It was impossible that the Soviets could have created their own bomb so quickly following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Which led the entire globe to the one inevitable conclusion: American atomic secrets from the Manhattan Project had, without a doubt, been leaked to the USSR.
There was a spy in our midst, someone who was willing to sell our most important secret to our enemy.
I told myself I would never have done such a thing, that I’d only shared intelligence with our wartime ally. (Of course, now that I’d been threatened by the Soviets and knew their true colors, I’d never share even the lyrics for “The Star-Spangled Banner” with them.) Still, my conscience needled me every time my thoughts wandered in that direction. If I’d been given the blueprints to Fat Man and Little Boy, what would I have done?
None of my philosophical angst mattered, only that we’d been betrayed. I’d have bet money it was William Remington—my lone contact who still worked for the federal government—who had done it. That is, until I woke up one morning to headlines blaring that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—a quiet and unassuming Jewish couple from New York—had committed the crime of the century. That they were underground Communists who had supplied Russians with schematics for the atomic bomb.
Suddenly, the FBI was once again desperate for counsel from their top expert on Communists and the Party underground. Me.
“We have irrefutable proof from VENONA cables that Julius was a courier and recruiter for the Soviets, that he was actually the kingpin of an entire ring of spies and received payments from the Russians for his work,” Hoover informed me after I’d answered a summons to the New York field office. “Actually, without you, we never would have gotten to Julius Rosenberg. Or his wife, Ethel.”
“Oh?” In all my years of spying I’d known only one Julius, from that time just after Pearl Harbor when Yasha made a drop during the wartime dark-out and then when I’d answered the man’s poorly timed calls. I’d never even known his full name.
Hoover enlightened me. “You named that Long Island city chemist—Abraham Brothman—in your earlier testimony to the HUAC, and that led us to his Soviet courier, Harry Gold. One of Gold’s other contacts, David Greenglass, was Ethel’s brother. Julius recruited him, but he cracked open like a walnut when we questioned him about the leaking of atomic secrets to the Soviets. Told us everything about Julius and Ethel.”
What a tangled web we weave. Still, at least something good had come from perjuring myself on the stand. Something big. Perhaps the ends really did justify the means.
“Ethel is a bit trickier,” Hoover continued, “but she clearly hid money and espionage materials for her husband, typed and relayed her own evaluations of sources Julius was recruiting. But as you know about VENONA . . .”
“You can’t use any of it.”
“That’s my Clever Girl.” Hoover pointed his steepled fingers at me. “That’s where you come in, Agent Gregory. It’s up to you to convince the jury that the Rosenbergs were traitors to their country. After all, if it wasn’t for you, we never would have found the trail of bread crumbs that led us straight to Julius . . .”
Upon entering the courtroom that afternoon, I felt a flicker of recognition as I passed tall and reedy Julius Rosenberg, the pencil mustache and round eyeglasses that made him look every bit the withdrawn engineer that he was. However, it wasn’t lost on me that Ethel Rosenberg and I might have passed for sisters. Both of us were of a certain age, our dark hair curled and lipstick carefully drawn on pursed lips (Victory Red for me, something akin to Persian Melon for Ethel), both our jawlines starting to go soft with middle age. How had her choices led her to being on trial for treason alongside her husband? How had my choices led me to testifying against her?
Several twists of fate, I supposed.
Just like an atomic bomb, I’d started a chain reaction without even realizing it. And now, with VENONA verifying the Rosenbergs’ guilt, it was my responsibility to finish the job.
“Miss Bentley,” asked the prosecution once I’d taken the witness stand, “during your time as a spy, had you learned what the relation of the Communist Party was to the Communist International?”
I’d already been briefed on the prosecution’s line of questioning and understood that my job as a star witness was to establish that the CPUSA was always a springboard for spies. The Rosenbergs had been verified as Party members—all that was required was that I cast them under a darker cloud of suspicion. Julius Rosenberg was no misguided American hoping to better his country; no, he had stolen classified details from America’s most carefully guarded military secret and ferried that information to our greatest enemy. And his wife had been his accomplice through it all.
“The Communist Party of America only served the interests of Moscow, be it propaganda or espionage or sabotage,” I answered. (At least that’s what I think I said. Damn difficult to remember through the four-alarm hangover I had at the time.)
“And did you ever come into contact with Julius or Ethel Rosenberg?”
I recalled that night in New York spent sitting in the LaSalle while Yasha met with a shadowy man in spectacles. Named Julius.
A man the same height and build as the Julius in front of me now. With the same spectacles.
So that’s what I told the prosecutor. I resisted the urge to embellish as I’d once done on the stand. Nothing but the truth, Elizabeth. Let the jury decide.
Then I looked directly at the defendants. Julius’s eyes were partially hidden behind the glare of his glasses, but his guilt hung about him like a shroud in the way his gaze suddenly slid away from mine like oil on water. It was Ethel who made me pause, Ethel who had either blindly followed Julius out of love or might have known exactly the treason she committed when typing up top secret notes to be passed to the Soviets.
Her story was too close to mine for comfort.
Except Ethel had made her choices, just as I had mine. We both had to face the consequences of those decisions.
The prosecutor ceased his pacing, looked at me. “We’ve been informed of your impressive feats of memory regarding your contacts, Miss Bentley. What do you remember of this Julius?”
Not just Julius, this Julius. Leading the jury to draw the inevitable conclusion that this thin man wearing round eyeglasses and sitting in front of them was one and the same.
Was it possible that Yasha had been speaking to a different Julius? Possible, but not probable. In my heart, and knowing what I knew about VENONA and what Hoover had told me about Ethel’s brother, I fully believed that the man sitting a mere twenty feet away from me had leaked critical secrets to Russia after they’d become our enemy again.
There was nothing good or noble in Julius Rosenberg. If I could bring him down, perhaps I could redeem myself from all my other failed attempts.
I turned my gaze to stare directly at Julius. I would look him in the eyes, even as I condemned him. “Julius called several times, always in the early hours of the morning, and he always wanted to speak with Yasha. He refused to speak with me, only claimed he had information that would benefit the Party to pass along.”
It was flimsy evidence, circumstantial at best, but this truth of mine corroborated what Harry Gold and David and Ruth Greenglass had already testified. It was enough for the jury.
Less than two weeks later, the court—and the country—had its verdict.
Guilty.
The Rosenbergs were sentenced to die via the electric chair.
* * *
NOVEMBER 23, 1963
8:40 P.M.
Cat didn’t give Elizabeth time to regain her composure. “You sent the Rosenbergs to Old Sparky? Even if they were guilty, how do you live with yourself?”
“It’s not easy.” Elizabeth shifted in her seat. On the surface she appeared relaxed, nonplussed, but Cat had caught the way her voice trembled with that last sentence. Electric chair
. “It’s something you can never outrun, knowing that you doomed someone to die.”
“There were protests, too, people who believed the Rosenbergs weren’t guilty. Especially Ethel.” Cat kept prodding, wasn’t about to let Elizabeth off the hook for this. Or for anything. “Wasn’t there a chance she was innocent? At least partially?”
Elizabeth gave that trademark snort of hers and crossed her arms over her chest. And leveled a glare at Cat that would make the devil cringe. “You won’t accept shades of truth, but now there’s shades of guilt, eh, Catherine? I’m afraid that’s not how the justice system works. No, according to VENONA, Julius and Ethel were both guiltier than cats with canary feathers in their teeth, but the FBI needed me to connect the dots for the jury. So, I did. And, as my reward, half of America turned against me.” She rapped her knuckles against the Formica table. “Once again, I couldn’t even leave my hotel room to buy a loaf of bread without getting spit on by people who believed I’d sent an innocent man and woman to Sing Sing.”
“Was it worth it? Would you do it again if you had the choice?”
Elizabeth blinked, let her eyes lift to the crucifix on the wall, then her gaze snared Cat’s. “I don’t know . . . Ask me again if you ever run into me in hell.”
“You told me that you were responsible for three deaths. Now I know about the Rosenbergs. I’ve been patient—it’s time you tell me about my mother.”
That damned lighter started up again. Click click click. “Unfortunately, if you include your mother, it’s actually four deaths.”
“What—”
“All I wanted was peace,” Elizabeth interjected, lifting her chin. As if going into battle, one she knew she wouldn’t win. “Instead, after the Rosenbergs, everything really went to hell.”
* * *
MAY 1950
Compliments of my comments on Meet the Press, William Remington sued both me and NBC for libel, to the tune of one hundred thousand dollars. If the courts decided he had a case, it would be Elizabeth Bentley v. William Remington all over again. Only this time, I would be in the defendant’s box, the very thing I’d made Hoover swear would never happen.
Of course, Hoover hadn’t made me point the finger at William Remington from the studio of Meet the Press. That had been my own special brand of idiocy. Still, I had no desire to set foot in that courtroom and defend myself.
So, I disappeared.
A judge had yet to decide whether Remington even had a case, but my vanishing act was akin to waving a red matador’s cloak at the ravening beast that was the press. There were all sorts of headlines: RED WITNESS MISSING AT 100-G SLANDER SUIT was the first one, from the New York Daily Mirror.
Well, I couldn’t have that, so I planted a story of my own.
The World-Telegram complied nicely with my wishes by running a story that I was sequestered at a Catholic retreat in the Bronx. Patently false, of course, but the story made all the newspapers in New York and Washington, DC. (I recall their exact words that I was “quietly pursuing religious meditations while the US Marshals, attorneys, and process servers were frantically seeking me.” I was praying, but let’s be honest—manipulating the truth that time bought me some much-needed breathing room.)
I eventually made good on part of the story, returned to New York and had myself baptized as a God-fearing Catholic. Some thought the conversion far too convenient, but there was something inherently reassuring about shutting the confessional door and pouring out all my sins to a priest. Wiping my conscience clean.
If only it were that easy.
No matter how many Hail Marys or Our Fathers I said, I never felt entirely pure.
Hail Mary, full of Grace . . .
Yasha, Mary Tenney, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Vlad . . .
My prayers and meditations always brought me back to all the mistakes I’d made, those who had suffered because of me. Until I realized my penance would be to carry with me the terrible weight of what I’d done. Always.
I supposed I could live with that, could shoulder the added burden of Al’s promise that the NKVD would hunt me down the instant I forged a bond with anyone else. I would never hurt anyone again. Ever.
I resurfaced after a brief—and strategic—disappearance, accepted a position as a political science teacher at the prestigious Mundelein College on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.
Between courtroom appearances, I’d given a few paid lectures about the Communist menace that was stalking America, but this new position would be permanent. I’d be surrounded by good, honest people, all of my coworkers nuns and all of my students bright-eyed and Catholic.
Catholics hated Communists, you know. So, we had that much in common.
Keeping everyone at arm’s length, I found myself filled with hope for the first time in a long, long while. That I could live some semblance of a normal life. Hold down a normal job. Pay my bills.
Until a Manhattan judge decided that William Remington had a basis for his libel case against me. Which meant months of traveling back and forth between Chicago and New York, conferring with lawyers, and giving my deposition to Remington’s legal team, facing grueling examinations and cross-examinations.
Things got uglier when I received word that Remington’s lawyers had dug up information—or more likely, fabricated it out of thin air—that in my youth I was admitted to Yale University’s psychiatric ward. “Right,” I said over the telephone line to my lawyer, so livid I could scarcely think straight. “Because the NKVD was going to put a certified nutjob in charge of couriering sensitive information back to Stalin.”
One phone call to the FBI and they dug up evidence that the psych ward rumors were untrue. Still, I had no choice. I resigned from my new position before it even started.
Just like that, my hopes of peace and happiness were slipping through my fingers.
I remember picking up a newspaper before I boarded the train that would take me to New York for another deposition, how the paper felt as I crumpled and hurled the ineffective, lie-laden projectile against the carriage’s dull gray wall.
Miss Bentley claims that her frequent subpoenas did not help class morale, and she is afraid the libel suit would embarrass the school. But, according to sources in Chicago, Bentley has been living openly and notoriously with a man. Sister Mary Joseph of Mundelein College believed it best that Bentley left.
It didn’t help that the final line read, “It was very hard to replace her.”
Meaning I’d already been replaced.
I should have just sipped malted milk on the rest of the train ride, but instead I guzzled one martini after another. (Some people chain-smoke; I suppose I chain-drank.) I pulled into Grand Central Station irate and ready to flay the very skin from anyone in my way.
And that was before I learned that NBC had settled my case out of court.
“What do you mean, they settled?” I gripped the chair in front of me and faced off against my lawyer.
“They negotiated an offer to settle for nine thousand dollars. Apparently, the insurance company believed that was a better deal than taking the chance that they’d have to pay one hundred thousand dollars instead.”
“I thought that the witness from Knoxville planned to testify that he knew Remington was a Communist? And the eighteen others who worked with him on the Tennessee Valley Authority? You said with a list like that, we were guaranteed to win. Incontrovertible proof and all that.”
“Yes, but winning the case would have cost more than settling,” my lawyer said. “I’m not happy about it, either, but NBC’s insurance company wouldn’t cover the expense.”
“So, they settle and I wind up looking like a liar?”
(Yes, Catherine, I know I was a liar, but it’s more irritating than someone chewing with their mouth open to be accused of a particular falsehood when you’re telling the honest-to-God truth.)
“
I’m sorry, Elizabeth, really I am. I’ve had complete confidence all along that you would be vindicated if we went to trial. Unfortunately, we’re not going to be given that chance. I issued a statement that you will not be issuing a retraction, which is usually part of a libel case. I’m afraid that’s the best we can do.”
Instead of being exonerated, I was vilified as a liar when I was actually the one telling the truth. Meanwhile, the man who had lied and perjured himself would go free. Again.
I slammed my hand on the table, barely feeling the pain that lanced up my arm.
I’d put my name and reputation on the line, had cooperated fully with the FBI and told nothing but the truth on Meet the Press. I’d quit my job in order to cooperate.
All for nothing.
* * *
* * *
I was a woman with a bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees, and years of real-life experience. I had proven my poise and my worth through countless courtroom and congressional testimonies. However, I still lacked the two main avenues women typically took to support themselves: family money or a well-connected spouse.
Sometimes it felt not much had changed since my years of heating beans over a hot plate during the Depression. No teaching position meant that I needed to find a source of income, and fast.
Unfortunately, not even my Catholic connections could locate a teaching position in the middle of the school year.
Which meant I had to get serious about writing my memoirs.
Devin-Adair Publishing offered me a three-thousand-dollar advance, which was close to a year’s wages, but the bigger carrot was the possibility that I might get my life story serialized before publication. That’s where the real money was.
It had been nearly four years since my defection from the NKVD, and I hoped that putting my story to the page would offer me a fresh chance at redemption, that my life’s story might persuade America that when I started down this path, I had been just a naive student unaware of the perils and pitfalls of Communism. (I don’t mind saying that Mussolini himself could have learned a thing or two from my propaganda skills.) The reality was somewhat cruder—I hoped to save myself from vitriol hurled my way by the American public following the mess of the Rosenberg and Remington trials. I was weary of being public enemy number one. (Or maybe number two, after failed witch-hunter Joseph McCarthy tumbled from grace. And let me make the distinction between myself and McCarthy crystal clear, Catherine, once and for all. Yes, we both hunted Communist spies, but that man was nothing but a snake oil–selling charlatan who foamed at the mouth with his conspiracy theories and smear tactics. Whereas I was an authentic handler who actually had firsthand knowledge of the NKVD and its contacts, all backed up by Project VENONA. So, don’t you dare ever compare us.)
A Most Clever Girl Page 31