The Hellfire Club

by Jake Tapper

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Thursday, April 22, 1954—

  Early Morning

  Capitol Hill

  A few hours after he got home, Isaiah Street was almost relieved to be awoken by the pounding on his front door, even though, according to his watch, it wasn’t yet five a.m. He’d been in the grasp of his recurring nightmare, reliving the time the Tuskegee Airmen of the 332d Fighter Group lost some of the B-24s they were escorting on a bombing run. Struck by German bombers flying in formation, eight of the B-24s were hit by Luftwaffe fire over Nîmes, France; three crashed. From his cockpit he’d watched two of the planes go down; he saw only three airmen able to secure their parachutes and jump.

  Renee murmured something inaudible; Street pulled the covers over her shoulders and reached for his bathrobe, then jogged to the door to stop the knocking before it woke the twins. Eye to the peephole, he wasn’t entirely surprised to see Charlie, disheveled, with a panicked expression discernible even through the tiny distorted lens. Street opened the door, stepped out onto the front stoop, and closed the door gently behind him.

  Charlie dispensed with greetings. His face was a study in pure terror. “They have Margaret.”

  Street gripped Charlie by both shoulders. “Stay calm.” He could see Charlie’s panic rising. “It’s the only way to help her.” Street shook him gently. “She’s going to be okay. Just let me get dressed.”

  “I’ll be in that car,” Charlie said, pointing to the black Hertz Studebaker Commander parked in front of Street’s modest town house, revealed by a street lamp. “If you have a gun, bring it.”

  “I have two,” Street said.

  Three minutes later, Street was dressed and in the car. Charlie hit the gas and raced through the remnants of the storm. He told Street about the events of the night: After Leopold and her two thugs had driven away with Margaret, Charlie had run across the bridge to his rental car. Headlights turned off, Charlie trailed them for miles, a task made a bit easier by the storm, which kept Leopold from driving as fast as she no doubt would have otherwise.

  “I followed them all the way back to Washington,” Charlie said. “Around the Bay Bridge, there was enough traffic for me to turn my lights on and blend in.”

  Charlie turned left onto Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast. The street was dark and empty, the sun not yet risen, the disquieting hour before dawn when it feels as if no one else is alive. The stillness was interrupted by the click-clack sound of Street loading an odd-looking pistol that resembled a flare gun, with room for bullets in the pistol grip. Street caught Charlie’s uneasy glance.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s an FP-forty-five Liberator,” Street told him. “The only guns I have here. I have others back in Chicago. It’s designed to look like a flare gun, but it ain’t. Mainly used by OSS during the war.”

  “You were OSS? Clandestine services?”

  “I’m a Tuskegee Airman, you know that,” Street said.

  “Okay, but were you also OSS?”

  Street paused and then said, “Yes, I was, and I’m also still in a branch of former OSS who continue to serve, in our way. We can talk about that later—where are we going?”

  Charlie raised an eyebrow at his friend and was ready to press him further but was distracted by the view of the immense black dome looming five blocks ahead.

  “I saw them take her into the Capitol,” he said.

  The attack by the Puerto Rican nationalists was apparently not enough to warrant increased security before dawn, since only one Capitol Hill Police officer roamed the grounds outside the Capitol Building. Charlie and Street saw him off in the distance, on the Senate side, as they pulled up. The cop briefly turned and considered their car—Charlie’s rented Studebaker—but then seemed to recognize Charlie as he exited the vehicle and looked back in the other direction. Members of Congress were given a wide berth to do whatever they wanted.

  Street discreetly handed Charlie one of the two OSS guns he’d brought. Charlie tucked the dossier on General Kinetics at the small of his back under his shirt, and with the gun in his right hand, he led the way into the Capitol.

  They first entered the Rotunda Crypt, a round room on the first floor containing thirteen statues representing historic figures from each of the original colonies. Red light from an exit sign exposed Robert E. Lee’s mournful gaze as Charlie and Street ran between the Doric columns in the center of the room, then took a left to exit the crypt. They rushed past a giant bust of George Washington and softly hustled their way up a curved stone staircase to the second floor.

  The Rotunda was dimly lit by small lamps built into the circular wall. Normally daylight flooded the room through the dome windows a hundred and eighty feet above them, but at this early hour, with cloud cover, visibility was dim. Charlie knew that twelve statues of various Founding Fathers and former U.S. presidents stood like guards throughout the room, but all he could see were their immense looming shapes. The details of the eight paintings displayed—enormous renderings of explorers from Columbus to Daniel Boone—were all but invisible.

  Charlie and Isaiah stood silently for a second. The Senate side of the Capitol was to their right, the House side to their left.

  Street leaned close to Charlie. “Do you have any idea where they took her?” he whispered.

  “No,” Charlie said. “I saw them go through the door we just came through, and then I went to get you.”

  “Smart soldier,” Street said. “Let’s split up. Meet back by this doorway in fifteen minutes. You go to Statuary Hall, I’ll head toward the Senate side.”

  “Roger,” Charlie whispered.

  Street fell back and disappeared into the darkness.

  Charlie drew his FP-45 Liberator and held it with two hands. He walked carefully along the walls of the Rotunda, heel to toe, making as little noise as possible. After passing by the statues he believed to be Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt, he took a left out of the Rotunda and into National Statuary Hall.

  He had been holding his terrors about Margaret at bay, focused as he was on his mission to save her. In this, he instinctively relied on the muscle memories of his days as an army captain in war, the ability of a soldier in life-or-death situations to cram unhelpful emotions in a box. But the war was nine years ago, and he was a different man now. A softer man. He started to tremble as his fears for Margaret crept into his consciousness.

  Suddenly aware of his shaking legs, Charlie made himself stop short. There was no time for such indulgences, for fear or self-pity. He needed to finish this mission.

  Statuary Hall was better lit than the Rotunda, and Charlie could make out some of the faces on the vast array of sculptures, men whom he and Street had been arguing about just a few months ago: Georgia governor Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy; Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis, its president. The men containing multitudes. Charlie shook his head as he recalled making that remark.

  He walked softly on the black-and-white-checkered marble floor as he moved along the edge of the room, stepping on the tile dedicated to James Polk. The faces of the statues, shrouded in shadow, were doleful, like guests at a funeral. He wondered what Street was finding. How much time had passed? He checked his watch: only five minutes. He quickened his pace, making his way out of the room and into the hall that went to the House Chamber. As he approached a narrow stairwell leading downstairs, he suddenly felt a metal object poking his back as he heard a voice.

  “Hello, Charlie.”

  His heart skipped. Phil Strongfellow was behind him. With a gun, presumably, one whose muzzle was now nestled firmly against his back. Charlie raised his hands in the air.

  “Hi, Strong,” Charlie said.

  “What is this you’ve got? A flare gun?” Strongfellow asked, half curious, half mocking, as he took it from Charlie’s hand.

  “It’s an OSS gun, Strong,” Charlie said, turning his head to the right to try to see Strongfellow behind him. “Desig
ned to look like a flare gun, but it’s not.” Strongfellow didn’t react. “Odd that you wouldn’t know that,” Charlie said. “I mean, given your illustrious history in the clandestine services. According to This Is Your Life, I mean.”

  Charlie felt Strongfellow shove the butt of his gun more sharply into his back.

  “Fuck off, Charlie,” he said. “Move. We’re going downstairs.”

  Charlie proceeded slowly down two flights of stairs, turning his head to get a look at Strongfellow, who, he noticed, still had a limp but was no longer using crutches. “Where are your crutches?”

  “Shut up, Charlie,” Strongfellow snapped. “You wouldn’t want to risk me getting agitated. I might trip, causing an accidental discharge of my firearm.”

  In the basement of the Capitol, Strongfellow guided Charlie through a labyrinth of unlit hallways.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To your wife. If you’re lucky, they’ll let you swap the dossier for her.”

  “Why would they let me live?” Charlie asked. He didn’t expect an answer and he didn’t get one.

  They passed storage rooms and the occasional maintenance closet, went down one hall, then another. They came across a stairwell leading them down an additional flight, though Charlie hadn’t known until then that there was a floor lower than the basement in the Capitol Building. At the bottom of that stair, Strongfellow guided them to the right, down a long hall so dark all Charlie could see were the two closed oak doors at the end of it. Their footsteps echoed above the dull hum of the generator as they finally arrived at their destination. On one of the wooden doors was written STORAGE.

  “Open it and keep your hands up,” Charlie was told, and he obeyed.

  The expansive room was filled with statues, fifty or more. In front of one honoring Confederate congressman John Tyler—a former U.S. president who’d backed the wrong horse in the Civil War—stood Margaret, her mouth gagged with a cloth, her hands tied behind her back with a rope, her pregnant belly moving rapidly in time with her breathing. To her left, leaning against a sculpture of Aaron Burr, stood Chairman Carlin, his arms crossed. To her right stood Leopold and the two thugs Charlie had seen out on Susquehannock Island.

  “Honey, you okay?” Charlie asked Margaret.

  “She’s fine,” Miss Leopold answered for her. “For now.”

  “Congressman Marder, you’ve proven to be quite the irritant,” Carlin said. “Phil, did you check to see if he has the General Kinetics dossier with him?”

  “Not yet,” said Strongfellow. He approached Charlie from behind, frisked him, and easily located the dossier under his shirt. Strongfellow removed and inspected it, then handed it to Carlin. The chairman looked at the dossier, then raised his eyes to meet Charlie’s.

  His voice was low, the menacing tone unmistakable. “Do you have any idea how much damage you could have done to the security of this nation?”

  “By exposing pesticide plants that are literally killing your fellow Americans?” Charlie asked.

  “Might as well tell him, Mr. Chairman,” someone behind Charlie said. “If he’s not ever going to leave here, maybe he should know just how out of his depth he’s been this whole time.”

  Street’s voice.

  Charlie looked around and saw his friend lighting a cigarette, his gun in one hand, as casual as a summer breeze.

  “There you are, Isaiah,” said Carlin. “I was wondering when you were going to show up.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Thursday, April 22, 1954—

  Early Morning

  Capitol Hill

  “Oh my God,” Charlie said, and he looked to Margaret, whose eyes widened in disbelief.

  Carlin and Leopold chuckled. The two thugs stayed silent. Strongfellow looked as if he wished he weren’t there.

  Street ambled casually into the room, cigarette in one hand, OSS gun in the other. He stopped next to a statue, looked up, and regarded the likeness of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He smirked and pulled himself up to sit on the statue’s marble pedestal, then ashed his cigarette on General Forrest’s boots.

  “You want to know why,” Street said, looking at Charlie.

  “He’s not entitled to know anything,” Leopold said.

  “I want to know everything,” said Charlie, turning his gaze to Carlin. “And start at the beginning: Did you have Van Waganan killed?”

  “You don’t have to tell him, Franklin,” Leopold said.

  “Franklin?” said Charlie, noting the unusual use of Carlin’s first name.

  “Go ahead and explain it, Mr. Chairman,” Street said. “We never meant for Charlie to get tangled up in any of this. And certainly not Margaret.”

  “Of course not,” said Leopold. “I did everything I could to try to steer him in the right direction. But you wouldn’t listen, Congressman.”

  “Martin Van Waganan had figured out what you’re doing,” said Charlie. “That’s why he’s dead, isn’t it?”

  “Martin Van Waganan is dead because he was even more treasonous than you!” Carlin spat. “Someone at the Pentagon told him about the University of Chicago study by Mitchell and Kraus, how a defoliant could be used as a weapon against the Reds. And then he started looking into all of it. He had all these connections at the Pentagon and in corporate America that he’d picked up on the Truman Commission. Thankfully, our connections quickly told us what was going on and we positioned one of our Hellfire Club nuns right next to him so she could keep us abreast of everything the whole time.”

  Leopold nodded, lips pursed.

  “That’s correct,” she said. “And just like Congressman Marder, Congressman Van Waganan ignored me and thought he was somehow above it all and that all of those working so hard to save this country from the Red Menace were its enemies.”

  “Which reminds me, Charlie,” said Carlin, “you owe Miss Leopold and our security team here a thank you for saving your wife’s life. Louis Gwinnett had orders from his Soviet friends to do whatever he needed to get those files on the General Kinetics plants. I have no doubt he would have killed her.”

  “As you’re about to,” Charlie said.

  Carlin shrugged. “At least this way you get to say good-bye.”

  Charlie glanced at Margaret, who looked terrified.

  “What do you mean, good-bye?” Strongfellow asked.

  “By that, Chairman Carlin means that he intends to kill Charlie and Margaret,” Street said. “Or have them killed by you or me or those two meatballs over there.” He pointed at the two thugs next to Leopold, who shot Street angry looks. “Speaking of which, bring me my gun, the one you took from Charlie.” Street hopped down from the statue and held out his hand.

  Strongfellow looked around the room in disbelief. He walked slowly toward Street and handed him the OSS gun he’d taken from Charlie. “Let me see yours too,” Street said.

  Strongfellow handed over his .38. Street opened its chamber, clicked it back in place, and felt the weight of the piece in his palm.

  “I’ve seen the Smith and Wesson Chief’s Special before, but I’ve never fired one,” Street said to Strongfellow as if he were at a cocktail party. “Feels good.”

  “You’ll get to use it in a second,” Carlin said.

  “Lyes rubyat, shchepki letyat,” Leopold said to Charlie. “That’s what Lenin said. ‘To chop down a forest, splinters will fly.’”

  “Or in American, ‘You can’t make an omelet without cracking some eggs,’” said Carlin. “Forgive Catherine, she loves to show off how much she learned when she was undercover for military intelligence in Moscow.”

  Margaret tried to speak, but they couldn’t understand her through the gag.

  “What’s she saying?” asked Strongfellow.

  “Go ahead and remove that, Catherine,” Carlin said.

  After Margaret swallowed, she spoke: “Love the notion of an anti-Communist quoting Lenin,” she said.

  “
Should I put the gag back on?” asked Leopold.

  “Margaret’s right; it’s perfect,” said Charlie. “‘To chop down a forest, splinters will fly.’ So they’ll fly into me and Margaret, right, who cares. But how many splinters are flying? General Kinetics is manufacturing this pesticide to spray all over insurgencies around the world—and the people and livestock dying here in the U.S. are just collateral damage? That’s what this is about? Is this pesticide really worth it?”

  “You half-wit, these aren’t pesticides,” Carlin snarled. “We’re making chemical weapons.”

  “You really think all of this is about defoliation?” said Leopold. “This is about the next century’s worth of warfare. Nukes probably won’t ever be used in our war against the Soviets or the Chinese. We will fight conventional wars, and we cannot afford another loss like in Korea. So we need a better way to fight.”

  “Chemical weapons were outlawed after World War One,” Charlie said.

  “Which is why a chemical weapon disguised as a defoliant is so brilliant,” said Leopold.

  “You’re sick,” said Margaret. “You’re sociopaths. Innocent people might die.”

  “They already have,” said Street. “It’s going on in Malaya right now. Vietnam might be next. Wake up, Margaret.”

  “It’s simply astounding to me that people like you can literally almost be killed by Reds one minute and the next minute you’re essentially defending them,” Carlin said.

  “You’re the ones reciting their mottoes,” Margaret said.

  “We’re not defending Communists,” said Charlie. “We’re objecting to you killing innocent people. Whether in Malaya or here in the States.”

  “None of the problems here in the U.S. are intentional,” said Strongfellow. “At least, the livestock incident in my district, in Skull Valley, was an accident. Chemical spill.”