gleaming, empty.
“They were here,” he said. “They must have heard me come in. Got out the back way.”
I sat down again. “Jim, I think you ought to get out of here. Your wife’s down in Florida. You said you have friends down there waiting for you. Relax … unwind.”
“You don’t understand how insidious they are. I’ve been chosen; I’ve been marked.”
“Chosen? Marked, how?”
“I’m not the number one target-just the first to be liquidated. Because I tried to alert America to the menace.”
“What menace, Jim?”
He was trembling all over. “The Kremlin plans to liquidate all our top leadership in Washington; the Reds are planning an invasion as we speak. The first wave, the secret wave, is already here!”
I had to ask; at this point, what would it hurt to ask?
“Jim … what about Roswell, Jim?”
His eyes widened and flickered, as if I’d lighted a flame in them. “How do you know about Roswell?”
“You mentioned it,” I lied.
“… I’ve done a bad thing.” He shook his head. “I’ve done a bad thing. Sometimes you do bad things, to try to do right, don’t you?”
“Sure, sure …”
The flames in his eyes flickered out. He sighed and his body seemed to deflate. His face had a flatness, like a frying pan, his wide eyes like fried eggs clinging to it. “Do you know what it’s like?”
“What what is like?”
“Being a complete failure? Failing your family, your country, yourself?”
“Stop it, now.”
“My life’s a wreck. A shambles. I know terrible things; I did terrible things, allowed terrible things to be done…. Have you ever considered suicide, Nate? If there was a button I could push, and end my life, I’d push it. Why should I give them the satisfaction of ending my life, when I can do it myself?”
“You’ve been through the mill, Jim. Things look this way because of your overwork. You’re exhausted …”
He shrugged, just a little. “That’s probably because I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in months. My teeth ache … my intestines are all out of whack … all my normal bodily functions are breaking down. I’m not even a man, anymore. Do you have your gun?”
His wife had asked me the same thing, only she’d been joking, and wanted Pearson’s hide; I knew, with cold certainty, that if I handed this man a gun, he’d shoot himself, right in front of me.
The doorbell rang.
Remy ran for it, and thank God, it was Eberstadt. Relief flooded through me, as I went to meet him.
“You’re Heller?” he asked, stepping inside, a tall, well-tailored, square-jawed handsome man of around sixty with the look of a former athlete and hair the color of burnished steel.
I said I was Heller, and we shook hands, and I took him aside and whispered, “He’s talking suicide. I’m out of my depth here, Mr. Eberstadt. He’s your friend-help him.”
He nodded gravely, said, “Thanks for standing watch.”
From where we stood, we could see into the living room where Forrestal sat, having again lapsed into a sort of trance, now holding the empty bowl in his hands, staring into it.
“Where’s his valet?” Eberstadt asked.
“Has the week off, ’cause of the Florida trip. The houseboy’s around somewhere.”
“Would you find Remy and have him pack a bag for James, some sports clothes and the like, maybe round up his golf clubs. I’m going to get him to Hobe Sound, where he can rest in the sunshine, in the company of close friends.”
I shook my head. “Anything you say, but I think he’s a little past the vacation stage. He needs medication, and he needs supervision-away from sharp objects.”
“I appreciate your advice, but please do as I ask.”
“Sure,” I said, and I found Remy in his quarters and sent him on his mission. Then I slipped into Forrestal’s study, got out my wallet, found the slip of paper I’d been given by Frank J. Wilson and used the phone.
“Chief Baughman,” I said to the head of the Secret Service, “you wanted me to call if something interesting developed?”
10
My call to Chief Baughman set several things in motion. Within half an hour, at Morris House, Eberstadt heard by phone from Louis Johnson, Forrestal’s successor, expressing grave concern about Forrestal’s condition.
The President was providing an Air Force Constellation, Eberstadt was told, to facilitate the former secretary’s much-needed vacation; and by early evening Forrestal had arrived in Florida, where a formidable circle of friends-including banker (and former Under Secretary of State) Robert Lovett, Douglas Dillon of Dillon, Read amp; Company and playwright Philip Barry-took him under their wing.
Jo Forrestal was staying at the Jupiter Island Club, but Forrestal was soon in a private home where he was attended day and night by Eberstadt and others, including Dr. William Menninger of Topeka’s Menninger Clinic. The presence of Menninger, the country’s preeminent psychiatrist, was Eberstadt’s doing.
Ironically, Menninger had been invited to the Pentagon just months before, to aid in a Forrestal-directed study of combat fatigue; Forrestal and Menninger had spent a morning together, discussing the subject, at which time Menninger apparently noticed nothing of a similar (or any) malady in the behavior of the Secretary of Defense.
Nonetheless (Eberstadt told me on the phone), this brief contact and casual acquaintanceship had made Forrestal willing to at least talk with Menninger.
But, at the same time, the government sent down their own man, Captain George N. Raines, chief psychiatrist at the Bethesda naval hospital. This may have reflected President Truman’s natural humanistic concern for a great public servant in a time of dire need; or it may have indicated the administration’s desire to contain the incident and handle the manner in which the press and public learned that a crazy man, until a day or so ago, had been their Secretary of Defense, holding his fingers to the nation’s atomic pulse.
I had intended to return to Chicago that same evening Forrestal made his Florida trip; but the Secret Service “requested” that I stay in Washington for “debriefing,” and at both Treasury and Justice I was questioned by Baughman himself, and Frank Wilson, and several other agents whose names I did not know (and which were not offered to me). This exercise in repetitiousness took three days, and the government was kind enough to pick up my hotel check for my extended stay-one of the rare times my tax dollars came back to me.
I was frank about what I’d witnessed regarding former Secretary of Defense Forrestal’s mental breakdown, and filled them in on my own meager investigation, from the maid leaking to Anderson to the unproductive sweep of Forrestal’s home for bugs; but none of my dealings with Pearson came up, specifically no mention of Roswell or Majestic Twelve. Had they asked me, I would have been forthcoming (because if they asked, that would indicate knowledge on their part, possibly stemming from surveillance of myself and/or Pearson); but they didn’t ask. And I didn’t tell.
Friday afternoon marked the final stop of my debriefing tour, which took me tooling through the suburban slumber of white cottages and brick bungalows that was Bethesda, and beyond into the flat, green countryside of Maryland. Just when I thought I’d misunderstood the directions, easing the rental Ford up over a little rise in U.S. Route 240, a nineteen-story white tower rose out of nowhere like an
The National Naval Medical Center sprawled over some 265 acres, the central tower flanked by L-shaped four-floor wings, a complex at once utilitarian and starkly beautiful, modern and timeless, its structural steel faced with white-quartz-aggregate concrete panels, dark spandrels between windows creating an effect of massive square columns.
On the periphery of the endless parking lot were many squat temporary buildings, so this facility-which had
