The Magdalene Cipher

by Jim Hougan

  Dunphy muttered to himself. Why not? In fact, how could he not? The Magdalene Society had its own agenda, clearly, and there was no reason to assume that its agenda was peculiarly American—or liberal. On the contrary, the guy who was running the show, or who was supposed to be running the show—the “Helmsman”—was a loony, pro-Fascist poet making propaganda broadcasts from Italy and hailing Mussolini as a savior. Dunphy knew that much from History 101. So why not Speer? If anything, Speer was probably less eccentric than Pound. Moreover, it was becoming increasingly clear to Dunphy that the Magdalene Society (at least the organization had a name) was a kind of secret church.

  But, which kind? There was nothing to glean from the name: Mary Magdalene was a prostitute who’d gotten religion. She manifested the idea that even the most serious sinners could be forgiven. But so what? What did that have to do with anything?

  Maybe everything, maybe nothing. But what was certain was that if the Society was indeed a kind of church, then its adherents might come from every corner of the globe, regardless of political boundaries—even boundaries between countries at war.

  Which only went to prove that while politics made strange bedfellows, religion made even stranger ones.

  He checked his watch. It was nine fifty-five. Three hours to go. And then he’d turn into a pumpkin (if he was lucky)—or a torso (if he wasn’t).

  There was a soft knock on the door, and Dieter entered, carrying an armload of files. Stacking them on the desk, he gestured inanely and said, “The Dumpy file is not available.”

  “You mean Dun aphy.”

  “Yes—that one. But . . . as I said, it is not available.”

  “Why not?”

  “Someone uses it.”

  Dunphy tried not to look too disappointed—or too interested. “Do you know who?”

  Dieter nodded. “The Direktor. a”

  A weak smile from Dunphy. And a shiver. “It’s cold in here,” Dunphy complained.

  “You get used to it,” Dieter replied.

  When the big guy had gone, Dunphy returned to the Schidlof file. Having moved to Bern, Dulles saw Jung more often, but wrote to him less frequently—perhaps because the war made communications chancy. Even so, there were gems to be found among the few missives written between ’42 and ’44. “I am particularly grateful,” Dulles wrote after a 1943 visit to Jung in Küsnacht,

  to your Miss Vogelei, who was kind enough to take Mrs. Dulles on a delightful sail to Rapperswill and back. You are very lucky to have a secretary as talented and gracious as she.

  So that’s who she is, Dunphy thought, happy to see another loose string tied into a bow. He glanced at his watch. Ten-fifteen.

  The next letter wasn’t a letter at all, but a postcard. It had been sent by Dulles on April 12, 1943. On its face was a picture of an exquisite mountain wilderness, where all the trees were flocked with snow. A cutline on the opposite side identified the image as a part of the Swiss National Park (est. 1914) in the canton of Graubünden, near the Italian border.

  “I have been to see our young man,” Dulles wrote.

  He is unhappy, as you know, with his confinement and shows no interest whatsoever in our plans. Nevertheless, he is in reasonable health and gets about as much as his wounds will allow.

  There’s “Our young man” again, Dunphy thought. Gomelez.

  The next letter was written after the war. Dated May 29, 1945, it had been sent from Rome.

  Dear Carl,

  I have just been to the Disciplinary Training Center in Pisa, where Ezra is being held until the paperwork is completed for his return to the United States.

  As you may imagine, the Center is a rough place—a holding pen for American soldiers charged with serious crimes (murder and rape, desertion and drug addiction). To find our Helmsman there nearly broke my heart.

  Still, it could be worse. His “capture” was arranged by Major Angleton, who made certain that no interrogation took place. (According to Ez, I was the first American “to spit two words” at him since the arrest.)

  Even so, the conditions under which he is being held are predictably appalling. So, also, is the evidence against him: scores, if not hundreds, of radio broadcasts attacking the Jews, the bankers, and all things American, while celebrating the courage and vision of Il Duce.

  I don’t know what to say. I think there is a possibility that he might be hanged.

  A half-dozen communiqués followed over the next six months. Some were long, others short, but all revolved around the same theme: how to save the Helmsman? American sentiment was running strongly toward a lynching, and Dulles thought a trial would be a catastrophe. Accordingly, a strategy was decided upon by which Pound would plead guilty to insanity, but not to treason. And, in this, Jung proved the most valuable of allies. As the founder of analytic psychology, he was an icon of the psychiatric community. It was an easy matter, then, for him to assist Dulles and “young Angleton” in marshaling a tidal wave of expertise in behalf of the otherwise dubious proposition that the politically incorrect Pound was in fact raving mad.

  October 12, 1946

  And so we have prevailed.

  Ezra is committed to the federal asylum in Washington, D.C. There, at St. Elizabeth’s, he will remain under the care of Dr. Winfred Overholser—who is one of our own. While I have not yet had the opportunity to visit the great man in his psychiatric haven, I am reliably informed that Ezra has been given a sort of suite in which he holds court for admirers from every corner of the globe.

  Winnie assures me that no privileges have been (or will be) withheld from him—save the freedom to move about outside the grounds. His dinners are prepared by caterers, and a stream of visitors moves constantly through his rooms—so much so that he has begun to complain that he does not have time to write, so busy is his schedule.

  This much, at least, is well and good. . . .

  Two months later, Dulles wished Jung the merriest of Christmases and reported “a fascinating tête-à-tête with Dr. Overholser’s patient.”

  With Pisa behind him, and the trial, too, he seems to have regained much of the vitality he’d lost—and all of the acuity. Indeed, on the basis of the afternoon that I spent with him, I can assure you that his long incarceration was anything but unproductive. Indeed, it would appear to have focused his attention to an amazing degree.

  From his rooms in the asylum, our Helmsman suggests a strategy that just might work. “What is needed,” he told me, “is for our little band to take a proactive stance toward the Apocryphon, [There’s that word again, Dunphy thought.] whose prophecies will be no less fulfilled for having endured a midwife.”

  You see the point. Rather than standing passively by, our Nautonnier would have us intervene, reifying the portents enumerated in the Apocryphon, while making its prophecies come true—in effect, acting as midwives to the millennium. In that way, Ez suggests, it may be possible to achieve our ends while our young man is still among the quick.

  Dunphy wasn’t entirely sure what Dulles was talking about. For one thing, he didn’t know what reifying meant, and for another, he’d never heard of the Apocryphon. Even so, he understood the part about making prophecies come true—though what that had to do with achieving their ends “while our young man is still among the quick” was a mystery.

  “To accomplish this,” the letter went on, a political and psychological strategy will, of course, be required. And, in particular, a mechanism will be needed to protect the Magdalene Society from the scrutiny of the mob. Happily, such a mechanism is at hand.

  The next letter, dated February 19, 1947, went a long way toward answering that question.

  In our meeting last week, Ezra remarked that the secret services provide an ideal refuge for a brotherhood such as our own. This is so because the day-to-day activities of the intelligence services are, by their very nature, clandestine. It is, indeed, the hallmark of their ordinary business. Accordingly, a secret society within a secret service would be about as visible a
s a pane of glass at the bottom of the sea. (The metaphor was his.)

  As you can imagine, this is an insight from which our Society might easily benefit.

  Unfortunately, the British and French services are essentially unavailable to us at this time. While members of our order have served both organizations at the very highest levels (Vincent Walsingham was for nine years our Nautonnier, after all), we do not currently have the same degree of influence among them as we once did. (I blame Nesta Webster.)

  Dunphy got to his feet and stretched. He didn’t know who Walsingham was, but Nesta Webster was notorious as an author of books about secret societies.

  He rolled his head in a circle, trying to get the kinks out. It had been a long time since he’d gone for a run, and he missed it. Maybe tomorrow, Dunphy thought, and heard himself reply, If there is a tomorrow. And so he sat back down and resumed reading.

  Still, an opportunity has arisen over the past year. In January, President Truman signed the secret charter of a new American intelligence service—one that will build upon the work of the OSS. Called the Central Intelligence Group, the new agency has the Red Menace as its brief, with Moscow as its focal point. I think you will not be surprised to learn that I have been given a central role in getting the CIG up and running—prior to the appointment of the organization’s first director.

  In this capacity, it has been a relatively simple matter to create a sort of inner sanctum within the CIG, enabling us to act without fear of scrutiny or unintended consequences. The enterprise to which I refer is the Security Research Staff, a component of the counterintelligence apparatus that will soon be headed by young Angleton. With his help, the Society’s activities will be concealed within a sea of muzzy invisibilities, the day-to-day spookery that both press and government must soon take for granted.

  If the metaphor of an inner sanctum seems obscure, think of us instead as the political equivalent of Dracunculus medinensis. (I invite you to look it up.)

  Dunphy let the letter drop from his hand. Falling back in his chair, he looked at the ceiling and heaved a sigh of weary astonishment. It’s like the CIA is just a cover, he thought, for something more important. And the Cold War: an excuse for something else. This Magdalene thing . . .

  “Excuse? . . .”

  Dunphy looked up. Dieter was standing in the doorway. “What?” Dunphy asked, pronouncing the word as if he were asking a blackjack dealer to hit him.

  “I thought—I heard you. I thought you asked . . .” Dieter looked confused, but it was Dunphy who was embarrassed: he’d been talking to himself.

  “I need an encyclopedia,” Dunphy said.

  Dieter blinked. “A whole encyclopedia? In English?”

  Dunphy shook his head and tried to get a grip. “No,” he said. “Just the Ds. But definitely in English.”

  When the door closed, Dunphy glanced at his watch. It was eleven-fifteen—just after five in the morning in the States. Which meant that he had about an hour and a half before he’d have to leave.

  Time sure flies when you’re having fun, he thought, flattening the next letter on the desk in front of him.

  April 23, 1947

  Dear Carl,

  I am now back at my desk after eight days in the West, visiting the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and certain facilities that we have in Nevada. Doctor Bush accompanied me on the last leg of the trip, and I can report that our time was put to especially good purpose.

  The first archetype will be introduced within the next few weeks. The event will take place in the vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico (a small town not far from Sandia Laboratories). Members of the Security Research Staff, on temporary assignment to the 509th Composite Bomb Group, will be responsible for the object’s “recovery,” and all subsequent relations with the public and the press.

  As agreed, the existence of the recovered artifact (in actuality, a weather balloon) will be acknowledged and then denied, turning the event into what you have so aptly described as “a symbolic rumor.”

  Reinforcement of that rumor will take place from time to time, until such a time as the archetype is found to be self-generating. Toward that end, the CIG is establishing a reinforcement facility under Air Force cover at Wright Field (in Dayton, Ohio). Convenient to U.S. and foreign news media, the facility will legitimize the phenomenon by denying its reality, whatever evidence may be put forward in its behalf.

  A knock at the door interrupted his reading. He looked up. Dieter was standing in the doorway, holding a couple of books. “Here,” he said, crossing the room in a single step. “It’s ’93, okay?”

  Dunphy accepted the books with an impatient nod, then watched his baby-sitter turn on his heel. A moment later, the door closed behind him.

  There were two thick volumes, bound in Moroccan leather. For a moment, Dunphy didn’t remember why he’d asked for the encyclopedias. Something in one of Dulles’s letters, something Latin, but . . . what? His mind was spinning—and not like a compact disc. It was more like a top at the end of its rotation, leaning to one side and another as it begins to wobble, soon to spin out.

  He went back to Dulles’s earlier letters, scanning the pages until he found the one he was looking for—February 19—and the words “the political counterpart of Dracunculus medinensus. (I invite you to look it up.)” Dunphy did.

  GUINEA WORM. A waterborne nematode that causes an appalling disease. The females are larviparous, and grow to a length of one meter or more, working their way through the duodenum to the subcutaneous tissue, where the parasite discharges millions of eggs into the definitive host (Homo sapiens). The intermediate host is the copepod, Cyclops. The appearance of an inflamed papule on a person’s skin betrays the worm, which can be removed in a painful procedure of gradual extraction, using a short stick around which the worm is slowly wound over a period of several weeks. The procedure is thought to have inspired the medical symbol of the serpent entwined upon a caduceus.

  It was eleven fifty-five.

  He’d been reading the Dulles correspondence for nearly four hours, and he felt like he was going to lose it. The paranoia that he’d felt a few hours earlier was making a comeback. Every so often, it hit him that he was four stories underground, and the realization triggered a twinge of claustrophobia that he hadn’t known that he’d had. And a question had arisen—one of those hostile questions whose origin seems to be in the spleen, rather than in the brain: what made him think he could walk in and out of the Special Registry, just because he had a building pass? What if Hilda and her friends wouldn’t let him leave until they’d talked to Harry Matta?

  Well, that’s easy, Dunphy told himself. If they do that, you’re a torso.

  Suddenly, he needed a breath of fresh air—at least, that’s what he told himself. But the lie didn’t take. He knew what he really wanted: to see if Dieter would let him out of the room. Getting up from the desk, he went to the door and opened it. As he suspected, Dieter was outside, sitting in a straight-back chair, reading Maus.

  “Is there any coffee around here?” Dunphy asked.

  “Sure,” Dieter said, nodding toward the elevators. “In the canteen on the second floor.”

  Dunphy pulled the door shut behind him and, walking backward, told the security guard not to let anyone in the room.

  “Of course not,” Dieter replied, and turned the page.

  Finding the cafeteria wasn’t hard. It was noon, and it seemed like half the building was heading in its direction. By following the crowd, Dunphy soon found himself in the most wonderful—indeed, the only wonderful—cafeteria he’d ever been in. There were frescoes on every wall—pastoral scenes with modern faces—including those of Dulles and Jung, Pound and Harry Matta. There were no cash registers. Everyone just helped themselves. And Dunphy was tempted: there were heaps of seeded rolls and crusty breads, and platters of thinly sliced roast beef, duck, and venison. There were plates of raclette, spaetzle, and rosti, charred bratwurst and smoldering fondues flanked by icy beers
and little bottles of wine. There were plates of cheese, towers of fruit, and baskets of salad.

  He helped himself to a cup of decaf and returned the way he’d come.

  “Here,” Dieter said, holding out a folded piece of paper.

  “What’s that?” Dunphy asked, his apprehension returning.

  “A note—”

  “For me?”

  “Yes, take it! It’s from your friend—Mike.”

  Mike a?

  Dunphy took the note and went into the office, shutting the door behind him.

  Gene!

  What are you doing here? I thought you were sick! I saw Hilda this morning, and your name on her desk, and she mentioned you’re doing some kind of damage control—what’s all that about? Since when did you know anything about “damage control”? You’re just a cowboy! (Ha ha!) Anyway, let’s do lunch—I’ll be back in ten minutes.

  The signature was a practiced scrawl: R something something something G-O-L-D. R-gold. Mike R-gold. Rhinegold! Fuck!

  Though it no longer mattered what time it was, Dunphy looked at his watch: twelve twenty-two. He had to get outa here because . . . because Dunphy knows Rhinegold, and Rhinegold knows Brading—and that ain’t good. Rhinegold was the psycho nerd who’d debriefed him in the anechoic chamber at Langley, and if he sees me here—in Zug—at the Registry . . . gotta go gotta go gotta go.

  And leave my nice topcoat. The one that cost a thousand pounds in the little square past the Zum Storchen. Because I don’t think Dieter’s gonna let me out of here with my coat on.

  With a rueful look, Dunphy cast his eyes toward the files on the desk. There were half a dozen unread letters from Dulles to Jung, and a stack of files marked Bovine Census—N.M., and Bovine Census, CO. He’d never get to read them now. Unless . . .

  He slipped one of the Census files inside his shirt and stuffed the last of the Dulles letters into one of his pockets. He was reaching for the Schidlof tapes when the door flew open, and Mike Rhinegold waltzed in with a glad hand and a dopey grin that dwindled in an instant to incomprehension—then swelled at the memory. Finally, a deep frown.