by Peter Quinn
—SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Karsten Heinz? How could that be?
—It’s a flesh-and-blood fact.
Pully led the way deeper into the park. A heavy, wet snow started to fall. On we trudged as he laid out the facts. He’d received a letter from a Swiss couple interested in setting up an American office for their medical supply business, which specialized in developing advanced diagnostic devices. They had patents they wanted to protect as well as prototypes they wished to introduce to the American market. They’d heard Wynne Billings speak at a business seminar in London and were convinced ISC could help. They’d be in New York the following week.
Pully wrote back and set up a breakfast meeting at the Savoy Plaza, where they were staying. Only the man showed up. After he’d spoken with Pully for some time, he confessed that he was there under false pretenses: To wit, he wasn’t Swiss, he didn’t own a medical supply business, and he and the woman with whom he’d traveled to New York—his sister, as it turned out—were determined to capture Dr. Karsten Heinz. Would he be interested in helping them?
Unsure with whom he was dealing, Pully posed questions of his own. Who were they? Where did they get his name? What was their interest in Heinz? Indeed, what made them believe Heinz was alive? What evidence had they? For whom were they working?
Their answers satisfied Pully. They’d stumbled on the trail of an Auschwitz physician, an SS officer, who’d been presumed dead. In fact, he was alive but there seemed to be an impenetrably protective wall set up around him. One source had told them if they were interested in pursuing the matter, they should speak with Louis Pohl. They went to hear Wynne Billings speak only to provide a pretext for getting in touch.
They produced the dossier they had on Heinz. It spelled out the details of his postwar existence that they’d been able to piece together.
Before he could be returned to Nuremberg, Heinz contracted bronchopneumonia and died. A month later, Oscar Hemmer, a refugee from East Prussia with no Nazi affiliations of any sort—a simple chemist who fled the invading forces of the Red Army—appeared at the offices of the International Refugee Organization in Rome.
His documentation in order, he was issued a Red Cross passport. He subsequently sailed from Genoa on the S.S. Garibaldi for Buenos Aires. He settled in that city for several years, working for an Argentinean subsidiary of IG Farben, the German chemical conglomerate, in its research division.
Unlike most other German immigrants, he steered clear of reunions and social gatherings, preferring a quiet, comfortable, solitary life in the upscale suburb where he resided. In 1955, Hemmer returned to Europe and settled in Hamburg. He set up an import-export firm specializing in chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
The dossier pointed to the fact that Oscar Hemmer was the reinvented Karsten Heinz. It also traced his continuing connections to Reinhard Gehlen’s intelligence operation—the Org—which conducted business under the aegis of the CIA. Hemmer/Heinz was consulted on his knowledge of the inner workings of Soviet intelligence. His import-export business was nothing more than a front for his reintegration into the Org.
In 1956, the Org became the Federal Republic of Germany’s official intelligence service: the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). Gehlen was appointed director in chief. Out of genuine concern or a desire to play the ends against the middle—most likely a combination of both—Hemmer/Heinz voiced to his contacts in the CIA his suspicion that the BND was hopelessly penetrated by Soviet moles.
His concerns were brought to Carlton Bartlett, whose brief included coordinating operations with the BND. It didn’t take much to convince Bartlett of the worthiness of Hemmer/Heinz’s suspicions. They stoked his conviction that the Soviets had succeeded in riddling the intelligence agencies of our European allies with agents and satisfied his desire to keep a close eye on Gehlen’s minions.
Bartlett made Hemmer/Heinz his mole in the BND. He authorized him to enlist a cadre of agents to spy on the spies and nose out possible double agents. Hemmer/Heinz wasted no time in forming a tight-knit unit made up of former SS colleagues.
Pully told me all this while the snow swirled around us. The buildings beyond were obscured behind it. I blurted out a condensed version of the conversation you and I had in the Drummond all those years ago. He’d heard it before but listened with rapt intensity.
We stood silently—I’m not sure for how long—until I broke the quiet with a question:
—Who are these pursuers of Heinz? On whose behalf are they acting?
—I’m going to meet with them again today. I’ll fill you in tomorrow.
—Why not now?
—Because I need time to think.
We left the park where we had entered, at Grand Army Plaza. The white flakes stuck to us like paste. We must have appeared as two abominable snowmen who’d stumbled out of some mountain fastness into the middle of the metropolis.
I should have insisted on going with him. I had the distinct impression that this most reasonable and logical of men had fallen prey to his emotions and was about to do something he’d regret. Instead, I let him go.
As incredible as the story of Heinz’s resurrection sounded, I knew it was true. Yet, though I appreciated Pully taking me into his confidence, I was unnerved—even resentful. I didn’t want to get sucked back into this deadly vortex, especially when the stakes were so high. I was content with the life I had.
Alas, my fears about Pully’s state of mind proved correct. This most logical and deliberate of men let feelings race ahead of reason. He contacted Bartlett directly and told him he knew all about Heinz. At first Bartlett pretended ignorance. The BND managed its own affairs, he protested. The story of Hemmer/Heinz struck him as a “fairy tale probably spun from whole cloth in Moscow.” Even if it did contain a kernel of truth, “it’s not the business of the CIA to hunt for war criminals.”
Pully wouldn’t be put off. He stayed on the attack, challenging Bartlett that “this wasn’t about hunting war criminals but harboring them.” It so blatantly crossed the line between “legitimate counterintelligence and soul-corrupting deceit and manipulation,” it had to be exposed.
I knew Pully had made a dangerous error confronting Bartlett. I knew equally that his intent was not to discredit or subvert our entire intelligence operations but to purge them of the self-aggrandizing opportunists, fearmongers, and ideological zealots (“the warocrats,” he labeled them) who didn’t care about the means—assassination, torture, employment of the worst sort of war criminal—so long as those means served the greater end of “national security,” however they chose to define it.
“If we allow this to go on,” Pully insisted to me, “even if we win, we’ll end up secondhand replicas of the very people we set out to defeat.”
Bartlett appealed to Pully’s sense of loyalty. He asked for the chance to discuss the case. It wasn’t as simple as it first appeared, Bartlett said. “Before the genie was let out of the bottle” and the facts made public, he wanted a chance to give his side. After that, Pully could do as he pleased. They agreed to meet the following evening at the Commodore Hotel. I begged him not to go. But he wouldn’t be dissuaded.
He still believed, despite all he knew, that some basic code of honor applied, that at worst Bartlett would try to bully or bribe him into silence. But Bartlett wouldn’t succeed, he said. Heinz was the final and fracturing straw laid upon the camel’s back.
Their meeting was scheduled for 6:00 p.m. At a quarter past the hour, I got a call at home. It was Pully. He sounded like a raving lunatic. The room was melting. The furniture was talking.
I immediately suspected what was afoot. One of the assignments I’d carried out for him was to delve into a secret program—code-named MKULTRA—set up at Allen Dulles’s direction to test the ability of biological and chemical substances to affect the mind and alter human behavior. Involving drug companies and universities around the country, it not only had succeeded in producing mind-altering substances but also had used them on unwitting su
bjects, including prisoners, soldiers, and civilians.
The most intriguing—and, to my mind, dangerous—substance was lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Its use on uninformed human guinea pigs, in more than one case, led to suicide. Those dosed with it experienced a stream of hallucinations that varied from mellow insights to harrowing delusions. It could easily cause those unaware of what they’d ingested to believe they were going mad.
I tried to calm Pully over the phone, reminding him of the investigation I’d done into MKULTRA and warning him that the psychotic episode he was undergoing was almost certainly induced by a drug he’d been slipped. I implored him to lie down. I promised I’d be right over. I reached the hotel just as the police were cordoning off the sidewalk on which lay the broken form of a man who’d thrown himself out an eleventh-floor window.
I didn’t know where to turn after that. The newspapers the next day reported Pully had called the front desk in a state of panic. A “colleague at ISC” was quoted as describing him as “seriously depressed for some time.”
I was unsure how much—if anything—Bartlett knew of my association with Pully. Had he been listening when Pully phoned me? Was he aware of how Pully learned Heinz was alive? Despite Pully’s beliefs to the contrary, it was clear that Bartlett would sink to whatever depths necessary to keep the truth from coming to light.
I hid as best I could. I gave up my apartment and rented rooms by the week in Brooklyn and on the Upper West Side. I lived off my savings until my funds were so low I had to go back to work. I took part-time positions as a proofreader and researcher, which is how I came across you.
On temporary assignment fact-checking a feature article on the growth of the private security business, I looked up a citation from an article in one of those silly, self-promoting industry-sponsored rags and, voilà, there you were: “Fintan Dunne: ‘A Soldier’s Soldier.’”
I immediately thought to myself, yes, if there’s anyone I can turn to for help, it’s Dunne. Still—both out of my own reluctance to risk any further involvement and the conviction that, in the final analysis, it wouldn’t be fair—I hesitated. You’d moved on, put the war behind you. You’d had your last drop.
I wavered back and forth until one day I started following you. When I sensed you’d caught on, I stopped. Several months had passed since Pully’s death. It seemed that no one was hunting for me, that our connection had gone undetected. I’d saved enough money that I could consider a move to the West Coast. Then I followed you again. Was I hoping—expecting—you’d sniff me out? I’m not sure.
I’ve no inclinations to become a hero or a martyr. I like to think I’m not a coward, yet I was never put to the test the way so many of you were. In the end, though I didn’t have the stomach to tilt with windmills as powerful and relentless as Bartlett and crew, I couldn’t walk away from Pully’s memory without sharing the truth. When I spotted your reflection in the window of Rogers Peet, I felt a sense of relief.
You’re free to do with this information what you wish. I offer no advice and make no judgments. I’ve come to admire the wisdom of those who relish their solitude and stick to caves and crevices where they can live undisturbed. Perhaps if I were braver, younger, and had greater faith in our human species—in our ability to learn from the past—I would think otherwise. But I’m not, and I don’t.
Totiusque,
Turlough
August 1958
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, MANHATTAN
“YOU HAVEN’T LOST THE KNACK FOR THE KNUCKLEBALL.” DUNNE stood in the library hall beside the same backless marble bench on which he’d left Bassante the previous day.
“‘Luck is fate’s knuckleball. It has a will of its own.’ So an OSS colleague once opined to me.” Bassante dangled his hat between his knees.
Dunne studied the thinning weave of gray-black threads atop Bassante’s head. “You have a good memory.”
“You told me that once before. It’s still good, I guess—just not as good as it used to be, like the rest of me.” Bassante patted the empty space beside him. “Sit.”
Dunne unpocketed the letter and offered it to Bassante. “Quite a story.”
“Keep it. I don’t want it back.”
“Did the police investigation of Pully’s suicide turn anything up?”
“There was no note.”
“No sign anyone else was in the room?”
“Pros don’t leave clues.”
“Any idea what the autopsy showed?”
“Alcohol in the bloodstream. But he wasn’t drunk.”
“No drugs?” Dunne sat.
“No LSD, if that’s what you mean.” Bassante rested his hat on his knees. “But you have to know what to look for. The coroner hadn’t a clue.”
“Pully was acting kind of odd even before that, don’t you think?”
“Odd?”
Dunne searched for a better word.
A group of tourists came up the stairs. The redhead librarian/guide from the day before was in the lead. Same curves but different package: pink blouse and tight black skirt replaced by blue dress with white polka dots. They stopped in the middle of the floor. She pointed at the ceiling. They raised their heads in unison.
It came to him: “‘Agitated’—that’s how you put it in the letter.”
“He had his reasons. You read the whole letter, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Did you see the dossier on Oscar Hemmer?”
“Pully told me what was in it.”
“But you never saw it?”
“No.”
“And the Swiss couple who weren’t really Swiss?”
“What about them?”
“Who were they?”
“He didn’t say.”
“You never met them?”
“No.”
“Or talked to them?”
“What are you getting at? That Pully made all this up? That he’d lost his mind?”
“I’m trying to figure out where to go with this.” Dunne held up the letter.
Bassante snatched it out of his hand. “Well, if you think this is a lot of BS”—there was as much fury in his eyes as his voice—“I’ll tell you where to go.” He put on his hat and stood.
“Sit, please.” Dunne tugged Bassante’s sleeve. “I’m only following ‘the simplest and most necessary rule of all,’ the one Pully imparted to you, and you passed on to the rest of us: Pay attention.”
“Pully wasn’t paranoid or deluded. He suffered from an excess of integrity, a handicap in most professions, a fatal one in the profession he chose.”
“I’m not doubting the truth of what he told you. I’m trying to figure out what we should be paying attention to and aren’t.”
“I did what I could to help. I owed him that much. But he knew I didn’t want to get sucked back in. He did his best to respect my wishes.” Bassante sat down again and handed back the letter.
The tour group moved toward the Main Reading Room. Redhead guide/librarian turned with easy, unstudied Miss Ginny Thompson–esque sway, a resemblance he almost pointed out to Bassante but didn’t. It couldn’t be a happy association.
Dunne repocketed the letter. The marble bench had caused a throbbing at the bottom of his spine, old ache, old wound. His coccyx. “Who’d Pully trust besides you?”
“You.”
“But I was in Florida for the winter.” Dunne dug his thumbs into where the ache was.
“He kept to himself. You know that. We were two of a kind.”
“He didn’t have any friends?”
“That was his private business.”
“What was?”
“He saw Dick Van Hull now and then.”
“Van Hull?”
“They traveled some of the same … er … the same circuit.”
“Which circuit?”
“The Bird Circuit. Pully knew I knew. But we never talked about it. I respected his privacy.”
“Where’s Van Hull?”
“I don’t know where he
lives. Pully used to meet him every once in a while at Red’s Bar and Grill, corner of Fiftieth and Third. He teaches at a hoity-toity girls’ academy on the East Side. He usually stops in for the cocktail hour. I was never inside. He had me drive his car and pick him up a few times. Van Hull was a regular. Pully worried about him.”
“Why?”
“Booze. ‘Van Hull’s drinking too much,’ Pully said.”
“I’ll do my best to keep you out of this, but at least give me a phone number where I can reach you.”
“I don’t have a phone. I live in a rooming house in Park Slope, on Union Street, off Seventh Avenue.” Bassante salvaged pencil stub and paper scrap from his pocket, scribbled on it. “Here’s my address. I move, I’ll let you know.”
They walked to the staircase. Bassante stared at the mural directly in front, on the north flank of the Reading Room. He swept his hand in an arc, indicating the companion murals in the hall, two on each wall, all four painted, he said, by the same artist who put Prometheus on the ceiling. “Standard-issue art of the didactic WPA sort.”
Dunne stood back. He’d barely noticed them.
“They’re meant to sum up the progress of the written word. This is my favorite.” Bassante tipped his hat at the scene in front of them: Two white-robed monks in a scriptorium, one resting while the other labored at his desk over a sheet of parchment; in the distance, a building aflame and a barbarian on horseback thrusting his spear into a figure on the ground. He pointed at the mayhem in the background. “Something to be said for the cloister when the time comes around at last, as it always does, for our species to revert to its homicidal, bloodthirsty worst.”
The sand in the hourglass on the monk’s desk was running low.
“I was hopeful you’d be willing to take the lead on this.” Bassante extended his hand. “I’ll give you what support I can. Just let me keep my distance.”
They shook. Bassante went down the stairs and out of sight.
Red’s Bar & Grill had been a speakeasy during Prohibition. Thanks to the local precinct captain—brother to the owner, Red McGinnis—it had enjoyed protection from the raids and shakedowns most speaks experienced at one time or another. When liquor became legal again, Red’s privileged status allowed him to cater to a clientele more decorous and better behaved than the sullen, pugnacious crew found in many nearby gin mills.