“Take him up on it?”
“No, it was tempting, but I declined-respectfully.”
Using the same tray, the cute brunette waitress brought us our drinks, then took the tackle his: a bottle of 7 UP and a glass of ice. Maybe he was in training.
“Okay, Teddy. You got friends in the mob, you got friends in the Pentagon. What’s your point?”
Kollek leaned forward, the eyes again disappearing into the slitted pouches. “Haven’t I made it? Your pal Forrestal thinks we’re trying to kill him. Why, to get information we’re already getting from sources all around him? Hell, a phone call to Meyer Lanksy, I could have that fat cat snuffed out like a candle. But that’s not how I operate- not that the son of a bitch wouldn’t deserve it.”
“So, any American official that doesn’t back Israel deserves to die, Teddy?”
He was shaking his head, cigar smoke swirling around him like a wreath. “That’s what I don’t get about you, Nate-you’re Jewish, you’re a combat veteran-how can you work for that Nazi bastard?”
Up onstage, the drummer hit a rim shot, punctuating Jack “Jive” Shaffer’s latest joke-and Kollek’s.
“Oh,” I said, “so now Forrestal’s a
The quizzical eyebrows raised even higher. “You mean, maybe James Forrestal doesn’t have a corner on the paranoia market? Don’t you read Drew Pearson? Nate, your friend Forrestal’s company Dillon and Read helped
I sipped my rum and Coke, refusing to get caught up in his hysteria. “A Wall Street firm doing business with Germany after World War One, before Hitler’s rise, doesn’t make Forrestal and the rest of Dillon, Read amp; Company a nest of Nazis.”
“Bullshit! They loaned hundreds of millions to the German cartels that formed the backbone of Hitler’s war machine. Hell, Forrestal’s on the fuckin’ board of directors of General Aniline and Film, the American arm of I. G. Farben, the drug and industrial trust that created Auschwitz!”
Kollek was getting really worked up; it was all the tackle at the postage-stamp table could do not to just pull up a chair at our booth.
“You got a lot of passion, Teddy, but you’re as full of shit as a Christmas goose. Jim Forrestal’s a patriot.”
“In his twisted view of it, I’m sure he is. And you’re right, I’m overstating, he’s no Nazi-he’s just one hell of a capitalist. I mean, Chase National Bank, General Motors, ITT, Ford Motors, Standard Oil, they’ve all been in bed with Germany since long before the war.”
“Hey, this is all way over my head,” I said, but I had a sick feeling in my stomach and it wasn’t the lobster mingling with his cigar smoke.
Kollek waved a blunt-fingered hand; the diamond and gold rings on it seemed at odds with his patronizing view of capitalism. “Yeah, what the hell, Nate-these guys were just protecting themselves-and their great country- to make sure that, after the war, the same fraternity of all-American business bigwigs still had their holdings.”
I held up a palm: stop. “Teddy, I’m way out of my element, here…. I’m just a private eye with a client who thinks somebody wants to kill him. You say your group isn’t a likely suspect, then you give me hundreds of reasons why you oughta be on top of the goddamn list!”
Kollek blew another fat smoke ring; raised his eyebrows, set them down. “Not the top, maybe. But why bother killing the bastard? Forrestal’s on his way out, isn’t he? And even if he
I frowned, shook my head. “Many what? Nazis? If I believed what people were telling me lately, half the government’s Communist, and the other half is fascist. Back where I come from, we call them Democrats and Republicans.”
Now he held up a palm; in fact, he held up two of them. “All right, okay-fine. Dismiss everything I say as biased, alarmist, Zionist bullshit. But know this: if your friend Forrestal is in danger, it’s more likely from his own people than mine.”
This time it was Forrestal’s voice echoing in my head:
That one got some real laughter-not just titters-and Jack “Jive” Shaffer knew when to get off the stage, the six-piece band returning to dance music, starting with “Little White Lies”; the floor was soon flooded with couples. This left the well-groomed tackle all alone in a sea of empty tables, a shipwreck survivor on a desert island; the exposure didn’t stop him from occasionally stealing glances at our booth.
Kollek swirled the remains of his drink in its glass and said, too casually, “Has Forrestal ever mentioned Operation
“No.”
He sipped the drink, smiled his half-smile. “I’m not surprised. We have solid information that U.S. intelligence agencies-even while they were rounding up, shall we say, sacrificial wolves for the Nuremberg tribunals-were at the same time actively recruiting Nazis and Nazi collaborators for what Forrestal and others in your government see as the coming war on Communist Russia.”
“Oh, please …”
The smile evaporated and he leaned deep across the booth. “You can’t imagine how many scientists fresh from factories run by concentration-camp labor, and doctors right out of ‘research facilities’ where Jews were human guinea pigs, are on Uncle Sam’s payroll, now.”
“That’s ludicrous. If that were true, and the public found out-”
“Which is exactly why Forrestal is in more peril from his friends than his enemies. These efforts go beyond gathering up top Nazi minds, understand-Operation Nightingale, for example.”
I sighed. “You seem to want me to ask, Teddy, so I’ll ask: what the hell is Operation Nightingale?”
He sat back in the booth; his glass was empty, his arms folded, the cigar sending up smoke signals from an ashtray before him. He spoke very softly: “My sources indicate that the NSC … that’s the National Security Council, a body formed at Forrestal’s urging … is secretly financing and arming underground resistance movements in the USSR and its Eastern European satellites.”
I thought about that, translating it for myself. “Funding the overthrow of Russia from within, you mean.”
“Yes. Operation Nightingale is one of those efforts, a recruiting of right-wing Ukrainian militia members who during the war were among the Nazis’ most eager lapdogs, perpetrators of atrocities beyond comprehension. They not only rounded up thousands of Jews for the Nazis, they performed the mass executions themselves-after the women had been raped, of course. These barbarians, these purveyors of modern-day pogroms, your friend Forrestal enlisted in the service of anti-Communism. These monsters were even brought here, to your great country, and trained for their mission.”
“If this is true-”
“And not just Zionist propaganda? Then what, Nate?”
“That’s my question-then what? Why tell me all this? So I’ll quit working for Forrestal?”
The eyebrows flew up, the small eyes widened. “Hell, no! We want you to stay as close to him as possible. See what you can learn. If Forrestal is suffering from pangs of guilt, as our sources indicate, he might come forward with what he knows.”
Now I gave him a smirk. “And think of how much money you could pry out of indignant rich American Jews, if he did-how pissed off they’d be over their country’s Nazi collaboration … oh, and how much money they’d cough up for
Kollek shrugged with his eyebrows. “I won’t deny that’s one motive. Simple goddamn justice is another. Everything we know about Operation Nightingale, and other efforts to employ Nazis and Nazi collaborators, is hearsay; our sources won’t take the step of stealing or microfilming top-secret and classified materials.”
“Maybe they don’t want to get shot by a firing squad for treason.”
Kollek pointed his cigar at me. “I’ll tell you about treason and firing squads: if a man of Forrestal’s power and stature came forward with this ugly story, it would tear the dome off the Capitol. These goddamn Nazis would be flushed out of their lucrative new government positions and tried for their war crimes. And the traitors in
