(1976) The R Document

by Irving Wallace

  He went on, then on and on, for the remainder of the ten minutes, as Rose Tynan sat enchanted.

  When he was done and had closed the folder, his mother said, ‘Thank you, Vern. You’re a good boy. You’re always thoughtful about your mother.’ ‘Thank you, Mom.’

  At the door, she studied his face.

  ‘You have lots of troubles,’ she said. I can see.’

  “These are bad times in the country, Mom. There’s a lot to do. If we don’t get the 35th Amendment through, I don’t know what will happen.’

  ‘You know what’s best for everybody,’ she said. ‘I was telling Mrs Grossman the other day - she’s in the apartment above me - I was telling her you’d know what to do if you were President I believe it. You should be President’

  He winked at her as he opened the door. ‘Maybe I’ll be better than that one day,’ he said. ‘We’ll see.’

  *

  It had been a long day for Chris Collins. Trying to make up for the time he had lost attending Colonel Baxter’s funeral in the morning, he had worked straight through without taking off his usual hour for lunch. Now, seated with his wife and two of their closest friends near the white Parian marble hearth in the upstairs dining room of the 1789 Restaurant on 36th Street in Georgetown, he was just beginning to satisfy his hunger.

  Two scotches, a bowl of French onion soup, and the Caesar salad he had shared with Karen had brought him to his first moment of relaxation today. Cutting and eating his roast duck in orange sauce, Collins glanced up to see whether Ruth and Paul Hilliard were enjoying the entre6s they had ordered. Obviously, they were.

  Collins considered Hilliard - it was hard to think of him as the junior Senator from California - with affection. He had known Hilliard from their beginnings, when Hilliard had been a San Francisco city councilman and he himself had been an ACLU attorney. In those early days, they had played handball together three times a week at the Y, and Collins had been best man at Hilliard’s wedding. And here they were, years later, both in Washington, he Attorney General Collins and his friend Senator Hilliard. They both had made it big.

  Hilliard was a pleasant man, bespectacled, scholarly, moderate, soft-spoken, the perfect companion for an evening like this. The talk, as usual, had been easy - some gossip about the Kennedys, the prospects for the Washington Redskins football team in the fall, yet another film on the life of Lizzie Borden that everyone was going to see.

  Hilliard had finished with his broiled filet mignon, placed his fork and knife neatly on his cleaned plate, and begun to fill his new Danish pipe.

  ‘How’d you like the wine, Paul?’ Collins asked. ‘It’s California, you know.’

  ‘Just look at my glass.’ He indicated his empty glass. ‘The best testimony for our vineyards.’ ‘Want more?’

  ‘I’ve had enough of California wine,’ said Hilliard, lighting his pipe. ‘But not enough of California. I was waiting to discuss it with you. I guess that’s where it’s all going to be happening from now on.’

  ‘Going to be happening? Oh, you mean the 35th.’ ‘Ever since the Ohio vote the other night, I’ve been getting calls from California. The whole state is buzzing with it.’

  ‘What’s the word?’

  Hilliard blew a smoke ring. ‘The odds are the bill’s going to be ratified, from what I hear. The Governor is going to be announcing his support of it later in the week.’ ‘That’ll make the President happy,’ said Collins. ‘Between us, it’s a deal,’ said Hilliard. ‘The Governor is going to run for the Senate after this term. He wants Wadsworth’s backing, and the President’s always been lukewarm about him. So they’ve made a trade. The Governor’ll come out for the 35th if the President will come out for him.’ He paused. ‘Too bad.’

  Collins, who had been chewing his last morsel of duck, ceased chewing. ‘What does that mean, Paul?’ He swallowed his food. ‘What - what’s too bad?’

  ‘That the big guns are lining up behind the 35th in California.’ ‘I thought you were for it.’

  ‘I wasn’t for it or against it. I sort of played the innocent bystander. I just watched and waited to see what would happen. I suspect that’s the way you’ve felt privately. But

  now that the decision is in our backyard, I’m inclined to act, to get involved.’

  ‘On which side? Against it?’

  ‘Against it.’

  ‘Don’t be hasty, Paul,’ Ruth Hilliard said nervously. ‘Why don’t you wait and see how people feel about it?’

  ‘We’ll never know what people feel until they know how we feel. They’re depending on their leaders to tell them what’s right. After all -‘

  ‘Are you sure what’s right, Paul?’ Collins interrupted.

  ‘I’m becoming sure,’ said Hilliard quietly. ‘Based on what I’m gradually learning of the situation back home, the provisions of the 35th Amendment amount to overkill. That bill is loaded with too heavy an armament aimed at too small an enemy. That’s what Tony Pierce thinks, too. He’s coming into California to fight the Amendment.’

  ‘Pierce isn’t to be trusted,’ said Collins, remembering Director Tynan’s tirade against the civil rights advocate in the White House the other night. ‘Pierce’s motives are suspect. He’s made the 35th a personal vendetta. He’s fighting Tynan as much as the Amendment, because Tynan fired him from the FBI.’

  ‘Do you know that for a fact?’ said Hilliard.

  ‘Well, that’s what I’ve heard. I haven’t checked it.’

  ‘Check it, because I’ve heard different. Pierce became disillusioned by the FBI when he was part of it. He threw his support to some Special Agents Tynan was manhandling. In retaliation, Tynan decided to exile him to somewhere -Montana or Ohio or some such place - and so Pierce resigned to fight for his reforms from the outside. I’m told Tynan spread the story that he was fired.’

  ‘No matter,’ said Collins with a trace of impatience. “What matters is that you say you’ve decided to side with those opposing the 35th.’

  ‘Because that bill troubles me, Chris. I know the underlying purpose of it, but it’s too strong, and more and more I feel its provisions could be abused or misused. Frankly, the only thing that makes me feel safe about its passage is that John Maynard is on the high bench as Chief Justice. He’d

  keep it honest. Still, the possibility of its passage is really beginning to bother me.’

  ‘There’s a positive side, Paul. It’ll keep crime from overwhelming us. Crime in California alone is just becoming too much -‘

  ‘Is it?‘said Hilliard.

  ‘What do you mean, is it? You read the FBI statistics as well as I do.’

  ‘Statistics, figures. Who was it said that figures don’t lie, but liars figure?’ Hilliard squirmed uneasily in his chair. He put down his pipe and then looked directly at Collins. ‘Actually, that is something I’ve been wanting to discuss with you. Statistics, I mean. I’ve been a little hesitant about bringing it up, because it’s your Department and I was afraid you might be touchy.’

  ‘What do I have to be touchy about? Hell, we’re friends, Paul. Speak your mind.’

  ‘All right.’ Still, he hesitated, then decided to go ahead. ‘I had a disturbing call yesterday. From Olin Keefe.’

  The name did not register with Collins.

  ‘He’s a newly elected state legislator from San Francisco,’ Hilliard explained. ‘He’s a good guy. You’d like him. Anyway, he’s on some committee that required him to talk to a number of police chiefs in the Bay area. Two of them -the police chiefs - wondered aloud why the FBI was trying to make them look bad. The police chiefs claimed the figures on crime that they submitted to Director Tynan -and which they said were accurate - were nowhere near as high as the figures you put out.’

  ‘I don’t put out any figures, except technically,’ said Collins, mildly irritated. ‘Tynan gathers them from local communities and computes them. Formally, my office releases them, makes them public for him. Anyway, that’s not important. What are you telling me, Pa
ul?’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you that young Keefe - State Assemblyman Keefe - suspects Director Tynan is doctoring those national crime statistics, tampering with them, especially the figures delivered to him from California. He’s giving us a bigger crime wave than we actually have.’

  ‘Why should he do that? It makes no sense.’

  ‘It makes plenty of sense. Tynan is doing that - if he is doing it - to scare our legislators into passing the 35th Amendment.’

  ‘Look, I know Tynan is gung-ho on getting the Amendment passed. I know the Bureau has always been statistics-happy. But why trouble to do a risky thing like falsifying figures? What does he have to gain?’

  ‘Power.*

  ‘He already has power,’ said Collins flatly.

  ‘Not the kind of power he would have as head of the Committee on National Safety, if the emergency provision of the 35th were ever invoked. Then it would be Vernon T. Tynan uber Alles.’

  Collins shook his head. I don’t believe that. Not one bit. Paul, I live in Justice. I’ve been part of it for eighteen months, in one capacity or another. I know what goes on in the Department. You’re removed from it. And that young Assemblyman of yours, Keefe, he’s also on the outside. He doesn’t know a damn thing.’

  Hilliard would not be stopped. He pushed his rimless spectacles high on the bridge of his nose and said earnestly, ‘He seems to know plenty, from our phone conversation. There are some other things he knows, too, and they’re not pretty. You don’t have to take it from me, Chris. Find out for yourself firsthand. Earlier, you said you might be going to California soon. Fine. Why don’t you let me have Olin Keefe look you up? Then, just hear him out.’ He paused. ‘Unless for some reason you don’t want to.’

  ‘Cut it out, Paul. You know me better than that. There’d be no reason I wouldn’t want to hear facts - if they are facts. I’m not a company man. I’m as interested in the truth as you are.’

  ‘Then you’re willing to see Keefe?’

  ‘You set up the meeting and I’ll be there.’

  ‘With an open mind, I hope. The fate of this whole damn republic can depend on what happens in California. I don’t like some of the things going on in California right now. Please listen to everything he has to say, Chris, and then make up your own mind.’

  ‘I’ll listen,’ Collins said firmly. He picked up the menu.

  ‘That orange sauce with the duck got to be pretty sour. Now, for a change, let’s have something sweet.’

  *

  The following day, exactly at noon, as he had done once every week for six months, Ishmael Young arrived in the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building after a drive from his rented bungalow in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Even though it was Sunday, he knew that in these critical times everyone in Justice, in the FBI, was on a seven-day week. Tynan would be expecting him. Young parked in the basement, with effort pushed out of the front seat of his secondhand red sports car, and met Special Agent O’Dea in front of the Director’s private-key elevator. Sometimes it was Associate Deputy Director Adcock who met him. Today it was O’Dea, the former track star with the crew cut.

  They rode the elevator up to the seventh floor, there parted company, and Young walked alone - carrying his tape recorder and briefcase - down a corridor that separated two rows of offices, and in moments he entered Director Tynan’s suite.

  Presently, in Tynan’s spacious office high above Pennsylvania Avenue, Ishmael Young rolled a heavy easy chair closer to the low-slung circular coffee table, faced it toward the sofa where the Director would soon sit, took out his papers, and made himself ready. By twelve fifteen, Tynan’s secretary, Beth, had placed a beer on the coffee table for the Director and a Diet Pepsi-Cola for his writer. Next, she brought in two containers of lunch delivered by a delicatessen nearby on 9th Street. She laid out the cream-of-chicken soup and cottage cheese for the Director, and the potato salad, pickle, and egg salad on an onion roll for his writer. Then she left. Finally, Tyson got up from behind his awesome desk, after telling someone on the phone that no calls were to come in except from the President, and he secured the office, locking both doors from the inside. Next, he went past Young into his dressing room and on to his bathroom. A minute later, rubbing his dried hands together, he emerged refreshed and dropped down on the sofa to gulp his beer.

  Vernon T. Tynan enjoyed these autobiographical sessions. Obviously, because they were about himself.

  Ishmael Young hated them.

  Young loved the FBI, but he hated Director Tynan. He loved the FBI not for its raison d’etre, but because it was flawlessly, smoothly efficient, which Young was not. He cherished all great organizations that worked - IBM, the Russian Communist party, the Vatican, the Mafia, the FBI - irrespective of what they stood for. He disliked how these mammoth machines manipulated and exploited people, but he loved how effectively these machines - bigger than life -painlessly got things done. He himself got things done mostly with a pencil, a typewriter, a mess of papers, in fits and starts, with nervous tension, and it was no way for a man to live.

  He had loved and respected the FBI as an organization from that time, before his first session with Director Tynan six months ago, when Associate Deputy Director Adcock had taken him on a tour of the Bureau to give him ‘the feel’. There had been the tourist part of the tour. Over a half million tourists came to see the exhibits annually. He didn’t blame them. It had been exciting: the criminal Hall of Fame displaying John Dillinger’s actual guns and bulletproof vest and his death mask; ‘The Crime of the Century - The Case of the A-Bomb Spies’, featuring Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list; the Brink’s Robbery Case exhibit; ‘The Sinister Hand of Soviet Espionage’, starring Colonel Rudolf Abel; the indoor shooting range where every nine minutes a Special Agent gave a demonstration of deadly marksmanship using a .38-caliber service revolver and then a Thompson .45-caliber submachine gun to riddle a life-sized paper target.

  Above all - and here he had been taken backstage, off limits for tourists - Ishmael Young had been enamored of the FBI files. In this clearinghouse for criminal apprehension, there had been fingerprint sets, over 250,000,000 of them. If God had hands, Young had decided, the FBI would have his fingerprints. Among the other 8,700 gray file cabinets, there had been the Typewriter Standards file, a record of the typeface and make of every typewriter, regular or toy,

  ever manufactured (he would never again fantasize the typewriting of an anonymous letter). There had been the Watermark file, the Bank Robbery Note file, the National Fraudulent Note file. There had been so much else - the Serology section, where body fluids and blood were tested; the Chemistry department, where human organs were boiled; the Spectrograph room, where particles of paint were examined. He had found it hard to tear himself away from the Hairs and Fibers Unit. ‘When people get into a fight,’ Adcock had explained, ‘the fibers of their garments may adhere to each other. We shave all fibers off the garments, separate them, and test them to learn which belonged to the assailant and which to the victim.’ Then Adcock had gone on, ‘Our lab is our silent secret weapon. It is invincible. J. Edgar Hoover established it in 1932. As he once said, “The minute stain of blood, the altered document, the match folder found at the scene of the burglary, the heelprint or fleck of dust often provide the essential link of evidence needed to link the criminal to his crime or clear the innocent person.”’

  When he left, Young’s mind had been bursting with a hundred ideas. It had been a writer’s heaven. He had wondered, but had not asked Adcock, how any criminal could ever hope to escape the FBI. He had not asked because the nation was teeming with crime, and most of the criminals did get away with it.

  And then he had been brought to his first official book-writing session with Director Vernon T. Tynan.

  He had somehow expected that some of his love for the Bureau would rub off on its Director. It hadn’t, and then he was not surprised. He had hated Tynan from the start, before ever setting eyes on him. Tyna
n had wanted an autobiography, and Young had been recommended. Tynan had read two of Young’s ghosted books and approved. Young had resisted. From hearsay, he had known Tynan’s reputation, his egomania, and had rejected the offer to collaborate. But only briefly. Tynan had, in effect, blackmailed him and forced hrm to do the book.

  He had never forgotten his first meeting with Tynan in his office. There was the Director - a cat’s eyes set in a

  bulldog’s skull - saying, ‘At last, Mr Young. Glad to meet you, Mr Young.’ He had replied, jocularly, ‘Call me Ishmael.’ The Director had looked blank. Then, Young had known that was how he was, and that was the way it was going to be. Incidentally, Tynan had never called him Ishmael, either. The Director had probably thought it a foreigner’s name. Thereafter, the Director compromised by calling him ‘Young’ or simply ‘You’.

  Now six months of weeks had passed, and once more they were seated across from each other, Ishmael Young drinking his Diet Pepsi and Vernon T. Tynan gulping down the last of his beer. As Tynan put the beer mug aside and reached for his soup, Young knew it was the signal to begin. He leaned over, simultaneously pressed the Record and Play buttons on his portable tape recorder, nibbled at his egg-salad sandwich, and reviewed the notes in his lap. A week ago, the Director had announced the subject of this session, and Young had done his homework and had come prepared. It was not going to be easy. He reminded himself to show restraint.

  ‘We were going to talk about J. Edgar Hoover,’ Tynan said, spooning up a portion of his cottage cheese, ‘and how he broke me in and made me what I am. I owe a lot to him. When he died in 1972, I didn’t want to work for Gray or Ruckelshaus or Kelley or any of the others who followed. They were good men, but once you’d worked for the Old Man - that’s what we used to call Hoover, the Old Man -once you’d worked for him, you were spoiled for anyone else. That’s why I decided to quit after he died, and set up my own investigation agency. Only the President himself could make me give up my private agency to take on the head job. I guess I gave you all that already.’