The Man with the Iron Heart (39 page)

He might figure the resistance movement would die with Heydrich. He might be right, too, though the
Reichsprotektor
didn’t think so. If the resistance had gone on after Hitler died, it would go on after Heydrich, too. Jochen Peiper was more than capable in his own right—and freedom for Germany was more important than any one man.

Which didn’t mean treason couldn’t hurt. “People do have to keep their eyes open,” Heydrich said.

“That’s right,” Klein agreed. “You can’t push it too hard, though, not when we’ve all been down here so long. Folks stop listening to you. Anything you have to say over and over starts sounding like
Quatsch…
uh, sir.”

“And you not even a Berliner,” Heydrich said with a mock-sorrowful shake of the head. But the slang word for
bilge
was understood all over Germany these days. After some thought, Heydrich nodded much more seriously. “That is one of the troubles with a fight like this. Well, if you think the warnings get to where they do more harm than good, let me know.”

“Will do,
Herr Reichsprotektor,
” Klein promised. Heydrich had no doubt he would, too. Klein was solid. You couldn’t win a war without leaders, but you also couldn’t win it without reliable followers. Heydrich would have paid a reward of his own to bring in more just like Hans Klein.

Meanwhile…“We’ve lost one doorway. We’ve still got plenty. If they think we can’t hurt them now—they’ll find out.”

N
OVEMBER
5. E
LECTION
D
AY.
S
UNNY BUT CHILLY IN
A
NDERSON.
Early in the morning, Jerry Duncan and his wife made the ceremonial stroll from their house to the polling place a couple of blocks away. Sure enough, two or three reporters and their accompanying photographers stood waiting on the sidewalk.

“Wave to the nice people, Bets,” Jerry said in a low voice, and followed his own advice.

Betsy Duncan did, too. Also quietly, she answered, “I know what to do. It’s not like this is the first time.”

“Nope,” Jerry agreed. The one who’d be sweating rivets was Douglas Catledge. Duncan didn’t think the Democrat had ever run for anything before he came back from the war.

“Who you gonna vote for, Congressman?” one of the reporters called.

“Who do you think, E.A.?” Jerry said. E. A. Stuart grinned. One of the other reporters laughed out loud. It was funny, and then again it wasn’t. About every other election, you heard of some little race—school board, maybe, or town councilman—decided by one vote. Sometimes it was decided when—oops!—one candidate chivalrously voted for his opponent. Like any serious politician, Jerry believed in winning more than he believed in chivalry.

The polling place was in the auditorium of an elementary school. Jerry shook hands with people in there till an election official—a skinny old lady and undoubtedly a Democrat—said, “No electioneering within a hundred feet of the polls.”

“I wasn’t electioneering—just meeting friends,” Jerry lied easily.

He got his ballot, went into a booth, and pulled the curtain shut behind him. After he’d marked his ballot, he folded it up and gave it to the clerk in charge of the ballot box. That worthy stuffed it into the slot. “Mr. Duncan has voted,” he intoned ceremoniously. Betsy came out of her booth a moment later. The clerk took her ballot, too. “Mrs. Duncan has voted.”

Flashbulbs from the photographers’ cameras filled the dingy auditorium with bursts of harsh white light. The walk back to the house was attended only by E. A. Stuart. Jerry’d hoped he would get to be an ordinary human being on the way home, but no such luck.

“What will you do if the Republicans win a majority today?” Stuart asked.

“Celebrate,” Betsy answered before Jerry could open his mouth.

Chuckling, Jerry said, “She’s right. You can write it down. I think the first thing we’ll do after that is try and bring our boys home from Germany.”

“President Truman won’t like it,” E.A. Stuart predicted. Jerry tried to remember his full handle, but couldn’t. It was something ridiculous and Biblical—he knew that. No wonder he went by his initials.

“Truman’s had a year and a half to fix the mess,” Jerry said. “He hasn’t done it—not even close. Things are worse now than they were right after the surrender. If he won’t get cracking on his own, we’ll just have to make him move.”

“And if the Democrats hold on?” Stuart asked. Jerry and Betsy Duncan made identical faces. The reporter laughed. “I can’t quote expressions, folks,” he said.

“Awww,” Jerry said, and E. A. Stuart laughed again.

He tried another question: “Would you oppose the occupation so strongly if Diana McGraw hadn’t mobilized opinion against it?”

Betsy’s step faltered, ever so slightly. She was jealous of Diana. Jerry hadn’t given her any reason to be, but she was. (What she didn’t know about a few young, pretty clerk-typists back in Washington wouldn’t hurt her.) He picked his words with care: “Of course Mrs. McGraw comes from my district.” He stressed
Mrs.
for his wife’s benefit. “That makes me pay some extra attention to her views. But the President’s disastrous policy would have sparked opposition with her or without her. I have to think I would have been part of it.”

“Okay,” Stuart said, scribbling. “Now—”

Jerry held up a hand. “Can we hold the rest for tonight or tomorrow? Then I’ll know what’s what. Right now I’d just be building castles in the air, okay?”

“Well, sure.” E. A. Stuart smiled crookedly. “But that’s half the fun.”

“Maybe for you.” Jerry turned into his own walk. A man’s home was his castle, and reporters and other barbarians could damn well wait outside.

The polls closed at seven. Jerry and Betsy were at his campaign headquarters—a storefront three doors down from the Bijou—at five past. Radios turned to CBS, RCA, and Mutual stations blared returns. Some people had trouble straining information out of election-night chaos. Not Jerry. He could pick the East Coast nuggets from all the random chatter.

And all the nuggets seemed pure gold. Democrat after Democrat was losing or “trailing significantly,” as the pundits liked to say. Republican after Republican claimed victory. Excitement made Jerry’s fingertips tingle. It had been so long, so very long.

“And now we have the first returns from Indiana,” one of the radio announcers said. Everybody at campaign headquarters yelled for everybody else to shut up. While people were yelling, the announcer read off the returns. In spite of Jerry’s ear, he couldn’t make them out.

“Downstate,” someone said. “We’re leading three to two.”

“Is that all?” Someone else sounded disappointed. Downstate Indiana, down by the Ohio River, was as solidly Republican as anywhere in the country. Still, three to two wasn’t half bad, not by any standards. And most of the votes might have come from some local Democratic stronghold. Till you knew provenance, you had to be careful about what the raw numbers meant.

“In the suburbs of Indianapolis,” the announcer went on, “incumbent Jerry Duncan leads his Democratic challenger. The totals are 1,872 to 1,391 in what are still preliminary results.”

Cheers erupted. So did a few four-letter words aimed at the man on the radio. People from Anderson and Muncie didn’t like to hear their towns called suburbs of Indianapolis. When you got right down to it, they were, but folks didn’t like to hear it or think about it.

“What were the numbers like two years ago? I don’t remember exactly,” Betsy said.

“Not as good as they are now. I was only up by maybe a hundred votes at this stage of things.” Like most politicos, Jerry had total recall for all the returns in every election he’d ever contested. But he was also cautious: “Can’t tell too much yet. Besides, who knows where these votes come from?”

“Okay,” Betsy said. “But I sure like it a lot better than I would if you were behind by that much.”

He laughed. “Well, when you put it like that, so do I.”

The air got thick with cigarette smoke and the odd pipe and cigar. Then it got thicker. Jerry was puffing away like everybody else, but he didn’t like it when his eyes started to sting and water. That took a good thing too far.

More good news kept blaring out of the radio. “This does look like a repudiation of Harry Truman’s domestic and foreign policy,” a broadcaster said. “Unless things out West dramatically change the situation, the Republican Party stands to gain control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the Hoover administration.”

More cheers. Jerry shouted along with everybody else. But he couldn’t help wishing the guy on the radio hadn’t mentioned Hoover. If ever there was a jinx…

But not even the ghost of Hoover and the Depression could jinx the GOP tonight. Around half past ten, when Jerry’s lead had swelled to over 5,000 votes, one of the telephones at campaign headquarters jangled. The staffer who answered it waved to try to cut the hubbub in the room. Not having much luck, he bellowed, “It’s Douglas Catledge, Congressman!”

Jerry jumped to his feet and hurried over to the phone. The campaign workers yelled and clapped and stamped their feet. But when Jerry waved for quiet, he got it. He grabbed the handset, saying, “Thanks, Irv.” He talked into the telephone: “This is Jerry Duncan.”

“Hello, Congressman. Doug Catledge here.” The young Democrat sounded tired and sad but determined: about the way Jerry would have sounded in his shoes.
One of these days, I will sound that way. Going to Washington is always a round-trip ticket. But not today, thank God,
Jerry thought. After an audible deep breath, his opponent went on, “I called to congratulate you…on your reelection.”

“Thank you very much, Doug. That’s mighty gracious of you,” Jerry said. “You ran a strong campaign. I was worried right up till the polls closed.” He hadn’t been; he’d thought things looked pretty good. But if the other fellow was gracious you had to follow suit.

“Kind of you to say so,” Catledge replied. “If you don’t mind my two cents’ worth now, I do hope you’ll soft-pedal the pullout foolishness you spouted the past few weeks.”

Jerry frowned. Douglas Catledge had lost not least because he backed Truman’s policies, and he was telling Jerry what to do?
Go peddle your papers, sonny.
Jerry came
that
close to saying it out loud.

But no. Just because the other guy couldn’t mind his manners didn’t mean Jerry had to imitate him. What he did say was, “The fight over there costs more men and more cash than we can afford. Our dollar is falling against the Swiss franc and the Canadian dollar and even the Mexican peso. It would be falling against the pound, but England’s stuck in this flypaper, too.”

“If we run away from Germany, either the Russians grab all of it or the Nazis come back in and start getting ready for World War III,” Catledge said. “I don’t think either one helps the United States.”

“I don’t think either one is anything we’ve got to worry about, not as long as we have the atom bomb,” Jerry answered. “Good night, Mr. Catledge.” He wasn’t about to argue, not tonight.

“Good night,” Douglas Catledge said sadly. “I still think you’re making a bad mistake.”

“I know you do. But the voters don’t.” Jerry said “Good night” once more and hung up. He’d got the last word. So had the voters: the only word that mattered in an election. Jerry stood up and held up his hands. Everybody in the crowded room looked his way. “My opponent has just generously conceded,” he told the campaign workers. “I want to thank him, and I want to thank all of you for making my victory possible. I’m the one who’s going back to Washington, but I couldn’t possibly do it alone. Thanks again to every one of you from the bottom of my heart.”

He got another round of applause. He went over and kissed Betsy. Then somebody stuck a lighted cigar in his mouth. He didn’t usually smoke them, but he took a few puffs with it held at a jaunty angle while the photographers snapped away. It was like a victory lap at the Indianapolis 500. As soon as the photographers were done, he stuck the cheroot in an ashtray and forgot about it.

Diana McGraw walked into the campaign headquarters about fifteen minutes later. The campaign workers gave her a hand, too. Jerry joined in. His wife, he noticed, didn’t. No, Betsy never came out and said anything about Diana, but she didn’t need words to make her feelings plain.

“Congratulations,” Diana said. “When the radio said Catledge had conceded, I figured I could come over without causing too much distraction.”

“We’re going to have another term,” Jerry said. Betsy’s smile might have been painted on.

“Another term,” Diana agreed. “How long do you think it will take to get the bonehead in the White House to bring our men home?”

“Good question. If Truman’s shown one thing, it’s that he’s at least as stubborn as FDR ever was,” Jerry answered.

“But Congress holds the purse strings,” Diana said. “If you don’t give him the money to keep troops in Germany—”

“Have to see what things look like, what the lineup is after they count all the votes,” Jerry said. He’d been trying to make that calculation himself. Knowing the numbers of Republicans and Democrats in the upcoming Eightieth Congress would help only so much. Some Democrats would steer clear of Truman for fear of losing the next time around, while some Republicans would stick with him because they were scared of Stalin—or just because the people in their districts thought occupying Germany was still a good idea.