“Yes.”

“You don’t think you should tell me what it is?”

“Mother, are you going to put Johnny up for the Presidency at the convention next year?”

“Raymond, shall we make your friend a colonel or not? I don’t think Johnny can make it for the Presidency. I may go after the number-two spot.”

“Will you enter him in the primaries next spring?”

“I don’t think so. He has too much strength for that. I don’t think I need any popularity contests for Johnny. Now—about the negative side of the major.”

Raymond folded his hands neatly before him on the table. “He’s been in Army psychiatric hospitals twice in the past year.”

“Oh, that’s all,” she drawled sarcastically and shrugged. “And all the time I thought it might have been something which could present a problem. My God, Raymond! A psycho! Have you ever seen what that looks like when it’s stamped across a personnel file?”

“It’s not what you might think, Mother. You see, due to an experience in Korea, a very vivid experience, he has been suffering from recurring nightmares.”

“Is that right?”

“What happened to him could give anyone nightmares. In fact, it might even give you a nightmare or two after you hear it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s quite a story and I’m involved in it up to my ears.”

Her voice picked up a cutting edge. “How are you involved?” she asked.

He told her. When he had finished explaining that Marco had decided to demand his own court-martial to prove falsification and collusion in conjunction with the conferment of that Medal of Honor, savoring each word and each shocked look on his mother’s face with great and deep satisfaction, she was the color of milk and her hand trembled.

“How dare he?”

“Why, Mother, it is his duty. Surely you can see that?”

“How dare the contemptible, psychoneurotic, useless, filthy little military servant of a—?” She choked on it.

Raymond was startled at the intensity of her attack. She brought her fist down on the tabletop with full force from two feet above it, in full tantrum, and the glasses, plates, and silver jumped and a full water pitcher leaped into the air to crash to the floor. Everyone in the dining room turned to stare and some stood up to look. A waiter dashed toward the table and went to his hands and knees, fussing with the sopping carpet and the fragments of heavy glass. She kicked him in the thigh as she sat, with vicious vigor. “Get out of here, you miserable flunky,” she said. The waiter stood up slowly, staring at her, breathing shallowly. Then he left abruptly. She stood up, breathing heavily, with sweat shining on her upper lip. “I’ll help your friend, Raymond,” she said with violence in her voice. “I’ll help him to defame and destroy an American hero. I’ll cheer him as he spits upon our flag.” She left him there, striding rapidly through knots of people and attendants, shouldering some. Raymond stared after her, knowing he had lost again but not knowing what he had lost. But he was not dismayed, because losing was Raymond’s most constant feeling.

She went to the manager’s office in the hotel. She brushed past his secretary and slammed the door behind her. She said she was the wife of Senator John Yerkes Iselin and that the two people then meeting with the manager, two barber-pinked businessmen each wearing a florid carnation, would oblige her by leaving the room. They excused themselves and left immediately, vaguely fearful of being proved Communists. She told the manager that it would be necessary to use his office and his telephone and that it would be necessary for her to have utter privacy as she would be talking about an emergency matter with the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, and that she would greatly appreciate it, in fact she would regard it as a patriotic service, as would indeed her husband, Senator Iselin, if he were to go to the telephone switchboard in person and direct the placement of the call to the Secretary, reversing the charges, and standing by at the operator’s shoulder to make sure there was no eavesdropping on the call, a natural and human tendency under the circumstances.

Raymond paid the check and wandered about the lobby looking for his mother. He concluded that she had left so he went out of the hotel on the Fifth Avenue side, deciding to walk back to his office. When he reached the office he found a message to call Army Intelligence in New York. He called. They asked if he could help them locate Major Bennet Marco. Raymond said he believed Major Marco was presently at his apartment, as he was visiting him in New York. They asked for the telephone number. He gave it to them, explaining that they were not to give it to anyone else, then felt silly having said such a thing to professional investigators. He got busy after that on a call from the governor’s press secretary and the three check-up calls that were made necessary by that call. When he called Ben at the apartment there was no answer. He forgot about it. That night, when he got home at six twenty-two, he found a note from Ben thanking him and saying that his indefinite sick leave had been canceled and that he had been recalled to Washington. The note also urged Raymond not to question Chunjin in any way after he came out of the hospital.

In Naples, in the summer of 1958, in discussing the most powerful men in the world with Leonard Lyons, the expatriate Charles Luciano had said: “A U.S. Senator can make more trouble, day in and day out, than anyone else.” The condition as stated then had not changed perceptibly a year later.

Fourteen

WHEN LIEUTENANT GENERAL NILS JORGENSON had awakened that morning, a celebrant of his fortieth anniversary in the United States Army, he had been euphoric. When he left the office of the Secretary and the further presence of the Army’s Congressional liaison officer, he was dismayed, cholerically angry, but mostly horrified. The general was a good man and a brave man. He locked the doors when he and Marco were alone in his office, then demanded that Marco confirm or deny that Marco had planned to request a court-martial of himself to enforce a public investigation of circumstances involving a Medal of Honor man. Marco confirmed it. The general felt it necessary to tell Marco that he had known Marco’s father and grandfather. He asked Marco what he had to say.

“Sir, there is only one person in the world with whom I have discussed this course and that was Raymond Shaw himself, at his apartment last night, and it was Shaw, sir, who urged the course and originated the conception. May I ask who has made this accusation to the Secretary, sir? I cannot understand how—”

“Senator John Yerkes Iselin made the accusation, Major. Now—I offer you this because of your record and the record of your family. I offer you the opportunity to resign from the Army.”

“I cannot resign, sir. It is my belief, sir, that the Medal of Honor is being used as an enemy weapon. I—if the general will understand—I see this as my duty, sir.”

The general walked to the window. He looked out at the river for a long time. He went to a casual chair and sat down and he leaned far, far forward, almost bent double, staring at the floor for a long time. He went to his desk and took a chewed and battered-looking pipe from its top drawer, plugged tobacco into it, lighted it, and smoked furiously, staring out of the window again. Then he went back to the desk and sat down to stare across at Marco.

“You not only will not get the court-martial but I am advising you that you will have no rights of any kind.” He snorted with disgust. “On my fortieth anniversary in the Army I find myself telling an American officer that he will have no rights of any kind.”

“Sir?”

“Senator Iselin is the kind of a man who would work day and night to block the entire defense appropriation if he were crossed on a matter as close to him as this. Senator Iselin is capable of wrecking the entire military establishment if an investigation of his stepson’s glorious heroism were permitted to go through. He would undertake a war upon the United States Army which would be far more punishing and ruinous than any ever inflicted by any enemy force of arms in our history. To convey to you the enormity of the responsibility you carry, I have been ordered to tell you this, and it violates everything I stand for. Under orders, I will not threaten you.” His voice trembled. “If you persist in urging your court-martial for the purpose of examining Raymond Shaw’s right to wear the Medal of Honor, you will be placed in solitary confinement.”