by Marek Halter
“The hearing is over, Mr. Koenigsman. We must ask you to leave the room. The Committee members need to deliberate in camera.”
I shoved my notebook into my briefcase and jammed my hat on. Shirley was taking the strip out of her stenotype machine. She gave me a wink as I brushed passed her.
My colleagues were hanging around outside the door. I had to put up with the usual jokes about cronyism and New Yorkers’ privileges. I can’t say I disliked their jealousy.
I fed them some trivial details to get rid of them. No, the Russian hadn’t admitted to being a spy. Yes, the Committee members were still convinced that she was. No, she still hadn’t said anything about the OSS agent. …
I slipped off to the parking lot. Shirley’s car wasn’t difficult to spot. It was a raspberry-colored 1946 Ford convertible with a cream hood. A pendant charm of topaz pearls dangled from the rearview mirror. I had given Shirley the good luck charm three months after our first night together. It was still there.
She sauntered over to me. Watching her elegant and graceful figure weaving in and out of the cars, I felt a twinge of regret. Or was it jealousy?
She smiled innocently.
“Do you realize that in just twenty-four hours you’ll be holding the restaurant door open for me?
“I’m not going to be holding the door open for you. At Chez Georges, staff in admiral uniforms are paid to do that. Be sure to be ready and made up for eight thirty tomorrow evening.”
Shirley turned her key in the car door and slung her big bag inside. Knowing me too well, she jumped in without waiting for me to ask the question.
“It’s impossible to know what they’re talking about. They’re still in there, on their own. Wood threw us out too.”
I’d expected as much, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
“Do you really have no idea?”
“Not the faintest. All I can tell you is that McCarthy and Nixon were in my boss’s office at nine thirty this morning. Senator Mundt joined them an hour later. They made several phone calls: two to the FBI and one to the CID, the military police.”
I smiled. I could rely on Shirley’s natural curiosity.
“Cohn wasn’t with them then?”
She shook her head.
“That file that McCarthy was reading while Marina was talking … ”
“Oh, so you’re already on first-name terms, are you?”
“We’ve started communicating by telepathy. … Seriously though, Shirley, did McCarthy already have that file tucked under his arm when he went into your boss’s office or did he come out of Wood’s office with it?”
She laughed mockingly and closed her eyes. There was no telling whether she was trying to put some wicked thought out of her mind or jog her memory.
“He already had it.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. I’ll put it on your bill, in addition to the restaurant of course.”
On shaky ground, I preferred to sidestep the issue.
“Shirley, have you ever been at a hearing where they didn’t keep interrupting the witness?”
“Hmm … You’re right. It was odd, but she sure knows how to tell them. We could have gone on listening to her for hours. Mundt was breathing contentedly like a granny engrossed in the best episode of her favorite radio series.”
“Yes, but Mundt didn’t say anything. Neither did the others, not a word. You can bet your bottom dollar that Nixon and McCarthy aren’t too keen on drama, though.”
“Is that what you think, that she’s acting?”
I grunted but didn’t answer her question. Shirley smiled at me, amused. We were silent for a few seconds.
“Help me lower the hood, would you?”
When that was done, Shirley took a scarf out of her bag and tied it under her chin. She looked in her rearview mirror to check that her hair was in place before once again demonstrating her knack for guessing what I was thinking.
“Go on, spit it out, Al.”
“What?”
“The question you’re dying to ask but don’t know if you should. I’ll tell you if you can afford it.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Actually, truth be told, I had to stop myself from smacking a kiss on her neck. There was no way I could afford that.
“Okay then. Did you see her dress? Tomorrow, she’ll look like a bag abandoned at Central Station. It seems as if nobody cares enough to send her a change of clothes.”
“How can that be? She must have at least one or two girlfriends. Actresses aren’t solitary creatures.”
Shirley was right. Actors and actresses tend to flock together. Marina must have colleagues, perhaps even friends at the Actors Studio. But that was one of the effects of being summoned before the Committee. Suddenly you didn’t have friends anymore. Hardly anyone would admit to even knowing you. Sometimes, it was the last you saw of your family. Now that Marina was behind bars, she was going to find herself increasingly isolated.
“Well, I can’t exactly go around to her place and start raiding her wardrobe, Shirley. Do you think you could guess what size she is?”
She nodded.
“About the same as me, only a bit skinnier and bonier, don’t you think?”
Her smile gave away more than I realized at the time.
“My old dresses should fit her. Is that okay, or are you prepared to fork out?”
Like an imbecile, I felt myself go red.
“It might be best for you to … for the stockings … and the … ”
Though I’m not particularly shy or prudish, I had difficulty saying the words out loud. I hastily pulled out my wallet, avoiding eye contact with Shirley. She took the money, chuckling to herself. I glanced at my watch.
“Will it be okay if I come around to your place in two hours?”
She nodded, getting into her Ford. It wasn’t until then that I noticed that her scarf was the exact same red as her raspberry-colored convertible. Before pulling the choke, she caught hold of my wrist.
“Al, tell me something. You won’t lie, will you?”
“Okay, I promise, cross my heart.”
“Would you do the same for me?”
“You’re never going to be up in front of those furious lunatics on charges of espionage, Shirley!”
“There are lots of ways of landing yourself in jail, Al. I’m told homicide motivated by jealousy is very common.”
“In that case, I’ll do more than just bring you a suitcase. I’ll send you a good lawyer.”
That’s exactly what I arranged to do for Marina.
I went back to my own car, a dark green Nash coupe that I was rather proud of. Before the hearing that morning, I had made an appointment with T. C. Lheen. Very few people knew that his initials actually stood for Theophilius Clarendon.
T. C.’s standing as a plump, bald, and somewhat ungainly little man had long been his ultimate weapon. His horn-rimmed spectacles distorted his myopic gaze. When he smiled, his thin lips disappeared altogether. He wore the same all-purpose suits until they were threadbare and, as far as anyone knew, only had a dozen ties to his name. His appearance, however, couldn’t have been more deceptive. There was an amazingly intelligent brain whirring away inside that smooth, round skull of his.
Approaching sixty, he was one of the best-informed men in Washington. How he managed it was a mystery to me. The list of people who regretted having underestimated him was now so long that there could be no more surprises. He had been semiretired for quite a few years and was only interested in hopeless cases that he stood every chance of losing. Though he was filthy rich, he had never been motivated by money. He was driven by pride alone, the kind reserved for exceptional individuals who know that they have been irredeemably cast out from the herd.
Although I had known him since before the war, I can’t pretend that we were friends. T. C. Lheen was never sentimental enough to have friends. Let’s just say we had mutual respect for each other’s way of dealing with what life t
hrew at us and leave it at that. More than once, we had helped each other out in little ways. A couple of times, T. C. had gone beyond just returning a favor, and if Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev was as innocent as she claimed to be, nobody was better placed to rescue her from the devil’s clutches than T. C. Lheen.
He lived on the far side of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. His house was hidden behind hundred-year-old trees. Ulysses, his black butler, dressed in a bow tie and impeccable white suit, treated me like a friend of the family. He led me to the poolside overhanging the long wooded north bank of the Potomac River. As far as I knew, the idyllic setting and staff fit for royalty were the only luxuries that T. C. allowed himself.
T. C. was reading in a wicker chair. He didn’t bother to greet me, just motioned to an armchair opposite him. We didn’t shake hands. He hated any kind of physical contact with his clients, and quite possibly with the rest of the human race. Rumor had it that he had never indulged in any kind of carnal activity whatsoever, but I doubted that. Where T. C. was concerned, judging by appearances rarely got you to the truth.
He didn’t wait for Ulysses to finish pouring me a large bourbon before asking, “How’s your Russian protégée coping?”
I smiled. When I had spoken to him on the phone, I hadn’t mentioned Marina. I took a moment to light a cigarette from the plentiful supply arranged in a tulip-shaped cigarette stand. T. C. slipped a bookmark between the pages of his book. Cowering under the title, The Creeping Siamese, a redhead’s mouth hung open in an endless scream. It was the latest work of Dashiell Hammett, a Hollywood author with a drinking habit. For a year now, McCarthy had been doing his damnedest to put Dashiell out of print by trying to portray him as a dangerous communist. I had heard that T. C. had agreed to take the author under his wing, and I knew it was no coincidence that the novel was lying on the table next to our drinks. T. C. followed my gaze, chuckling like a child glad to find some pebbles left to mark his way.
“My dear Al, when you’re the only journalist who gets to sit in on the patriotic exploits of McCarthy and company, you can’t expect to go unnoticed.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you already know? It’ll save me the effort. I’ve got a lot to do before I can turn in for the night.”
“I don’t know much, except for her name and what came out at the hearing yesterday, most importantly the murder of an OSS agent. Your pals on HUAC couldn’t have dreamed up a better catch.”
“They’re not my pals and you know it,” I growled.
“You’re still their pet journalist though. They even invited you to admire them behind closed doors.”
T. C. had the tact not to say “their Jewish journalist.” I was grateful to him for that, because I knew he was thinking it. I told him about the arrangement that Wechsler and the Post had made with Congressman Wood. He nodded but made no comment. I suppose that’s how he came by most of his information. He would sting his contacts into talking. They would tell him what was going on behind-the-scenes to avoid looking stupid.
“Why have you taken such an interest in this woman, Al?”
“Probably because Nixon and McCarthy are doing everything in their power to put her in the electric chair, and that would be such a waste. … Actually, it wouldn’t just be a waste; it would be a really mean trick.”
“Hmm?”
“There’s something genuine about her.”
“Is it her beauty?”
“Well, there’s that too. She’s an actress of course, and a good one at that. When it comes to taking you in and creating an illusion, she knows every trick in the book and uses them all, and yet … the longer I listen to her, the less I smell a lie.”
T. C. took a sip from his glass before remarking, “The good liars are always the ones we think are telling the truth, Al. If not, they’d change tack.”
“You haven’t been at the hearings, T. C. The girl lays more horrors at Stalin’s door than I’ve heard from the mouths of those furious lunatics on HUAC! And she doesn’t restrict herself to vague ideas either. She talks about what she went through in that hellish country. It’s enough to give you goose bumps.”
T. C. didn’t say anything, just nodded wryly. In his eyes, I was just a hopelessly naive fool.
“Okay, I’ll admit you can never be certain about anything. And I’m quite prepared to put my intuition aside. But she doesn’t know the rules of the game. She thinks she’s going to get off by telling her story. They’re letting her gush all she wants, waiting for their chance to push her head underwater. She has no more proof of anything she’s saying than she has a change of clothes! A real spy wouldn’t risk tripping themselves up with such tales. … ”
“Or would take the gamble that ‘the taller the story, the more likely it is to do the trick.’ Do you believe her story about sleeping with Uncle Joe?”
I shrugged. T. C. was right to have his doubts. That was his job. But I had heard Marina talk about that night she had spent at the Kremlin, and it still sent shivers down my spine.
“What I do believe, T. C., is that in three days, McCarthy, Nixon, and their merry men will pin the OSS agent’s murder on her. Like me, they’ve realized that she’s telling us this long involved story because it’s all she’s got. If she had the tiniest shred of evidence to prove her innocence, she would have produced it already. They know that, and they’ve got the scent of blood in their nostrils like jackals pacing around a dying animal. They’re in no great hurry. In fact, they’ve already won. If they only bide their time a little longer, their spoils will be all the better for it. And we’ll never know whether Marina is a spy or whether she killed Agent Apron. She’s already locked up, alone, completely isolated. Nobody has even given her so much as a change of stockings. What can she do? The only option left open to her now is to tell her story at every given opportunity. Could it be that she knows it and is playing for time? Might she perhaps be going over her past before they slaughter her? I don’t know. All I know for sure is that it won’t be long before McCarthy and his pals do their great smoke-and-mirrors job, and I have no desire whatsoever to look the other way while they pull it off.”
I knew T. C. was cynical enough to smile at my indignation, but he didn’t. His mouth twitched in approval. Magnified behind his lenses, his eyes left my face while he struck a match and pensively lit a cigarette.
“Do you remember the Hiss case?”
“Of course I remember the Hiss case. I’ve thought of nothing else since Wood asked me to leave the auditorium.”
The previous winter, the trial of “Hiss the traitor,” “Hiss the spy” had made the front page of every newspaper from New York to San Francisco. Born to a working class family living on a shoestring, Alger Hiss hadn’t yet turned two when his father committed suicide. Despite his difficult early childhood, he had won several scholarships and done well for himself. After studying law at Harvard, he had joined Franklin D. Roosevelt’s team of attorneys in 1933. Five years later, he had gone on to work for the Department of State. By then a specialist in Far Eastern affairs, he was appointed to the Office of Special Political Affairs in 1944. He had been at Roosevelt’s shoulder at the Yalta Conference and had gone on to help found the United Nations. It was a perfect career path, or at least it was until 1948, when the nightmare of the HUAC hearings began for a significant number of US citizens.
On August 3, 1948, under pressure from Nixon and a few others, Whittaker Chambers, a former member of the US Communist Party divulged the names of some of his “comrades.” Alger Hiss’s name was mentioned. It was quite a revelation. Hiss had never made any secret of the fact that he supported the Democrats. He was a true liberal, a left-winger. Bringing down Hiss was tantamount to bringing down President Truman and the “bunch of lefties” in the White House. Also, as far as Nixon and his Republican supporters were concerned, Hiss had committed an unforgivable offense fifteen years earlier when, as a member of the legal team that defended the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, he had stopped
the powerful agribusiness from ruining small farmers in Arkansas.
Nixon and HUAC had only one problem: Chambers had no proof to back up his allegations. With Hoover’s help, Nixon soon came up with a solution. The Head of the FBI had longed to prove that the Democrats were just a bunch of commies—communist spies in disguise—more than capable of handing the country over to Stalin.
Against that background, the first “miracle” occurred. Chambers presented HUAC with a long list of confidential documents from Hiss’s office, claiming he had gotten them from Hiss himself. Hiss protested and, once again, Chambers found himself without a shred of evidence.
Then four months later, the second “miracle” occurred. Chambers took the FBI to a farm owned by Hiss in Maryland where they “found” five rolls of film hidden inside a pumpkin. The FBI and the Committee confirmed that they were photos of classified State Department documents, although, to this day, no one has ever verified that. With the exception of one page, which turned out to be as harmless as the phone book, the photos were never developed. The very day, Nixon showed the rolls of film to the press, and then they disappeared into the FBI’s coffers.
One last “miracle” ended that round of hocus-pocus. The FBI suddenly “discovered” an old typewriter belonging to Hiss. By some incredible stroke of luck, it was the very same machine that had supposedly been used to copy the sensitive documents.
Truman personally exposed the farce. Hiss had been behind bars since the previous January. Nixon and McCarthy felt empowered, as if they had sprouted wings, the wings of ravenous vultures in search of prey. They now needed a victim for a new magic trick, and Marina was perfect for that role. Without knowing it, she was everything they could wish for, beyond their wildest dreams.
T. C. took another swig of bourbon.
“I’m listening, Al. Tell me about the hearing today. I want to know all the details.”
I tried not to leave anything out, drawing particular attention to McCarthy’s behavior. I added what Shirley had confided in me a little while ago about the meeting in Wood’s office prior to the hearing, and the calls made to the FBI and the Criminal Investigative Division.