The Redhunter (25 page)

Ever since Wheeling, screening and sorting the incoming mail was taking more than one hour. Mary Haskell paused over the letter
received that morning from Harry Bontecou. Impulsively, she walked into Joe’s office with it. “I think you should read this.”

He proceeded to do so.

“Hot stuff from the Ivy League, eh, Mary? Well, I tell you what: You answer it; you tell him to come on down to Washington,
and you interview him.” Joe smiled and resumed his examination of a huge folder.

She didn’t tell Mr. Harry Bontecou, when she called him on the phone, that it would be she, alone, who would be talking to
him. She thought to be diplomatic by setting up the interview for Saturday morning, when the office was officially shut and
the senator was elsewhere. It was more tactful that way. If the boss who has declined personally to interview the applicant
is during the interview sitting at the other end of the office, feelings get hurt. Giving him the impression that he would
meet and be interrogated by the senator, Mary told Harry that Saturday morning would be a very good day, “less hectic for
the senator.”

As arranged, Harry arrived at eleven. There was plenty of activity in the Senate Office Building. Young men and women, usually
carrying large briefcases, scurried back and forth, a few of their seniors entering and leaving offices, dodging men and women
with their cleaning materials. It was only May, but the temperature was summerlike, and Harry felt gratefully the refreshing
coolness of the Senate’s air-conditioned
office building, the envy of the occupants of the legion of federal office buildings not yet equipped with that postwar luxury.

He went by elevator to the second floor and walked down the hall to office number 212. On the outside of the door he examined
the polished brass plate.

Should he knock, he wondered? He did, but got no response. He tried the door. It was not locked. He walked in. There he saw
a wide expanse of desks, each with typewriter and telephone. On four or five desktops vast piles of papers and manila folders
were stacked. Two large sofas, the state flag of Wisconsin woven on the upholstered back of the larger of the two, were placed
near the entrance door, in front of them a coffee table. Copies of Senator McCarthy’s recent speeches and of editorials commending
his activities lay on the table. Harry could hear a typewriter clicking away behind a partition at the far end of the big
room. He was beginning to walk toward the sound when, from the recessed alcove, Mary Haskell appeared, her reading glasses
held around her neck by a slim yellow band, her gray hair slightly tousled, two pens attached to the pocket of her yellow
blouse.

“You’re Harry Bontekow?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s Bonte-KEW.”

“Sorry. … I’m Mary Haskell, the senator’s office manager. Let’s go over to the sofas. Nobody else is here to bother us. I’m
sorry to say that the senator is at the State Department; emergency meeting. But he will listen closely,” Mary smiled reassuringly,
“to what I have to say. You won’t be wasting your time.”

She sat down and positioned her glasses over her nose, her secretarial pad on her lap, and said—”Let’s begin, all right? Where
were you born?”

Mary Haskell wrote in shorthand, so there was little delay between answers and queries. Harry was surprised by the thoroughness
of the interview, and later gratified by it.

“Father?”

“Jesse Bontecou, deceased.”

“Profession?”

“He was a … scholar. But unattached to any university.”

“How did he make a living?”

“He wrote. Articles, reviews, and books. His field was poetry.”

“When did he die?”

“1943.”

“Of?”

“Heart.”

“Surviving family members?”

“Widow and one child. Me.”

“Sources of family support?”

“Poetry.”

“
Poetry?
”

“My father published a book called
Poetry to Live By.
”

Mary Haskell looked up. “I read that book in school.”

“Fortunately,” Harry smiled, “most people since 1937 read that book in school.”

“Other sources of income?”

“None.”

“Did your father’s estate provide for your schooling?”

“My father left no estate. Just the property in his book. The revenue from it goes equally to my mother and me. Most of my
schooling was paid by the GI Bill.”

“What is your annual revenue from the book royalties—you understand, Mr. Bontecou, we have to ask a lot of questions other
senators wouldn’t have to ask. We use the same preliminary interview form as the CIA. I was asking you about income.” She
returned to her pad.

“Last year, 1949, the royalties were just over twenty thousand. So my half was ten thousand.”

A half hour later, taking notes assiduously, she was questioning Harry about his activities at Columbia. A voice came in from
the other end of the long room, beyond her own office.

“Hey, Mary?” the voice called out.

Joe McCarthy had entered through the private entrance.

She rose quickly to intercept him, but McCarthy was halfway to them, charging in in characteristic stride, shoulders weaving
to one side then the other.

“Joe—Senator, this is Harry Bontecou. … I already apologized
to Mr. Bontecou, Senator, for your absence because of the State Department meeting.”

Mary Haskell had worked for Joe for four years. She knew how to flash signals to him. “We were just talking about his activities
at Columbia, after his service in the war and on Operation Keelhaul. It’s good that you were able to get away to meet Mr.
Bontecou personally. He’s down from New York.”

Joe caught all the pointers. He had been told by Mary 1) the name of the young man (three times). She had told him 2) what
excuse she had concocted to account for his absence. And that 3) young Bontecou had served in the war and attended Columbia.

Joe McCarthy off stage was pleasant by nature, and uninhibited. He took the hand of Harry, shook it vigorously, and plopped
himself down at the end of one of the couches. He looked at Harry but addressed Mary.

“Catch me up, Mary.”

“Mr. Bontecou, Senator—”

Harry interrupted. “I wish you’d call me Harry, Mrs. Haskell.” Harry smiled informally. At ease. “After all, Mrs. Haskell,
you know my life story.”

Joe smiled his own approval.

“Harry has graduated from Columbia, where he was editor of the student newspaper. He was very active in fighting the Wallace
for President movement in sophomore year.” She was scanning her notes. “He graduated with honors, won a battlefield commission
in January 1945, was wounded, decorated, and closed out his service by prodding the Russians—by sending them back to the Soviet
Union. You gave a speech about that, Senator.”

Joe interrupted her. “You believe in my cause, Harry?”

“That’s why I’m here, Senator.”

McCarthy trained his eyes on the young man, hesitated for only an instant, and then,

“Harry, let’s go to lunch.”

Joe spoke with animation about the trial ahead. He would need to convince an antagonistic Senator Tydings, chairman of the
investigating committee, that the loyalty/security situation in the State Department was “lousy” and “dangerous.”

“What you need to remember, Harry, is that what’s important to Tydings isn’t whether that’s so. What’s important to Tydings
is to discredit McCarthy. He’s figuring: If McCarthy is right, then that damages the Truman administration and McCarthy’s
critics.”

Mostly, Harry listened. But he interposed occasionally. He asked, “On your two hundred-odd cases, Senator, is there evidence
at hand that ties these people to any particular
deed?
I mean, to a memo obscuring reality to the benefit of the Communists, or obvious delinquency in passing up damaging information—I
mean, obviously, some activity this side of actual policy espionage.”

“In some cases, yes. In most cases, no. And of course there are two kinds of policy corrupters. The kind that says, Don’t
sell arms to Chiang Kai-shek because he’s a lost cause. And the kind who delay the delivery of authorized weapons to Chiang
Kai-shek. We’ve got to get both kinds.”

Harry nodded.

Suddenly McCarthy said, “Did you ever hear of Owen Lattimore?”

“State Department?”

“Not quite. A professor by background, Far East specialist. Never mind. You’ll be hearing a lot about him.” He paused. “You
know we’re losing the struggle, don’t you Harry?”

“I know we’ve had a lot of setbacks.”

McCarthy looked up at him and chuckled. “Yes, that’s right. A lot of setbacks is different from losing.”

He looked at the tall young man with the light brown eyes, dressed in a white shirt and light gray suit, a hint of a reciprocal
smile on his face. “When can you come to work for us, Harry?”

Jean walked into his office carrying a file. She intended to wait until Joe finished his telephone conversation but became
impatient. She wiggled her fingers in front of him. It worked:

“Hang on a second, Dick, Jeanie’s trying to tell me something.” McCarthy put his hand over the mouthpiece. “What is it, Jean?”

“Tell him Mother’s out of town and her big, roomy old Packard is sitting in the garage. Harry and I will pick you up, and
together we can go to the Senator’s, pick him up, and I’ll drive you all.”

McCarthy lifted his hand from the receiver. “Jeanie says let’s stop fightin’ about who will pick who up in what car: She’s
going to pick us both up.”

The date was made, after two postponements, and at eleven on Saturday morning, Jean Kerr at the wheel, Harry alongside her,
Joe McCarthy behind, the car stopped at an apartment house on Gunston Road in Alexandria, Virginia. She stayed in the car
while Joe went out and rang the buzzer. Harry opened the door and stood by. The audiophone sounded. “It’s me, Dick. We’re
downstairs.”

Five minutes later Richard Nixon walked out, dressed in a light summer gray suit and wearing a fedora. He had already met
Harry, whose hand he shook.

“We’ve been instructed to sit in the backseat,” McCarthy said.
Harry will sit up front with Jeanie, who knows the route. Chambers wrote me giving directions.”

“Hell, I know the way,” Nixon said. “I practically lived there during the Hiss trial.”

Whittaker Chambers—his story was by now very public—had joined the Communist Party in 1925 and, during the thirties, served
as an espionage agent for the Soviet Union, acting as courier for a ring that included Alger Hiss of the State Department.
In 1948 he had given testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, identifying Hiss as his coconspirator
ten years earlier, when Chambers had broken with the party and joined
Time
magazine, where he became a senior editor. Hiss had sued Chambers for libel, and a trial was held in New York, the point
of which quickly became less whether Chambers had libeled Hiss than whether Hiss had engaged in espionage. The jury was divided,
and a second trial ordered. This time, the jury found against Hiss, and the superliterate Chambers became the hero of the
anti-Communist community. He had exhibited his great learning as an editor, dared to challenge a bastion of the diplomatic
establishment, and prevailed in a judicial contest against dogged and well-financed forces that thought the vindication of
Hiss necessary to the validation of the New Deal. Chambers, dismissed from
Time,
had retreated to his farm in Westminster, declining almost every invitation to leave it or to receive visitors.

The two legislators talked in the backseat. Jean chatted with Harry. Occasionally McCarthy would consult Jean, who drove evenly
and waved at the cop guarding the crossing near Baltimore. She did not conceal her excitement over meeting the now-legendary
figure. “He’s supposed to be very polite,” she reassured Harry, who felt his own heartbeat accelerate as they neared Westminster.
Joe, seeking some show of approval from Chambers, as also perhaps his advice, had taken the initiative. He didn’t want to
appear as the guest of Richard Nixon, but he thought it wise to make him a part of the delegation. In his letter to Chambers
seeking permission to visit, McCarthy suggested that Nixon, who had stood by Chambers during the ordeal of his congressional
testimony and the suspense and agony of two trials, might like to be present at their meeting. Might he come, and might he
bring Jean Kerr and Harry Bontecou of his staff with him? “She is very good company and can take notes if ever you
want notes taken. And Harry is only twenty-three but has fought the wars since he was a lieutenant in Germany.”

Whittaker Chambers wrote back quickly. Yes, he said, do come with Miss Kerr and Mr. Bontecou. If Congressman Nixon can join
you, fine; if he is busy, come anyway. He enclosed driving directions. Jean had enjoyed their exactitude, and gave Chambers’s
letter to Harry, to read sentence by sentence as time came to turn onto different highways or roads.

“Let me tell you how to get here from Washington,” Chambers’s letter read.