“Take that as agreed.”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“Who knows about this?”
“You, me, Truman, Serov, Hancox and Truman’s friend Abe Karney.”
“Who will know the on-going details?”
“Just you, me and the President. The others are already out of the picture. But when you talk with the President it will just be the two of you. Nobody else will know what you’ve both talked about. I shan’t ask you what you talked about, neither will anyone else. I’ll just be a messenger for both you and him when either of you wants a meeting.”
CHAPTER 40
For months the press had been full of scandals that conjured up new words like “call-girls” and “party girls,” who were used by business to get contracts and favours. But when President Truman announced that he would not run again for the Presidency it seemed to trigger an onslaught by the Republicans on the corruption of the government itself. It had been no secret that the President appointed old friends to government office at many levels. And now the word to describe them was “cronies” which implied that their misdeeds were accepted by the President as fair rewards for old friends.
Day after day the press revealed graft and corruption at all levels of the administration. Sometimes subcommittees were set up to investigate. The most prestigious of these was the Fulbright committee which the President had said was “asinine.” But day after day in the Senate Caucus Room the President’s cronies were exposed as lining their pockets at the public’s expense. It showed that even officials of the Bureau of Internal Revenue were indictable for conspiracy to defraud the government.
The Republican campaign was so ruthless that even such men as Dean Acheson, and General Marshall who was entirely non-political, were targets for the attacks. The General was a public hero, beyond criticism and that was considered a threat by the Republicans. When McCarthy charged Marshall with “a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man,” there were even Republicans who thought that maybe the campaign had gone too far. But the campaign of calumnies continued. The public no longer responded to the gutsy little man from Missouri. His courage and honesty were obvious but his judgement seemed to be flawed.
The door of the house was ajar and Malloy led Aarons up the stone steps and when they were inside Malloy closed the door behind them. A few moments later Malloy introduced Aarons to Abe Karney. He gave no name, just introduced him as “my friend.” Karney asked no questions but led them upstairs to a small room that had been converted into a study, its walls lined with shelves of books.
On a side table was a thermos of coffee with a jug of cream, a bowl of sugar and cups and saucers. There were several bottles of mineral water and beside a tray of plates with an assortment of sweet biscuits was a telephone. He was told that it would be at least an hour before his visitor arrived. There was a pile of the day’s newspapers on a trolley and Karney had told him to make himself at home. His visitor was unlikely to detain him for more than half an hour but he was not to leave the house himself until Karney gave him instructions.
There was a table with four chairs, two leather armchairs and a couch that looked as if it were sometimes used for taking a nap. When he was alone Aarons took a book from a shelf and sat reading it at the table. It was John Gunther’s Inside USA. He had sold several secondhand copies at the shop and had read it when it was first published in 1947. After ten minutes randomly turning the pages and reading brief items he put the book aside. He had asked Malloy how the meeting would be structured and Malloy had said that it was not intended to be structured. In fact it wasn’t even a meeting. It was just two men chatting.
Aarons wondered what Truman would want to know. And he wondered what questions he should put to the President. The more he thought about it the more unrealistic it all seemed. What on earth was he doing here? An illegal refugee Jew from Moscow about to have a clandestine meeting with the most powerful man in the United States. He had read about Truman’s background but it was of little help. He had no idea of how a man from such a humble, everyday background got to be the President of the United States. In the Soviet Union he would have to have some sort of power-base. A trades union, the military, an ethnic group or long service as a party organiser. Truman had been a shop-keeper, a haberdasher, and not even a successful one. He’d gone into local politics but wasn’t a charismatic personality. And local politics in Missouri were notoriously corrupt. How did such a patently honest man survive, let alone succeed, with such a background?
Then he heard car doors banging and voices in the street below the window. He walked to the window and looked down through the net curtain. There were two limousines and two police motorcycles. He saw Malloy’s friend walk down the steps and stand at the gate. The two cars were side by side on the quadrangle beside the house. Two men got out of the first car and looked around slowly and carefully and then one of them leaned down and opened the rear door of the car without taking his eyes away from the area. He saw a short man with a tweed fisherman’s hat and a heavy overcoat get out of the back seat of the car. He walked towards the gate where Malloy’s friend was waiting. The light from a street lamp reflected briefly on his glasses. It was Truman. He turned to give a
