“Why?”
“Because this is my lucky day and it’s raining. And I ain’t ever going to get wet in the rain ever again.”
She smiled. “Let’s go. It’s time we were in bed.”
He glanced at her face as they crossed the street and as she looked back at him she winked. “Yes, I did say we.”
CHAPTER 37
In the White House that Christmas President Truman wrote in his diary—“… I have worked for peace for five years and six months and it looks like World War III is near.”
The war in Korea had become a disaster. With conflicting views on Chinese intentions from MacArthur and the intelligence agencies it seemed that the nightmare would never end. There was to be no Christmas for the President.
In New York the Aarons family had gathered for a meal and at the end Andrei told them that he and Tania were to be married in the New Year. He was surprised and relieved that they all seemed so pleased. Serov and Angela had married two weeks earlier and had joined them for the Christmas holidays.
The day after Christmas the Communists recrossed the 38th parallel and the President had received a handwritten note from General MacArthur who demanded that Congress should now recognise that a state of war existed with the Chinese as well as the North Koreans, and followed this up with the recommendation that the United States should drop thirty to fifty atomic bombs on air bases and other strategic points in Manchuria, then land half a million Chinese Nationalist troops from Formosa with two divisions of US Marines at either end of the border between Korea and China. Finally, after the defeat of the Chinese they should “lay down a belt of active cobalt all along the Yalu River.”
On New Year’s Eve 1951 the whole family plus Malloy and Kathy were celebrating at Sam’s club. Celebrating not only the New Year, but Andrei’s forthcoming marriage and the fact that Sam was now the owner of half the equity in the club. Even Ivan was there with his Rachel. Serov and Angie joined them just before midnight. And as they all joined hands to sing “Auld Lang Syne” half a million Chinese and Koreans poured through the American defences on their unstoppable sweep to take Seoul.
The next months were field days for the isolationists like Joseph Kennedy and Hoover but to the American public even the official policy of local containment rather than unlimited warfare seemed nothing short of treason. In the White House the President saw it as proof that all over the world the Communists were intent on bringing America to its knees. And it was a time when to the man in the street Joe McCarthy seemed the only hero he’d got left. Every shabby lie he uttered seemed to work, and his hatreds had become uncontrollable. It was Congressman Nixon who stopped the drunken McCarthy from physically beating up Drew Pearson in the men’s room of a Washington club. It wasn’t a good time for politicians or journalists.
It wasn’t too good for soldiers either. Unlike Eisenhower, MacArthur was not widely admired by fighting men, and in Washington the Joint Chiefs of Staff had realised as far back as January that the General had lost confidence in himself and was fast losing the confidence of his field officers and troops. By early March the President decided that it was time for a ceasefire and negotiations.
When MacArthur got his instructions from the President to this effect the General told the press that he would negotiate on his terms and offer Peking total annihilation. He then appealed to the House with scathing comments on the White House and the President. In the early hours of 8 April the President announced that the General had been relieved of all his commands.
Rarely had a President of the United States been so reviled. The public, frustrated by the war that no one could win, were up in arms. The flag was burned or flown at half-mast, effigies of Truman were burned in public places, clergymen reviled him from their pulpits and one Los Angeles newspaper suggested that the President was befuddled by drugs.
The returning MacArthur was invited to address the House and after his speech Representative Dewey Short of Missouri said—“We heard God speak here today.”
As the fighting in Korea ground on and settled to a bloody stalemate the public virtually ignored the far away war and turned its mind to what seemed to be an economic boom. The war’s only legacy seemed to be an even more zealous loathing of communists and fellow travellers. Mickey Spillane and his Mike Hammer novels epitomised the vigilante instinct for violence that seemed to be latent in every American. It sensed that the civilised West were helpless against the brute force of their enemies and maybe their hope lay with the violent men in their midst who weren’t afraid to take the law into their own hands. Even the more cautious who didn’t approve of McCarthy’s methods felt that maybe he’d got the right idea.
It was in June 1951 that the Atomic Energy Commission agreed to the financing of America’s first H-bomb plant. It looked as if the two world powers were testing each other out to see which one of them was most ready for World War III.
CHAPTER 38
Aarons was surprised when he saw the “For Rent” sign pasted in the window of Cowley’s shop but assumed that he was moving to larger premises.
Cowley came out from the back-room, a soldering-iron in his hand.
“Is business that good?” Aarons said, pointing at the sign.
“I’m closing down, chief. Moving out of New York.”
“Why?”
Cowley shrugged. “I’m tired of working for myself.”
“What about my work?”
“Have to call it a day. But you’ve got other radio people, haven’t you?”
“What makes you think that?”
“I’ve heard at
