Memorial Bridge

by James Carroll

  But it was Dillon who said, "Three and a half weeks."

  "What if she doesn't buy it? What if—?"

  "Lothrop will continue to see her," Dillon said with an authority he had not yet displayed. "And I will continue my surveillance. It is my job to assess whether Yergin has swallowed the hook or not. If I conclude that she hasn't, or that she is playing us along, I will call the operation off and arrest her."

  "And your jobs, gentlemen"—Crocker swept them with the stem of his pipe—"is to provide support to Mr. Dillon. I'll expect an action plan from each of your shops on my desk when I arrive here in the morning."

  "What time do you want us?" a thoroughly chastened Cheever asked.

  "Not you, George. Just your plan. Tell me how OSS can support us in confirming the Balkans for this woman. Like it or not, until this phase of it is resolved, Noah's Ark is going to be run off of one desk. This desk."

  Crocker slapped his hand down and a cup of paper clips jumped. "From here on you are each to be individually responsible to Mr. Dunlop. He speaks on this matter with my authority. Is that clear?"

  Cheever leaned back in his chair, lifting its front legs off the floor, craning toward Dillon. "Where does Yergin live?"

  "We are conducting this operation on a need-to-know basis, sir."

  Cheever went white again, and he exchanged a look with Lawrence. For once they had something in common: neither would find it easy to brief his boss on this shit. Donovan and Strong would have something in common too: a reaction of sputtering rage to this incredible intrusion by Hoover.

  General Alfred had his own reasons for finding this turn of events unbelievable. He said timidly, "Your authority, Mr. Crocker, I understand that. But General Marshall is going to ask me where your authority rests in this matter. Shall I tell him Secretary Stimson's?"

  "No, General, you tell him President Roosevelt's. You tell General Marshall to feel free to call me or the President, either one."

  Crocker stood up. His leg clicked, and the others seemed to take that as their signal to rise too. Dillon thought of a nun's cricket, these eminences in a Canaryville parish school.

  Dillon stepped forward, preempting his own chief. But he was not jostling for position on a racecourse. He simply stood there with his hand extended, facing General Forbes, who hesitated for a moment before understanding that Dillon wanted the photographs back. Forbes surrendered them, saying, "If this works, it will make my job easier. I can admit that."

  Dillon went efficiently around the half-circle, silently collecting the pictures. Only Colonel Cheever refused. "I want General Donovan to see these."

  "General Donovan will be welcome to see them, Colonel. I will bring them over myself whenever he asks. Or he can call Mr. Dunlop or Mr. Hoover."

  Cheever looked to Crocker for support. But Crocker said quietly, "I'm sorry, Colonel."

  Cheever turned and started to leave the room, the photographs under his arm. Dillon stepped around a chair to block him. "Colonel, these photographs constitute evidence in a criminal investigation. If you refuse to yield them, I will arrest you for obstructing a federal officer."

  Cheever handed the photographs over and pushed roughly past to leave.

  Dillon crossed back to the conference table to put the pictures back in his briefcase. He began to rewind the Dictabelt.

  By the time he finished, the others were gone. Dunlop was waiting by the door. Crocker, from his desk, nodded at Dillon once.

  Dillon started for the door.

  "Mr. Dillon?"

  "Sir?"

  "Can David Lothrop hold himself together?"

  "Yes, sir. I believe he can."

  "You did a good job getting him ready."

  Dillon hesitated, then said, "He's better at it than I would be. When he's with the woman, I almost believe him myself."

  "Yes, I know. Lothrop is better than you would be. To do what Lothrop is doing takes an emptiness at the core of the man. If we hadn't gotten there first to fill it with our idea, Sylvia Yergin would have filled it with hers." Crocker paused before adding, "You don't have an emptiness like that in you."

  The two men looked at each other across all that separated them, each one aware of the strength of their surprising connection.

  Dillon, as the junior agent, did the driving. He nosed the heavy Bureau sedan out of the freshly paved parking lot onto the boulevard that ran between the Pentagon and the river. Dunlop had gone within himself, but Dillon felt too exhilarated not to comment. "I thought wars made men pull together. Those fellows are at each other's throats. They were at our throats."

  Instead of answering, Dunlop pointed at a drive-in restaurant called the Hot Shoppe. It had once served box lunches to travelers flying out of the mud-flat airport that the Pentagon had replaced. "Pull in here. I've got to make a phone call."

  Dillon did as he was told, but with an ominous intimation. He'd expected his boss to be roaring with satisfaction. Hoover was going to be delighted at how they'd held the line against Donovan and Strong both. More to the point, a crew of gumshoe FBI agents had a chance now of really affecting the outcome of the war.

  But Dunlop was in the grip of an altogether different set of feelings. Dillon would have asked him what was up, but rank separated them. When the car stopped, Dunlop opened the door. "I'll be right back."

  Dillon put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it and smoked. A sense of trepidation thickened in his chest.

  When Dunlop returned he was positively morose.

  Now Dillon did ask, "What's up?"

  "Christ, Sean, I hate to be the one to tell you this." He was no longer the man who had coolly made the moves in Crocker's office.

  Dillon's mind leapt ahead to, He's taking me off the case. "Tell me what?"

  "Your wife called the Bureau this morning. I couldn't tell you before. She's in the hospital."

  "In the hospital? What are you talking about?"

  "She went into labor."

  "When, now?"

  "This morning. The baby was born. That's what they just told me. Your wife is all right. She's going to be all right."

  Dillon started to speak, then stopped. He looked at his watch. "When was this?"

  "She called about ten."

  "Ten o'clock this morning? That's six hours ago! Why the hell are you telling me this only now?"

  "How could I have this morning? You were en route to the Melville Arms at ten o'clock. What was I supposed to do, summon you back? Cancel the surveillance just when it was paying off?"

  "But we've been together all afternoon, and you didn't tell me?"

  "I'd have told you if what we're working on wasn't so—"

  "What, the damn war depends on me? I can't have an hour to go to my wife to make sure she knows—" He stopped, unwilling to say "I love her" to Dunlop. His mind jumped. "And now she's alone?" To start the car, he pushed the ignition button so hard his thumb went white. "She's by herself in the hospital all this time?"

  "Mike Packard went over, and I think Packard's wife is there too. She's a friend of your wife's, isn't she?"

  Packard and Dillon had trained at Quantico together. Mike should have come for me, damn it. Dillon whipped the car backward out of its space. He shifted into first and gunned away from the restaurant. "You've got a nerve, Dunlop, keeping this from me."

  "Calm down, Sean. Get your priorities straight. We made sure your wife got everything she needed today. As soon as it was proper to do so, I informed you."

  "Need-to-know, is that it?"

  "You're upset, but don't push it. If it's your wife you're worried about, relax—"

  "What about my baby?"

  Dunlop hesitated, a beat too much, before saying, "I don't know."

  Dillon slammed the steering wheel.

  "Sean, nothing would have been different if you had been there."

  "I'd have been there." He circled off the ramp onto the road leading to the Fourteenth Street Bridge, fast. "What hospital?"

  "George Washingto
n."

  "George Washington, shit! That's the other bridge!" He swung off the approach road as abruptly as he'd cut onto it. As he sped upriver toward Memorial Bridge, he reached to the dashboard to flick the siren switch. The noise seemed to goose the car, which nearly climbed onto the bumper of the car in front. "Move! Damn it!" And the car ahead did.

  He drove wildly along the river boulevard, the Pentagon and the cemetery on one side, and, across the water, the monuments and temples of the sacred city. He had stopped thinking of Dunlop, of Yergin, of winning the war. "Cass," he said under his breath, as if the name itself were a password. But what it opened was a memory of running like this before.

  But on foot. He was running to the trolley shed to find out what had happened to his Pa. "None of your business," his mother had said, which told him that his father's death was his fault.

  His wife in the hospital? His baby—?

  Raymond Buckley's face, of all things, came into Dillon's mind. Then Doc Riley's face, afraid. "Trust me, Doc."

  "What?" It was Dunlop, reaching across to him, touching him. They were halfway across the bridge, almost into Washington. "What'd you say, Sean? I can't hear you because of the siren."

  What siren? Dillon wanted to say. I thought someone was screaming.

  When he stepped quietly into her room, she was turned away, facing the wall. He thought she was asleep.

  He stood over her, as unmoving as she.

  Her red hair was tangled, a mass of knots and snarls spilling onto the pillow behind her. Her hair, the curve of her ear, the ridge of her cheekbone, the hollow of her neck, the lines of her form under the sheet; the simple sight of her was all he needed for a moment.

  Then he became aware of the reason for the reassurance he felt. The subtle rising and falling of her body meant she was alive. His Cass was still alive! Now he could begin to believe what the nurse had told him: his Cass was going to be all right. The floor of his heart had turned upside down, was the ceiling, all at once, of his gratitude. When had he ever felt so thankful? And when had he ever been hauled so far beyond his capacity for expression? He was grateful too that, at that moment, she required none from him.

  But then, as if reading exactly that in him, she rolled slowly back from the wall. Her weary gaze floated around him for a moment before snapping to, and he understood that she had not been sleeping at all. The black hole in her eyes made him feel that his gratitude had come too soon. She had not died, but he understood at once that something in her had.

  "Hello, darling." He took her hand, which was wet and cold and made him shiver.

  "Where were you?" she asked dully.

  "What?"

  "I needed you. You weren't here, and the baby died."

  Dillon was stunned to hear the link of causality in her statement. For a moment in the car he had accused himself like that, but it was nonsense. Nothing would have been different if he'd—

  "The baby died!" Suddenly she rose up, half out of bed, like a crazy lady.

  He sat beside her, to take her into his arms. "I know, darling. I know."

  "Where were you?"

  "Cass, you know where I was. I was at work."

  "But for hours?"

  "Cass, they didn't tell me."

  "Sean, there was no one to help me. I didn't know who to call!" She was sobbing into him, but dryly, as if she had no tears left.

  "You did just right, sweetheart. You called the Bureau, and they—"

  "They said you'd get here, but you didn't. The baby didn't die at first. They said she might ... if you had come ... Oh, Sean, where were you?"

  The baby, a baby girl, had lived for two and a half hours. That news had pierced Sean when the nurse had told him. The baby had been living when he drove across town to the Pentagon. That meeting with Crocker could have been postponed. He pictured the child, undersized and flushed, trying to breathe in an incubator. The little girl had tried to live long enough to meet him, but he had not come. Now her remains had already been taken discreetly away. Her grave would be marked "Baby girl Dillon."

  "Cass, Cass," he said, stroking her. He knew better than to try to explain himself to her, as if he could.

  But of course he could. For a moment, he rebelled at her blaming him. He had not been on the golf course, for Christ's sake! He'd been laying snares for Hitler!

  "Cass ... Cass..." He repeated her name to soothe himself as much as her. Yet he hated how her accusation made him feel. He hated how it forced him to face the choice he had made. He had chosen the Bureau. But what was he supposed to do? It seemed unfair to him that—

  He stopped himself, aware of how hurt she was. "Cass," he said, holding her so that she could see him. "I'm just grateful to have you. You're all right. I'm so grateful."

  "But don't you care about the baby?"

  "Oh God, Cass." He gently pulled her against himself once more. "Don't say such a thing to me." And, despite himself, under his breath, as if she were Dunlop, as if she were responsible for what she was saying, he added with exasperation, "Christ almighty, Cass."

  "What?" She pulled back from him. "What did you say?"

  "Just don't accuse me of not caring about the baby, when all I'm trying to say is how much I care about you."

  "If you cared about me, you'd have been here. That's all."

  And with that, she pulled away from him and rolled back to her wall.

  And now he realized that he'd become furious at Dunlop in the car because he knew in the first instant that she would feel this, taking his unavailability as indifference. But it was not true, not remotely true. Nor was it fair! There was a war on, and lo and behold, without her even knowing, he had an important part to play in it.

  How well he knew her. He had understood viscerally that she would blame him. And he knew himself. Much as he hated it, he could feel the temperature dropping in his own heart, a chill coming, even ice. If she could throw shutters open to the freezing wind like this, so could he.

  He forced himself to touch her shoulder, and when he did, she fell back toward him again. Now tears ran freely on her face. "Sean, Sean, I'm not all right. You said thank God I'm all right, but I'm not."

  "The nurse told me—"

  "The doctor said I shouldn't have children again. I mean, ever. He said—"

  "Cass, hush, we can—"

  "No, listen! He said I have hypertension or something. I risk this every time. He said he was going to talk to you about it. Sean, promise me we can have a child! We'll try again, promise me."

  "But, darling." Dillon felt buffeted. No wonder she was unglued. The nerve of the doctor, talking to her about this now.

  "I want a child, Sean. I don't care what the doctor says. Promise me."

  How could he promise such a thing? He could only hold her. He said, "I love you, Cass," but that was not the point, or not enough, and he knew it.

  ***

  Dillon had wanted to get back to Ninth Street for the shift briefing, but he missed it. He waited in the hallway outside Cass's room until her doctor finally came. Approaching from the stairwell, he was a white-gowned, white-haired older man. Though he'd been taking care of Cass since before she was pregnant, Sean had never met him. His name was Bigelow, and now Sean saw in his erect posture, in his cold blue eyes, and in the features of his handsome face the marks of a man long accustomed to thinking of himself as superior. He was taller than Sean. Dr. Bigelow took his white cap off. Sean understood that he'd just delivered someone else's baby.

  They shook hands. "Mr. Dillon, I'm sorry."

  "What can you tell me about my wife's condition, Doctor?"

  "She suffered a severe bout of eclampsia."

  "You told her hypertension."

  "I said it's like that, soaring blood pressure, but associated with the trauma of childbirth. She won't have a problem otherwise."

  "She'll be all right?"

  "Well, she's stable now. But you should understand, she almost died. Her blood pressure had us ... her numbers were up
in stroke range. We really thought she'd have a stroke. But now she's near to normal again. We'll watch her for a couple of days, keep her comfortable. Nature will do the rest. But my goodness, she came awfully close..."

  "She seems very..." What? He could not explain. He'd never seen her at such an edge before.

  "I'm not a psychiatrist, Mr. Dillon, but your wife is going to need more than we can give her. A woman might tend to feel like quite a failure after—"

  "She said something about not conceiving again. You told her not to conceive."

  "Yes. Eclampsia is a condition that we would expect to see again, and she seems susceptible to a severe form of it. She's very lucky not to have had a stroke. I seriously question if she can stand the stress of childbirth."

  "My wife wants a baby, Doctor."

  "I understand that. There are risks, is what I'm telling you, serious risks. I would frankly recommend at some point, soon, a tubal ligation."

  "What's that?"

  "Making it so she can't conceive. Cutting the Fallopian tubes."

  "Sterilization?"

  "Yes."

  "Christ, Doctor, isn't that extreme? Why couldn't you anticipate this and get her ready for it? Isn't it your job—"

  "We did our job, and your wife is alive."

  "But my baby is dead."

  "Yes, tragically. And now your job is to take care of your wife. She can't conceive alone, you know."

  Dillon wanted to hit him.

  "You're concerned because you're Catholics."

  "That is not the issue here."

  "If not sterilization, then strict birth control. That's what I recommend. Otherwise"—Dr. Bigelow shrugged, supremely detached—"your religion may well present you with a truly awful problem."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Don't Catholics believe it's more important to save the life of the baby than the mother?"

  "I don't believe that." Dillon had to look away sharply. His anger had become another kind of intense emotion. "I'm grateful to you for saving her."

  Even Dr. Bigelow seemed ambushed then.

  "My wife wants a baby. It is not a casual wish of hers. I'm not talking about what I want. If my wife can't have a child..." Dillon stopped. He had never come this close before to the recognition of how little, in fact, he gave his wife. A child was to have rescued both of them, her from loneliness and him from precisely this sense of failure. "My question to you, Doctor, is, Exactly how dangerous is it?"