While Forrestal was busy getting honored (having already been fired), I spent the day with two key people in his life: his wife and his archenemy.
I met Drew Pearson at ten a.m. on the third floor of the Metropolitan Club, a venerable, subdued bastion of respectability on Connecticut Avenue. A colored waiter in a starched white coat served us eggs Benedict; the dark- paneled room was sprinkled with selected bankers and executives doing business over breakfast.
“At noon this place is jam-packed,” Pearson said, sipping a glass of orange juice. He was immaculate in a well-cut gray suit with gray-and-blue tie, the tips of his mustache waxed, sharpened. “You can’t turn around without bumping into a former Secretary of State or a top diplomat.”
“How is it that you’re a member?”
I knew an exclusive club when I saw it; this reminded me of Chicago’s Tavern Club.
“Oh I’m not,” he laughed, his smile turning his eyes to slits, as he took my dig in stride. “They draw the line at only two types of members: Negroes and journalists. But I’m on the approved permanent guest list.”
“I heard your broadcast last night,” I said, sipping my orange juice. “Thanks.”
Pearson had kept his word: no mention of Forrestal’s unstable mental condition; no mention of Forrestal at all, in fact.
“I held up my end of the bargain,” Pearson said, buttering a muffin. “What did you learn from Major Marcel?”
I told him Marcel’s story, reading from notes I’d taken after the interview. As the fantastic aspects of the tale accelerated, Pearson’s expression shifted from amused to absorbed to astonished.
“What do you make of all this?” he asked.
Our breakfast had been cleared away; we were having coffee.
“Marcel seems sincere enough,” I said, “and he did not appear to be deranged, or deluded. And he was reluctant to give me any secondhand information. All of that is a plus.”
“Do I detect, in your tone, the presence of a minus, as well?”
I nodded. “The guy’s in intelligence work, for one thing, which makes him a ripe candidate for carrying misinformation. He’s awfully high-placed to be spilling his guts like this.”
“But he has credible motivation to talk,” Pearson said. “If he’s being truthful, then his government ordered him to go along with a deception that made him look an utter fool who mistook an ordinary weather balloon for the wreckage of a flying saucer.”
“Listen to yourself, Drew. Think about your own credibility, using a term like ‘flying saucer’ in a sentence as if you take the possibility seriously. Major Marcel is a skilled intelligence officer, remember, fresh out of a war where propaganda and misinformation were common currency.”
And yet his eyes glittered with the possibilities. “But if it’s true, Nate, why … this is the biggest story since Jesus Christ …”
“What does your nose tell you?”
Pearson’s motto, famously, was: “If something smells wrong, I go to work.”
Now his eyes had hardened, studying me, deadly serious, even though his smile was wry. “You’re a professional bloodhound, Nathan. What do your olfactories tell
Our waiter returned to refill our coffee cups, the rich aroma drifting up.
“I’m just not sure,” I said, stirring some sugar in. “The guy seems legitimate to me. If he were telling me a story that didn’t have all this Buck Rogers shit in it, I’d buy him wholesale. Hell, retail.”
“If the government recovered an aircraft from outer space,” Pearson said melodramatically, “it might have access to new technology that could make the atomic bomb look like a popgun.”
“Quit writing your column out loud; you’re jumping to a preposterous conclusion.”
His eyebrows climbed his chrome dome. “Am I? Suppose, as Marcel indicated, there were aliens found, as well? Do you know the implications, the ramifications? Social, political … religious?”
“Print that, why don’t you? See how seriously you’re taken, after.”
He sighed and nodded. “And, as we both know, that could well be what this is all about: discrediting me.
“The only thing you might do,” I said with a shrug, sipping my coffee, “is send me to Roswell to poke around a little. Talk to these other sources that Marcel mentioned.”
His eyes slitted again. “How much would that cost me?”
“Who cares, if it’s the biggest story of the millennium? A hundred a day and expenses.”
He frowned, staring into his coffee cup. “I’ll consider it.” Then he looked up, arching an eyebrow. “You know, Nathan, if this is true-if there is a Majestic Twelve group in the government, that Forrestal is a part of-it could go a long way toward explaining the man’s mental state.”
“How so?”
“What if he’s been faced with a threat from the skies?”
I smirked. “Little green men to join the Reds he’s already frightened of?”
Pearson painted a picture in the air with a splay-fingered hand. “Think about it: a recovered flying saucer, advanced technology-maybe he thinks creatures from outer space are trying to kill him. Maybe they are!”
I laughed, grinned. “Definitely put that in your column. You’ll be in the padded suite next to Forrestal’s.”
He shook his head, returning my laughter. “It does sound ridiculous…. Let’s just put it aside, for now at least. But, uh, should I decide to explore this further … you are willing to make the Roswell trip?”
“As long as it’s in a train or a plane,” I said, sipping at my coffee cup, “and not one of these.”
And I tilted my saucer.
We left it at that, and to Pearson I’m sure I seemed indifferent about whether he sent me to New Mexico or not; but in truth my curiosity was piqued.
And Pearson was right: if the government had recovered-and covered up-technology from beyond the stars, the possibility that Forrestal’s condition was related to that remarkable discovery could be very real. Considering that the guy was under stress anyway, suffering from a world war’s worth of physical and nervous exhaustion, being confronted suddenly with the existence of creatures from another planet just might be … taxing.
I didn’t mention the subject to Jo Forrestal, however; she seemed only marginally more stable than her husband, as she prepared for their trip to Hobe Sound, Florida, and I supervised a sweep of their home for electronic bugs.
My A-1 Agency and Washington’s Bradford Investigations supported each other in their respective cities, and two of their men took much of the day combing the big house from basement to watchtower, garage to garden. Electronic surveillance was never my specialty, though, and I spent more of my time with Jo Forrestal than with the Bradford boys.
The Filipino houseboy, Remy, had let me in, and informed me that the bug hunters had beat me there.
“Men in kitchen,” the skinny little man said. He seemed kind of wild-eyed, put out by the intrusion.
I moved past half a dozen suitcases that were lined up next to the second-floor stairway-for the Florida trip, no doubt-and padded on into the kitchen, which was fairly small for such a big old house, and had been remodeled a gleaming white, cupboards and all. The two Bradford dicks were searching high and low, to the displeasure of the Negro cook, who was pacing out back, smoking and muttering.
Bob Hasty, whose last name was an inaccuracy, looked up from the black-patterned white linoleum where he was on his hands and knees, checking the floorboards, looking like a cat after a mouse. Both he and Jack Randolph, who was standing on a kitchen stool, checking the light fixture, were dressed in tan jumpsuits that looked vaguely military.
“Bowing and scraping in my presence isn’t really necessary, Bob,” I said. “A respectful tone will do. You could avert your eyes, maybe.”
“Blow me, Heller,” the round-faced Hasty said with a grin.
“Seems to me you’re in a better position for that.”
His lanky partner Randolph, checking the light fixture, was cackling over our witty exchange.
I asked him, “How’s it going, Jack?”
“Clean so far,” Randolph said. “If I get electrocuted, by the way, it’s gonna cost you.”
“Time and a half,” I said.
Bob, who had gotten to his feet, was brushing himself off. “Nothing so far. I swept the house with a field- strength meter … clean as a whistle. Jack checked all the phones.”
