Allegiance (25 page)

This one belongs to Spain, according to its flags. The promised crowd mills outside; black cars drop off passengers. I take Clara's hand and lead her toward the door. “Stay close to me,” I say. “We'll have to hoof it if they figure out what's up.”

“Of course,” says Clara. Her voice is skeptical, but she leaves her hand in mine.

There is a row of functionaries at the door. “Senator Lucas will be along in a moment,” I say, shaking hands. “Last-minute vote.” I move down the line. “Cloture motion. Filibuster.” It is working just as Pearson promised. I am developing a smooth rhythm, barely looking up from the hands. Clara is right behind me. “Appropriations,” I say. “Hearings.”

“Why, Mr. Harrison.” I stop cold. The voice is familiar. It matches the hand I am holding, delicate and feminine. I look up into a pair of attractive dark eyes. “So glad you could make it.” She lays her other hand atop mine and leans forward. In an instant I remember her from Cissy's party. “I regret we can offer you no Fish House Punch. But you may learn to enjoy sangria.”

I feel my face flush. From Clara there emanates a speculative silence. When we are through the line she turns to me. “Tell me,” she says. “Do we have to hoof it now?” She digs two stiff fingers into my ribs. “What a gangster you are,” she says. “You had an invitation.”

It is true. “Just as backup,” I say.

“Of course,” says Clara. “Still, it makes the venture a little less risky, wouldn't you say? Makes you cut a slightly less dashing figure, maybe?”

I am starting to steam again. The girl has a genius for putting me in the wrong. “It's not my fault I was invited.”

“No. But to pretend to me that you were not . . . I suppose I should be flattered. You wanted to put on a show for me. You were trying to impress. Does that excuse it?” She lifts a glass of champagne from a passing tray and takes a meditative sip. “Were you nervous, trying to pass for something you are not?”

I don't know what to say. “It was just fun.”

“Yes,” says Clara. There is something wistful in her smile. “It was fun.” She sips her champagne again. “Well, I will see you later.”

“What?”

“You seem to have friends here already. I am going to see if I can make new ones.”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT,” SAYS
Francis Biddle. He does not look up from his desk. “These are American citizens living outside the evacuated military areas. There is no legal authority to bring them back to the camps, and I will not send the FBI to do it.”

There goes my information on Bendetsen, I think. Yet I am not entirely disappointed. Indeed, I am feeling something like pride in Biddle. “John Hall says the War Department thinks they're security risks.”

Biddle raises his eyes to meet mine for the first time. “This doesn't come from John Hall.”

“I just talked to him.”

Biddle shakes his head. “John Hall confuses domination with nobility, which he was taught at Episcopal and again at Harvard. The lesson was available at Groton, too, for those who wished to learn.” He shrugs. “It is one view of aristocracy. My mother raised me to be gallant, which to her meant protecting one's people. I hope to have enlarged the compass of my sympathy. As for Hall, he likes working with the Army. He likes the feeling that they will do what is necessary, that he shares the ruthlessness of the righteous. But I've known him his whole life. He would not on his own set out to hunt down citizens cleared by the Relocation Authority. This comes from Karl Bendetsen.”

My heart leaps at the name. “Why would Bendetsen want it?”

“Bendetsen built his program on the premise that loyalty could not be
determined. He's against anything that would call that into question. Eventually it will be undone, of course. General DeWitt is a fool and an embarrassment, and the War Department has finally realized that. He's not in charge of the Western Defense Command anymore; they've kicked him upstairs to the Staff College. The new generals will be more reasonable.” He looks down again at the papers in front of him.

“Why do you think Bendetsen pushed this program in the first place?” I ask.

Biddle shakes his head. “I do not know. Possibly he believed it was necessary. Possibly he saw a chance to prove his loyalty and zeal, to overcome his origins or to curry favor with DeWitt. His rise has been rapid.”

“So what should I tell Hall?”

Biddle looks up one more time. His eyes meet mine and hold them. “Tell him this department will not participate in an action that has no basis in the laws or Constitution of this land.”

• • • • 

So the swap with Hall is off. Still, I am making progress. Back in my office, I spend more time with Rowe's files. I am pulling out all of Rowe's descriptions of intergovernmental meetings and putting them in order. And I can see the story of evacuation is not what I thought it was. Working on the
Hirabayashi
curfew case, I'd thought the program was generally agreed to be necessary. That was what the government briefs said. But now I can see that was not the case. There was a struggle among the departments, a fight between War and Justice.
January 4, 1942
, Rowe writes.
Meeting with Bendetsen and General DeWitt at the Presidio in San Francisco. Bendetsen claims radio transmitters operating on coast.
There is a useful fact, a token of disloyalty I remember from the amicus brief of the Pacific states. Rowe has marked it with a handwritten marginal note:
FCC RID 42-107. ONI Ringle
. His narrative continues.
Wants warrantless searches of Japanese homes. “For a warrant, you have to show a reason. We don't want to show a reason.” Refused.

But Bendetsen is not done.
January 30, 1942. Meeting with Bendetsen. Wants Bainbridge Island Japanese arrested. Told him unconstitutional, can't be done to citizens.

February 1, 1942. Bendetsen unannounced at Biddle's office with McCloy.
Jack McCloy, I think, Assistant Secretary of War. I do not know him personally, but he is a Philadelphian, and as Judge Skinner once said to me, we keep track of each other.
Biddle: DOJ will have nothing to do with detention of citizens. Unconstitutional. McCloy: You put a Wall Street lawyer in a hell of a box, but if safety of country at stake, Constitution just a scrap of paper.

I flip the pages, looking for more Bendetsen. Through February, Rowe lobbies Biddle, congressmen, anyone who will listen. Hoover backs him up. Bendetsen is spreading hysteria, they say. There is no evidence that sabotage is threatened.
February 15, 1942. Drafted letter from Biddle to FDR. Special interests pushing for evacuation, no military necessity.
Rowe is marshalling his forces. He sounds optimistic, almost happy. He does not know how it will end.

But I do.
February 17, evening. Meeting at Biddle's house. Ennis, Bendetsen, McCloy. Explained constitutional difficulties. Bendetsen pulled out draft Executive Order authorizing evacuation of coast. “Crazy,” I said. Biddle wouldn't look at me. Authorized it yesterday.
Rowe is too angry to speak, he writes. Biddle keeps his eyes on the floor and tells them to prepare the order for the President's signature. FDR has already approved. “Do what you need to,” he said. “Be as reasonable as you can.” In the taxi on the way back to Justice, Rowe considers resignation. Ennis talks him out of it. There will be lawsuits. Someone has to write the briefs.

And James Rowe wrote them, doing the best he could with the facts he had. It must have been an unpleasant job, but he did his duty. A loyal soldier.

I still cannot understand why he left his files in such confusion. I sit for a moment mulling it over, frowning into space. Rowe was trying to make it hard to reconstruct his thinking, I guess. But why would he do that? Or was he trying to confuse someone else, under whose eyes he was working? And in another flash of insight, I realize why the notes sound odd. There is nothing in there about the role of the man who told me to get the facts. Nothing about Edward Ennis.

“Kanno?”

The voice startles me out of reverie. When I look up, Ennis has poked his head around the doorframe. I look at him in silence and he steps into the
office, closing the door behind him. “Minoru Kanno,” he repeats. “What about him?”

Again there is a challenge in his voice, and it pricks me with annoyance. That, and his use of Kanno's first name. “The guy at Leupp is Masuo Kanno,” I say. “And you should let him go.”

Ennis nods, his face expressionless. “Yamaguchi?” he asks.

I hesitate.
Do you want to find who killed your friend?
Frankfurter asked.
Or to be fair to someone you will never see?
If I say we should hold Yamaguchi, it may prove my loyalty. It may let me get the information I need to find Gene's killer. I would be sacrificing Yamaguchi for my purposes, but they are good purposes, and if he's released from Leupp he will just be going back to Rohwer, to another camp. I open my mouth to tell Ennis we should keep him at Leupp.

But I can't. At Rohwer, Yamaguchi will at least be back with his family. “Let him go,” I say.

Ennis looks quizzical. “Really?”

“Really,” I say. I strive to put conviction in my voice. “If we hold the ones we don't have anything on, the courts won't trust us for the ones we do have evidence against.”

“And what if we don't have evidence against any of them?”

I hold his eyes. “Then I guess we let them all go.”

“You guess wrong.”

“What?”

“What are we going to say? We made a mistake? We don't know what we're doing? We're at war, Cash. Is that the kind of message you want to send to our citizens, to our enemies?”

“When did this become about sending a message?”

Ennis shrugs. “We're not letting them go. Actually, they're all going to Tule Lake. We're shutting Leupp down. It was a public relations nightmare.”

“Then why did you ask me?”

Now he gives me a smile, though it is not one I would call nice. “Just got the news this morning. And I wanted to see what you'd say.” He turns to leave, pausing at the threshold. “Made any progress on the facts?”

“There doesn't seem to be much in Rowe's notes,” I say.

“Oh,” says Ennis. “I wonder why that would be.”

“The Pacific states made a stronger argument. I might start there.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

He is giving me nothing. “It was a funny thing,” I say. “Don't you think? Rowe getting drafted like that?”

“Yeah,” says Ennis. “A laugh riot.” Now there is open hostility in his eyes.

“Okay,” I say. “Well, I'll get to work on those facts.”

I look at the door for a long moment after he has gone. Rowe put nothing in his notes about Ennis because he expected Ennis to read them. Or perhaps Ennis has been through the files already, removing the mentions of his role. Perhaps he's the one who put in the wheat market analysis, throwing sand in my eyes.

It doesn't seem completely right, as I think about it. But surely I will learn more about Ennis in the days ahead. About Bendetsen there is no doubt. That is the lead to pursue, and the time has come to take advantage of my institutional resources. I pick up the phone. “How are you coming with the prints?” I ask Clyde Tolson.

“We are searching our files. There is no match yet. We will continue to look.”

“And you'll let me know if anything comes up?”

“Of course, Mr. Harrison.” There is a different tone to Tolson's voice. I am a Special Assistant to the Attorney General now, toiling in the same vineyard. I do not know if I outrank him, for he is an Assistant Director and can boast a closer relationship to Hoover than I have to Biddle. But when he calls me “Mr. Harrison” it sounds as though he is addressing a colleague, not sneering at a street punk. I find that I like it.

The news that they have failed to match the foreign print is less welcome, but not surprising. It tends to support my theory that the killer was one of the clerks, someone gone now with no way to trace him. Perhaps Hoover was right; perhaps they should all be printed. But the FBI has more to offer.

“I've got another question,” I say. I do not know if Tolson will help, but it seems worth a try.

“What is it?”

“Do you have a file on Karl Bendetsen?”

“I am not familiar with the name,” Tolson says. He does not sound surprised at the request; perhaps it is more common than I'd supposed.

“He's an Army colonel,” I say. “An aide to General John DeWitt. And one of the architects of the Japanese evacuation.”

“Ah,” says Tolson. “He has most likely undergone a background check. We have files on many people, Mr. Harrison, and if we do not, we can open one. We will let you know in either case.” There is something unsettling about his calm assurance. For a moment I wonder what they might have on me, and who might ask for it. But I put the thought aside. There is work to be done.

Half an hour later a young man comes to my office with a manila folder. I recognize him as FBI before he identifies himself as Special Agent Miller. There is a type, at least here at Main Justice: clean-shaven and well-muscled under the white shirt, dark hair parted on the left.

“From the Assistant Director,” he says. I thank him and open the folder.

Karl Bendetsen is from Aberdeen, Washington. Weatherwax High School, Stanford University, Stanford Law. He is Jewish but likes to conceal that fact, a practice he started as an undergraduate seeking to join Theta Delt. From law school he went back to Aberdeen and local practice. He married his secretary. In 1940 he joined the army as a lawyer with the Judge Advocate General's Corps. He changed the spelling of his name, originally Bendetson, and began claiming Danish heritage. He became an aide to General DeWitt and a specialist on the threat of enemy aliens and native fifth columns. After Pearl Harbor, he stayed awake for forty-eight hours, setting out in memos the government's power to respond. Two months later he completed a recommendation for the evacuation and detention of American citizens of Japanese descent. He was promoted to full colonel the same day that recommendation was accepted. No known subversive tendencies or associates; no known sexual deviancy.