kit to your billet, sir, while you get briefed.”

  “Where’m I bunking?”

  “They’ll show you when you’re done, sir. Good luck.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  “Maybe you will, Lieutenant.”

  Another sergeant was waiting for me. He made McAllister look like a real gabber. Just read my nameplate, saluted, and said, “This way, sir.” The sounds of a bureaucracy at work carried from the offices lining the long corridor. Clattering typewriters, thump-thump of a mimeograph, indistinct telephone conversations. The sergeant opened a door with POST SECURITY stenciled on its opaque window and shut it behind me without entering. For the first time since disembarking from the train, I was alone. Two small windows, an unmarked door, an upholstered couch with matching chairs, a low-slung table with dog-eared magazines and an ashtray, a faded war bond poster, the one with the grim-faced Bataan prisoner: Remember Me?

  Before I could sit down, the interior door opened. An army officer stuck his head out. “We’re ready, Lieutenant Voigt.”

  Ready for what? I wondered. Involuntarily, I shuddered—the electric shock treatment the Russians had given me was still a fresh memory. But I dutifully entered a windowless, brightly lit room lined with metal file cabinets and wooden card catalogs like those found in libraries. In the center was a long table with chairs. The officer who had spoken to me was lanky, with a long, thin face. He wasn’t wearing his cap, and his wispy, light brown hair was combed over a bald spot. Looked to be about thirty. The colonel already seated at the table was much older, at least sixty, with a creased, tanned face. His piercing blue eyes expertly appraised me. His crew cut was fully white. My guess, a sheriff or a cop whose service during the First World War had fetched him this commission. I saluted; he put me at ease and gestured at the chair directly across from me.

  “Welcome to Site Y, Lieutenant Voigt. As in the twenty-fifth letter of the alphabet, not the adverb.” He sure didn’t sound like a sheriff or a cop—so much for my hunches.

  “I’m Colonel Latham,” he continued, “this is my adjutant Lieutenant Dahlen. I’m in charge of security for Site Y. As you already know, we do things differently here. The gate inspection, for instance.”

  “Yessir.”

  “The purpose of Site Y, what’s being done here, I ask you to put that out of your head. I make this request knowing full well that it is all but an invitation for you to spend every spare moment letting your imagination run wild. You will want to conjecture, surmise; above all, guess, and guess some more. This is a human tendency, even a necessity. Are you familiar with the Buddhist faith, Lieutenant?”

  “Nossir.”

  “The Buddhists believe that man is born to suffer. The cause of this suffering is craving. Our longing for material as well as intangible things, like love, can never be sated. Therefore we suffer. How do you think a Buddhist would advise we cease our suffering?”

  “By not craving things, sir.”

  He offered me the smile of a pleased teacher, but it was fleeting. “Very good, you catch on fast. But now I’m afraid I must raise an unpleasant matter.”

  Nothing to say to that, so I waited.

  “It is your contention, Lieutenant, that I have a security problem, a very serious one, a spy. I believe, however, you are incorrect, though Lieutenant Dahlen phrased my response much more bluntly, didn’t you?” He glanced at Dahlen, who looked uncomfortable but still spoke up.

  “Yessir, what I said was, ‘This Voigt’s full’a horseshit.’”

  CHAPTER 24

  COULDN’T BLAME DAHLEN AND LATHAM FOR BEING INCREDULOUS. They were in charge of security for Site Y, and to have a lieutenant j.g. from the Navy expose the lapse added insult to injury. Even worse, if Commander Paslett was correct, the O.S.S.
had already told them they had a breach. Had someone from the O.S.S. already finagled a meeting with Latham to break the bad news? But I wasn’t about to ask pesky questions or argue with Latham. To leave Site Y unscathed, my secrets and sins undetected, I needed their cooperation every step of the way. I responded diplomatically.

  “It’s an extraordinary charge, I know.”

  “Of course we’ve read the report your commander sent, but I’d like you to review the evidence for us yourself,” Latham said.

  “Yessir.” I took out my cigarettes, drawing a pained look from the colonel.

  “About those, Lieutenant—I’m allergic to tobacco.”

  “Sorry, sir.” I slipped the Luckies back into my pocket. As concisely as possibly, I told them about my undercover assignment at the clipping service, told them how Himmel had fed me fake finds to throw O.N.I. off the scent. I described Himmel’s Automat meeting with the spy from New Mexico, holding fast to the lie I’d told everyone—Paslett, the F.B.I., the Russians—so far: Himmel had received an envelope that night and slipped away before I could follow him. But I did repeat verbatim what I’d overheard the spy tell Himmel: To diffuse the Uranium-235, use uranium hexafluoride and a metal filter with submicroscopic perforations. Do not use a mass spectrometer. I’d said this gobbledygook so many times it had become an incantation in a language I didn’t understand, like a prayer in Latin.

  If the instruction about uranium meant anything to the two officers, they didn’t let on. Dahlen scribbled notes, his head down, as Latham listened quietly, asking no questions, tilting back in his chair, eyes cast upward, fingers steepled and pressed lightly to his lips. After I finished, the colonel remained silent for a long moment, the scratch of his adjutant’s pen the only sound in the room. Then:

  “Why did you follow this Himmel to the Automat?”

  An excellent question, one I had to answer carefully. “Himmel fired me that day, sir. It struck me he had hired me, as Ted Barston, just as suddenly as he let me go. Seemed too cut and dry, so I followed him from his residence to the Automat. I was beginning to suspect that he knew I was not who I claimed to be.” Understatement of the year, I thought.

  “You were able to arrange the surveillance astoundingly fast.” A question, not a statement. The colonel still had his gaze on the ceiling.

  “Our civilian technician is quite good, sir. I went straight from Himmel’s hotel to the Navy Building to get him and his rig.”

  Now Latham straightened up, looked at me. “How were you able to go to the Navy Building if you were following Himmel to the Automat?”

  “Sorry, sir. I didn’t mention that I bribed the doorman at the hotel to find out where the taxi was taking Himmel—the doorman had overheard him give his destination.” All true, but it sounded weak, sounded complicated, and I didn’t want Latham scrutinizing every detail of my account. He looked mild-mannered but he was good, he was sharp—perilous for me to risk his suspicion.

  “Never leave anything out, Lieutenant—if a detail, fact, or observation is irrelevant, I’ll make that call, you shouldn’t.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Given your success in trailing Himmel to the Automat, why weren’t you able to follow him after his meeting?”

  Is he on to me? I wondered uncomfortably. Had Agent Slater contacted Latham, told him the Bureau was digging up the bones of my past, told him the Bureau thought I was bent? I eased that worry to the side and reminded myself that Latham was behaving normally, as any security chief would when confronted with a major lapse in his operation. He simply didn’t want to believe he’d missed a spy.

  “I lost too much time packing up my technician.”

  “Your technician couldn’t do that himself?”

  “I shoulda let him, sir. I made a big mistake not hustling outta there.”

  Latham looked sideways at Dahlen, his way of saying Be sure to write down “big mistake.” “So Himmel escapes, with an envelope, contents unknown, as well as the statement his contact had him memorize.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And it’s your contention that the man Himmel met came from Site Y, that he’s a scientist of some sort. What’s your proof?”

  Your proof. Shading his words, casting a shadow of doubt. Subtle, but troubling.

  “Himmel’s contact said he came, quote, from the desert, unquote, sir.”

  “And you’re just assuming that meant he came from Site Y.” He said assuming as if the word was coated in acid.

  “Can we afford to assume he didn’t, Colonel?” I dared.

  His bright blue eyes flashed, but he didn’t rebuke me. Instead, tersely, “Describe him, the man from, quote, the desert, unquote.”

  “I never saw him, sir.” A bald-faced lie, that, but I had to keep that man’s image, now burned into my memory, completely to myself. Offer up a description, and Latham could easily find him without me. I needed that man brought before me, had to look him in the face and declare He’s the one while Latham watched. If I wasn’t the star, the spy-hunter who bagged his prey with witnesses, I wouldn’t leave Site Y with the luster necessary to blot out the shadow cast by the F.B.I.’s suspicions of me.

  “So how are we to find him, Lieutenant?”

  “I know his voice, sir. If I hear him talk, even a little, I’ll recognize him immediately.”

  “What you want then is a lineup, a listening session as it were, of all the men stationed at Site Y who were off the base on the date of the Automat meeting.”

  “Yessir, I believe that’s the best approach.”

  He said nothing, just drummed his fingers on his desk. Deliberating, not liking it, but not saying no, not yet. Then he asked, “Why would the Soviets set up a front in D.C. for a contact they may or may not have here?”

  “Safest transmission to Mother Russia, sir. Diplomatic pouch or a coded transmission.”

  “Why not someplace closer, like San Francisco?”

  “Do they have operatives they can trust in Frisco, sir? Veterans who know their tradecraft, who don’t make mistakes. Himmel is one of their best on the East Coast.”

  Latham glanced at Dahlen, who stopped writing.

  “Let’s review your scenario,” the colonel said. “This spring, working undercover at a Washington clipping service, you discover a communist spy ring, but its owner, who uses the name Henry Himmel, knows exactly who you are. He then feeds you false information about the front’s espionage in order to mislead O.N.I. and the F.B.I. This ruse frees Himmel to meet with an alleged Site Y employee, who traveled to Washington to deliver sensitive data, both orally and in writing. Because you didn’t witness the meeting, never even saw the alleged Site Y employee, there’s no way to confirm that something on paper actually exchanged hands. And to date, the only evidence to suspect a Site Y employee is because the man you overhead—but never saw—claimed to come from, quote, the desert, unquote. Is this an accurate summary, Lieutenant?”

  I wondered if Latham was an attorney in civilian life. His summary was one hundred percent correct, yet every emphasis, every nuance, added doubt. I had no choice but to agree with him.

  “Now, about this Himmel,” he went on. “You believe he took flight because he believed the Russians planned to kill him after he turned over the received data. What’s your evidence for this theory?”

  “The N.K.V.D. has been eliminating veteran operatives since the early spring. These men have been in the States a long time—in Himmel’s case, more than ten years—and the Russians get awful suspicious of anyone who spends too much time away from watchful eyes. Do you know what the Russians are doing to their P.O.W.’s, sir, the ones who managed to survive the war in German camps?”

  He shook his head.

  “Sentencing them to hard labor in Siberia. All because Stalin believes they became German spies in order to survive. What’s happening to their operatives here, it’s part of the same pattern.”

  “A pattern is not proof.”

  “Nosir, it’s just a theo
ry.”

  “As I see it, Lieutenant, the disappearance of this Himmel is peculiar and, as yet, insufficiently analyzed. But that’s not my concern. What is my concern, my obligation, relates to the alleged presence of a Site Y employee in Washington in May.”

  “Of course, sir. No one would be happier than me to find out that Himmel didn’t meet with someone from this base. Like you said, one quick reference to the desert doesn’t prove we’re dealing with a breach here. But if we’re not, then the sooner we rule Site Y out of the equation, the faster we can figure out who Himmel’s contact was. So maybe, as Lieutenant Dahlen suggested, I’m fulla horseshit”—I cracked a friendly smile—“but let’s find out.”

  I wasn’t wrong, of course; the plan I’d taken from Himmel after I killed him was a schematic of a new type of weapon, and all signs pointed to Site Y as the place where that weapon was being built. But I had to placate Latham, had to coax him into believing I wasn’t a threat; above all, I had to act like an intelligence officer who was telling the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, every minute of every hour.

  For a long moment, no reply. Then Latham said, “We’ll let you know when we’re ready for you.” He nodded at his adjutant, who handed me a badge. Orange, my name printed in ink, no photograph. “Until then, your security clearance only gives you access to your quarters and the officers’ mess and club.”