Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  “They also said Roosevelt didn’t know about Pearl Harbor in advance.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “My aunt says he did.” Another giggle. Gary was easing his guest toward the door. “My whole family says he did. That’s the kind of family I have. Bunch of paranoid fascists. That’s why they can help.”

  “I should meet them sometime.”

  “You should. They’d make great characters for a genuine Wesley novel.” As they stood on the front step, the chilly night air blew all the tipsiness away. Gary’s face was slack but concerned. “You know, Eddie, even if my aunt can get the Bureau off your back, you still have a problem.”

  “Yes. You mentioned that.”

  “Belt is dead,” said Gary, again.

  “So?”

  “So—I think you might want to be careful.” Gary’s eyes were stone sober. “Look at the facts. The Federal Bureau of Investigation seems to think you know something about Professor Belt. You should consider who else might think the same.”

  “Who else? You mean the Russians?”

  Gary shook his head with stern impatience. “You’re small potatoes, Eddie. I’m sure the Bureau doesn’t think you’re a Russian spy. They might be fascists but they’re not idiots. Believe me, I know how they operate. I’ve been investigated a time or two. No. All that Russian-spy stuff was just show.”

  “Then what do they want with me? What do they think Belt and Castle were up to?”

  “Obviously, something else.”

  (II)

  EDDIE TOOK THE SUBWAY HOME. There was at this time a Harlem tradition of judging class by where people disembarked from the A train. If you got off at 125th Street, you lived in the Valley, and were discounted accordingly. If you got off at 145th or 155th, you lived on Sugar Hill, the highest point in Harlem, among the truly wealthy of the darker nation. The Valley was vast, and Sugar Hill was small. In between the two, like a demilitarized zone, sat Strivers Row, policed by legions of the upwardly mobile who had not yet made it to the top. For most of his time in Harlem, Eddie had detrained at 125th, and looked down his prominent nose at the bourgeoisie, who stayed on board. Tonight he stayed on. After publication of the novel, he had moved to a spacious apartment at 435 Convent Avenue, near the heart of Sugar Hill. Different addresses carried different degrees of prestige. The doyennes of Harlem society decided which addresses were which. Number 409 Edgecombe Avenue, top of the list, had been home to such Negro leaders as Thurgood Marshall, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Roy Wilkins. Now it was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Garland. Next along in prestige was probably 555 Edgecombe, the Roger Morris Apartments, not far from Jumel Terrace. Number 435 Convent Avenue ranked fairly high on the list that Eddie had once derided. He did his best to ignore the irony. The apartment was beautiful. The ceilings were high. The rooms were large. The dining room had a chandelier from before the First World War. Across the street were townhouses built by such luminaries as Henri Fouchaux and Frederick P. Dinkelberg, back when the neighborhood was white. The Czarinas decreed that young Mr. Wesley needed a wife to serve as hostess in so wonderful a space, and already the applicants, so to speak, were piling up. Gary Fatek had taken one look at the new place and announced that Eddie had joined the ruling class.

  “Permanently, I hope,” Eddie shot back.

  He began dressing better. He widened his circle of acquaintances. He began to hang out with scholars, physicians, other writers. He received a letter from Bertrand Russell, praising the novel and asking him to join the international campaign against the bomb. He dined in Westchester County, at the home of Adam Clayton Powell, who did not maintain a residence in the district he represented in Congress. Powell advised him to get out and see the world. There was so much more, said the Congressman, than Harlem. The struggle was everywhere, said Powell. But never forget you are an American first. You have to do both, the Congressman said. And always be willing to carry the heavy end of the log. Eddie nodded. Powell kept peering at him with those meaty eyes, as if he believed the two of them shared some sacred knowledge not available to ordinary mortals. Later, Eddie recorded the dinner in his journal. He had an idea for a novel about a Harlem politician, although he was at a loss to invent a life more colorful than Powell’s.

  Two nights after his conversation with Gary Fatek about Agent Stilwell, Eddie emerged from the train at 145th Street as usual and began walking up the hill toward Convent Avenue. He passed restaurants and storefront churches. He slipped into a tiny bookstore that catered to the paranoid left and had a friendly chat with the madwoman who ran it, because she had sources Eddie himself could never tap. When he stepped outside, Emil was leaning on a parked car.

  “Have you located my photographs?” the German asked without preamble. His powerful arms were crossed. He looked fit and confident, like an angry cop.

  “I never promised to do that.”

  “I would pay well for their return.”

  “I’m not really—”

  Emil shoved himself off the car. Another white man inside opened the door, and, for a silly moment, Eddie feared they would, in the manner of Stilwell and his companions, invite him in. But the only passenger tonight would be Emil, who was snapping out orders as he sat. “Remember, Mr. Wesley. A pink envelope, a number penciled in the corner, seventeen or eighteen.”

  Watching the taillights, Eddie remembered Gary’s parting words. The Federal Bureau of Investigation seems to think you know something about Professor Belt. You should consider who else might think the same.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Summons

  (I)

  IN THE FIRST WEEK of May 1957, Eddie went down to Washington to deliver a lecture at American University. His subject was the responsibility of the intellectual. Before his address, he did some sightseeing. His parents had dragged their three children around the city frequently. Junie and Eddie used to make fun of the exhibits behind cupped hands, but their older sister would take careful notes, because their mother was bound to quiz them later, and Marcella did not want to hear Wesley Senior, in That Voice, lecturing her for inattention. The sightseeing left Eddie thoughtful. At this time Washington was a segregated city, so much so that when Thurgood Marshall and the other lawyers from the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education at the Supreme Court, they had to run across the plaza to the train station for lunch, because the Court cafeteria did not serve Negroes. Neither did the congressional dining room, unless you happened to be a member of Congress. But even members of Congress were not allowed to bring Negro guests. Adam Clayton Powell had overturned that rule by bringing to lunch whom he liked, and nobody had dared challenge him. The nation was changing. This was an article of Wesley Senior’s faith, and of Eddie’s. His Harlem friends argued that it was changing too slowly, and Eddie supposed that he agreed, but he had less interest than others in protesting and battling. He wanted to write. He tried to explain that writers needed space away from life’s bustle, but only Langston Hughes really understood.

  Eddie’s lecture went poorly. The audience went away confused. Perhaps Eddie had parsed his point too finely. He insisted that the intellectual should devote his mind to the movement without sacrificing his reason. One should not pretend, said Eddie, that intellect pointed where in fact it did not. One should not suppress inconvenient facts for the sake of victory. A bad argument in a good cause, said Eddie, is intellectual prostitution.

  Applause was tepid.

  Eddie hardly cared. His mind had hardly been on the talk. He had been distracted throughout by the unexpected presence in the audience, three rows back and four seats in, of Mrs. Kevin Garland. Eddie had hardly seen her these past two years. His literary rise had been meteoric. Aurelia had retreated. True, she still wrote the occasional piece for the Sentinel, but mainly had thrown herself into her new role as Garland hostess and Czarina in training. What was she doing here? What was she even doing in Washington? Inspired, he reached rhetorical heights he had not previously suspected, and his carefully organized lecture suf
fered from his efforts to impress her. Afterward, Aurelia emerged from the throng of admirers to offer a cool cheek and explain herself. She was in town for her sorority’s annual convention, she said: four days’ worth of what would later be known as networking, as well as listening to inspirational lectures, voting on inscrutable bylaw amendments, and, most important, changing into a different gown for each night’s event, and don’t you dare wear anything that even resembles what you wore last year. When she saw that Eddie was speaking, she naturally had to come, to congratulate him on his great successes.

  He thanked her, even as he sensed that there had to be more.

  She burbled on about how all the Garlands admired him, and so did her family back home in Cleveland, and Eddie basked not in her words but in her attention. She asked if he had time for a drink with an old friend. Naturally, he agreed. But when they were seated in a back booth at a small Capitol Hill bar that served Negroes and whites alike, she did not, as Eddie half expected, propose any extramarital intimacy. Instead, she downed her pink gin fizz in one quick gulp.

  “I think I’ll take that autograph now,” she said, and Eddie, remembering their conversation outside the Sentinel last year, knew there was trouble.

  And then she told him why.

  (II)

  AROUND MIDNIGHT, Eddie was wakened by a ringing phone. He was dozing in Aurelia Garland’s arms. Most of her sorority sisters were in hotels or private homes. Aurelia had a friend, a divorcée, who lived in a small apartment building on East Capitol Street: what used to be called a woman of speed. Her friend was out of town, and Aurelia had borrowed the apartment. She had offered no reason for rejecting the hotel, and her friend had not asked. They had known each other a long time.

  Actually, things had progressed further and faster than Aurelia planned. She wanted the apartment so that she could talk to Eddie in peace. She had not reckoned on the dangers of being alone with him. True, they had not had sex, or even kissed, and were still fully dressed. Nevertheless, they had spent a long time holding each other as they sat together on the sofa after she told him some—not all—of the story. Aurie had talked about her husband’s strange behavior, and mentioned, in passing, his search for the testament. But disclosing these marital intimacies made her feel like the hussy the nuns never wanted her to be, so she stopped before telling about breaking into Kevin’s safe. Now, waking on the sofa with her head on his shoulder, she felt two feet tall.

  “Oh, shit,” she said—and not about the ringing phone.

  She had been a fool to bring him here. At least she was awake now, and could send him back to his hotel. She pushed him off her, hurried across the room in her stocking feet, picked up the phone, started to say that Janine was away, then listened, muttered, and, no longer sleepy, handed the receiver to Eddie.

  “Nobody knows I’m here,” he whispered.

  “Somebody obviously does.”

  A male voice asked if he was Eddie Wesley, then told him that a car was waiting for him downstairs. Eddie tried to brush the cobwebs from his mind. “A car?” he mumbled. “What car?”

  To take him to his meeting, said the voice.

  “What meeting? You mean now?”

  But the voice had hung up.

  Eddie considered, then brushed his hair and picked up his jacket.

  “Where are you going?” asked Aurelia, looking for her shoes.

  “No idea.” He explained.

  She thought it over, then padded toward the bathroom. “In that case, I’m going, too,” she said over her shoulder.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Whoever it is already knows we’re up here together. If you’re getting arrested, I want the story for the Sentinel.”

  (III)

  THE CAR WAS A DARK FORD, shiny and inconspicuous, and the crewcut driver refused to take Aurie until Eddie made him understand that in that case he was going back upstairs. The car had a two-way radio beneath the dash. The driver murmured code words, listened, said “Check.” They headed due west, past the Capitol, then along Pennsylvania Avenue, passing the White House, turning north again on Connecticut, eventually ending on a leafy street of grand houses somewhere in upper Northwest. Eddie looked at his watch. It was almost one in the morning. The sign said Thirtieth Place. The car stopped. Another crewcut led them into the garden and along the front walk to the house. A third opened the front door. He asked if they wanted anything to drink, which they did not. Out in the hall they heard cross words being exchanged, and Eddie had the shrewd notion that the driver was being upbraided for bringing Aurelia. One of the identical crewcuts, red-faced, stuck his head into the room and invited Mr. Wesley to please follow him. He informed Mrs. Garland that the wait would not be long, and invited her to make herself at home. There were books, a Victrola, a bar. Eddie, more bemused than worried, followed the crewcut down the hall. The young man knocked once at a heavy door, then stood aside as Eddie walked in alone. The man shut him in. The room was a library, dark and depressing, and behind the desk sat a stout, angry man who barely glanced up as he ordered Eddie to sit.

  “I’d rather stand,” said Eddie, recognizing his host.

  “Up to you. I don’t give a rat’s ass.” His burning gaze was studying a sheaf of papers, and Eddie saw his photograph clipped to one. “Mr. Stilwell tells me you were enormously helpful to him in the investigation of the traitor Joseph Belt. Mr. Stilwell vouches for you absolutely.”

  The interview had just begun, and Eddie had already been left behind. “So you’re sure Joseph Belt was a traitor?”

  “Did you really think he lost his security clearance because of your little story, Mr. Wesley? Is your ego so large?” J. Edgar Hoover turned a page in the thick dossier, then another. People said he looked like a bulldog, and people were right. He had a wide fleshy canine face and a low, round brow. His hands moved like swift, efficient paws. “Had a call from somebody who had a call from somebody who had a call from somebody.” The jowly face said he disapproved of such calls. “Said maybe we should give you the chance to avoid a trial.”

  “For what?” said Eddie, more loudly than he intended. “A trial for what?”

  The full gaze, doleful and warning, flicked over him like a prison searchlight, then returned to the papers. “Espionage, Mr. Wesley. What we electrocuted the Rosenbergs for.”

  Eddie sat down, hard.

  “We can link you to the traitor Belt. A child could connect the dots. The jury won’t have any trouble.” Despite Eddie’s efforts, no words of indignation or protest poured forth. Hoover was playing with a pencil. “Let me fill you in, just in case you didn’t know what you were passing along. What they build at Los Alamos is bombs, Mr. Wesley. Hydrogen bombs. The traitor Belt was one of these characters who thinks he’s an idealist when he’s really a misfit. He did not approve of the H-bomb, even though he was paid to work on it. I am told the man was a genius. I wouldn’t know about that. Oppenheimer was a genius, too. Belt testified at Oppenheimer’s hearing. That’s the other reason he was in New York when you met him at the Savoy. He was waiting to testify. One traitor helping another.”

  Eddie said, “Oppenheimer wasn’t a traitor. You people made that up.”

  “Don’t blame me. Blame Teller. Anyway, that’s ancient history.” Hoover turned a page. “Let me explain how their little scheme worked, Eddie. After we got the Rosenbergs and Greenglass and the rest of those Jews, the Soviets had to come up with a new way to steal our secrets. The new way was to insert an agent into New York. What we call an ‘illegal’—not a diplomat, in other words, but somebody who blends in, pretending to be an ordinary citizen.”

  “I know nothing about any of this,” Eddie protested, belatedly finding his voice again.

  “If you keep interrupting me, Mr. Wesley, you’ll be away from the lovely Mrs. Garland’s bed a whole lot longer.”

  “We weren’t in bed,” he began.

  Once more Hoover rode over him. “This is how their scheme worked. Belt would
take information out of Los Alamos. He would get it to his friend Castle, who is also conveniently dead. Telephone. Letters. Photographs. There are lots of ways. Castle would leave the information in a dead drop, which would be cleared by the cutout, a man we have in custody, a stupid little Finn who used the name Maki. Ever met him? No? Maki would deliver the information to the illegal. He knew the illegal as Mark. Met him? No? Listen. The Soviets are outstanding at this sort of thing. They love conspiracies. It’s the heart of Leninism. Maybe you knew that already. The Soviets know how to organize a network. Belt knew only Castle. Castle knew where the drops were, but not who cleared them. That’s why we call him a cutout, Mr. Wesley. Maki does not know who leaves what he collects. Maki delivers the take to his control—the illegal agent, Mark—whom he has met face-to-face only a few times. Maki might possibly be able to pick Mark out of a lineup, but even that isn’t certain, because Mark was usually disguised for their meetings. And of course Maki has no idea what name Mark is living under, or even whether he lives in New York City. We have to find the illegal agent.”

  “I had nothing to do with this,” Eddie said woodenly.

  “Nobody thinks you did, Mr. Wesley.” A hangman’s smile of perfect charity, but his heavy gaze was on the file. “Not tonight, anyway. But if we send you to trial, everybody will think so. If we send you to trial, you and Castle will turn out to have been best friends for years.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “You and I are small men, Mr. Wesley. Neither one of us is important in the grand scheme. The meaning in our lives comes from attachment to a great cause. You’re not a God man.” Hoover’s fleshy fingers had found the page. “Good for you. Neither am I. Well, now and then. But my great cause, Mr. Wesley, is the security of this nation.” Pouchy bulldog eyes lifted. “What is yours, Mr. Wesley? What do you care about?”

  Eddie was, for a moment, startled. “Justice. Justice for my people—”

  “Nonsense. Save it for your fans. Your great cause is yourself.” Tapping the folder. “Did you know that the leadership of the so-called civil-rights movement is chock-full of Reds? Did you know that, Mr. Wesley?”