Robert Coover - Public Burning

But maybe they were all wrong. Maybe the case constructed against the Rosenbergs had been a complete fabrication, beginning to end, maybe Greenglass was the Herbert Philbrick of this investigation and he’d simply fucked it up, had had to agree to the invented meeting with Gold in order to validate many years of otherwise fruitless effort, save the Old Man’s job. Or worse: maybe even the FBI didn’t know what had happened. Maybe the whole trial had been just an elaborate smoke screen thrown up by the Phantom to conceal the real ring. Perhaps Gold, wilier than anyone had thought, had surrendered to throw the FBI off the track, and the Rosenbergs, innocent of the spying but in on the cover-up, had constructed their tenacious defense to waste Uncle Sam’s energies and draw the FBI into a blind alley. Maybe they were even supposed to have pleaded guilty but chickened out at the last moment — certainly this would explain why until a few months ago they’d been completely disowned by the Communist press and abandoned by their old left-wing friends. So was that it, a calculated deflection? A bit crackpot maybe — or as TIME would say, psychoceramic — but even those clowns over at the FBI had noticed Rosenberg’s “quixotic behavior,” once they’d shown themselves and let him know they were on his tail: they’d reported that he’d continued to traffic with the very characters who later got arrested with him, had made ludicrously elaborate preparations for other people to escape while lingering on himself, had made all manner of furtive and suspicious moves while at the same time bragging openly to complete strangers about his undercover exploits. The FBI planted informers in jail with him after he was arrested and following his conviction, and even there he kept right on blabbing away. In effect, in order to satisfy themselves he was indeed the man they wanted, they’d had to conclude he was a nut. Maybe he was. That story he allegedly told the passport photographer about Ethel inheriting an estate in France was pretty far out after all, nearly as good as Harry Gold’s invented family. Providing Rosenberg had ever actually said such a thing: there were a lot of lively imaginations in the FBI, too. But to me all that “quixotic behavior” looked more like a snow job by a couple of con artists, two experienced actors diverting the overeager G-men’s (and later the whole nation’s) attention away from the real thing.

In short, they seemed to be taking the rap for somebody else. Yes, I was convinced of this now. Maybe they knew who this somebody else was, maybe they didn’t, but this was what I had to find out. I could only guess. Maybe Sobell and Greenglass had talked them into it. Maybe even their supposed antipathy toward David had been feigned, David getting the tragic part, as it were. Maybe they’d been conned into thinking such a ring existed and were taking the rap for nobody. Pawns in a Cold War maneuver that only Uncle Sam and/or the Phantom knew about. Maybe their own lawyer was setting them up — Bloch, I knew, was close to a lot of hardline Commie causes and had helped to orchestrate the publicity on the case in the Red press, maybe he’d masterminded the whole thing. Whatever the case, they’d convinced me of two things: they weren’t who or what the FBI said they were, but they did know something, even if they’d only got it, like me, from a backstage glimpse.

And so that was my handle. Exposure of the FBI in exchange for confessions, a partnership in iconoclasm. I had a lot of contacts over at the Bureau, and I knew what kind of crazy and dangerous place it was — Hoover was in many ways a complete loony, arbitrary in his power and pampered like a Caesar, and if he dreamed up a spy network one day, then by God it existed . Doubt was out. It was an agent’s job to increase the Bureau’s “statistical accomplishments” and “personally ramrod field investigations of ‘major cases’ to successful conclusions,” and never to question the remote wisdom of the Director, and I assumed if we moved fast enough, before they had time to tidy up after all the desperate excitement, we could probably find enough deception and confusion over there to blow this case wide open. The Rosenbergs would have to consider it, I was their last best hope. Might get a lot of their friends in trouble, but it’d be, from their viewpoint, for a higher cause, and so justified. And if it worked, if they talked, and if we went after the FBI and the Justice Department, what then? Could the American people take it? The incorruptibility of U.S. agencies and institutions — above all, the FBI — was an article of faith in this country: could the people brook an attack on that faith? Would they even listen? Well, it’d be risky like all great power plays, might even drive the whole nation into dangerous paranoia, but if it worked I’d have them in the palm of my hand. They’d have to believe in something, and I’d be all they had left, not even Joe McCarthy with his assaults on the Army and the State Department could match it. Even Uncle Sam would have to toe the goddamned line! And it wasn’t for myself I’d be doing this, and not even just for the nation. Let’s face it, the survival of the whole fucking world depended on us, and I was the only guy in the country who could make it work. And I would, too, I’d give everything I had to it. The government would function, truly function, for the first time since the eighteenth century. Then who could stop us? We could do good wherever good needed to be done!

This was not idle dreaming: I knew I could do it. I felt my strength reach out to embrace the globe. I saw statues of myself in Berlin, in Seoul, in Prague, Peking, and Peoria. A universal veneration for the hardnosed but warmhearted Man of Peace, the Fighting Quaker. On horseback maybe (I seemed to feel a horse under me) — or better yet, standing, arms outstretched in a great V, in the back seat of a limousine. All done in black marble. Prizes, medals, titles, special investitures, all that shit — meaningless of course, but the people needed ceremony like they needed proteins, and I’d do my duty in this regard as in all others, even as I understood, better than any other man of my generation could, what children they were. Honorary degrees, too, from Oxford and the Sorbonne, Harvard and Heidelberg — and screw those constipated candy-asses from Duke. I would make war and rebellion physically impossible, and world commerce would flourish with an energy and elegance not seen since the first trade routes were opened up to China. Naturally I’d be loved. Priceless treasures would be heaped on me but politely refused: what did I care for the world’s wealth in my selfless dedication to its welfare? Well, a special palace perhaps, not for me of course, but for Mom and Dad, a gift from the peoples of many nations. I could see it far ahead, standing high on a bluff over a sleepy river, turreted and bejeweled in the sunlight. It was something like the Mission Inn in Riverside (we’d get the best architects), only more beautiful. I seemed indeed to be riding a horse, decked out in silver armor, some kind of special ceremony no doubt, yes, I was coming home, there was a festival in my honor, bands playing, the people were pouring out into the streets, singing my praises — but, oddly, the trophy I was bringing them was a gigantic rubber cigar (or was it the pommel on the saddle?) and high above me I saw as I rode under it, a mysterious dark tower, long soft tresses streaming from it wet with blood—

I’d come to with a start: it was Sing Sing Prison I’d been staring up at! My God, where had the time gone? Must have been dozing! I’d caught just a glimpse of the place as we’d rolled under it, standing up there in the afternoon sunshine, much closer and more ordinary than I’d expected, its heavily manned guntowers looking like little yellow and green toy castles armed with thick stubby cannons (not cannons of course, but spotlights) — and then we’d shot below through a tunnel and a kind of trench and reeled with a wheeze and a screech of steel wheels on rails into Ossining Station. No time to wash up or piss as I’d planned — in fact I’d barely had time to shove my feet into my shoes, grab up my other things, hang on to my pants, and leap down before the empty train had gone lurching on out of there toward the north. I’d caught my breath, buckled my belt (this was when that Western desperado feeling had swept over me), tugged my homburg down around my ears, settled the sunglasses on my nose, and, pressing through the inrushing crowds, had stepped out into what — flattening it all out a bit and tossing in a few pepper, camphor, and loquat trees — might have passed for Whittier, California.