“Sure, that I was a Jew but didn’t follow the faith, and you’d been raised Catholic and had rejected it.”
He sat forward, his eyes intense. “Yes. I believe I’ve long harbored a guilt, however deeply buried, for rejecting the faith my mother worked so diligently to instill within me. I’ve wondered if, perhaps, the root cause of my troubles is my break with the Church, that I’ve been punished … or have punished myself … for being a bad Catholic. Consequently, I’ve found myself working my way back to my boyhood faith.”
I nodded toward his nightstand. “I noticed the book by Monsignor Sheen.”
“I bring this up, Nate, not by way of soul-searching, but to demonstrate that, even with my thinking clear again, I’m more convinced than ever I’m being watched, controlled.”
Until he’d made this statement, I’d been feeling good about Forrestal’s condition; but now my neck was starting to tingle.
He must have sensed that and his smile was somewhat chagrined. “No, not by Russians, or Zionists, Nate-by my own government.”
Now that I could believe.
Folding his arms again, he sat back, took a few puffs of the pipe, then spoke with clarity and confidence. “My brother Henry, who’s been to visit me frequently, cherishes this rekindling of my Catholicism, and consequently has asked my doctors to allow a priest-a Father Sheehy-to visit me. And they have refused.”
“Why in hell?” What sort of doctor denied a mental patient the guidance and solace a visit by a clergyman might bring?
Forrestal arched an eyebrow. “I asked both Dr. Raines and Dr. Bernstein, and their answers were the same: reopening the Catholic issue, at this time, would be too ‘disquieting’ to me.”
“What do you think the real reason is?”
The thin line of a mouth formed the faintest of smiles. “Can’t you guess, Nate? I’ve always admired your shrewd, if unschooled, analytical mind.”
I thought about it for a few moments, then said, “You entering a Catholic confessional would risk disclosure of sensitive national security issues.”
“Bull’s-eye,” Forrestal said, eyes twinkling. His gaze fell upon the steel screen again, beyond which a sunny May afternoon seemed to beckon. “I could never bring myself to jump out a window, anyway-I’ve always had a mild case of vertigo. And slashing my wrists would be entirely too messy. I believe I’d opt for sleeping pills or perhaps hang myself.”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
“A master of the art not recognizing sarcasm?” he chuckled. “Disappointed in you, Nate…. They’re concerned about me attempting suicide? And yet I’m on the sixteenth floor, when most of the mental patients at Bethesda receive treatment in a one-story wing … and they are reluctant to have me rekindle my Catholic faith, a faith that would include the very rejection of suicide as a mortal sin. What do you make of that?”
“There’s no paranoia in those suspicions; you’d be nuts not to think that way.”
He gestured with the pipe again. “They had my house bugged, too, when I hired you.”
“Jim, I had it thoroughly swept …”
“The government knew you were coming, didn’t they? They knew I’d hired you?”
That was true: the Secret Service certainly did.
Forrestal shrugged. “They took them out. And they would’ve put them back again, if I hadn’t … slipped out of control, first.”
“You seem fine to me now, Jim.”
Nodding, he said, “I’ll be all right; I’m pulling out of it. And, to give the bastards credit due them, they are lessening up on the restrictions. I’m allowed to leave this room, visit with other patients, flirt with the nurses … and I have full run of the pantry, across the hall. Here, I’ll show you-let me play host.”
Noting that the Naval medical corpsman was not at his post, I followed the silk-robed Forrestal-who left his pipe behind-across the hall to a much smaller room, a galley-like pantry with a single table, counter and cupboards, and a refrigerator. A pot of coffee sat, steaming fragrantly, on a hot plate.
“Care for a cup?” he asked.
“Thanks. One lump of sugar.”
As he prepared the coffee for himself and me, Forrestal said, “This is a rather nice privilege…. They call this the diet kitchen, and of all of the patients, I alone have been granted its use-I can wander over and fix myself a snack, pour myself a cup of coffee, as I please…. Such are the small pleasures of the incarcerated.”
As I sat at the chrome-legged, porcelain-topped table, which was about half again as big as your average kitchen table, I noticed the pantry’s single window did not have the tamper-proof screen of Forrestal’s room; in fact, of the two hooks that fastened it in place, one was broken.
He was asking, “Can I get you a cup of soup, or a sandwich?”
“No, no thanks, Jim. Just had lunch.”
Sitting with his cup of coffee, he placed it before him, then patted his stomach, just above the yellow sash. “You should have seen the steak I put away, at noon. It’s nice to have my appetite back.”
“You look good. You look fit.”
“I’ve been exercising.” He sipped his coffee, glanced about the tiny room. “There’s nothing wrong with me that not being cooped up here, on the sixteenth floor, wouldn’t cure. How I’d like to be outdoors, with friends, visiting an estate, walking in the sun … soon, very soon.”
“How is Jo holding up under all this?”
The tight line tightened in an unconvincing smile. “Splendidly. She, uh, hasn’t been around much-hospitals depress her. I know she’ll be sorry she missed you, she’s very fond of you.” A quiet sadness slipped into his eyes. “She’s gone off to Europe, on vacation.”
Her husband a mental patient, confined because of his suicidal tendencies, and Jo was off to Europe. Somehow I wasn’t surprised.
“My son Michael’s over there, you know, in Paris,” he was saying. “Mike has a post with the Economic Cooperation Administration. Working for the Marshall Plan.”
“How’s Peter doing?”
“Very well, thank you-you just missed him. He spent half an hour with me, after lunch; he’s living in Morris House, looking after it for me. He’s at Princeton, doing very well-just started a summer job as a copyboy at the
His pride in his sons buoyed him; this was the most talkative I’d ever seen Forrestal, and I was relieved to see him doing so well. I hated to forge ahead into troubling territory, but I felt I had to.
“Jim, can I ask about something you mentioned to me, when you were-having your difficulties?”
“Certainly, Nate.” He took another sip of his coffee. “I like to think we’ve gone beyond a client/employer relationship. You were at my side when the chips were down.”
Well, that made me feel shitty.
But I asked, “What happened at Roswell?”
His expression froze. Then, slowly, he shook his head. “Nate, I shouldn’t have mentioned that to you. That’s a delicate, and classified, area.”
“I figure it must have something to do with the Air Force,” I said.
He said nothing, expressionless, though his eyes were alive.
I had a sip of my coffee, which wasn’t bad at all, and pressed on. “You seemed to have, well … lost your grip, after Symington rode home with you that last day at the Pentagon. He said he had something important to talk to you about, and, after all, he’s the Secretary of the Air Force-”
Forrestal raised a palm, in a stop gesture. “Nate, I’ll say only that the defense of one’s country sometimes necessitates unfortunate choices.” His gaze fell; he was looking at his own reflection in his coffee cup. “I’ll go to my grave feeling I betrayed my country; all the laudatory editorials in the world, all the psychiatry, a battalion of priests, cannot assuage that singular guilt.”
“I don’t understand, Jim. Does this have anything to do with Majestic Twelve?”
He looked up sharply, brow furrowed. “How did you know about that?”
“Someone’s leaked it to a reporter I’ve done some work for.”
He was shaking his head. “Majic-12 is a top-secret group, Nate, I won’t discuss it. Knowledge of that kind is what makes a … mental case like me … a security risk. Are you asking on behalf of this reporter?”
