He resumed reading. "I've been thinking about how we used to walk along the Oak Street Beach, you in your boater hat and seersucker suit, me with my stockings stuffed in my purse so that I could wade. You used to look out across the blue lake and interrupt whatever you were saying by all of a sudden saying instead, 'God, Cass, don't you love it here?' And I always knew you meant that stretch of beach, not Chicago, and I assumed you felt that way because the Oak Street Beach was where we'd found each other. But we never go there now, have you noticed?
"And I know why. We would talk to each other there, but talking has gone from our marriage, as if the Church had rules against that too. We have become a man and woman apart. And I know that because of how you can't stand it when I try to reach you like this, which is my fault because I so easily become upset. Then my feelings do come out, and they make you hate me, though they are nothing but the terrible, painful feelings of how much I love you. I have loved you from that first night outside of Walgreen's. But I made a mess of it then, and I am making a mess of it still, like Richard crushing crackers in the crib he has to sleep in. Nothing matters to me like you do, my darling, dearest Sean. That is what I am writing this letter to say.
"But even this letter, which is how I moved tonight from anger to its opposite, is against the rules of what a woman like me is supposed to be. I don't even know if I dare give it to you. How did this happen, that every way I would try to reach to you is wrong? Can I reverse things perhaps, and propose something to you? The man does the proposing, I know. But just this once, a woman does. When you return from Washington, can we talk to each other about all of this? Quietly, without arguing? Can we do that, Sean? Can we stop being blind and mute? Can we look each other in the eye and speak, without hurt and anger overwhelming us? I am going to count on it, may I? And to let you know the spirit in which I ask this of you, I am going to end this letter by asking something else of you. Dear Sean, with all my heart, I ask you to understand and, also, to forgive your sad, sorrowful—Cass."
Dillon fingered the warped spots on the paper where her tears had fallen and dried.
He folded the letter carefully back into its torn envelope, then put it in his briefcase with the pissant grand-theft-auto summaries he had yet to read, and the boner forms, the agent-performance reports he had yet to write. He realized consciously what for years he'd known only as a nagging, unarticulated sense of private failure. If his initial reaction had been, What the hell does she want? he knew now that the issue was not want but need. He knew that her need had grown so vast that its object no longer mattered. He simply knew that he, Sean Dillon, could never fill it.
He stared up the river as Crocker's car carried him across the Fourteenth Street Bridge. Georgetown loomed in the distance, that black spire. It struck him that he should never have turned his back on the priesthood, especially since he'd ended up celibate anyway. Cass's letter said he hated her, but that was not remotely it, and Sean was at a loss to see how that grave word applied. Hate? Christ Jesus, Cass, nothing like hate!
He saw the fringe of golden leaves on the trees ringing the tidal basin. Near here he'd begun his frantic rush to G.W. Hospital almost four years before, and he conjured the scene as clearly as if it were a photograph he carried, and not a mere memory called up to answer what she had written. Dillon had undergone an epiphany of feeling that day, but feeling radically for that woman, and it had not ever fully left him since. Its stirring now refuted not only her word, "hate," but his own flash of nostalgia for the life of the men of the Church. He was a typical Irish husband and knew it, barely more versed in the language of self-expression—not to say romance—than priests. His wife's physical vulnerability was real, and the inhibition that imposed on them was inevitable. Couldn't she see that? He didn't want to kill her. But he was the worst kind of man for such a situation, and he knew it. He could only withdraw. For now he clung to the feeling that that place on the bridge called up—his feeling for her. What he needed to do was keep this memoiy of that rare emotion as a point of reference—how longing, desire, fear and pain had combined once to form a measure of love.
He snapped his briefcase shut, snapping shut too the impossible question of what exactly he should do now about his sorrowful, yes sorrowful, wife.
The Metropolitan Club was like an Italian Renaissance palace that had lost its way in the commercial district of that modern city. It was a massive five-story brick edifice with carved Florentine balusters on the roofline and a banked crescent stone driveway slicing across the corner of Seventeenth and H streets. Insurance salesmen and loan underwriters from offices in the prosaic adjacent buildings would expect no access to the realm thus defined. In mundane Chicago the place would have been the cardinal's residence, or Colonel McCormick's, but in Washington it was typical of the houses of dozens of would-be New World aristocrats.
The driver was out of the car, and it took Dillon a moment to realize that he was coming around to open his door. Not my door, you don't. Dillon had authority over a hundred and fifty agents, not to mention accountants and clerical workers, but he had a complete aversion to a chauffeur's routine subservience. He nearly bumped the startled driver with the door as he opened it and got out.
He apologized and thanked him in the one efficient phrase—"Sorry, thanks"—which, all his life, he had heard deferential Irishmen use when cutting through crowds.
In the opulent marble entrance hall a Negro steward greeted him by name and led the way up a curving broad staircase to the second floor. To one side of the landing was a set of elaborately carved doors, two pairs of them, thrown open on a high-ceilinged dining room. The bulbs in the sconces on the oak-paneled walls and those in the two massive chandeliers were all illuminated despite the midday light pouring in the huge windows on the far side of the room. Dillon thought of the Tudor dining room at the Stockyards Inn because it too had sought to combine elegance and masculinity. This room, however, succeeded. Because there were so few people present, the room's features themselves could impress—the carved lintels over three imposing fireplaces, oriental rugs running the length and width of broad crossing aisles, the discreet patina of the aged leather wing chairs, the shimmering chrome of urns and taps along a mirrored wall. It was too early for lunch, and the chairs were still empty as waiters buzzed from table to table, fussing the silverware and linen and cobalt water glasses into the last state of perfect readiness.
"This way, please," Dillon's escort said, and he took Dillon the other way, toward a closed door across the landing from the dining room. It led into a narrow dark corridor off which other doors opened, and it was one of those, a dozen yards along, on which the man knocked briskly.
"Come," a voice said from within.
The steward opened the door and Dillon realized this was a routine of his. He had shown many visitors up here this way. "Mr. Sean Dillon," he announced, then stepped aside.
Randall Crocker was seated alone, in shirtsleeves, at a broad table on which papers, folders and familiar green-jacketed volumes from the Government Printing Office were stacked haphazardly among two telephones, a Dictaphone machine and an ashtray the size of a meat platter in which little cones of tapped-out pipe cinders were arranged like burnt offerings. A private side dining room had been transformed into Crocker's office. Dillon's sense of mystification redoubled.
"Forgive me if I don't stand, Dillon, will you?" When Crocker smiled, the room brightened. He reached a hand up to Dillon, who had to lean across the table to take it.
"It's great to see you, sir."
"You too. Take a seat. You're good to come."
"I'm on my way to Mr. Hoover's office." Dillon sat in the single dinner-table chair. It was cushioned, fancy, one of a set, but the others had all been removed from the room. He put his briefcase on the floor beside him.
"I know you are. Once we've had our chat, you'll want to talk to Hoover. I talked to him less than an hour ago."
"What's going on?"
"A lot. A lot is go
ing on." Crocker scraped his chair back. It matched Dillon's, lacking the maneuverability of a wheeled swivel chair, which was why Crocker had not risen. He reached for his pipe. Small talk later, if at all. "Have you followed the debate on the Hill, over the National Security Act?"
"More or less."
"You know the act passed last week?"
"Yes, sir."
"You know what it does?"
"It unites the War and Navy departments under a single chief. Secretary of defense, isn't it?"
"Right, the first step toward unification of the services, or 'centralization,' as the act calls it."
"Which was a recommendation of yours, as I recall."
"Then you'll appreciate the irony when I tell you that I'm involved in the one part of the process that decentralizes. The act creates a third military service, separating the air corps out of the army—the air force, it's called now."
"I read that."
Crocker put his pipe in his mouth and lit it. After letting the smoke billow around his head, he waved the match out and looked up at Dillon. "The President is going to sign the act into law tomorrow. He is going to name me undersecretary of war for air, pending the new law's date of effectiveness, then I become secretary of the air force."
"Congratulations, Mr. Crocker."
"I want you to work for me."
"How?"
"The air force has its airplanes and its bombs and its pilots. What it does not have the day it severs from the army is any organization." Crocker struck the table, bouncing papers. "And organization is what I aim to give it. The air force is not going to be a collection of feudal fiefdoms at the mercy of geniuses who don't trust each other, like the army and the navy are. The whole thrust of this reform is centralized control, and we're going to show them with the air force how it's done." Dillon remembered Crocker from two and a half years before as spent and old, the effect of the war. Now he was a man of striking vitality.
"I have two key areas," he said, ticking his fingers. "I want total centralization of procurement and supply. And I want total control of security." Crocker brought the fingers of his other hand into it, enumerating. "In the army you have CID, Criminal Investigation Division; the provost marshal, who's like a police commissioner; the CIC, Counterintelligence Corps; JAG, judge advocate general; the inspector general; the Special Branch of military intelligence; and God knows what else. They keep their secrets from the enemy, and especially from one another. They are police and counterspy operations, but they are staffed by infantry officers or engineers, men trained in logistics or whoever the hell gets transferred in that week. By the time they know what they're doing, they're transferred out. The only constant is the determination of the man in charge of each office to keep his command unpolluted by any tendency to cooperate with anyone else. The security system of the army, in other words, is a perfect scaled-down version of what's wrong with the whole goddamned American military."
Crocker stopped to let Dillon comment.
Dillon did not move in his chair.
"You're listening to me, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir, I am."
"I can't tell what you're thinking, Sean."
"Nothing yet. I'm still listening."
"Right." Crocker flared his fingers again, to resume his briefing. "Each one of these directorates has its AAF contingent, and they all think they will be coming over to the separated service whole, just like a Tooey Spaatz bomber wing. But they won't. In the air force we're going to do something new. One agency. One director. One organization to handle both criminal investigation and counterintelligence, an office rigidly controlled, with highly trained, absolutely reliable agents who respond to the authority of an all-powerful director. Ever heard of an operation like that, Sean?"
Dillon smiled. "It sounds vaguely familiar."
"I want the FBI inside the air force, and Hoover agrees with me."
"I'm sure he does. He'd like the FBI inside everything."
"I have informally asked Hoover's assistance in setting this thing up. Once my appointment is official, I will make the request formally. I'm asking for a six-month loan to the new Department of the Air Force of Special Agent Sean Dillon, whose job will be to propose a specific charter for an air force security-investigative organization." Crocker put his pipe in his mouth. That was it.
Dillon dropped his hand to his briefcase which held Cass's letter. To his horror he realized instantly that he was going to say no to this man again. Once more Crocker had flung wide the doors before him, opening the way to an entirely new room, the best in the house, a gleaming, polished room with chandeliers. And Dillon was going to say no.
Before he could, Crocker leaned across the table, pointing with his pipe. "Don't misunderstand what I just said. I was describing to you the motions I am going through with Hoover, but I am not really asking him. And I'm not really asking you. This is not an invitation to come on up to Wall Street. This is conscription. This is your country saying it needs you, same as it did to me. If I couldn't say no, neither can you." Crocker reached for a tamper the size of a golf tee and used it on his pipe. The gesture diluted his too solemn tone. "Do you know what the air force is going to be? It's going to be the goddamn A-bomb with wings. Are you going to say no to helping to protect that?"
"Protect it from whom?"
"Uncle Joe, for starters."
"When we last talked, you seemed to think Stalin was an uncle. I hate to say I told you so, Mr. Crocker. What we know now is that Uncle Joe has murdered more people than Hitler did. Only he's still doing it."
"But not with the bomb. I'm terrified, the way our army security system operates, that Stalin is going to walk into Oak Ridge and take one. I can admit you saw something coming before I did, but as I recall, that was your job. It's the job I'm offering you back."
"Why me?"
"You already combine expertise in criminal work, fraud investigation and counterintelligence. How many, even in the Bureau, have covered the bases you have? How many?"
"I don't know."
"Well, I do. An even dozen agents have records to compare. And of them you're the only one who's run a major office. How old are you?"
"Thirty-seven."
"You're the youngest agent-in-charge in the Bureau, aren't you?"
"I've no idea."
"You've broken a fifty-year-old machine in Chicago. They tell me Ed Kelly didn't run for mayor again because of what you brought to the grand jury."
Dillon laughed. "He didn't run again because he'd been mayor seventeen years and people got sick of him. We've hardly touched the damn machine. I've hardly started in Chicago. I wasn't out to retire Kelly. I was out to indict him."
"The FBI course in Chicago is set. You can turn the wheel over to someone else. I know for myself what you did in Washington. Among other difficult accomplishments, you impressed me. What I want in my air force outfit is an organizational version of you."
"But air force? I can't land in an airliner at National Airport without my palms getting wet. I don't think you know what you're asking."
"Hell, do I look like a birdman? I'm not asking you to fly a secret mission into Berlin. I am asking you to help us keep the Russians from finding out when someone else does, though. Your palms don't get wet at the thought of that, do they?"
"No."
"Good. And that's the last 'no' I'll take from you this time. I told you, this is conscription."
"I'm not saying no, Mr. Crocker."
"You're not saying yes either, I notice."
Dillon had been gripping the handle of his briefcase all this time. He released it. "Six months?"
"That's the commitment. You acquaint yourself with what's under way in the army. You already know some of how it goes. Learn everything. Decide what functions fit and what don't, what activities, what plans, what procedures and what command channels. I want your view of everything but personnel. That will be my problem. Yours is to give me an organizational blueprint that's so foolproof
even military men can implement it. Six months. That's Hoover's limit of how long I can have you, but these initial six months before the new service hardens up are all I have anyway. We have to get the new operation up and running before the old ones, especially CIC and CID, can move to undermine it."
"How would they do that, if you're in charge?"
"They'll do it on the Hill. Every feudal baron in the Pentagon has his protector in Congress. And they will all be threatened by what you're doing. First they'll whisper, then they'll scream. And some congressman will listen. Like it or not, those knuckleheads on the Hill think they're in charge."
Dillon grinned. "They gave you the law you wanted, didn't they?"
"They're knuckleheads not to know what we are going to do with it. When Jimmy Forrestal and I get finished, the brass are going to be on permanent parade up there, accusing Congress of selling them out, when what they will have done is simply to have put some new men in charge of the American military." Crocker shook his head, imitating the generals' and admirals' stark disbelief. "And the new men in charge are all goddamn civilians! That is what 'centralization' in the National Security Act means. The military, which in the war came to regard itself as omnipotent, is about to be brought back into the corral of the U.S. Constitution. Is that important enough for you?" Suddenly Crocker seemed pissed off, but then Dillon read that as an imitation too, the imitation of a cross-examiner. Never ask a question you don't already know the answer to. "Is that important enough for you to leave Chicago?"
"Yes, sir, it is."
"Do you agree then? Do you accept the job?"
"Absolutely."
Crocker pushed his chair back and hauled himself up. He leaned across to offer his hand. "Great, Sean, great!"
Sean's hand was dry. The sensation of strength in his fingers, his own and also Crocker's, filled him with pleasure.
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