Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“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.”

No answer.

“Simon. It’s murder. The boy could hang.”

A hard silence at the other end of the line. The kind that takes a piece out of your fuselage in the night. Finally Jack adds, “That’s the worst-case scenario.”

“I’ll tell you what the worst-case scenario is, Jack,” and Simon’s tone is still reasonable. “A number of our people — brave people, agents-in-place — begin dying in the Soviet Union, far from your precious conscience. Fried’s information about Soviet intentions and capabilities vis-à-vis their strategic missile program — test results, blueprints, organizational structure — becomes worthless; the press has a field day with the story of Nazis at NASA and government funding is cut, crippling our bid for the moon, to say nothing of the implications for Western intelligence, and the fight for supremacy in certain technologies that keep you safely at your fucking barbecue.”

“Yeah, well Simon, I’m here and you’re not, and so is Fried. I just have to make one call and he’ll be picked up so fast—”

“Fried is long gone, mate.”

Of course. Jack takes the humiliation. “When?” he asks, adding, “I know you won’t tell me that, just tell me, was he already gone the other day when I offered to look in on him?”

“Afraid so.” Simon’s tone is almost apologetic.

Jack reaches up and leans his hand against the cold glass.

After a moment, Simon says quietly, “Jack, the reason I came to you with this mission is that I’ve learned to trust very few people,” and it’s the voice of a friend again. “I don’t care what their security clearance is or where they’re from. Some of the worst offenders are among my own countrymen. I wouldn’t ask you to cross the street for Oskar fucking Fried. We’re not doing this for him.” He sighs. “This war — the one we’re engaged in now — makes me pine for the last one. Any fool can die for his country, Jack.”

“I don’t happen to think forty thousand Canadians were fools.”

“I’m not belittling the sacrifice made by my friends and yours — by my younger brother, for Christ sake. I’m pointing out that you and I don’t have the privilege of fighting and dying. We have to live, and we have to make decisions — we had to make decisions in the last war too but they weren’t all secret. The guilt and the bullshit and the triumph were shared and we called it duty….” Jack can’t talk about the last war. He was and was not there. I don’t have the right to talk about it . And those who do have the right almost never talk about it at all. “Then one day the shooting stopped and we called it victory. We demobbed and went back to work, got married, had children and we called it peace. But it isn’t quite. And you’re right in the middle of it.”

“Simon, I manage an organization that teaches people how to manage organizations. I drive a station wagon, I love my wife, I’m not in the middle of a damn thing.”

“You’re in it, lad. You’re on ops now, whether you like it or not.” Simon’s tone brightens. “You know we bombed the shit out of the German war industry. The Ruhr night after night — you should’ve been there, mate, you were robbed.” Is he being sarcastic now? “You know I went to Peenemünde.” I went to Peenemünde . Jack knows enough to translate: I beat the odds and survived a bombing mission. Target: Peenemünde . “We bombed the hell out of Hitler’s V-2 rockets—”

“That’s for sure.”

“So they moved underground, got a lot of slaves, worked them to death at Dora, starved them, hanged them, bloody good show.”

“That wasn’t our fault.”

Simon continues, his voice calm — Jack realizes he is furious. “When we bombed Hamburg, thousands of people died. I was in on that one, we dropped incendiaries, fluorescent bombs along with the old blockbusters, and what was down there? Civilians. We killed them just as surely as if we’d lined them up and shot them into a pit, and we won the war either because of it or in spite of it, I suspect in spite because I know who rebuilt their cities, the bloody women did, brick by brick, and how are you going to defeat that? But we got rid of Hitler, didn’t we, and what’s bothering me, Jack, is that Stalin killed more civilians than Hitler did, but Germany is a different place now and Russia is not. And I’m asking you — your country, your goddamn civilization, is asking you to maybe, perhaps, sacrifice the life of one boy — and very probably not his life, merely his freedom — in the interests of peace, in the interests of a number of scientific advances that could make the difference between survival and annihilation, in the interests of your daughter. You bloody fool.” Simon falls silent. When he speaks again, he no longer sounds angry. Merely sad. “I killed hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. But I didn’t do it secretly and I never saw a single victim. You don’t at that height, it’s called the morality of altitude. And I got a medal for it. You are being asked to jeopardize one person. The difference is, you know him. I didn’t know the women rushing to the shelters when the sirens went, I didn’t know their children, who died under buildings or stuck to the roads when the tar melted, I didn’t know the people in the hospitals and churches, or the ones who ended up in the canal, I don’t delude myself that they deserved what they got and I don’t indulge in a lot of pointless guilt and virtuous hindsight. I did my fucking duty, Jack. It’s time you did yours.”