Dragonfly

strength of his judgments or acquire an hysterical tone; he sounded quite reasonable.

“Mr. Rice? Andrew Rice? You mean the President's chief aide?” Kirkwood asked weakly. He looked as if he were about to mutter and drool in idiot confusion.

Ignoring Kirkwood, certain that he was on the verge of learning something that he would have preferred not to know, McAlister stared hard at Jackson and said, “You're making some pretty ugly accusations. Yet I'm sure that you don't know Rice personally. You probably don't know him even as well as I do — and that's not very well at all. So what makes you think you know what's in his heart?”

Back in the early 1960s, Jackson explained, he had reached a point in his life when he finally felt secure, finally knew that he had gotten out of the ghetto for once and all. He had plenty of tenure on the White House domestic staff. He was making a damned good salary. His investments had begun to pay off handsomely, and he had been able to move into a good house in the suburbs. He had been successful long enough to have accepted his new position, and he had gotten over the lingering fear that everything he had worked for might be taken away from him overnight.

“All my life,” he told McAlister, “I've enjoyed books. I've believed in continuous self-education. In 1963, when I moved to the suburbs, I felt financially secure enough to devote most of my spare time to my reading. I decided to establish a study program and concentrate on one subject at a tune. Back then, I was most interested in racial prejudice, having been a victim of it all of my life. I wanted to understand the reasons behind it. The psychology behind it. So I worked up a reading list, both fiction and nonfiction, and did considerable research. Eventually I was led to these two magazines owned by a man named J. Prescott Hennings.”

“I know of him,” McAlister said.

Jackson said, “He's published some of the most hateful racist propaganda ever committed to ink and paper in this country. It's not all directed against blacks. Hennings despises Jews, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos…”

“I've seen copies of the magazines, but I've never bothered to read one of them,” McAlister said.

Jackson picked up the first magazine in his lap and opened it to an article titled “Negro Mental Inferiority.” He handed it to McAlister and said, “Here's a little something written by Andrew Rice in 1964.”

Reading the first several paragraphs, McAlister winced. He passed the magazine to Kirkwood.

Jackson gave another one to McAlister. “Here's an especially nasty little number titled 'Has Hitler Been Maligned?'”

“Christ!” McAlister said, feeling sick to his stomach. Glancing only perfunctorily at the article, he quickly passed it on to Kirkwood. Weakly, he said, “Well… People do change.”

“Not as radically as this,” Jackson said. “Not from a fanatical fascist to a paragon of liberal virtue.” He spoke with conviction, as if he'd had considerable time to think about it. “And people certainly don't change so quickly as Rice appears to have done. That paean to Hitler was published exactly one year before Harvard University Press issued his Balancing the Budget in a Welfare State, which was the best seller and which was overflowing with liberal sentiment.”

Skimming through the Hitler article, Kirkwood said, “This is the work of an Andrew Rice who belongs in a nice little padded cell somewhere.”

“Believe me,” Jackson said gloomily, “that Andrew Rice is the same one who is today advising the President.” He opened another magazine to an article titled 'The Chinese Threat,' and he gave this to McAlister. “In this one Rice advocates an immediate nuclear attack on Red China in order to keep it from becoming a major nuclear power itself.”

Shocked for reasons Jackson couldn't grasp, McAlister read this piece from beginning to end. By the time he had finished it, he was damp with perspiration. “How could he ever have become accepted as a major liberal thinker when he had a background like this?”

“He published eleven of those articles, the last in October of 1964,” Jackson said. “They all appeared in magazines with terribly small circulations.”

“And even then, not everyone who received a copy read it,” said Kirkwopd.

“Right,” Jackson said. “My guess is that no one who read those magazine pieces also read his liberal work beginning with the Harvard book. Or if a few people did read both — well, they never remembered the byline on the articles and didn't connect that work with the book. As the years passed, the chance of anyone making the connection grew progressively smaller. And when Rice did move into a position of real power, it was as a Presidential aide. Unlike Cabinet members, aides do not have to be confirmed by the Senate. Because Rice doesn't have an engaging or even particularly interesting personality, he hasn't been much of a target for newspapermen. No one has combed through his past; they all go back to the Harvard book and never any further.”

As he wiped the perspiration from his face with his handkerchief, McAlister said, “Why haven't you blown the whistle on him?”

Jackson said, “How?”

“Call up a reporter and put him on the right track. Even give him your copies of the magazines.”

“Too dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

Sighing, Jackson said, “Do you think for a minute Rice could have gotten away with this change of face if Prescott Hennings didn't want him to get away with it?”

“You're suggesting a conspiracy?'

“Of some sort.”

“To accomplish what?”

“I dont know,” Jackson said.

McAlister nodded.

“But I'm beginning to think you know.”

Staring straight into the black man's eyes, McAlister said nothing.

Jackson said, “I'd wager that if I hustled some reporter with this stuff, Hennings would have conclusive proof that the very famous liberal Andrew Rice was not the same Andrew Rice who wrote those articles way back when. And then yours truly would be marked as a slander monger. I've got a nice job and a big earned pension that's coming to me in a few years. When it comes to my financial solvency, I'm as morally bankrupt as the next man.”

McAlister folded his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket. “Rice isn't a very common name. Even if Hennings did have some sort of trumped-up proof, it wouldn't be believed.”

“Mr. McAlister, forgive me, but even if the proof was conclusive, Rice would remain as a Presidential aide — and I'd get bounced out of the cloakroom on my ass. Do you think all those liberals, Democrats and Republicans, who have praised Rice to the skies are suddenly just going to admit they were deceived? Do you think the President will admit Rice made a fool of him? If you think so, then you're more naive than I would have thought. There will be a lot of somber speeches and statements about giving a man a second chance and about the marvelous capacity for change that Rice has shown. Hearts will bleed. Pity will flow like water. The conservatives won't care if Rice goes or stays. And the liberals would rather argue that a child killer can achieve sainthood even in the act of murder then admit they were wrong.

“I believe that Rice probably has taken a long-term position in order to achieve power with which he can score points for right-wing programs — while he professes liberal aims. It's an ingenious tactic. It requires consummate acting skill and monumental patience, and it's more dangerous to our system of government than any screaming, shouting frontal attack of the sort that right-wingers usually make. But it's much too complicated for most Americans to understand or worry about. They like their politics nice and simple. Actually, I'm not even sure that it's anything to worry about. I'm not so sure he can do all that much damage. If he's got to maintain his liberal image, he can hardly begin pressing for the Hitlerian laws and schemes he wrote about in those articles for Hennings' magazines.”

Getting to his feet, McAlister said, “That's quite true.”

“But now I'm not so sure,” Jackson said, standing, stretching, watching McAlister closely. “Since you came here like this, you must think Rice is involved in something very big and very dangerous.”

McAlister said, “I'd appreciate it if you kept this visit to yourself.”

“Naturally.”

“Could I have a few of those magazines?”