Revelation

13 Witch Hunt

Stefi said, 'I have a feeling I can't describe too. We have a piece of living history here. Can't you feel it? Is it not speaking to you?'

Findhorn stood up and stretched. 'Stefi, it's only a photocopy.'

'I'm beginning to learn things about you, Doctor Findhorn. For example, you have all the romance of a cold fried egg.'

'There's nothing in there,' Findhorn complained.

Romella said, 'He keeps coming back to this question of setting the atmosphere alight.'

'I know,' said Findhorn. He was wiggling his strained ankle. 'It preyed on his mind.'

'It's beginning to prey on mine,' Romella said.

'My nuclear physics friend says it has to be a red herring. It couldn't happen unless the bomb was so big it would zap the planet anyway.'

'This religious maniac,' Stefi asked. 'What was it he said in the Gardens?'

'I'll help them turn the key to the bottomless pit.'

'A very useful clue.' Findhorn assumed Stefi was being ironic.

She stood up. 'I'm going to speak to that nice librarian boy.'

'About HMS Daring?

'Inter alia. I'll bring back a Chinese take-away. Byee.'

Romella had been flicking through the A4 sheets. Her face was thoughtful. 'Petrosian seems to have gotten into some sort of trouble after the war.'

Findhorn sat down on the couch again. 'Tell me the story,' he said.

At 8.14 a.m. Japanese Time, Monday, 6 August 1945, powerful shock waves ripped across Hiroshima at the speed of a bullet.

News of the explosion was flashed from the Enola Gay fifteen minutes after the drop, and was announced at Los Alamos through the Tech Area's Tannoy system. Oppenheimer quickly called the whole staff together in an auditorium, acknowledging the cheers and shouts like a prize fighter. Suddenly, the suspicions of the scientists' wives, that their menfolk had been engaged on something extraordinary, was confirmed. Their children learned that their fathers' work was praised by the President, that their overcrowded little Los Alamos school was being named in great newspapers. In sheer exuberance they paraded through every home in the complex, led by a band banging on pots and pans.

Three days later, Fat Man was dropped from the Great Artiste. Nagasaki became an inferno of flames visible for two hundred miles, and another eighty thousand dead were added to the hundred and twenty thousand of Hiroshima.

A couple of days after that, Los Alamos resounded with parties, conga lines, sirens, drunkenness and TNT explosions in the desert. For most, the doubts, the moral questions, would come later; this wasn't the time.

Over the next few weeks, depression settled over Los Alamos. A diaspora took place, as talented young men took up teaching positions in universities around the States. Few of the emigres returned to their homelands. Fermi joined a new institute at Chicago. Oppenheimer took up his old post at CalTech but, after the daily contact with minds of scorching brilliance, and the creation of a sun which had scorched the New Mexico desert, teaching was an anti-climax. He soon accepted directorship of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, and continued to advise government on the development of the new weapons until the day came when the witch-hunters finally got to him.

Across the Atlantic the radar men, whose contribution to the victory had been even more vital than that of the atomic scientists, were likewise dispersing, and would likewise enrich scientific life in future years. Lovell, whose airborne radar had finally killed the U-boat threat, went on to create the Jodrell Bank telescope. Hoyle went on from his wartime radar work to become the most influential living astrophysicist. Bondi, an Austrian and former enemy alien, became Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence; and Tommy Gold, a brilliant iconoclast who had likewise fled the Nazis from Austria, would harass a complacent scientific establishment with radical new insights for the remainder of the century.

At the end of 1945 Petrosian gave up his bachelor flat. With the help of a couple of scientists' wives, he loaded cardboard boxes with Indian pottery, cacti and books, and left them in storage to be sent on. He drove his four-door Buick slowly through the weird, wind-sculpted canyons. Occasionally he glimpsed the Sangre de Cristo mountains far to the west, glowing blood-red in the light of the setting sun. The car's progress was soon marked by tracks in a light covering of snow. He reached a small house on a ridge overlooking Santa Fe; and there he stayed overnight with Kitty Cronin. The morning brought a difficult farewell.

He took Route 85 south, running parallel to the Rio Grande, before turning left, skirting the Trinity test site. Somehow Trinity was a psychological boundary. Once past it, he felt he had left one world behind and was entering another. He drove a thousand miles to Arkansas, stopping only occasionally at roadside diners to relieve himself and have an occasional snack.

Others from the Los Alamos days, and from the defeated Germany, were to turn America into a great powerhouse of science and technology; Petrosian, however, took no part in this. In Arkansas, he buried himself in a small-town community college, a position far below what his talents and reputation could have earned him. Almost wilfully, he had returned to the obscurity whence he came.

Petrosian's record as a refugee who'd worked on the Manhattan Project was soon known locally. He had helped build the Bomb and finish the war in Japan; he had saved thousands of American and Japanese lives; he was a local hero.

Lev quickly established himself as a popular and competent teacher, with a talent for explaining difficult ideas in simple ways. He lived quietly, making only a few close friends. A few Southern girls fluttered their eyelashes at him, but he kept to himself. If asked, he would express clear opinions on anything, and soon became known as anti-segregationist, anti-religious and anti-establishment in outlook. Strangely, in this conservative backwater, these outrageous opinions merely enhanced his popularity, establishing his reputation as a slightly mad foreign eccentric. Lev nominally joined an organization for protecting academic freedom; otherwise, he stayed apart from all organized activity, political or social.

And Romella was now ploughing through year after year of diary whose pages were utterly banal. There was no hint of any drama in Petrosian's life, nothing to suggest that he had invented some new theory, found some novel means of creating energy, or thought of some way to make a super-bomb in a garden shed. He had, in effect, switched off and dropped out. Stefi was singing in the kitchen, and Romella's voice was becoming hoarse, when she said, 'And here comes the trouble.' It started one Wednesday morning in the summer of 1953.

That Wednesday morning started as an ordinary day. Lev had developed a routine. His internal clock woke him at half past seven. He was showered and dressed by eight. Around then the mail would arrive, and he would read this over a breakfast of cereal, coffee, a boiled egg, orange juice (Florida oranges, freshly squeezed) and marmalade on toast. By nine o'clock, he was on his way to the College, a two-mile walk along a broad, tree-lined suburban road. They announced their arrival through a letter with an unfamiliar look and a Washington Capitol postmark. With a vague sense of foreboding, he returned to the kitchen table and slit the envelope open with a breadknife. He read and re-read the contents. Then he stood up, abandoning his breakfast, and paced up and down the kitchen, his head whirling.

Petrosian walked his standard route to the College on autopilot, scarcely aware of his surroundings. But instead of making his way to the mathematics building, he took a back path towards the Faculty of Arts and entered the corridors of the English Department. To his relief, Max Brogan was in his office.

Max Brogan was an untidy, overweight West Texan, with curly brown hair thinning on top and a double-chinned face which managed to be permanently cheerful no matter what the external circumstances. His chief claim to fame was his small, overweight wife who ran the Sweet and Tart, a culinary highspot in the little town. Today Brogan was wearing a pink, short-sleeved shirt and shorts. Pencils were sticking out of a pocket. On the face of it the friendship between Petrosian the thin aesthete, and Brogan the good-living, corpulent Falstaff, defied analysis; but a closer examination revealed a common factor: each man detected in the other, in his own way, a quiet but rock-solid individualism. The tides of fashion, whether intellectual or sartorial, ebbed and flowed in vain around these men.

Brogan was at his desk, or at least it had to be assumed there was a desk somewhere under the pyramid of books and papers in front of him. He looked up as Petrosian entered; his normally cheerful expression had a serious edge to it. 'I heard.'

Petrosian collapsed into a black leather chair. 'Anyone else?'

'Neymeier in French Literature, Sam Lewis in Liberal Studies, but what the hell it's only nine o'clock and there are bound to be plenty more. Maybe even me.'

'Why you, Max? You're as American as turkey on Thanksgiving.'

Max raised his hands. 'Maybe some writer on the reading lists I give my students, maybe I went to a party with the wrong people ten years ago. Who knows with these frigging morons?'

An old, old sensation was gradually creeping over Petrosian, a sensation he thought he had left behind twenty years ago in Germany, and fifteen years before that in Baku. It was the feeling of being a target, of being hunted by some ill-defined, implacable, malevolent force. He felt the fear in the dryness of his mouth as he spoke. 'What will I do, Max?'

'Squeal on your friends. It's a ritual. You confess and give them names, they confer absolution and move on.'

Petrosian said, 'But I've done nothing wrong.'

'I envy you, Lev. You're a single man. A man with a wife and three kids who's done nothing wrong, now that's a whole new ballpark.' Brogan shifted uneasily. Lev waited while his friend plucked up courage. Then the Texan was saying, 'Look, these guys scare me. They only need to name you and you're destroyed. Once you're on their blacklist you'll never work again.'

Petrosian repeated, 'But I've done nothing wrong.'

'But can you prove it?'

'I'm not even a communist.'

'You do your own thinking, right? You're a liberal? Maybe even a New Dealer? That's all they need, pal. They have an agenda, which is to put the American political landscape somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan.'

'Max, I've done nothing wrong.'

Max was all patience. 'You still don't get it, Lev. That's not a defence.'

Petrosian shook his head in bewilderment, and Max tried again. 'Look, Mary has a cousin, an accountant with MGM Studios. The tales he told us would make your hair stand on end. You know these people reduced the studio czars to milksops? They denounced some wartime movie as Red propaganda because it showed the Soviets fighting Nazis. Another one got the treatment because it showed Russian kids being happy. You said something, or you did something. Yesterday, or twenty years ago. Or somebody thinks you did.'

'My instinct tells me to fight these swine.'

'We got an old saying hereabouts, Lev. Those who wrestle with pigs are bound to get dirty.'

Petrosian stood up. 'Okay, Max. But I'm an old Nazi-fighter and I'll tell you this. Those who are led by pigs end up in their slimy mire.'

Back at his office, a message was on Petrosian's desk, propped up on books so that it could not be missed:

Petrosian crossed the campus lawns towards the Faculty offices, his stomach churning. Janice was typing briskly on a Remington.

'The boss is expecting me.'

Normally he would have expected a smile, or a joke. But today she nodded without looking up or pausing. Lev knocked on Lutyens's door.

The Head of Faculty, Boothby W. Lutyens, was a burly, white-haired and florid-faced man. Of limited talent, his rise in the College hierarchy had a lot to do with an astute nose for office politics, coupled with an uncanny ability to say the right things at the right time. The fact that he came from a rich Southern family which had generously endowed the University was, of course, neither here nor there.

Lutyens was pouring coffee from a machine in the corner of the room. He was wearing a crumpled white suit, the trousers supported by brilliant yellow braces. He was looking grim and Lev sensed that he already knew something. He didn't offer Lev a coffee. He crossed to his desk and put his feet up. Lev remained standing, and without a word passed over the letter. Lutyens glanced at it and tossed it back. 'I have a copy.'

'What's going on?'

'What it says, Petrosian. You have questions to answer.' Lutyens's tone was cold.

'That's not telling me much.'

'It's all you'll get from me.'

'Who are these people?' Lev asked. The hostility was baffling.

Lutyens stared at Lev over half-moon spectacles. 'Don't you read newspapers, son? It may have escaped your attention, but there's a war on. And while the Commies are in Korea spilling the blood of our boys, others right here in their own country are stabbing 'foresaid boys in the back. Infiltrating our institutions, undermining our values, getting at the minds of our young people. I imagine HUAC's questions will have something to do with your own associations in this regard. If I'd known you were a Commie I'd never have hired you.'

'What associations?'

'The American Association for Democratic Information and Freedom, a front organization if ever there was one. You evidently forgot to inform this College about your membership of that society when we offered you the post.'

'Doctor Lutyens, Americans have been forming societies for mutual purposes since America began. The process is part of democracy. The reason I belong is this: I was a student in Germany in the thirties. I saw what cowards academics are. They talk a lot of bullshit about freedom but as soon as a threat like this comes along they head for the hills. It seems to me the only safe organization to join these days is the Methodist Church.'

Lutyens puckered his lips, forming the skin above them into tight, vertical, disapproving wrinkles. 'Watch your tone, Petrosian.'

'It strikes me that for a man to freely hold and express his beliefs is the American way. Do you have a problem with that?'

Lutyens said, 'There's a point beyond which academic freedom should not be pushed, Petrosian. We're very dependent on federal funding these days. Meaning we are vulnerable to government definitions of loyalty and politically appropriate attitudes.'

'I envy you, sir. I wish I had your moral flexibility.'

Lutyens thumped his coffee furiously down on the table. He stood up angrily, open-mouthed. Lev said, 'Can you at least tell me what testimony the loyalty board are talking about?'

Lutyens glared angrily. 'You got difficulty with your hearing? I told you, I have no more information to give. Now get out.'

Janice didn't look up as Petrosian left.

Over the next few days, subtle changes took place in Lev's professional and social life. The first time a colleague crossed the street, out of greeting distance, Lev put the apparent slight down to his own over-sensitive imagination. The second time it happened, with another colleague, he was not so sure. The third time, it was becoming clear: to be seen with Lev Petrosian was bad news. He met no overt hostility in the common room; it was just that his colleagues were polite and distant. They tended to exclude him from conversation. He was assuredly excluded from the jokes, and more than one outburst of ribald laughter, it seemed, was directed his way. In the classroom, his sophomores stared out the window more, rattled desks more, paid less attention than usual. It might just be, he thought, that the course was getting tough; but the usual banter and repartee which he shared with his students was gone, to be replaced by a sullen and hostile silence.

There was, however, nothing subtle about the unsigned note which Lev found at his feet when he opened his office door one hot, sticky afternoon. The ribbon on the typewriter was worn, and the typist was clearly unskilled. In upper-case letters, it read

Petrosian found Max Brogan again in a quiet corner of the campus, seated in the shade. About fifty yards away some girls were trying out Hula-Hoops, pausing from time to time to collapse in giggles on the parched grass.

'You're looking pale,' Brogan said as Lev flopped onto the bench.

Petrosian passed over the message. Brogan's lips tensed angrily as he read it.

'What does it signify, Max?'

'Semper in excretum, solo profundis variat.'

'And boy, am I up to my neck in it.'

A lithe girl in tight white sweater and shorts was gyrating her hips and Max paused momentarily. 'Lev, you need representation. I know a liberal-minded lawyer. Maybe you can plead the Fifth or something.'

Petrosian shook his head. 'I don't need a lawyer. I've done nothing wrong. And I'm not even a Communist.'

Max Brogan laughed sardonically. 'Well, that helps. You know what they say.'

'No. What do they say?'

'You don't lynch the wrong nigger, that's not the American way.'

'Don't knock your country, Max. I lived under the Nazis.'

Brogan shrugged. 'You're doomed anyway. The Board of Regents are scared shitless. I hear whispers they're aiming to buy off McCarran with a loyalty oath. That ought to shake a few professors out of their torpor. Lev, are you going to co-operate with HUAC?'

'I guess so.'

Max grinned bleakly. 'Of course you are. You're a baseball-loving, gum-chewing, God-fearing, loyal American. And you have one thing more going for you.'

'What's that, Max?'

'You're white. God help you hereabouts if you'd been born Theodore Sambo Roosevelt.'