Pagan's Spy

by Matt Eaton

  The Post headline summed it up:

  Senator Ives ‘unaware’ staffer met with Russian spies

  The story was the work of her old friend and former lover, Joe Eldridge. He must have been there in the press pack the previous day but she hadn’t noticed. His story raised the obvious question about Verus, quoting Roy Cohn, who had spoken to reporters outside the hearing about what he termed “this mysterious and secretive foundation that may or may not have links to the Communist Party”.

  Eldridge had, at least, gone some way to offering Edna the benefit of the doubt, noting she told the hearing “I am no friend of the Soviet Union or its corrupt system of government”.

  But those words sounded hollow when set against all the other questions she’d refused to answer. Questions dutifully repeated by Cohn and Senator McCarthy to any reporter who bothered to ask. Seeing her own evidence in print made her seem remarkably uncooperative. Like a criminal seeking to dodge the noose but only succeeding in pulling it tighter.

  Eldridge had also managed to find out Polina Ilyin was in FBI custody and that Edna had been “instrumental” in aiding authorities in the Russian’s arrest. He went on to quote Cohn saying Edna’s usefulness to authorities might not be enough to save her from accusations of selling information to America’s enemy.

  The New York Times noted her stern defense of Irving Ives and her claim of disinterest in communism that again jarred against all the things she refused to say. Both papers also revealed the INS would deport Clarence Paulson to the United Kingdom following his refusal to appear before the subcommittee.

  She wondered if her parents had seen the news yet. There was no more putting it off, she had to speak to them. Adding sunglasses to the scarf, she headed back to the street corner telephone outside the grocery store. She called her dad.

  He sympathized, but sounded so disappointed in her. It was almost too much to bear. Particularly given she couldn’t answer any of his questions, even though they were perfectly reasonable. He wanted so hard to understand what she’d been doing that had gotten her into so much hot water. She reassured him she wasn’t a Communist sympathizer and suggested he say nothing to reporters should they call for comment.

  There would be no trip home for consolation. It hadn’t worked last time and now the silence would be unbearable. There was still nothing she could say to alleviate their fears and she didn’t want to drag them down into the mud with her.

  She pulled another nickel from her pocket and asked the operator to put her through to Agent Price Wilkins at FBI Headquarters. She asked him to help her get in to see Clarence. He told her she didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, and didn’t sound the least bit inclined to do anything to help.

  Knowing by this point it was a fruitless exercise, she dialed Sherman Adams at the White House. He wouldn’t take her call. His secretary said he was busy, but made it abundantly clear Edna should not attempt to call back.

  There was one person left who would speak to her. She knew Lee Tavon would take her under his wing. But she couldn’t go near him now. It would risk bringing the Outherians to the media’s attention.

  She pulled open the pay phone cage door to find Joe Eldridge waiting for her. He was clean-shaven, wearing a freshly ironed shirt with hair well cropped and 20 pounds lighter than the last time she’d seen him. In short, he looked good.

  “Hello Edna.”

  “You found me,” she said.

  He grinned. “I wish I could say it was the brilliance of my investigative technique, but the truth is the grocery store owner put a call in to the paper when you made an appearance this morning.”

  “I’m glad they sent you, that a smart move. But I really don’t have anything to say, Joe.”

  She heard a camera snapping and recognized the snapper. “Hey, Carl.”

  Carl Ogden looked up from his viewfinder. “Hey Edna, how are you babe?”

  “I’ve been better, I won’t lie,” she said.

  “Come on, it’s me,” said Joe. “There must be something you can give me. Even off the record. I want to help you if I can. I know how much you hate the commies.”

  “Hate is a very strong word, Joe. Oversimple and overused of late, I find.”

  “What have you really been doing for Senator Ives? Does he have links to the CIA I don’t know about?”

  “Like I said, Irving Ives has nothing to do with any of this.”

  “Any of what?”

  Joe’s dogged persistence made her laugh. It was really quite admirable. “No comment.”

  “Somebody has hung you out to dry. Who is it? Who are you protecting? What is this Verus Foundation they’re talking about?”

  “I have no idea where Roy Cohn heard that name, but I think someone is feeding him misinformation. I know nothing about a secret organization.” He was writing down every word that left her lips. All of it would be in the next day’s paper. She had to tread carefully.

  “If Irving Ives knows nothing about this, who are you really working for?” Eldridge asked.

  She recalling having this conversation a year ago with Majestic-12 member Gordon Gray. Back then, she’d been a Times-Herald reporter trying to break open a story on what the Truman administration knew about flying saucers. She barely managed to scratch the surface before they silenced her. She offered Eldridge the benefit of the same response Gray had given her. “I’m bound by US government security oaths that prevent me from explaining any further,” she said. “I believe it’s everyone’s best interests that I make no further comment.”

  She knew Donald Menzel would say she had gone too far in saying this much. But Menzel had refused to come to her defense, so he could go to hell.

  Joe Eldridge’s mouth fell open. “Are you serious?”

  “Do you need me to repeat it?”

  “No”, he mouthed silently, slowly shaking his head as he scribbled madly to get it down on paper. “Why didn’t you say this in your own defense yesterday?”

  “No comment,” she said.

  He got that down too and smiled at her in admiration. “I knew it. You’re a goddamned spy.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “This is gold,” he said. “You’re a gem. I could kiss you.”

  She held up a hand to hold him back. “Please don’t. Go write your story, Joe. And never darken my door again. I won’t be saying another word to anyone.”

  FIFTY THREE

  Sunday September 6, 1953

  For three days, she kept her head down and remained inside the apartment, which was possible thanks to a bag of groceries that arrived at her door mysteriously on Thursday afternoon. Either the grocery store owner’s way of saying sorry or, more likely, Joe Eldridge’s way of saying thanks.

  His piece in the Post on Friday might have gone some way toward ensuring her future wouldn’t be spent in poverty or prison. Eldridge had intimated she was linked in some way to classified government work. He quoted Senator Symington in suggesting there was a secret alliance of senior men operating inside the Pentagon — for reasons unknown but deeply suspicious — and that they believed Edna Drake was working for them. It was deemed to be evidence of McCarthy’s obsessional, but hitherto unproven, assertion of Communist infiltration of the State Department. Senator Ives denied all knowledge of such things, but let it slip that Edna Drake had only worked in his office part-time. Edna’s quote, citing security oaths, painted her as a spy. Eldridge then made the point that not all spies were bad; some were working to advance American interests.

  She felt vindicated to some extent, if still weighed down by a growing sense of desolation and abandonment. It was impossible to imagine what sort of life she might have in the wake of all this. Being bound by secrecy appeared to rule out any return to journalism, given she would never be able to adequately explain herself. The McCarthyist taint had destroyed bigger and more robust careers than hers. She was no communist and there was no evidence to suggest she ever had been, yet most prospective employers
would view her as radioactive.

  Right on ten o’clock, with church bells ringing somewhere in the surrounding neighborhood, there was a shimmer in the sunlight streaming through the window that alerted her to the imminent arrival of Paolo Favaloro. He snapped into focus like a cathode-ray tube that had just warmed up. It comforted her to think of him as a TV signal rather than a ghost.

  “Salutations Miss Drake.”

  “Hello Paolo, how are you? Nice to know someone’s still thinking of me.”

  “You’re feeling lonely and misunderstood. Something we have in common, I believe.”

  “You’re really brightening my day here, Paolo.”

  “I come to you as an emissary of Clarence Paulson. He wants me to tell you they are treating him well and that you should not worry.”

  She frowned. She should be happy to hear it — so why did the message have the opposite effect? “Will you tell him I’m sorry? It’s my fault entirely and, well, I just feel terrible about it.”

  Paolo’s image faltered for a moment, like he was having signal transmission problems. He froze and the light seemed to go out of his eyes. But after a few seconds he was back and she realized what had been happening. He’d been talking to Clarence. “He would have insisted on being with you in that bar no matter what. He says to tell you that despite what you may think, he’s not twisted around your finger. He is his own man.”

  She laughed in delight. “Tell him I will find a way to get to England.”

  “He thought you might say that. He forbids it.”

  She frowned. “Forbids? Who does he...?”

  “Apologies,” said Paolo. “My word, not his. Clarence says you must stay focused on your work.”

  She sighed. “I have no work.”

  Favaloro smiled knowingly at her. “You will.”

  Did he know something she didn’t? “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to.”

  “You will know soon enough,” Paolo told her enigmatically.

  She sensed he was getting ready to leave. “Do me a favor. Tell him...” Did she really mean to say it? “Tell him we’ll see one another again. Tell him I love him.”

  Paolo Favaloro nodded in understanding and vanished like somebody yanked his electrical plug from the socket.

  She spent much of the day ruminating on all that might be, feeling a growing sense of optimism even as the logical part of her brain told her a little hope could be a dangerous thing. Then late in the afternoon, Lee Tavon and Sherman Adams showed up.

  FIFTY FOUR

  Sunday September 6, 1953

  She heard a crackle like cellophane and looked up as two Lee Tavons appeared in Paulson’s lounge room, one after the other. They smiled at her in carbon-copy expressions of delight.

  “Hello my dear,” they said as one.

  “Jesus Christ, are you trying to give a girl a heart attack? You’re both mad to come here like this,” she said, wondering for the umpteenth time whether it was better to address them as one person or as separate entities.

  “Mad, yes, most likely,” they replied in unison. It was the strangest thing. Theirs was a single voice in stereo, coming as it did from two mouths at once. The right-hand Lee flicked a small disc into the hallway, then took a step over it and, in doing so, vanished. Another portal device. The apartment was fast becoming like a cheddar cheese of wormholes. The other Tavon clicked a button on a black box the size of a cigarette packet then bent over to retrieve the disc from the carpet.

  “Eyes and ears,” Tavon explained. “We’ll keep an eye out. I’ll know immediately if something happens outside.” He pulled another controller device from his pocket. “This one is for you.”

  “I’m not sure I want it,” she said.

  “Believe me, you do.” He walked over and switched on the wireless on the lounge room mantlepiece. Edna had it tuned to WOOK-AM. Duke Ellington’s orchestra filled the room, playing a new rendition of The Mooche. The track was 25 years old, but had been re-recorded two years earlier for Ellington’s album, Uptown. It took Edna back to her childhood in Rockaway. She remembered hearing those wistful and foreboding trumpets for the first time, blaring out over the boardwalk like a call from her future. She had always marveled at how Ellington extracted beauty and pleasure from passion and pain. Now the circle had finally closed; it filled her with a powerful feeling of déjà vu. Was this the moment she’d felt coming all those years ago?

  It also meant Tavon must believe somebody was listening. He pressed the disc into her hand and stepped in close. “This is your ticket to freedom,” he told her quietly.

  “Why do I need it?” she asked.

  “The CIA has stopped tailing you, but I’m afraid the FBI have taken over.”

  It came as no great surprise to her. “You shouldn’t have come here. I’m probably on Hoover’s most wanted list.” She pointed at the radio. “I take it that’s for them?”

  He shook his head. “No. That’s for the Russians. They have this place bugged.”

  A muted trumpet sounded its amusement behind them. She smiled ruefully, wondering how he could possibly know what the Russians had done. Lately it felt like someone else was always having the last laugh.

  “How are you doing, kid?” Tavon asked her.

  She took a long, deep breath and as she let it out slowly, she pondered how best to put the depths of her emotions into words. “I feel like my existence has been obliterated. I’m completely alone and misunderstood with nowhere to turn.” She felt tears welling up in her eyes and wiped them away angrily. “Sorry. You were probably hoping for a simple, ‘I’m fine how are you?’, right?”

  “It’s OK to be upset. Nothing to be ashamed about. You’ve had a torrid time of it.”

  “The worst part is nobody else understanding. I’m sure my father thinks I’m selling secrets to the Russians. I should just tell him everything and be done with it, except I’m terrified that would only put him in danger. There are so many people keeping secrets from one another. And now McCarthy has everyone paranoid.”

  Tavon pulled her into a hug, which let loose her tears in a torrent. They remained in an embrace for a long time and it gave her enormous comfort. “I want you to know you’ll be all right,” he said. He showed her how to use the black box. “There is a disc we’ve embedded underneath the carpet in here. Nobody will ever find it. But it will allow you to come and go from here without being observed.” The box had two buttons, one blue and one red. The red one was glowing. He pushed it and the light went off. “That’s the activation button. When it’s lit, the portal is open. The blue button sets your current location as the hub for your network. No matter where you go, you will always return to the hub. But from the hub, you travel to wherever the dial is set.”

  The dial was set above the buttons. It clicked through six different settings.

  “What network?” she asked.

  “We’ve built one for you,” he said. “Your first stop is a small clearing inside Meridian Hill Park. And because it’s an outside location, this unit has a vibrational distortion field built in. Which means when you arrive outside, even if somebody is standing right beside you, they’ll never know.”

  She held the box gingerly, like it was a deadly weapon. “Vibrational distortion — is that dangerous?”

  He shook his head. “It throws all atomic particles within close vicinity of the device into a different vibrational phase. This renders you invisible for the moment of arrival and allows you to gradually snap back into phase. Anyone looking at you while this occurs will experience it as blurred vision and a moment of forgetfulness, much like a dream that escapes your recollection the moment you awake.”

  “What are the other destinations?” she asked.

  “Number two is your bedroom at Deborah’s house. The third is a room we have assigned to you at the farm in Virginia. The others give you options. I have a couple of destinations in mind, but they are — how shall I put it — yet to be confirmed.”

  “This is
the same device you used to escape from Garrick Stamford,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “But that disc burnt out after just one use — Stamford showed it to me.”

  Tavon nodded. “That was by design. Made for a single-use getaway to ensure the portal closed behind me. Your network is more robust.”

  “I’m sure Stamford has boffins poring over that disc, trying to understand how it works.”

  “They won’t get far with it. Was Garrick angry I left?”

  “Yes and no,” she said. “Recalibrating the saucer’s operating system has given them a lot to think about. He flew me home, I guess he can’t have been too upset.”

  There was another knock at the door.

  “Is that the other you?” she asked.

  “That,” said Tavon, “is Sherman Adams.”

  She looked at him in amazement. “You knew he was coming.”

  Tavon shrugged. “I wanted to be here when he arrived.”

  There were no conventional means by which Tavon could have known the President’s man would turn up today. They didn’t know one another. But she had only begun to scratch the surface on the Outherians’ ability to predict the future.

  “He has a proposal for you. But before you answer, I want you to know you can stay in this apartment indefinitely. I own it, so you don’t have to worry about rent. You’re my guest. Remind me later to show you the wall safe — Clarence has plenty of money.”