jets.”
Development of the British Meteor jet lagged well behind the ME-262. “I hope so,” said Galland. “If not, we might as well have blown them up on the runway.”
CHAPTER 24
Natalie Holt responded impatiently to the sound of the doorbell. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and she was up and about cleaning the large apartment. Ordinarily on a holiday like the Fourth of July she would be preparing to visit friends, and she still intended to see her mother later in the day, but so much of the time this morning was being spent in busywork to keep her mind off of how much she missed Steve Burke.
“I’m coming,” she hollered, and she heard a muffled masculine response. She opened the door a crack and saw the grinning face of Special Agent Paul Forbes.
“Can I come in?”
Natalie opened the door. Forbes had been with her when they had discovered Walter Barnes’s suicide, and the shared experience had helped an easy bond to form. The fact that neither was too fond of his boss, Tom Haven, was another plus. She noted he was wearing a dark business suit on Independence Day, so the visit was not social.
“Paul, unless I miss my bet, today is Wednesday, the Fourth of July. I know there’s a war on, but don’t you people get any time off at all?”
“Rest is only for the wicked. Not good guys like me.”
Natalie offered coffee, which he accepted, and she slightly regretted that she was dressed so casually in old white tennis shorts and a T-shirt that said U.S. Navy. She had been mopping the floor, not preparing to be a hostess.
“I’m assuming the obvious, Paul, that your visit is official and rather in a rush.”
“Very true on both counts. I got a call at home about an hour ago from your favorite lecher, Agent Tom Haven, who informed me that I had to leave my wife and children and see you immediately, Fourth of July or no Fourth of July.”
“How charming. About what? Have you discovered another closet homosexual or unrepentant socialist in the State Department?”
“I hope not. I want to talk about Steven Burke.”
Natalie was shocked. “Good lord, why? He hasn’t gotten into any trouble, has he?”
The only thing she could think of was that he might have blabbed something. It seemed unlikely. Steve understood the need for secrecy as much as she did. The only reason they talked about their mutual interest in the Soviet Union was that both had equal security clearances. Even his letters, which implied that he was doing something important for Eisenhower since he hadn’t returned with Marshal, had been appropriately circumspect.
Forbes shrugged. “I admit it’s a possibility, but not a very good one. If he was in trouble, he would be under guard, if not arrested, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation on a holiday. Frankly, Natalie, I really don’t know the reason for either the questions or the haste. I was just told to do a quick review and do it now. I think there is the possibility that he might be being considered for higher clearances than he now has.”
“I thought he was as high as he could be.”
“Nope, within security clearances, there are degrees within degrees. Now, let’s get this done so I can go home and burn hamburgers. How long have you known him and so forth?”
Natalie quickly answered all the statistical questions, and Forbes wrote her responses on a small pad. She stumbled at only one point. “Paul, I just realized I don’t know his birthday.”
Forbes laughed. “September twelfth. He’ll be forty-one. Some girlfriend you are.” He put down the pencil. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask this next question. Have you slept with him?”
“Paul, he’s in his forties and I’m in my thirties. Neither of us is a virgin.” Although, she thought, he might have been. “The answer is yes. Now, does that make him an immoral and degenerate reprobate?”
“I’d say it makes him damned lucky.”
Natalie laughed. Thank God even that pig Haven had enough sense to send the easygoing Forbes to ask questions like that.
“Natalie, this next line of questioning is a little more serious. In your opinion, why was he so interested in the Soviet Union in the first place? After all, not very many middle-class, Midwestern academics find the subject interesting. With your Russian ancestry, your interest is obvious, but the reason for his is somewhat more vague, and we’d like to know more about it.”
“Are you concerned that he might be a spy for Stalin? I can assure you he finds both the man and his regime to be highly repugnant. As to why he studied it, he told me he found the Russian Revolution to be one of the most dramatic events of this century, perhaps in several centuries. In his opinion, it ranks up there with the French Revolution of 1789 for its potential impact on the world; and, by the way, there are a lot of people still studying that ancient phenomenon, the French Revolution. It intrigued him and the more he studied, the more intrigued he became.”
Barnes put away his notes. “Sounds like what I expected. A harmless academic nut with the most beautiful woman in town as a girlfriend.”
Natalie laughed, then turned serious. “I cannot believe how paranoid the FBI is about people who are different. What they did at work to some very good people was awful.”
“I can’t argue that too much, and I sure as heck can’t say anything publicly, but I largely agree with you. By the way, I’m sorry you didn’t get the position vacated by your boss Barnes’s death. I guess the State Department isn’t ready for a woman in management.”
“Thanks, but I’ll live. It was what I expected. There are a lot of people unready for women in power. But I’m still angry at the way your FBI hounded that poor man who was already being beaten up psychologically by the Russians. Why is Hoover so afraid of homosexuals? From the rumors I’ve heard, he’s not always walked the straight and narrow in that regard himself.”
Barnes flushed and looked over his shoulder as if someone might be eavesdropping on them in her living room. “Natalie, there are some things in this world that we just don’t talk about.”
“Okay, I get the message. But I still don’t understand all the attacks on people who experimented with communism back in the twenties and thirties, and even later when the Russians were our Allies.”
Barnes helped himself to more coffee. “Natalie, I know a little about the Russian Revolution too. I know the cruelty of the old regime made revolution as inevitable as rain on a cloudy day, and that the Bolsheviks stole it from the majority, who wanted a less radical form of government. I also understand how people in the depths of despair caused by our Depression could be seduced by a theology that seemed to promise food, shelter, and dignity to people who had none. While a lot of my colleagues disagree, I can see that those people’s motives were caused by frustration and hunger.”
He shook his head. “They are the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t see the evil that Stalin had become, and the ruthless manner in which the revolution was enforced. Hell, you know as well as I do that many of those American workers who joined the Communist Party could barely read. All they saw was the glitter of hope and not the substance. You know that some of them even went over to Russia to work in their factories and most of them have returned? Well, a few of them are still there, either because they still believe, or because a couple of wars have trapped them in a strange land.
“But it’s the other type, the academics and the scientists who were highly educated, intelligent, and, therefore, should have known better. They read the theories of Marx and Lenin, but they closed their eyes when they heard about the massacres committed by Lenin and then Stalin. When hundreds of prominent people disappeared, they should have wondered, and even a dunce could have seen that the trials of so many were charades leading to death. But while many of them left the Communist movement disillusioned and really are of only minor concern to us, a number of others didn’t quit. They are totally unrepentant and rationalize their beliefs by saying that the excesses are either lies or just growing pains, like the Terror in the French Revolution. They feel that communism will, in the end, prevail and create a classless paradise in which people will be free to learn and
