Max Collins - Majic Man

“Sorry to hear that-that’s what Forrestal had, and look how he ended up.”

“You might want to keep that in mind.”

I gave him the most awful grin I had in me as I kept the gun trained on him. “Good for you, Doc. Getting cute like that’s the first step, in coming out from behind your mask. Where was I? Ah-the other brilliant thing about the saucer cover-up is that the witnesses-and their tampered-with memories-will fall into the lunatic fringe, and any reporters who cover the story-like Pearson-will look like saps. I mean, I’ve figured out what’s going on, but I still can’t be sure who’s a disinformation disseminator, and who’s a mind-controlled witness. Can’t tell the players without a scorecard, but then, of course, in the end it doesn’t matter.”

Bernstein’s voice was both soothing and condescending as he said, “A symptom of your illness, Mr. Heller, is the inability to differentiate between speculative fantasy and hard reality. In short, fascinating as this may be, it is as preposterous as, well, flying saucers … and there’s nothing here you can prove, and if there were, who would you prove it to?”

“I’ve proved it to myself,” I said. “To my own satisfaction. The certainty is in my head and my gut. I have no doubt that you worked your sick magic on me. I left Roswell, having heard ridiculous stories about spacemen from all sorts of people, Maria included, yet came away with a strong conviction that what I’d heard was true! After my stay at the guesthouse, I believed in flying saucers, all right; I even had a sort of vision of a pale, benign spaceman, in my dreams, soothing me with his suction-cup fingertips. But then it finally occurred to me, Doc … I admit to being a little slow on the uptake, here … but outer space creatures don’t usually have German accents.”

Bernstein didn’t have anything to say to that-no perfect clipped English response at all.

Now Maria was looking Bernstein’s way, as she said, “Mr. Heller says that Forrestal was murdered.”

“That’s his most ludicrous statement yet,” Bernstein snorted. “Why would the upper echelons of the United States government murder a celebrated former Secretary of Defense?”

I said, “The government didn’t kill Forrestal-you did, Doc … or rather, we did, you and I.”

He laughed, once. “Did you help me, or did I help you?”

“James Forrestal was a threat because he was feeling guilty about sanctioning our government’s collaboration with Nazis; further, he was genuinely mentally ill, and capable of either disintegrating in public, or going public with what he knew, neither of which was particularly desirable. Jim Forrestal was one of your classic men who knew too much, a nightmare of a security risk. Various steps were taken, including leaking forged Majestic Twelve files to Drew Pearson to throw the press off the trail of the real Majestic Twelve, which apparently had to do with saucer experimentation via Nazi collaboration, not unidentified objects from outer space. But however you cut it, Forrestal had to go-not in the government’s opinion, though I’m sure there will be as much relief in private as there is mourning in public. No, this was your call, Doc, protecting your own Aryan ass. Exposure of the extent of our government’s Nazi collaboration could lead to a second series of Nuremberg-like trials; your cushy new life, your Caddy, your house, your prestigious position, it would all go up like so much smoke out an Auschwitz chimney.”

“Nurse Selff,” Bernstein said, his tone temperate, the gaze he gave her radiating reasonableness, “please know these are the ramblings, the ravings, of a very diseased mind.”

“Like me, Maria,” I said, “you were this bastard’s unwitting accomplice. You were still working the Roswell disinformation project, not realizing the good doctor was putting the Forrestal kill in motion.”

Bernstein snapped, “I was nowhere near that hospital when Mr. Forrestal took his life!”

Gun steady on him, I said, “Neither was I, Doc, but we killed him together, just the same.”

Confused, Maria asked, “How is that possible, Nathan?”

“The doc here was well aware that I was a veteran of hypnosis therapy, that my battle-fatigue amnesia had been cured by hypnotherapy, in fact. So he knew I’d make a good subject, easily controlled, by a combination of, well … sex-that’s, uh, your role, Maria … and of course a visit to the base guesthouse. Either before or just after my guesthouse stay, back at Bethesda the doc prepped Forrestal to be receptive to posthypnotic suggestion; how exactly the doc achieved that, narcosis, hypnosis … well, he’s the magician, not me.”

Maria asked, in a hushed voice, “What do you think happened to you in the guesthouse?”

“Well for one thing-and this much you do know, Maria-I was a guest at the base longer than I’d been led to believe … don’t play dumb, baby, that doesn’t become you, either. You told me, when I fell asleep at your bungalow, that I’d slept straight through, losing a day … but really I’d only slept through that one night. Right?”

Chagrined, she nodded.

“You even gave me a posthypnotic suggestion yourself, didn’t you, Maria? Per the doc’s instructions, when you said, ‘You must be very tired, very tired, very tired.’”

“That is true,” she admitted, sending an accusing glare Bernstein’s way.

“That had nothing to do with Forrestal,” he told her emphatically.

I shook my head. “It had everything to do with him, Doc. You had, what, a day, a day and a half to work your magic on me, in that guesthouse? Including giving me the posthypnotic suggestion to buy that book of poetry for Forrestal. I vividly remember, Doc, you repeating the phrase on the phone, twice: ‘A book of poetry would be comforting.’ As if that wasn’t enough, you advised me to tell Forrestal that I, his trusted associate, had been secretly working for his nemesis, Drew Pearson, making a damn good case for that being a good idea, while in reality anticipating that my disclosure would help create in Forrestal the right suicidal mind-set.”

Now some desperation had found its way into Bernstein’s voice and his demeanor, as he turned to the nurse. “Maria, do you realize how preposterous all of this is? Do you see now that Mr. Heller is suffering from a complete mental breakdown?”

Maria said nothing.

I said, “Funny thing is, Doc, after I looked the crime scene over? I figured somebody had sneaked in and murdered Forrestal … and I was right: I did. I was the murderer who sneaked into Bethesda to kill Forrestal-I just didn’t know it. I didn’t know that that book I handed him was as lethal as poison gas.”

Bernstein said, flatly, “Forrestal threw himself out a window. Nothing changes that.”

“Yeah, I gave Jim Forrestal my thoughtful gift, that book of poetry, and I must’ve also passed along a posthypnotic suggestion to him-when was that, Doc, when I said, ‘I thought you’d find a book of poetry comforting,’ something like that? Anyway, thanks to the doc’s manipulation of my meager subconscious, I passed on the posthypnotic suggestion that made Forrestal get out of bed in the middle of the night, read that uplifting suicide poem you’d programmed him to read, Doc-and when Forrestal hit the crucial, guilt-inducing word-nightingale-he followed doctor’s orders and got some fresh air, trying to hang himself but succeeding instead in just throwing himself out the pantry window.”

Maria frowned, the big dark blue eyes tensed with curiosity. “Why ‘nightingale’?”

“Well,” I said, “in the original German, it’s Nachtigall, right, Doc? A guy named Teddy Kollek told me about it-you ought to get together with him, Doc, with your mutual interest in Palestine. Anyway, Operation Nightingale was a particularly ugly act of collaboration that Forrestal approved, subsidizing Ukrainian anti-Communist guerrillas who during the war were a Nazi execution squad, responsible for the mass slaughter of thousands of Jews. Not a bad guilt trigger for a man who felt he’d betrayed his country through such associations.”