The Shadow Cabinet

by W. T. Tyler

  “Strykker,” he said weakly. “I didn’t know anything, but it had to be Strykker.”

  He was still wobbly when Klempner led him into the Justice Department suite where Fred Merkle and Wilson were waiting. His feet shuffled, like an old man’s. He didn’t seem to know where he was as he collapsed down in a chair, but Klempner said he was ready to make a statement. Fred Merkle took one look at his face and decided not to wait. On the basis of what Haven Wilson had already told him, he’d decided to move immediately, before it was too late.

  The short, dark day was over. It was a quiet suburban night in a quiet suburban neighborhood. The snow flurries were still intermittent, barely discernible in the pools of white light atop the rustic lampposts of the Rockville subdivision. A faint frosting of snow lay over the streets and lawns, over the parked cars and the rail fences. Living room windows were lit, soft rectangles of orange and yellow blooming softly out from behind the white-shrouded shrubbery.

  In the first sedan, a federal marshal and a Justice Department investigator sat in the front seat. Wilson sat alone in back. Klempner followed in his own car.

  A new Toyota was parked in the drive of the last town house, not used since the snow began to fall. A television set was turned on in the living room. Wilson rang the door chimes and the U.S. marshal moved to one side of the porch, Klempner to the other. A thin, dark-haired woman in jeans opened the inner door.

  “I’m from up the street,” Wilson said, taking off his hat. “I wonder if I could talk to your husband.”

  “What about?”

  “The Optimist Club raffle; I mentioned it to him the other day.”

  She stood watching him uncertainly, drying her hands on the towel. “I’ll get him.”

  He appeared a few minutes later, beard and hair even longer now, sleepy-eyed, in stocking feet, wearing a flannel shirt. Only after he turned on the porch light did he recognize Wilson and then stood looking at him suspiciously. “What the shit do you want?”

  “To talk for a few minutes?”

  “Nothing to talk about. I told you all I know.”

  “It’ll just take a minute.”

  He hesitated, looked back in the hall, and then pushed open the metal storm door. “Listen, hey—” Then he saw Klempner’s huge figure standing to one side. “Fuck you, man.” He slammed the door shut.

  “Take the back,” the marshal called, and Klempner bolted from the porch and around the side. The marshal pushed in through the front door, Wilson at his heels. They went down the hall, down the steps, and into the bright kitchen. The sliding door that led to the terrace was open. The dark-haired girl was backed up against the refrigerator. “U.S. marshal. Does he have a weapon?”

  “He doesn’t even have his shoes on.”

  “It’s all right,” Wilson told her. “Nothing’s going to happen to him. The marshal’s got a warrant.”

  Footprints led across the terrace and disappeared into the small, dark yard. Klempner stood at the side gate. “Not this way,” he said. The girl turned on the patio lights and followed them out. “Let me talk to him,” she said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Come on, Gary! Don’t be stupid, it’s a U.S. marshal.”

  They waited, looking out into the darkness. “Is there a way out?” the marshal asked.

  “Just the high fence. Come on, Gary, don’t be dumb. They want to talk, that’s all!”

  Again they waited.

  “Come on, Morris—use your head!” the marshal called.

  “Listen to him, Gary!”

  After a moment they heard his voice. “I wanna lawyer.” It was muffled and weak.

  “He’s in the toolshed,” she said. She brought a flashlight from the kitchen and handed it to the marshal. “Just ask him nice. He’s all talk. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  She watched as they went back toward the portable toolshed built up against the high paling fence. The marshal flashed the light against the closed wooden door. “Come on out, Morris,” the marshal said easily. “We’d like to talk to you.”

  Silence. Then, “Get that Klempner hoodlum away from me.”

  “He’s not going to bother you. I asked him to come along. You’re in U.S. custody.”

  They waited. A few minutes passed and then the door opened slowly. Morris came out, his hands locked behind his head. He blinked painfully in the powerful beam of the flashlight. The marshal lowered the light and Morris marched back across the snowy yard in his stocking feet, his hands still behind his head, elbows out in some heroic parody of a Hollywood war movie.

  “You can drop them now, Morris,” the marshal told him as they reached the terrace steps.

  Morris turned to look at Wilson, like an actor who’d just given a cunning performance. “Like the tiger cage at Lang Vei, right, Wilson? Man, I really had you fuckers going, didn’t I? You really gobbled that shit up.”

  “It was stupid, the whole masquerade.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Little things. Your hands, for one. You talk too much, for another. The St. Elizabeths incident never happened.”

  “Shit, man, what’d you want me to do? I was home free until you come nosing around. I had to lose you quick.”

  “Where’s Cronin?”

  “He freaked out. The same day he crashed you on the beltway. Wendy and me took him up to that VA hospital in New York.” Klempner came up the steps behind him and Morris said, “Hey, you got a cigarette, Klempner? I’m still your main man, right? Federal witness program?” But Klempner made an abrupt move toward him and Morris bolted through the door. “Hey, listen, no rough stuff. I’m gonna make you guys look real good, what I got on that schlemiel Strykker and his Caltronics scam.…”

  In a locked closet upstairs they found a briefcase with thirty-eight thousand dollars. There were bankbooks for three local accounts and statements from two banks in the Bahamas, with over two hundred thousand dollars on deposit.

  While Wendy put some clothes in the washer for Morris to take with him, they sat in the breakfast nook, listening to Morris’s story. He was very much a man of roles—quick, cunning, and convincingly plausible, a man who could persuade others as brazenly as he could deceive himself that he was always precisely who he claimed to be.

  Strykker was behind the scheme to buy the government’s case. Worried about what the U.S. Attorney had uncovered of his personal financial dealings, he’d turned to Larabee, who’d identified Bernie Klempner as an old FBI agent with close ties to the Justice Department, who might be willing to help. Morris had been brought from the West Coast as the middleman. But the more Strykker learned of Klempner, the less he liked it. He began to get cold feet, not entirely convinced that Klempner wasn’t part of an FBI sting. When Artie Kramer sent a telex from the West Coast warning that Wilson was a federal agent, that was all he needed. He called Morris that Monday night and told him not to deliver the money. Klempner was working for the FBI.

  “That was the double cross I told you about,” Morris reminded Wilson.

  “Who was to be the bagman for the eighty thousand? Cronin?”

  “Yeah, Cronin. We had it all set up. Then Strykker calls me and the only thing I can drag out of him is your name. He tells me the feds are everywhere, but all I can get out of him is your name and how he’s got this bleeding ulcer thinking about it. So Cronin and me decide to check you out, but Cronin gets high that morning and screws up. He clobbers you with his Alfa and then he blows sky high—the shakes, man, the dry heaves, the whole snake pit. When we take the Alfa back to the lot that night, he rams the gate and crashes a tow truck. Then he takes a fucking tire iron out and finishes the Alfa off. He’s wacko by then and I’ve gotta take care of my buddy, so Wendy and me take him up to New York, up to that VA hospital that knows his case—”

  “The two-hundred-pound turnip,” Wilson said.

  “Yeah. Maybe. Then I get back to town, I find out the office is closing down, eighty grand’s missing, and someone’s fingering me. I get h
old of Strykker. He tells me to lie low, keep the money for a while, things are working out another way. Me, I don’t mind. I kind of like the life style—”

  “You mean you were squeezing Strykker,” Klempner broke in, leaning over the table. “Squeezing him on account of what you had on him, what you had on Caltronics. Then when it all blows over, you come crawling back out of the woodwork and squeeze him some more, a lifetime annuity for you and your girl friend.”

  Morris was pulling on a Shetland sweater Wendy had just brought him. “I was waiting for the right moment,” he said. “Waiting to come talk to you guys, cut a deal, like we’re doing now. Isn’t that right, Wendy?”

  “Leave me out of it,” she said.

  “Why’d you finger Larabee that night we talked?” Wilson asked. “How come Larabee?”

  “I dunno. I was tired, carrying a headful. I just wanted to get the hell outta there.”

  “Strykker said he wouldn’t give Gary any more money,” Wendy volunteered from the ironing board.

  “Hey, what’d you say that for?” he protested.

  “You were putting the heat on Strykker, weren’t you?” Wilson continued. “Working an extortion scam of your own.”

  “You guys got it all wrong. I was waiting to cut a deal—”

  “Listen, you little bastard,” Klempner said aggressively, leaning across the table to seize Morris’s wrist. “You don’t know who the hell you are—you never did. Just any fucking shoe fits, you wear it, the way you always have.”

  “Hands off the threads, turkey,” Morris said, pulling his arm free. “That’s federal merchandise you’re dicking with—right, marshal? He’s pissed because he didn’t get his eighty grand. I’ll put that in my statement too.”

  “I expect you would,” the marshal said.

  By the time they reached Fred Merkle’s office, Morris had dropped his accusations against Klempner. To Merkle, Morris was simply what he claimed to be, a frightened, ingratiating federal witness.

  9.

  The snow still sifted down lightly as Nick Straus arrived at the Pentagon that morning. The parking lot in front of the mall entrance was only randomly occupied. The gauze of gray gave the Washington skyline across the Potomac a secretive, medieval look.

  The five men met in the office of Leyton Fischer, who had failed to appear. Nick was without counsel. He was wearing a coat and tie, his brown oxfords freshly shined. His wife had chosen the tie, her favorite, a rep tie with blue and yellow stripes. This was to be the end of it, she’d told him, his conscience declared after all this time. She’d understood after they’d talked for three hours the previous evening, unraveling his geopolitical detective story. Would they understand? He now had his doubts. His hands were cold.

  A senior DIA brigadier general sat nearby, tall, sandy-haired, and in uniform. He wore a single decoration—the combat infantryman’s badge over his breast pocket. The Pentagon lawyer who was to be the interrogator sat to his left. He was balding and deep-voiced, his suit rumpled, his trouser cuffs stuffed in arctics. A briefcase stood on the rug at his feet and a notepad rested on the arm of the leather chair. General Gawpin had appeared, dressed in Saturday mufti, a blue sports jacket and dark slacks. Portly and jowlish, he seemed the middle-aged caricature of the young lieutenant who’d been one of the first Americans across the Rhine at Remagen so many years ago. He’d won the Silver Star as a T-26 Pershing tank commander with the 14th Tank Battalion. Les Fine sat alone to the rear. Nick Straus felt a twinge of remorse as he recognized the slight shrunken figure, seated apart from the others, his dark eyes burning with anger.

  In response to the lawyer’s questions, Nick explained that the materials he’d published in the DIA daily summary had been drawn from the documents available in Colonel Collins’s safe at the DIA special watch. The interpretations had been his. He wasn’t certain why the phone taps and FBI logs were there, but he had his suspicions. In the spring of 1971 and again in 1974 and 1975, a series of leaks had occurred during the SALT negotiations which had threatened to compromise the talks. The Pentagon, which had opposed the U.S. negotiating position, was the prime suspect. The FBI had been called in to investigate but hadn’t identified those responsible. General Gawpin had been on the Pentagon’s SALT advisory staff at the time and was one of those suspected of the leaks. “Perhaps General Gawpin knows why the special watch received transcripts from the FBI investigation,” Nick suggested. “I’ve no idea how they got there.”

  General Gawpin chewed his cigar, winked at the brigadier, and said nothing.

  Nick told them that his purpose in publishing his special issue of the DIA daily summary was to expose to executive view some of the more terrifying secrets of the Pentagon’s strategy. One was the hallucinated SIOP targeting plan. Another was Pentagon hypocrisy in claiming it was interested in arms control. The intent was as he described it: to convert nuclear superiority into political power, coercive if need be—a strategy which stood nuclear orthodoxy on its head. The Pentagon claim that the new strategy was intended to give the U.S. the capacity to resist Soviet nuclear blackmail was a hoax. It was the Pentagon itself that was planning nuclear intimidation in preparing for a protracted nuclear war…

  “These are his interpretations.” General Gawpin broke in irritably.

  “I’ve been following these issues for over twenty years,” Nick said. “You can’t hide the intent from me.”

  “You’d say you’ve had more experience than General Gawpin?” the lawyer asked. “Than Mr. Fine?”

  A geopolitical detective story, Nick had told Ida, but she had a talent for riddles. He wasn’t sure of the lawyer. “Each understands these matters in his own way,” he said. The snow fought the wind at the window and he watched it silently for a minute. “I know what General Gawpin’s position has been over the years,” he began again. “His position hasn’t changed. He has never accepted the idea of nuclear parity with Moscow. He never will. Mr. Fine’s situation is different. He once supported détente. This was when he worked on SALT I with Kissinger at the National Security Council.” He avoided Les Fine’s eyes as he spoke but felt the flush rise on his cheeks, acknowledging Fine’s presence. “He lobbied for SALT I on the Hill. A moral necessity in a nuclear age, that’s what he used to say. Those were Kissinger’s words, by the way. Mr. Fine believed at the time that the two superpowers had no choice but to find some kind of stability, some kind of equilibrium. The possibility of nuclear devastation made it a moral necessity. That’s what détente was at the time.”

  Gawpin removed his cigar. “Which the Sovs violated. Détente was their Trojan horse.” Nick gazed at him thoughtfully, conscious of the broken veins on his cheeks and nose.

  The lawyer said, “You say Mr. Fine believed in détente and now he doesn’t. Is that why you attacked him in the DIA daily summary?”

  “I didn’t attack him.”

  “You claimed he’d been in contact with a foreign embassy, the Israeli embassy.”

  “The phone taps and the FBI logs speak for themselves.”

  “You think he gave information to the Israelis, classified information?”

  “Possibly, but so have I,” Nick said. “When I was at the Agency, I often met with Israeli diplomats and analysts. We exchanged ideas. I found it helpful.”

  Surprised, the lawyer consulted his notebook. The room was silent. In the outer office, a phone was ringing. The snow still pelted down.

  “What is this New Irgun you mentioned?” the brigadier asked hoarsely. “What kind of conspiracy?”

  The intrusion of that rough, military voice seemed to Nick to give a crude new dimension to the room. “It’s a catchword, not a conspiracy,” he said warily. “I saw it scrawled on a poster in the DIA special watch.”

  “What’d it mean to you?”

  “A propagandist. A right-wing propagandist. In Mr. Fine’s case, someone who borrows the tactics of Begin’s old Irgun Zvai Leumi to terrorize his congressional and public constituency, not with grenades and ma
chine guns, but with the prospect of Soviet nuclear blackmail.”

  The brigadier smiled in surprise, looking at Gawpin. “What do you think of that?”

  Nick was annoyed. “Of course he’s a propagandist. Don’t be fooled. These are tactics, nothing more. Like the old popular front.”

  “To do what?” asked the lawyer.

  “Armies need a band to march by,” Nick said. “Men like Fine and General Gawpin supply the tune. In Fine’s case, to maintain the anti-Communist crusade, to keep in step this militarized diplomacy against Soviet imperialism.” He glanced at Fine. “The old defensive mentality, the Haganah mentality, isn’t enough. New strategies are needed, new tactics. Like the Pentagon’s strategic alliance with Israel and Egypt in the Middle East. What would Ben-Gurion have said to that? But that’s revisionism too, Begin style. The old moral commitment now recast in military terms. Realpolitik. What Kissinger taught in 1973.”

  The lawyer was confused. “I’m sorry,” he complained, “but I don’t follow this.”

  General Gawpin’s chair creaked under him as he shifted forward. “Don’t worry about it,” he muttered. “What is it’s bothering you?” he asked Nick. “You don’t approve of this military alliance in the Middle East? What would you suggest, Doctor?”

  “The Pentagon once supported Iran in the same way,” Nick said. “Are you asking me to put Israel and the Shah’s Iran in the same category? With Mobutu? With Somoza? A military alliance, nothing more?”

  “That wasn’t my question,” Gawpin said.

  “It was for me. Israel is a moral cause or it is nothing. I may disagree on strategy, on tactics, but not that. For you here in the Pentagon it doesn’t matter. Israel is, just now, a guarantor of your military and strategic interests in the Persian Gulf, just as the Shah once was. But for men like Les Fine to join you I think a tragedy. Tragically wrong, like my brother-in-law. He joined the popular front too, the right-wing popular front, like Mr. Fine did just after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He brought the cold war out of the closet too and has been beating the drum ever since, like Mr. Fine, not because he believes it but because he thinks it the only solution to Israel’s isolation.” He sat back slowly, regretting his outburst. “I didn’t mean to compare Mr. Fine with my brother-in-law,” he apologized. “He’s an emotional man. Mr. Fine isn’t.”