The transcript goes on and on, eighty pages of it altogether. Mr. Holmes had, it appeared, stabbed the generalissimo in the back and lost China to the Reds. He was accused of being soft on communism, just like that parlor-pink Henry Wallace, who he supported for the presidency. John Rankin of Mississippi-probably the weirdest voice on the committee accused Mr. Holmes of being part of the Jewish-Red conspiracy that had crucified Our Savior. Richard Nixon of California kept asking after names-he wanted to know the people Mr. Holmes consulted with in the State Department so that he could do to them what he’d already done to Alger Hiss. Mr. Holmes didn’t give any names and pleaded the First Amendment. That’s when the committee really rose to its feet in righteous indignation: they mauled him for hours, and the next day they sent down an indictment for contempt of Congress. Mr. Holmes was on his way to the penitentiary.
He was going to prison, and he hadn’t committed a single crime.
“Jesus Christ. I’ve got to talk to Earl and David.”
“I’ve already advised you against that, Mr. Braun.”
“The hell with that. We’ve got to make plans.”
“Listen to him, honey.”
“The hell with that.” The sound of a bottle clinking against a glass. “There’s got to be a way out of this.”
When I got to Mr. Holmes’s suite, he’d been given a sedative and put to bed. Earl told me that Blythe and Tachyon had gotten their subpoenas and would arrive the next day. We couldn’t understand why. Blythe never had any part in the political decisions, and Tachyon hadn’t had anything to do with China or American politics at all.
David was called the next morning. He was grinning as he went in. He was going to get even for all of us.
MR. RANKIN: I would like to assure the Jewish gentleman from New York that he will encounter no bias on account of his race. Any man who believes in the fundamental principles of Christianity and lives up to them, whether he is Catholic or Protestant, has my respect and confidence.
WITNESS: May I say to the committee that I object to the characterization of “Jewish gentleman.”
MR. RANKIN: Do you object to being called a Jew or being called a gentleman? What are you kicking about?
After that rocky start, David’s pheromones began to infiltrate the room, and though he didn’t quite have the committee dancing in a circle and singing “Hava Nagila,” he did have them genially agreeing to cancel the subpoenas, call off the hearings, draft a resolution praising the Aces as patriots, send a letter to Mr. Holmes apologizing for their conduct, revoke the contempt of Congress citations for the Hollywood Ten, and in general make fools out of themselves for several hours, right in front of the newsreel cameras. John Rankin called David “America’s little Hebe friend,” high praise from him. David waltzed out, we saw that ear-to-ear grin, and we pounded him on the back and headed back to the Statler for a celebration.
We had opened the third bottle of champagne when the hotel dick opened the door and congressional aides delivered a new round of subpoenas. We turned on the radio and heard Chairman John Wood give a live address about how David had used mind control of the type practiced in the Pavlov Institute in Communist Russia; and that this deadly form of attack would be investigated in full.
I sat down on the bed and stared at the bubbles rising in my champagne glass.
The Fear had come again.
Blythe went in the next morning. Her hands were trembling. David was turned away by hall guards wearing gas masks.
There were trucks with chemical-warfare symbols out front. I found out later that if we tried to fight our way out, they were going to use phosgene on us.
They were constructing a glass booth in the hearing room. David would testify in isolation, through a microphone. The control of the mike was in John Wood’s hands.
Apparently HUAC were as shaken as we, because their questioning was a little disjointed. They asked her about China, and since she’d gone in a scientific capacity she didn’t have any answers for them about the political decisions. Then they asked her about the nature of her power, how exactly she absorbed minds and what she did with them. It was all fairly polite. Henry van Renssaeler was still a congressman, after all, and professional courtesy dictated they not suggest his wife ran his mind for him.
They sent Blythe out and called in Tachyon. He was dressed in a peach-colored coat and Hessian boots with tassels. He’d been ignoring his attorney’s advice all along-he went in with the attitude of an aristocrat whose reluctant duty was to correct the misapprehensions of the mob.
He outsmarted himself completely, and the committee ripped him to shreds. They nailed him for being an illegal alien, then stomped over him for being responsible for releasing the wild card virus, and to top it all of they demanded the names of the aces he’d treated, just in case some of them happened to be evil infiltrators influencing the minds of America at the behest of Uncle Joe Stalin. Tachyon refused.
They deported him.
Harstein went in the next day, accompanied by a file of Marines dressed for chemical warfare. Once they had him in the glass booth they tore into him just as they had Mr. Holmes.
John Wood held the button on the mike and would never let him talk, not even to answer when Rankin called him a slimy kike, right there in public. When he finally got his chance to speak, David denounced the committee as a bunch of Nazis. That sounded to Mr. Wood like contempt of Congress.
By the end of the hearing, David was going to prison, too. Congress adjourned for the weekend. Earl and I were going before the committee on Monday next.
We sat in Mr. Holmes’s suite Friday night and listened to the radio, and it was all bad. The American Legion was organizing demonstrations in support of the committee all around the country. There were rounds of subpoenas going out to people over the country who were known to have ace abilities—no deformed jokers got called, because they’d look bad on camera. My agent had left a message telling me that Chrysler wanted their car back, and that the Chesterfield people had called and were worried.
I drank a bottle of scotch. Blythe and Tachyon were in hiding somewhere. David and Mr. Holmes were zombies, sitting in the corner, their eyes sunken, turned inward to their own personal agony. None of us had anything to say, except Earl. “I’ll take the First Amendment, and damn them all,” he said. “If they put me in prison, I’ll fly to Switzerland.”
I gazed into my drink. “I can’t fly, Earl,” I said. “Sure you can, farm boy,” he said. “You told me yourself.” “I can’t fly, dammit! Leave me alone.”
I couldn’t stand it anymore, and took another bottle with me and went to bed. Kim wanted to talk and I just turned my back and pretended to be asleep.
“Yes, Mr. Mayer.”
“Jack? This is terrible, Jack, just terrible.”
“Yes, it is. These bastards, Mr. Mayer. They’re going to wreck us.”
“Just do what the lawyer says, Jack. You’ll be fine. Do the brave thing.”
“Brave?” Laughter. “Brave?”
“It’s the right thing, Jack. You’re a hero. They can’t touch you. Just tell them what you know, and America will love you for it.”
“You want me to be a rat.”
“Jack, Jack. Don’t use those kind of words. It’s a patriotic thing I want you to do. The right thing. I want you to be a hero. And I want you to know there’s always a place at Metro for a hero.”
“How many people are gonna buy tickets to see a rat, Mr. Mayer? How many?”
“Give the phone to the lawyer, Jack. I want to talk to him. You be a good boy and do what he says.”
“The hell I will. “
“Jack. What can I do with you? Let me talk to the lawyer.”
Earl was floating outside my window. Raindrops sparkled on the goggles perched atop his flying helmet. Kim glared at him and left the room. I got out of bed and went to the window and opened it. He flew in, dropped his boots onto the carpet, and lit a smoke.
“You don’t look so good, Jack.”
“I have a hangover, Earl.”
He pulled a folded Washington Star out of his pocket. “I have something here that’ll sober you up. Have you seen the paper?”
“No. I haven’t seen a damn thing.”
He opened it. The headline read: STALIN ANNOUNCES SUPPORT FOR ACES.
I sat on the bed and reached for the bottle. “Jesus.” Earl threw the paper down. “He wants us to go down. We kept him out of Berlin, for god’s sake. He has no reason to love us. He’s persecuting his own wild card talents over there.”
“The bastard, the bastard.” I closed my eyes. Colors throbbed on the backs of my lids. “Got a butt?” I asked. He gave me one, and a light from his wartime Zippo. I leaned back in bed and rubbed the bristles on my chin.
“The way I see it,” Earl said, “we’re going to have ten bad years. Maybe we’ll even have to leave the country.” He shook his head. “And then well be heroes again. It’ll take at least that long.”
“You sure know how to cheer a guy up.”
He laughed. The cigarette tasted vile. I washed the taste away with scotch.
The smile left Earl’s face, and he shook his head. “It’s the people that are going to be called after us-those are the ones I’m sorry for. There’s going to be a witch hunt in this country for years to come.” He shook his head. “The NAACP is paying for my lawyer. I just might give him back. I don’t want any organization associated with me. It’ll just make it harder for them later.”
“Mayer’s been on the phone.”
“Mayer.” He grimaced. “If only those guys who run the studios had stood up when the Ten went before the committee. If they’d shown some guts none of this would ever have happened.” He gave me a look. “You’d better get a new lawyer. Unless you take the Fifth.” He frowned. “The Fifth is quicker. They just ask you your name, you say you won’t answer, then it’s over.”
“What difference does the lawyer make, then?”
“You’ve got a point there.” He gave me a ragged grin. “It really isn’t going to make any difference, is it? Whatever we say or do. The committee will do what they want, either way.”
“Yeah. It’s over.”
His grin turned, as he looked at me, to a soft smile. For a moment, I saw the glow that Lillian had said surrounded him. Here he was, on the verge of losing everything he’d worked for, about to be used as a weapon that would cudgel the civil rights movement and anti-fascism and anti-imperialism and labor and everything else that mattered to him, knowing that his name would be anathema, that anyone he’d ever associated with would soon be facing the same treatment… and he’d accepted it all somehow, saddened of course, but still solid within himself. The Fear hadn’t even come close to touching him. He wasn’t afraid of the committee, of disgrace, of the loss of his position and standing. He didn’t regret an instant of his life, a moment’s dedication to his beliefs.
“It’s over?” he said. There was a fire in his eyes. “Hell, Jack,” he laughed, “it’s not over. One committee hearing ain’t the war. Were aces. They can’t take that away. Right?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“I better leave you to fix your hangover.” He went to the window. “Time for my morning constitutional, anyway.”
“See you later.”
He gave me the thumbs-up sign as he threw a leg over the sill. “Take care, farm boy.”
“You too.”
I got out of bed to close the window just as the drizzle turned to downpour. I looked outside into the street. People were running for cover.
“Earl really was a Communist, Jack. He belonged to the party for years, he went to Moscow to study. Listen, darling”-imploring now-“you can’t help him. He’s going to get crucified no matter what you do.”
“I can show him he ain’t alone on the cross.”
“Swell. Just swell. I’m married to a martyr. Just tell me, how are you helping your friends by taking the Fifth? Holmes isn’t coming back to public life. David’s hustled himself right into prison. Tachyons being deported. And Earl’s doomed, sure as anything. You can’t even carry their cross for them.”
“Now who’s being sarcastic?”
Screaming now. “Will you put down that bottle and listen to me? This is something your country wants you to do! It’s the right thing!”
I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I went for a walk in the cold February afternoon. I hadn’t eaten all day and I had a bottle of whiskey in me, and the traffic kept hissing past as I walked, the rain drizzling in my face, soaking through my light California jacket, and I didn’t notice any of it. I just thought of those faces, Wood and Rankin and Francis Case, the faces and the hateful eyes and the parade of constant insinuations, and then I started running for the Capitol. I was going to find the committee and smash them, bang heads together, make them run gabbling in fear. I’d brought democracy to Argentina, for crissake, and I could bring it to Washington the same way.
The Capitol windows were dark. Cold rain gleamed on the marble. No one was there. I prowled around looking for an open door, and then finally I bashed through a side entrance and headed straight for the committee room. I yanked the door open and stepped inside.
It was empty, of course. I don’t know why I was so surprised. There were only a few spotlights on. David’s glass booth gleamed in the soft light like a piece of fine crystal.
Camera and radio equipment sat in its place. The chairman’s gavel glowed with brass and polish. Somehow, as I stood like an imbecile in the hushed silence of the room, the anger went out of me.
I sat down in one of the chairs and tried to remember what I was doing here. It was clear the Four Aces were doomed. We were bound by the law and by decency, and the committee was not. The only way we could fight them was to break the law, to rise up in their smug faces and smash the committee room to bits, laughing as the congressmen dived for cover beneath their desks. And if we did that we’d become what we fought, an extralegal force for terror and violence. We’d become what the committee claimed we were. And that would only make things worse.
The Aces were going down, and nothing could stop it. As I came down the Capitol steps, I felt perfectly sober. No matter how much I’d had to drink, the booze couldn’t stop me from knowing what I knew, from seeing the situation in all its appalling, overwhelming clarity.
I knew, I’d known all along, and I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t.
I walked into the lobby next morning with Kim on one side and the lawyer on the other. Earl was in the lobby, with Lillian standing there clutching her purse.
I couldn’t look at them. I walked past them, and the Marines in their gas masks opened the door, and I walked into the hearing room and announced my intention to testify before the committee as a friendly witness.
Later, the committee developed a procedure for friendly witnesses. There would be a closed session first, just the witness and the committee, a sort of dress rehearsal so that everyone would know what they were going to talk about and what information was going to be developed, so things would go smoothly in public session. That procedure hadn’t been developed when I testified, so everything went a little roughly.
I sweated under the spotlights, so terrified I could barely speak-all I could see were those nine sets of evil little eyes staring at me from across the room, and all I could hear were their voices, booming at me from the loudspeakers like the voice of God.
Wood started o$; asking me the opening questions: who I was, where I lived, what I did for a living. Then he started going into my associations, starting with Earl. His time ran out and he turned me over to Kearney.
“Are you aware that Mr. Sanderson was once a member of the Communist party?”
I didn’t even hear the question. Kearney had to repeat it. “Huh? Oh. He told me, yes.”
“Do you know if he is currently a member?”
“I believe he split with the party after the Nazi-Soviet thing.”
“In 1939.”
“If that’s what, when, the Nazi-Soviet thing happened. ‘39. I guess.” I’d forgotten every piece of stagecraft I’d never known. I was fumbling with my tie, mumbling into the mike, sweating. Trying not to look into those nine sets of eyes.
“Are you aware of any Communist affiliations maintained by Mr. Sanderson subsequent to the Nazi-Soviet pact?”
“No.”
Then it came. “He has mentioned to you no names belonging to Communist or Communist-affiliated groups?” I said the first thing that came into my head. Not even thinking. “There was some girl, I think, in Italy. That he knew during the war. I think her name was Lena Goldoni. She’s an actress now.”
Those sets of eyes didn’t even blink. But I could see little smiles on their faces. And I could see the reporters out of the corner of my eye, bending suddenly over their notepads. “Could you spell the name, please?”
So there was the spike in Earl’s coffin. Whatever could have been said about Earl up to then, it would have at least revealed himself true to his principles. The betrayal of Lillian implied other betrayals, perhaps of his country. I’d destroyed him with just a few words, and at the time I didn’t even know what it was I was doing.
I babbled on. In a sweat to get it over, I said anything that came into my head. I talked about loving America, and about how I just said those nice things about Henry Wallace to please Mr. Holmes, and I’m sure it was a foolish thing to have done. I didn’t want to change the Southern way of life, the Southern way of life was a fine way of life. I saw Gone With the Wind twice, a great picture. Mrs. Bethune was just a friend of Earl’s I got photographed with. Velde took over the questioning.
“Are you aware of the names of any so-called aces who may be living in this country today?”
“No. None, I mean, besides those who have already been given subpoenas by the committee.”
“Do you know if Earl Sanderson knows any such names?”
“No.”
“He has not confided to you in any way?”
I took a drink of water. How many times could they repeat this? “If he knows the names of any aces, he has not mentioned them in my presence.”
“Do you know if Mr. Harstein knows of any such names?” On and on. “No.”
“Do you believe that Dr. Tachyon knows any such names?”
They’d already dealt with this. I was just confirming what they knew. “He’s treated many people afflicted by the virus. I assume he knows their names. But he has never mentioned any names to me.”
“Does Mrs. van Renssaeler know the existence of any other aces?”
I started to shake my head, then a thought hit me, and I stammered out, “No. Not in herself, no.”
Velde plodded on. “Does Mr. Holmes-” he started, and then Nixon sensed something here, in the way I’d just answered the question, and he asked Velde’s permission to interrupt. Nixon was the smart one, no doubt. His eager, young chipmunk face looked at me intently over his microphone.
“May I request the witness to clarify that statement?”
I was horrified. I took another drink of water and tried to think of a way out of this. I couldn’t. I asked Nixon to repeat the question. He did. My answer came out before he finished.
“Mrs. van Renssaeler has absorbed the mind of Dr. Tachyon. She would know any names that he would know.” The strange thing was, they hadn’t figured it out about Blythe and Tachyon up till then. They had to have the big jock from Dakota come in and put the pieces together for them. I should have just taken a gun and shot her. It would have been quicker.
Chairman Wood thanked me at the end of my testimony. When the chairman of HUAC said thank you, it meant you were okay as far as they were concerned, and other people could associate with you without fear of being branded a pariah. It meant you could have a job in the United States of America.
I walked out of the hearing room with my lawyer on one side and Kim on the other. I didn’t meet the eyes of my friends. Within an hour I was on a plane back to California.
The house on Summit was full of congratulatory bouquets from friends I’d made in the picture business. There were telegrams from all over the country about how brave I’d been, about what a patriot I was. The American Legion was strongly represented.
Back in Washington, Earl was taking the Fifth. He announced that he’d simply paraphrased the Fifth and would continue to refuse any answer, they cited him for contempt.
He was going to join Mr. Holmes and David in prison. People from the NAACP met with him that night. They told him to disassociate himself from the civil rights movement. He’d set the cause back fifty years. He was to stay clear in the future.
The idol had fallen. He’d molded his image into that of a superman, a hero without flaw, and once I’d mentioned Lena the populace suddenly realized that Earl Sanderson was human. They blamed him for it, for their own naivete in believing in him and for their own sudden loss of faith, and in olden times they might have stoned him or hanged him from the nearest apple tree, but in the end what they did was worse.
They let him live.
Earl knew he was finished, was a walking dead man, that he’d given them a weapon that was used to crush him and everything he believed in, that had destroyed the heroic image he’d so carefully crafted, that he’d crushed the hopes of everyone who’d believed in him…e carried the knowledge with him to his dying day, and it paralyzed him. He was still young, but he was crippled, and he never flew as high again, or as far.
The next day HUAC called Blythe. I don’t even want to think about what happened then.
They didn’t just listen to the Fifth and then let him go. They asked him one insinuating question after another, and made him take the Fifth to each. Are you a Communist? Earl answered with the Fifth. Are you an agent of the Soviet government? The Fifth. Do you associate with Soviet spies? The Fifth. Do you know Lena Goldoni? The Fifth. Was Lena Goldoni your mistress? The Fifth. Was Lena Goldoni a Soviet agent? The Fifth.
Lillian was seated in a chair right behind. Sitting mute, clutching her bag, as Lena’s name came up again and again. And finally Earl had had enough. He leaned forward, his face taut with anger.
“I have better things to do than incriminate myself in front of a bunch of fascists!” he barked, and they promptly ruled he’d waived the Fifth by speaking out, and they asked him the questions all over again. When, trembling with rage,
Golden Boy opened two months after the hearings. I sat next to Kim at the premiere, and from the moment the film began I realized it had gone terribly wrong.
The Earl Sanderson character was gone, just sliced out of the film. The Archibald Holmes character wasn’t FBI, but he wasn’t independent either, he belonged to that new organization, the CIA. Someone had shot a lot of new footage. The fascist regime in South America had been changed to a Communist regime in Eastern Europe, all run by oliveskinned men with Spanish accents. Every time one of the characters said “Nazi,” it was dubbed in “Commie,” and the dubbing was loud and bad and unconvincing.
I wandered in a daze through the reception afterward. Everyone kept telling me what a great actor I was, what a great picture it was. The film poster said Jack Braun -A Hero America Can Trust! I wanted to vomit.
I left early and went to bed.
I went on collecting ten grand per week while the picture bombed at the box office. I was told the Rickenbacker picture was going to be a big hit, but right now they were having script problems with my next picture. The first two screenwriters had been called up before the committee and ended up on the blacklist because they wouldn’t name names. It made me want to weep.
After the Hollywood Ten appeals ran out, the next actor they called was Larry Parks, the man I’d been watching when the virus hit New York. He named names, but he didn’t name them willingly enough, and his career was over.
I couldn’t seem to get away from the thing. Some people wouldn’t talk to me at parties. Sometimes I’d overhear bits of conversation. “Judas Ace.”
“Golden Rat.”
“Friendly Witness,” said like it was a name, or title.
I bought a Jaguar to make myself feel better.
In the meantime, the North Koreans charged across the 38th Parallel and the U.S. forces were getting crunched at Taejon. I wasn’t doing anything other than taking acting lessons a couple times each week.
I called Washington direct. They gave me a lieutenant colonel’s rank and flew me out on a special plane.
Metro thought it was a great publicity stunt.
I was given a special helicopter, one of those early Bells, with a pilot from the swamps of Louisiana who exhibited a decided death wish. There was a cartoon of me on the side panels, with one knee up and one arm up high, like I was Superman flying.
I’d get taken behind North Korean lines and then I’d kick ass. It was very simple.
I’d demolish entire tank columns. Any artillery that got spotted by our side were turned into pretzels. I made four North Korean generals prisoner and rescued General Dean from the Koreans that had captured him. I pushed entire supply convoys off the sides of mountains. I was grim and determined and angry, and I was saving American lives, and I was very good at it.
There is a picture of me that got on the cover of Life. It shows me with this tight Clint Eastwood smile, holding a T-34 over my head. There is a very surprised North Korean in the turret. I’m glowing like a meteor. The picture was titled Superstar of Pusan, “superstar” being a new word back then.
I was very proud of what I was doing.
Back in the States, Rickenbacker was a hit. Not as big a hit as everyone expected, but it was spectacular and it made quite a bit of money. Audiences seemed to be a bit ambivalent in their reactions to the star. Even with me on the cover of Life, there were some people who couldn’t quite see me as a hero. Metro re-released Golden Boy. It flopped again.
I didn’t much care. I was holding the Pusan Perimeter. I was right there with the GIs, under fire half the time, sleeping in a tent, eating out of cans and looking like someone out of a Bill Mauldin cartoon. I think it was fairly unique behavior for a light colonel. The other officers hated it, but General Dean supported me-at one point he was shooting at tanks with a bazooka himself-and I was a hit with the soldiers.
They flew me to Wake Island so that Truman could give me the Medal of Honor, and MacArthur flew out on the same plane. He seemed preoccupied the whole time, didn’t waste any time in conversation with me. He looked incredibly old, on his last legs. I don’t think he liked me.
A week later, we broke out of Pusan and MacArthur landed X Corps at Inchon. The North Koreans ran for it. Five days later, I was back in California. The Army told me, quite curtly, that my services were no longer necessary. I’m fairly certain it was MacArthur’s doing. He wanted to be the superstar of Korea, and he didn’t want to share any of the honors. And there were probably other aces-nice, quiet, anonymous aces-working for the U.S. by then.
I didn’t want to leave. For a while, particularly after MacArthur got crushed by the Chinese, I kept phoning Washington with new ideas about how to be useful. I could raid the airfields in Manchuria that were giving us such trouble. Or I could be the point man for a breakthrough. The authorities were very polite, but it was clear they didn’t want me.
I did hear from the CIA, though. After Dien Bien Phu, they wanted to send me into Indochina to get rid of Bao Dai. The plan seemed half-assed-they had no idea who or what they wanted to put in Bao Dai’s place, for one thing; they just expected “native anticommunist liberal forces” to rise and take command-and the guy in charge of the operation kept using Madison Avenue jargon to disguise the fact he knew nothing about Vietnam or any of the people he was supposed to be dealing with.
I turned them down. After that, my sole involvement with the federal government was to pay my taxes every April.
While I was in Korea, the Hollywood Ten appeals ran out. David and Mr. Holmes went to prison. David served three years. Mr. Holmes served only six months and then was released on account of his health. Everyone knows what happened to Blythe.