No reply.
“I can’t be part of this, Simon.”
“I knew he was no Boy Scout. Not unlike several of the others.”
Simon’s tone — unconcerned, the same one Jack has always admired so much — repels him now. He isn’t ready for what he feels — not anger but a sagging disappointment. It’s as though he were seeing the world transform around Simon, bodies piling up. But Simon remains the same — the same half-smile, relaxed stance — knee-deep in blood. Jack says quietly, “I’m going to tell the police that I saw the boy on the road. I’m going to tell them I was in that car and I’m going to direct their inquiries to you.”
“Do you know what Project Paperclip is?”
“Did you hear me, Simon?”
“Ever hear of Operation Matchbox?”
Jack doesn’t answer.
“They’re related programs — classified, of course. The first is American. The second, Canadian. The Brits come and go as needed. Like Donald Maclean. You were right, Jack, I do have his old job. It involves liaising with the Americans, and targeting foreign scientists for recruitment by them. Although, in Maclean’s case, he was serving the wrong master.”
“And if these scientists happen to be war criminals, you turn a blind eye.”
“It’s true, a few required a little dusting off before they came stateside”—Jack hears him take a long drag off his cigarette, then exhale—“von Braun for one.”
The night has turned cold. Jack can see his breath. “What about von Braun?”
“Well he was rarely photographed in his SS uniform, but he was a Hauptsturmführer. A captain.”
“… A lot of them were forced to join.”
“I can’t picture anyone forcing von Braun to do anything.”
“Did he commit an actual crime?”
“I’ve seen minutes of a meeting that took place at Dora, attended by senior scientific, management and SS staff, including von Braun.” Simon speaks quickly but unhurriedly, a routine briefing. “They discuss bringing in additional French civilians to use as slaves, and they note the requirement that workers wear the striped concentration-camp uniform. No one is on record objecting. And if you look at the transcripts of the Dora war crimes trial, you’ll find the general manager on trial for mass murder. He mentions that von Braun was a frequent visitor to the factory and knew all about its operations, including executions.”
“The press should get hold of this.”
“They can’t. It’s been classified.”
Jack sees condensation from his breath on the black dial face of the phone. “But von Braun didn’t order executions—” he hears a foolish, plaintive note in his voice.
“Well that’s what they all said, but in von Braun’s case no doubt it’s true. Rudolph, however, is another story.”
“Arthur Rudolph?”
“Project director of NASA’s Saturn rocket program. He was head of production at Mittelwerk—”
“Mittelwerk?”
“Mittelbau. Sometimes referred to as Nordhausen, after the nearby town.”
“What are you talking about, Simon?”
“Dora. It was called anything but. Still is. What better way to confuse the enemy than by layers of ever-shifting bureaucratic nomenclature?”
“You knew all this.”
“It’s my job to know.”
Jack watches the fog gathering outside. Dimly visible beyond the aircraft hangars, the red light of the control tower blinks at regular slow intervals.
“The purpose of Paperclip is threefold,” Simon continues. “To deprive the Soviets of scientific expertise. To provide the West — usually via America — with scientific expertise. And three: to reward individuals who have enriched Western intelligence.”
“Reward Nazis.”
“In some cases,” says Simon. “Former Nazis. A number of them got to come to Canada. Lead quiet lives. You very discreetly welcomed them at the request of Britain or the U.S.”
“War criminals.”
“The fact is, most are completely harmless now. Pruning their roses, paying taxes. And they have no sympathy for Communists.”
“It doesn’t change what they did.”
“I quite agree. In a perfect world, they’d have hanged. Or gone to prison.”
Jack says nothing, annoyed by Simon’s exercise in relativism, and conscious that this imparting of classified information is a form of flattery aimed at co-opting him.
“It’s also different from the rat line,” says Simon. “The CIA ran that operation with the Vatican, funnelled a lot of these chaps, mainly to South America — genuine bastards. People like Barbie and Mengele. Their usefulness was purely intelligence, and I have my doubts about that, but there’s a big military-industrial complex here in the U.S. with a vested interest in keeping the military on tenterhooks; jockeying among the generals for bigger slices of the budget, a lot of competition among security agencies to see who can bring in the scariest bit of intelligence, the best defector, cock-and-bull about who has the most missiles, and a lot of them believe it too, all grist for the mill, good for business. It’s called threat inflation. But they damn well know who the enemy is and they do get things done, the Yanks.”
“Who runs Paperclip?”
“The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency. JIOA. Courtesy of the Pentagon.”
“An American operation designed to thwart American immigration laws, operating illegally in Canada. You’re subverting democracy.”
“We’re fighting to preserve it. At worst, we’re skeletons in the democratic closet.”
“You’re treating the public like the enemy, that’s what Communists do. And Fascists.”
“A number of senior American officers feel as you do. I heard one say he’d trade the whole pack of these former Nazis to the Soviets for a dish of caviar. And American scientists resent the plum jobs going to foreigners. There are even a few at your National Research Council in Ottawa.”
“Okay, Simon, I get it, but I’m not going to let that kid go to jail for a Nazi, I don’t give a damn how many of them we’ve got on our side now.”
“There’s a Soviet spy at the Marshall Space Flight Center.”
NASA. Jack waits.
“Fried has identified him. Fried will take up employment in the USAF missile program, then be seconded to Marshall. He’ll make contact with this individual and pose as a Soviet agent himself. He’ll feed the man false information to pass on to his handler.”
If Jack had heard this a week ago, he’d have been thrilled. Now he says, “You’re willing to let a boy go to jail so that we can confuse the Soviets?” Outside the booth an impenetrable fog has descended. Jack has lost sight of the red pulse of the control tower — he will be hard-pressed to find his way home.
“Our operation may involve American intelligence,” says Simon, “but at least they’re air force types. If the CIA get wind, they’ll move in on the Soviet mole, bag him, and it’ll be a notch on their belt, unless they decide to run him themselves as a means to get their foot more firmly in the door of the space program. No one wants that.”
“Forgive me if I can’t muster a whole lot of sympathy for your turf war, Simon. And even if I did keep quiet, I can’t control what Henry Froelich does.”
“If the cover is blown from our little mission, the Soviets won’t be the only ones to sit up and take notice.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’ll be out of my hands.”
“Who are you talking about? The CIA?”
“I’m simply saying that I can’t predict the outcome.”
What might the CIA do? Froelich is an immigrant. A Jew with leftist leanings. The McCarthy era is not so long in the past. Would they smear him? Get him deported? “The CIA isn’t authorized to operate in this country.”