The Redhunter Read online

  OTHER NOVELS BY WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

  Saving the Queen

  Stained Glass

  Who’s on First

  Marco Polo, If You Can

  The Story of Henri Tod

  See You Later Alligator

  The Temptation of Wilfred Malachey

  High Jinx

  Mongoose, R.I.P.

  Tucker’s Last Stand

  A Very Private Plot

  Brothers No More

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1999 by William F. Buckley Jr.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of historical fiction. It contains some names of real people, and some historical events are described. It also describes events and characters that are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance of such nonhistorical persons or events to actual ones is purely coincidental.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: December 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-316-09291-3

  Contents

  OTHER NOVELS BY WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  1: Enter Lord Herrendon

  2: London, the same day

  BOOK ONE

  3: Joe McCarthy, age fourteen

  4: Joe McCarthy, age nineteen

  5: McCarthy goes to Marquette

  6: McCarthy goes to war

  7: Harry Bontecou, age eighteen, goes to war

  8: Alex, Lord Herrendon, reminisces

  9: Harry Bontecou goes to Columbia

  10: Trying out

  11: McCarthy runs

  12: Senator Joe McCarthy goes to Washington

  13: President Harry Truman gives ’em hell

  14: The students debate, 1948

  15: Underground maneuvers

  16: Herrendon and Harry comment

  BOOK TWO

  17: McCarthy at Wheeling

  18: J. Edgar Hoover calls McCarthy

  19: McCarthy defends his Wheeling charges

  20: The Senate acts

  21: Factional politics

  22: A professor tries to understand

  23: Harry applies for a job

  24: McCarthy meets Whittaker Chambers

  25: A covert messenger

  26: McCarthy meets an informant

  27: Owen Lattimore

  28: Herrendon and Harry dig in

  29: Meet the Press with Lattimore

  30: The North Koreans invade the South

  31: Acheson reflects, Did he give the wrong signals?

  32: Harry writes to Elinor

  33: Hoover calls McCarthy to his lair

  34: The Tydings Committee reports its findings

  35: Alex and Harry discuss espionage

  36: Two Soviet agents meet in Pennsylvania

  37: The GOP Convention nominates Eisenhower

  38: Enter Robin Herrendon

  39: McCarthy vs. Kerr

  40: Herrendon and the security check

  41: A clarification by Herrendon

  42: Harry pursues Robin

  43: Off to the races!

  44: Harry and the intruder, 1951

  45: Acheson collects McCarthyana, 1953

  46: Herrendon decides to act

  47: Alex Herrendon visits Dorothy Bontecou

  48: Herrendon talks of March 1926

  BOOK THREE

  49: Professor Sherrill complains about McCarthy

  50: Eisenhower, in the Oval Office, is irked

  51: McCarthy reviews the hidden memorandum

  52: McCarthy begins the Monmouth investigation

  53: Ike is angered by McCarthy

  54: McCarthy questions General Zwicker

  55: President Eisenhower holds a press conference

  56: The evaluation of Eisenhower

  57: The Army-McCarthy hearings—an overture

  58: Viewing Army-McCarthy on television

  59: The view of the hearings from abroad

  60: Jean McCarthy meets with Harry

  61: Day thirty-four of the Army-McCarthy hearings

  62: Roy Cohn testifies

  63: Tom Coleman of Wisconsin suggests a compromise

  64: Army counsel Joseph Welch testifies

  65: The committee votes A second Senate committee convenes

  66: Joe McCarthy and Jean, in Wisconsin; vacationing

  67: The censure committee begins hearings

  68: McCarthy returns to visit Whittaker Chambers

  69: A rally at Madison Square Garden

  70: Harry visits McCarthy

  71: Harry speaks about the memorial services

  Advance praise for THE REDHUNTER

  TO L. BRENT BOZELL—in grateful memory

  Acknowledgments

  I knew Senator McCarthy and, with my brother-in-law the late L. Brent Bozell, wrote a book about him (McCarthy and His Enemies) in 1953. This book is a novel, but most of the events here recorded are true to life.

  The McCarthy library is scant, but one book is central. It was written by Thomas C. Reeves, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, is titled The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, and was published in 1982 by Stein and Day. I am very grateful to Professor Reeves.

  In chapter 7 I quote almost verbatim for several paragraphs a scene described by Nikolai Tolstoy in his book The Great Betrayal, 1944–47. It was published by Charles Scribner & Sons in 1977.

  Christopher Weinkopf, formerly assistant editor at National Review, now at the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles, did research for this book over two winters and made fine suggestions. I am grateful for his work, as for his company. And grateful, too, to Julie Crane, for her useful last-minute reading.

  Frances Bronson of National Review superintended the editorial effort with customary intelligence and dispatch, and Tony Savage patiently produced all seven drafts of this work, with punctilio and good humor.

  I am grateful to several readers who were kind enough to read drafts and make suggestions. My sister Priscilla Buckley, brother Reid Buckley, Professor Chester Wolford of Penn State, Professor Thomas Wendel of San Jose State, Mr. Evan Galbraith of New York, Tracy Lee Simmons of National Review, my agent, Mrs. Lois Wallace, and my wife, Pat. Mr. William Phillips, my editor at Little, Brown, made valuable comments. I owe special thanks to M. Stanton Evans, the author and journalist who is preparing his own book on Senator McCarthy and is comprehensively informed on the issues of that period.

  I come now, with some trepidation, to Samuel S. Vaughan. Harold Ross, the founding editor of The New Yorker, spoke impatiently of a contributor who in his manuscript had written of an “indescribable” event. Ross pounded into the margin of that essay, “Nothing is indescribable!—”a dictum that makes you feel good (“It can be done!”), but also a little scared (“But can I do it?”). Perhaps I can get by with saying that what Sam Vaughan did to encourage and refine this venture is unimaginable. This novel is not, at 400 pages, slight; yet his notes and references and asides and quotations and emendations were more extensive than my text. I wish this book were written about Mother Teresa, not Joe McCarthy, so that it might serve as a more fitting conduit for Sam’s productive benignity. I leave it that the best that is here is his responsibility.

  W. F. B.

  Stamford, Conne
cticut

  October 1, 1998

  PROLOGUE

  1

  LONDON, JUNE 1991

  Enter Lord Herrendon

  Harry Bontecou was tired, but also relaxed. He sat in one of the pleasant, comfortably tatterdemalion clubs patronized by English literati. He had been warned his host might be late for dinner so he had brought along the morning papers. The headline in the Telegraph spoke of the rumored capture the day before of Pol Pot in the Cambodian forests. There were two accounts, one in a news article, the second in the editorial section, telling the minihistory of Pol Pot, sometime plenipotentiary ruler of Cambodia.

  They differed on the enumeration of Cambodians executed by Pol Pot during the years 1975 to 1979, when he ruled. The news account spoke of “over a million executed,” the editorial of “two million.” Harry sipped his sherry. He paused then and reflected on exactly what he was doing, reading about Pol Pot twenty-five years after the age of the killing fields, drinking sherry.

  He supposed that there would not ensue, in the press accounts the next day, lively and informed discussions over which of the two figures was more nearly correct—one million killed by the self-designated Marxist-Leninist, or two. The population of Cambodia at the time of Pol Pot’s rule was five million, the Telegraph reminded its readers. So, Harry Bontecou closed his eyes and quickly calculated. The variable estimates meant 20 percent of the population executed, or 40 percent of the population executed. The Telegraph’s account told that Pol Pot’s genocide was the “gravest since those of the Second World War.” Harry reflected. The executions in Nazi Germany might have reached 10 percent of the population; perhaps an equivalent percentage in the Soviet Union (twenty-five million shot or starved between 1917 and the death of Stalin in 1953 was a figure frequently encountered). Harry remembered his reaction on that winter day in 1946 when it became his job to expedite a genocidal operation. A mini genocidal operation. Now he could read the papers and sip sherry and speak softly and securely in this well-protected shelter for British men of letters. It was very different for him then, and very different those early years. Now he could focus on the statistics, on the round figures. Now he was Harry Bontecou, Ph.D. History.

  The Telegraph noted also the transatlantic debate over whether Marcus Wolf was entitled to a visa to visit the United States. Herr Wolf, the paper reported, was indignant at having been held off. He had served as chief of intelligence for the Democratic Republic of Germany, which no longer existed. But when it did, East Germany’s mission had been to do the will of Moscow. This included guarding the impermeability of the Berlin Wall. That was a special responsibility of Marcus Wolf, Harry knew—he scanned the story, would the reporter mention the wall? No. He went back to the paragraph reporting Wolf’s displeasure. Harry knew, as did how many members of the Garrick Club?—70 percent? 10 percent?—that as Secret Police (Stasi) chief, Wolf had engaged in the torture and killing of anyone who, between 1961 and 1989, when the wall came down, tried to escape from the Democratic Republic of Germany to West Germany. Marcus Wolf had taken considerable precautions to discourage trespassers to freedom. They included land mines and electrical fences and barbed wire and spotlights and machine guns and killer dogs. Now, in the morning paper, Wolf was reported as saying he did not understand being persecuted for carrying out a routine professional assignment. “I didn’t kill anybody personally,” he told the reporter.

  Neither did Hitler, Harry reflected.

  He was jolted by the hortatory tone of voice from a figure standing by the bar, who now, drink in hand, approached him, an elderly man stylishly dressed in dark gray. His abundant white hair framed an angular face with heavy tortoise-shell glasses that magnified the light blue eyes. Oh, my God, Harry Bontecou thought, Tracy. His freshman-year college roommate.

  “Say.” The insistent tone was off register in the quiet of the Garrick Club. One had the impression the leather volumes winced at Tracy’s voice. “Didn’t you used to be Harry Bontecou?”

  Harry was irritated by the question. To begin with, the tired formulation, “Didn’t you used to be …” Harry remembered that phrase used in the title of a book published in the 1960s, an autobiography of George Murphy. The author had been a genial Hollywood song-and-dance entertainer in the memory of an entire generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was junior senator from the state of California. Clever title—back then. In the 1960s; not funny in 1991. There was that, there was the imperious tone of voice, and there were the—memories, many of them ugly, of the man who now addressed him. Harry remained in his chair but extended his hand. “Hello, Tracy. How you doing?”

  “I’m fine, old boy. And you? I’ll buy you a drink. What will you have?”

  “Nothing, thanks. You living in England, Tracy?”

  “Yes, old boy. But you—you still hunting political progressives for a living?”

  Oh, please, Harry thought. Four decades had gone by. He would not take the bait. He had had more than enough, back then. Back in the years of the Korean war, of the rise of Mao Tse-tung, of the Soviet explosion of an atom bomb, of the Berlin blockade, the campaign of Henry Wallace for president. Above all … the years of Joe McCarthy. His mind turned determinedly to the likeliest way of avoiding the old subject.

  “Yes, indeed, Tracy,” he said submissively. And then quickly, “Trust everything is okay with you. Come to think of it, the last time I got any word about you was from the Washington, D.C., police.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. After your surprise … visit to me … after they—escorted you home, they reported the next day that you were in law school and evidently had excess energies to spare.” Harry did not tell him about the other call, from the security people. “—But all goes well for you, I gather.”

  “Well, I manage to make ends meet.” Tracy Allshott extended his hand toward a waiter, who knew to bring him another drink. “You would discover this, dear Harry, if ever while in London—or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world—you needed a lawyer, and someone was benevolent enough, notwithstanding your Redhunting past, to give you the name of the … best in America—or in London—you would learn that I am indeed … paying my bills! Though if you came to me as a client, perhaps I would give you a compassionate discount, as a member of the Columbia class of 1950.”

  Talks rather more than he used to, Harry reflected. On the other hand, Allshott had clearly been drinking.

  “That would be nice, Tracy.” He permitted his eyes to wander over to the entrance of the lounge. Tracy did not miss the meaning intended.

  “But you are waiting for somebody?”

  To Harry’s dismay, Tracy reached over to an adjoining table, drew a chair alongside, and sat down. “Evidently your host has not arrived yet. So I will take the opportunity. I am writing my memoirs, and I thought to try to dig up an address for you. I want in my memoirs to talk about Senator McCarthy.”

  “Which Senator McCarthy?” Harry asked, affecting innocence, though knowing it was fruitless. Clearly, with his background, Tracy was not talking about the other McCarthy. Eugene McCarthy, sometime senator from Minnesota, had derailed President Johnson in 1968 and soon after resigned political office to go back to his poetry. Harry might as well have asked, “Which Pope John Paul?”

  “Don’t waste my time, Harry. My assistant, after a few minutes in the library, confirms my impression: that after Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, your Senator McCarthy was the dominant figure in the United States from 1950 to 1955.”

  “I will not deny that.”

  Allshott stared at his drink as though the salons of history were assembled there to hear his charge. His voice was oracular. “Senator McCarthy was, by the consolidated holding of history, the most dangerous American of the half century, a savage, unscrupulous, fascistic demagogue—”

  “Tracy. Would you please go away?”

  “You don’t want to talk about Joe McCarthy.” Allshott’s voice was insistent, the words rapidly pronounced. Now he paused. “I
don’t blame you.”

  He rose from his chair. “We’ll leave it that there were those of us back in the fifties during the anti-Communist hysteria who were far-sighted and courageous enough to resist McCarthy and McCarthyism.”

  “Congratulations,” Harry said, lowering his eyes to the newspaper.

  “All right. I’ll let you alone. But you’re going to have a place in my memoirs, Harry. Harry Bontecou, the young McCarthyite. You’ve never written about those years. But I’m not surprised. What the hell would you say?”

  Harry bit his lip. He said nothing, keeping his eyes on the paper. Tracy Allshott hesitated only a moment, and then turned and walked back to the bar.

  Harry’s eyes stayed on the newspaper, but they did not focus. It had been a long time since the subject of Joe McCarthy had been raised. But the memories would never entirely dissipate. When McCarthy died, Pol Pot was a young Marxist student in Paris; Khrushchev had succeeded Stalin as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the most exalted office in the Soviet empire; Dwight David Eisenhower was one year into his second term as president. And Harry—

  But again he was interrupted. This time by his host.

  “We’ve never met.” Lord Herrendon extended his hand.

  2

  London, the same day

  The letter from Lord Herrendon had reached Harry Bontecou at the University of Connecticut a day or two after Harry’s visit with Ed Furniss, UConn’s provost. Furniss, age thirty-two, had snow white hair. When two years earlier the trustees nominated him as provost, he found the color of his hair useful in suggesting a seniority he hadn’t biologically earned. It wasn’t easy for a thirty-two-year-old to deal with scholars twenty, thirty, even forty years older. But Furniss had to do it, approving this project, disapproving the other, allocating funds here at the expense of requests there.

  Harry Bontecou, sixty-four, had been thirty years with the department of history, teaching the politics and diplomacy of the nineteenth century. During his year in office Ed Furniss had never interfered with the history department, in which Bontecou was senior professor.