“When our delegates to Zurich were selected, Simon Madlock, President Earnshaw’s right-hand man—actually everyone considered Madlock the unofficial President—well, Madlock called me in and appointed me a delegate because of my experience in the field of disarmament and because he felt that my dedication to the cause of world peace would be attractive to the Chinese. Then, almost at the last minute, Madlock assigned Professor Varney of Caltech as part of my team. Madlock felt that Varney’s presence would impress the suspicious Chinese—first, because of Varney’s prestige as the so-called father of the neutron bomb, a weapon China did not yet possess; second, because, unlike many of his more belligerent colleagues, Varney had made many conciliatory statements about friendship with Red China and had been active in numerous Ban-the-Bomb schemes, perhaps in expiation for his own guilts over helping produce the ultimate Bomb. Well, I did a little poking around on my own, even had a glimpse of a CIA report on Varney, and I began to feel uneasy about the professor. I got up the courage to go to Simon Madlock, and—face to face, just the two of us alone—I told him I would be more comfortable without Varney on our team. I couldn’t tell him that I’d seen a classified CIA report that graded Varney as a security risk. But I could and did tell Madlock that Varney’s notions about peace were, well, emotional, amateurish, impractical, and that his presence might inhibit our realistic approach, which had been formulated by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Madlock simply would not listen to me. Amateurs such as Professor Varney, he insisted, were often more effective than professionals like myself. Moreover, Hung Chi, the journal of China’s Central Committee, had several times, praised Varney as ‘a flower in the reactionaries’ garden of poisonous weeds.’ In short, Varney must accompany us. And my assignment, in addition to my regular duties, was to keep Varney on a practical course as much as possible, since he was politically immature, employ him to the best effect, and keep an eye on him in general. Because Varney was highly individualistic, Madlock did not want him making statements contrary to our official policy. And so, reluctantly, we went to Zurich with Varney… You’ve heard none of this before, have you, Ted?”
“No, not exactly.”
“It’s true, and important for you to know considering what happened next. I won’t go into the details of the conference itself. That’s all been written. But let me tell you about another person who was there. At the time, Russia felt that Red China was as much a threat to them as to us. The Russians were on our side, working with the West to bring China into line. Understand that. Well, my counterpart on the Russian delegation was a youngish man, perhaps two or three years younger than I, named Nikolai Rostov. An attractive, dynamic fellow. Picture a cleanshaven Gorki in his youth. Rostov, with his shaggy eyebrows, Neanderthal forehead, ill-fitting clothes, rough manner, looked like a descendant of muzhiks. Actually, this was only half true. On his mother’s side, he came from a family of scholars. His father, a laborer, was the anti-intellectual, a weak drunk who was at odds with his wife and son. Rostov adored his mother but despised his father, and yet, I suspect, he was something of both of them. For all his tough posturing, Rostov was full of erudition, could quote Pushkin at the drop of a hat. He spoke a clear, although not idiomatic, English. And while he was a dedicated Communist, he was not a parroting one, mouthing the litany of party-line dogma. We became good friends, very good friends, or so I thought. Anyway, Professor Varney, with his airy idealism, was as difficult as I’d expected, and Rostov became as worried about him as I was. We used to get into constant arguments with Varney. I would argue with him over his impractical ideas for peace, and Rostov would argue with him over his unrealistic interpretation of modern China.
“Then, Ted, it all went wrong, everything came apart, and it happened in a single day, the day the conference was to adjourn. I was making notes around lunchtime in my room at the Carlton-Elite, and Rostov broke in on me, extremely upset. He’d got a tip from the KGB that twice Professor Varney had secretly visited Red Chinese delegates, at night in their rooms at the Dolder Grand Hotel. This kind of private unilateral business was strictly against security regulations, and it unnerved me. Both Rostov and I rushed to the Baur au Lac, where Varney had insisted upon staying because he liked the view of the lake. We found him, and confronted him with our knowledge of his activities, but the old man waved us off as if we were children. He admitted that he’d seen the Chinese a couple of times on his own, especially their well-known physicist, Dr. Ho Ta-peng. Varney felt that scientists had a common tongue. He also felt that he could accomplish more with the Chinese this way than we could at the formal meetings in the Kongresshaus. He was trying to prove to them that our intentions were honorable and peaceful, and they were obviously beginning to trust him, because they had already informally invited him to visit Peking.
“Well, Rostov and I pleaded with Varney not to continue on his own like this, not to visit another Chinese without one of us present. After an exhausting hour, we convinced him. He promised to behave. But once we were outside his hotel again, our uneasiness revived. Rostov decided to speak to his superiors, and I determined to call Simon Madlock directly at the White House. I went to our headquarters and placed my call on the scrambler, only to be told that Madlock was unavailable. When I spoke of the urgency of my message, I was advised to try again several hours later.
“I returned to my hotel, and as I walked into my room, the telephone rang. It was Nikolai Rostov. He had horrifying news. He had just learned that Professor Varney had defected to Red China. An hour before, in company with a group of Chinese delegates, nuclear physicists like himself, he had boarded a Pakistan International Airlines plane and taken off. I was thunderstruck, speechless, not only by the act of defection but by its implications. But Rostov had more to say. We would not be blamed, he assured me. A note had been delivered to him, addressed to both of us, written in Varney’s hand. Rostov read it to me twice, and the second time I wrote it all down, every word of it. It read: ‘Dear Nikolai and Matthew. After much soul-searching, I have decided to go over to the Chinese and do a missionary’s work in converting them to peace. I know how earnestly you both have labored to stop me from seeing our Chinese brothers, but I am convinced that your path is wrong and mine is right. Only by giving China every equality with the West will we gain their trust, as well as force the militarists in our own countries to put an end to their Catonian strategy, their echoing of Cato’s cry, “Carthage must be destroyed,” and to cease their aggressive acts. We shall force them to treat seriously with the New China for an enduring peace. I shall now devote the remainder of my life to achieving this peace. Forgive my sudden departure. It is your work I do. This note will absolve both of you of any responsibility for my act, an act made entirely on my own good conscience. Varney.’
“The note was a major consolation, since I sensed that my personal situation was a precarious one. Varney had been assigned to my charge, although over my protests, and now he had defected to America’s enemy with America’s secrets. There would have to be explanations. I had no doubt that my explanations would be satisfactory, for I had been only a minor instrument in Madlock’s peace offensive on behalf of President Earnshaw. Still, instinctively, I knew that I must reinforce my personal position.
“After recovering from the initial shock, I demanded to know whether Rostov still possessed Varney’s farewell note, which exonerated both Rostov and me. Rostov assured me that he was holding the precious note in his hand. I said it was of great importance to me to have either the original note or a photocopy of it. Rostov understood, and instantly promised to make a copy for himself and to deliver the original to me personally at the Carlton-Elite within the hour. He told me to stand by, and he hung up.
“I waited. Rostov did not appear within the hour or within the next two hours. I became frantic and began to make telephone calls, trying to reach him at his hotel, his delegation headquarters, his office in the Zurich Kongresshaus. “Everywhere, I was told that he was not in but sho
uld be back shortly. I was too distraught to rely on the telephone any longer. I rushed over to Rostov’s hotel and asked for him. I was told that he was no longer registered. He had checked out two hours earlier. I insisted that he must have left either a message or an envelope for Mr. Matthew Brennan. There was no message, no envelope. In short, no copy of the life-and-death Varney note absolving me. Much later, I learned that after Rostov telephoned me, agents of the KGB had entered his room and forced him to return to Moscow with them for questioning.
“That was the last of Rostov for me. I never saw him again, or heard of the Varney note again.
“Well, Ted, I suspect you know much of what happened next. Varney’s defection to Red China made headlines throughout the world. It caused an uproar in the United States. And even before I could leave Zurich, the word was out that Professor Varney had safely arrived in Peking. He had held a press conference in the Hsin Hsiao Hotel, and had been quoted in the official government journal, Hung Chi, as stating that he was on a mission to give China’s nuclear scientists the neutron bomb, and that this would give China the strength to force the Western powers to abandon belligerence for realistic peace talks. I remember Marshal Chen, Vice-Chairman of China’s Communist Party Central Committee, saying at the time, ‘Peace grows from the barrel of the gun.’ But most of us had not forgotten the original quotation, made by Mao Tse-tung years before, which was, ‘Power grows from the barrel of the gun.’
“Overnight, editorials began appearing in the American press demanding to know who was responsible for this horrendous security lapse. I was deeply troubled, but I was still confident, of my own position. While I did not have either Varney or Rostov to vouch for my innocence, I had someone more important. I had the President’s right-hand man, Simon Madlock himself, to testify that he alone had appointed Varney to our delegation. I knew he would admit that in a private meeting I had opposed Varney’s appointment, warning him that Varney was a risk; he would admit that subsequent events had proved me a prophet. As for Madlock, whatever his shortcomings, he was an honest man. This he was. And under oath he would, I knew, clear me and assume full responsibility for the fiasco himself. I was one of several delegates detained in Zurich for three or four days to undergo questioning by the CIA and various other intelligence agencies. Then we returned home.
“Moments after I descended from our jetliner at Kennedy Airport, I learned the latest, and for me the most stunning, news. Two hours earlier, in Walter Reed Hospital, Simon Madlock had died as the result of a sudden and massive coronary.
“You know how I felt, Ted? I’ll tell you. Like being in one of those thrillers you always read, where a newspaperman pretends to have committed a crime in order to ferret out the real murderer, and only the District Attorney knows his stunt, and is in on his game, and then, suddenly, the District Attorney dies, and the newspaperman has no witnesses left on earth to prove his innocence. You’ve read that one a hundred times. Ridiculous fiction, we’ve all said. But here it was, happening to me.
“The rest came fast. Dexter’s Joint Committee on Internal Security had its public inquisition. Vainly, frantically, I had Madlock’s secretary try to locate Madlock’s notes on our private meeting. They did not exist. I tried to get an affidavit from Professor Varney in Peking. There was no reply. I tried, through both our Embassy in Moscow and our correspondents in Russia, to reach Nikolai Rostov, begging him for a copy of the Varney note. Rostov had disappeared from sight. During the weeks of the hearings, and for a year after, I directed appeals to Rostov. There was no answer from Rostov, from anyone, only a rumor that Rostov had been disciplined for his own laxity and demoted to a minor post in Siberia.
“Prove my innocence, Ted? You bet I tried, and I did not stop trying until lately. But as far as I know, Varney is as dead as Madlock and Rostov has been quietly purged. And I am left, the only living witness to my own innocence.
“I ran away, you said. You wondered why I ran away. I’ll tell you why. Because, with all of that guilt by implication, I had to resign from the Disarmament Agency. There were no jobs or positions open to me. Then, well, your mother—I suppose she had no choice—she left me, and took you and Tracy. There just wasn’t enough reason to remain in a community where I was a pariah, to stay on in a homeland that wanted me evicted. Maybe it was weak of me to leave finally, but by that time, I’ll confess, I was weak. So—went abroad, I sentenced myself to this island city, where I would be accepted for what I was and not what I was supposed to be.”
Brennan halted, breathless, emotionally spent, throat and lungs dry.
“There is your Judas parent, young man,” Brennan said with a thin smile. “I’m sorry to have gone on at this length. But in a sense, you asked for it, coming here, and I had to answer—not perhaps because it was important to you, but because it was important to me.” He smiled fully now. “Okay, Ted?”
The boy nodded, dumbly. He tried to find his voice, and he did. “Okay,” he said, almost inaudibly, and averted his worried eyes.
Brennan pitied him. Ted had sat rigidly, phlegmatically, throughout the recital, like a young Spartan trained to endure and survive any test of manhood. Yet, it was evident that he had been deeply moved. He appeared like a grown adolescent who wanted to retreat into childhood, but was willing himself to resist the urge. His composure had been shattered, and what remained were pieces: the downcast, blinking eyes, the unsteady lips, the locking, unlocking hands.
Brennan ached to be beside him, arm around him, as once in the long ago, and address Ted not as a defense counsel but as a loving parent. It was no use. Ted could give him nothing back, at least not now. Ted had come to this meeting with one mind. His mind had been invaded, torn asunder, and now, possibly, he was of two minds, and it was strange to him and it was unsettling.
In his son’s mind, Brennan perceived, there was recorded his father’s brief. But that same mind was already filled with another brief, an accusing prosecutor’s case built large over four years, the years of stern Mother, whispering friends, vicious newspaper stories, the years of regarding Father as a troublemaker not a protector, seeing Father as a threat not a shelter offering security. Could this impromptu brief in Harry’s Bar in Venice overturn all that the boy had heard and suffered during the recent years in America?
Brennan did not know. And now he did not want to know.
He could see Ted shifting restlessly in his place. He could see that the boy wanted to be free of the half-guilts and total confusion his father represented.
Brennan said, “It’s getting late, Ted. You’d better be off.
I don’t want you to miss your one night on the town in Venice.”
Ted hesitated. “I—I suppose I should. They’re expecting me.”
Brennan pushed back his chair and rose, to make it easier for his son, who quickly and gratefully stood up. “You’re leaving in the morning?” Brennan asked.
“Yes. Like I said, real early. We’re heading down to Florence, and on to Rome.”
“You’ll enjoy both. If you want any suggestions on offbeat things to see—?”
“Thanks, I appreciate it, but we’re only spending a couple of days, and my friends marked the guidebooks.”
“Well, then—” Brennan offered his hand, formally. “Good luck. I’ll write you at Yale.” Ted took his hand stiffly, then released it, and Brennan added, “Try to write when you have spare time. I’ll be at the same old stand.”
For seconds, they were a few feet apart, and his son looked directly at him, eyes moistening, Adam’s apple going up and down, and in those seconds, it was as if Ted wanted to say something, offer something, perhaps something akin to love. But he could say nothing, after all, except “I’ll write,” except “Thanks for everything,” and Brennan would never know.
Brennan turned to watch his son pass quickly through the room, through the swinging doors, into Venice and out of his life, and he wished that the boy had at least once, just once, called him Dad.
Brennan settl
ed himself in the chair, trying to understand, and after thinking about it a few minutes, he understood fully: Ted had hurried off like this, unable to speak, because he had not wanted to be a traitor to his mother, the only one in life upon whom he could still depend.
In his utter aloneness, morosely contemplating his empty highball glass, Brennan considered the companionship of one more drink. The accompanying dirge was ready: Arrivederci, Ted, arrivederci, Lisa, arrivederci, Everything. But he remembered that Lisa had not yet gone, and that he had promised to see her off if it was possible.
After weighing the pain of another emotional parting against the pleasure of one more glimpse of Lisa’s loving face, he knew that he had to see her one last time, no matter how painful the encounter. It was twenty minutes to eight. He could still make it.
He reached inside his jacket for his wallet, and immediately, as always, his sense of alienation was heightened by the feel of the oversized wallet for foreign currency and the ever-present passport bulging in his pocket. This night, of all nights, he did not wish to be Philip Nolan, the Man Without a Country. Determined not to dwell on his role, he paid his bill, hurried to the telephone inside the cloakroom hall and called the Gritti Palace hotel. Not unexpectedly, he learned from the reception desk that Miss Elizabeth Collins had checked out ten minutes before. He would catch her at the depot.
The Plot Page 28