Max Collins - Majic Man

“Disinformation-government lies posing as the truth. Sort of like when you published that story about Forrestal’s cowardice in that jewel robbery.”

His eyebrows rose, and so did his homburg. “Then let’s suppose it’s not misinformation … disinformation, as you put it, black propaganda-let’s say you and your Roswell witnesses are right: a saucer crashed in the desert, with a crew consisting of beings from another planet….”

“Let’s say.”

Pearson’s voice grew hushed, like a scoutmaster telling his boys a ghost story around a campfire; he was driving slowly now, as we circled Honest Abe, as if the Buick were running out of gas-but Pearson sure wasn’t.

“Now let’s think about Jim Forrestal’s behavior,” he said, “from July 1947 until today, a frazzled individual already suffering from the civilian equivalent of battle fatigue, saddled with a wife herself ill with alcoholism and schizophrenia. Put in the hands of that ticking time bomb of a man-a man charged with the safety of his country-such momentous new information, such a consequential new responsibility …”

I laughed, once. “You mean, picture Jim Forrestal as one of the few key members of government who knows we’ve had a visit from outer space.”

He nodded emphatically; the facial tic jumped. “Yes, from creatures whose intentions are unknown to us, and, coming out of this recent devastating war as we have, wouldn’t it be natural for Secretary of Defense Forrestal to consider hostile objectives a likely possibility? Suppose … just suppose now, Nathan … that Jim Forrestal’s paranoia isn’t really directed at Mother Russia.”

“Maybe he’s spooked not by the Reds, but the Red Planet Mars, you mean?”

“Precisely. Maybe the ‘they’ he thinks are out to get him are little gray or green or silver men. Maybe the invasion he’s running in the streets announcing is not from the Soviet Union, but from beyond the stars?”

“Yeah, put that in your column. Go with that. And I’ll be visiting you at Bethesda.”

Suddenly he pulled over, almost opposite the steps up to the memorial. “Nathan, you’re going to see Forrestal today, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, never mind the poetry, man! Ask him about Roswell. Ask him about Majic-12.”

For all its granite grandeur, the U.S. naval hospital at Bethesda had its cramped aspects; its four wings were rather small, and the floors of its impressive, impractical tower provided limited patient space. The air-conditioned, disinfectant-scented sixteenth floor had a modest capacity of thirteen; only ten patients were currently in residence, however, as the former Secretary of Defense occupied 1618, a large, square double room from which the second bed had been removed, with the smaller adjacent room reserved for doctors and orderlies assigned twenty-four-hour watch on their important patient.

After checking in with the Navy medical corpsman who sat watch outside his door, I found Forrestal seated by the window, draped rather elegantly in a burgundy silk dressing gown with a yellow rope-style, fringed sash, legs crossed, exposing cream-color pajamas and brown leather slippers. All he lacked was an ascot. Smoking his trademark pipe, sitting back in a padded wooden chair, iron-gray hair neatly cut, clean-shaven, arms folded, entirely self-composed, he was staring out the window at a view of the hospital’s busy driveway and landscaped grounds.

The room seemed even larger than it was, due to that second bed’s absence, and conveyed a sterile emptiness; the walls were a faint peach color, and the sparse furnishings included a writing desk, a couple chairs, a nightstand and a hospital bed, cranked into upright position. A curtain gathered at the wall indicated where the double room would be divided, when not occupied by such an illustrious guest. Forrestal had been here, what? Seven weeks now? So there were no flowers, though on a small table against the right wall countless “Get Well” cards stood like little soldiers.

I’d stepped just inside the room, hat in hand. “Jim? It’s Nate.”

Still seated, the rather small man glanced my way and his Jimmy Cagney-like face, with its boxing-flattened nose, regarded me blankly for an instant, before the pencil-line mouth broke into the widest smile I’d ever seen him bestow. He almost leapt to his feet and charged over to meet me midway, where we shook hands, his grip as firm as ever.

“Nate Heller,” he said. His eyes were bright, his manner ebullient. “I’d been hoping you’d stop by, at some point, on this pleasure cruise.”

I tossed the paper bag with the poetry book in it on his nightstand, next to another book, Peace of Faith by Fulton J. Sheen.

“You look fine,” I told him. “How much more of this resting up can you stand?”

“Dr. Raines says within a month I’ll be walking out of here.” Forrestal pulled a chair up for me, opposite his, by the window, and we both sat; I noticed the window had been fitted with a heavy steel screen, the security-style that locked with a key. He noticed me noticing.

“That’s to keep me from jumping out the window,” he said cheerfully, teeth tight around the pipe stem. “That and the ’round-the-clock surveillance. Interesting way to treat a man with symptoms of paranoia, don’t you think? Watch him constantly?”

I had to smile. “I hear paranoia is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

His eyes tightened. “True enough, and I have no complaint about the medical treatment I’ve received, but I do resent, bitterly, the nonsensical extremes these restrictions have been carried to … and not entirely for my own benefit, in my opinion.”

“What do you mean, Jim?”

He gestured rather forcefully with the pipe. “This is not paranoia speaking, Nate, nor schizophrenia or any other mental disorder. These psychotherapy sessions, which were on a daily basis until recently, served to inspire me to do my own self-analysis of the feelings of persecution that brought me to this room. Do you remember, at the golf course, when we talked briefly about religion?”

“Sure, that I was a Jew but didn’t follow the faith, and you’d been raised Catholic and had rejected it.”

He sat forward, his eyes intense. “Yes. I believe I’ve long harbored a guilt, however deeply buried, for rejecting the faith my mother worked so diligently to instill within me. I’ve wondered if, perhaps, the root cause of my troubles is my break with the Church, that I’ve been punished … or have punished myself … for being a bad Catholic. Consequently, I’ve found myself working my way back to my boyhood faith.”

I nodded toward his nightstand. “I noticed the book by Monsignor Sheen.”

“I bring this up, Nate, not by way of soul-searching, but to demonstrate that, even with my thinking clear again, I’m more convinced than ever I’m being watched, controlled.”

Until he’d made this statement, I’d been feeling good about Forrestal’s condition; but now my neck was starting to tingle.

He must have sensed that and his smile was somewhat chagrined. “No, not by Russians, or Zionists, Nate-by my own government.”

Now that I could believe.

Folding his arms again, he sat back, took a few puffs of the pipe, then spoke with clarity and confidence. “My brother Henry, who’s been to visit me frequently, cherishes this rekindling of my Catholicism, and consequently has asked my doctors to allow a priest-a Father Sheehy-to visit me. And they have refused.”

“Why in hell?” What sort of doctor denied a mental patient the guidance and solace a visit by a clergyman might bring?

Forrestal arched an eyebrow. “I asked both Dr. Raines and Dr. Bernstein, and their answers were the same: reopening the Catholic issue, at this time, would be too ‘disquieting’ to me.”