Better Dead (14 page)

And he slipped away.

 

CHAPTER

8

I spent much of the tedious train ride to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, going over the transcripts of Harry Gold's and David Greenglass's testimony, as well as various newspaper clippings and magazine articles, and some off-the-record information culled from Justice Department sources by Pearson's man Jack Anderson.

Particularly interesting was the FBI's assessment that their star witness Harry Gold was a pathological liar. There had been considerable federal nervousness about how Gold might conduct himself on the stand. I could have told them they needn't worry—nobody testifies more believably than a pathological liar.

Harry Gold, the son of poor Russian Jewish immigrants, grew up in a rough section of Philadelphia, a bookworm picked on by schoolmates and imbued with the socialism of his Depression-battered parents. After earning a college degree in chemical engineering, the young man found getting work difficult until a Communist pal, also a chemist, arranged a position in return for some industrial espionage. The recipient of Gold's criminal toil was Soviet Russia, his justification that he was “helping them along the road to industrial strength” (while pocketing a few dollars).

Eased over the next several years into actual espionage, Gold claimed he wanted to quit, but feared his handlers would either expose or eliminate him. During the Second World War, the nondescript, pudgy, stoop-shouldered spy became the courier of atomic secrets obtained by British physicist Klaus Fuchs, who was working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. With Russia now an ally, Gold claimed he was only giving the Soviet Union “information that I thought it was entitled to.”

As he rose in spy ranks, Gold began spinning elaborate tales to his contacts about a nonexistent family life, including a wife and kids (he was a bachelor). Drinking heavily now, he got increasingly careless in his spycraft, almost as if he wanted to be caught. He'd even been given several days' warning that the FBI was closing in, but didn't begin removing incriminating evidence from the house he shared with his brother and father until his time had all but run out. Soon he was confessing to the FBI.

Maybe I didn't consider myself a Jew, but I could recognize a schlemiel when I came across one, and Harry Gold seemed to fit the bill. That didn't make him any less a skilled liar, particularly considering he'd fooled all the spies he was working with into thinking he was somebody he was not.

*   *   *

Lewisburg, population 5,268, might have fallen off the cover of
The Saturday Evening Post
or
Collier's
, an idyllic community of shaded lanes, brick houses, and well-tended lawns—perfect for the university there and well suited to be the commercial center of such rich surrounding farm country. Maybe that was why the former Northeastern Federal Penitentiary—the cab took me a mile and a half from town out State 404—looked more like a university, or maybe a monastery.

Possibly it was the Italian Renaissance–influenced architecture, utilizing rough-kiln bricks, concrete blocks, and cast stone. More likely it was the massive-walled facility's red-tile roof standing out against rolling green hills. But this was a prison, all right, its endless gray concrete wall with red-brick guard towers enclosing twenty-six acres where red-brick buildings sprawled and a massive smokestack made a break for the sky.

In the administration building of what had been declared “the most advanced penal institution in the world,” I was told by Deputy Warden Franklin Baxter that the two prisoners—one at a time, of course—would be brought to me in one of the attorney/client meeting rooms.

“Would it be easier for you,” I asked innocently, “if I just visit them at their cells?”

I was playing a long shot—if the meeting rooms were bugged, maybe this assistant warden wasn't in on it. Wiring the cells would be far less likely.

“Actually that
would
work out well,” he said. Slender, weak-chinned, about forty, he was bald on top and dark on the sides, with earnest brown eyes behind black-rim glasses. “Less manpower involved.”

A guard escorted me to Gold's cell through what was indeed an unconventional, modern facility. The seven-hundred-foot main corridor fed a series of three-story cell blocks alternating with administrative units—chow halls, gyms, clinics.

Gold was in a one-man cell, six by ten with a metal bed, chair, and toilet. The guard had informed me that this was a cell block for “hardened criminals,” but Gold was here in controlled isolation for his own protection. Apparently spies were about as popular as pedophiles within these walls.

In a darker gray uniform than Sing Sing style, Gold was seated on the green-blanketed bed with his back to the wall, reading Irving Stone's
Lust for Life.
At first I thought this was the wrong cell because he wasn't the pudgy character whose picture I'd seen or who had been described by Ethel as a “fat slob.” He must have dropped sixty or seventy pounds inside, though his face retained a roundness and a peculiar lopsidedness, as if he'd had a stroke. His hair was dark, his forehead high.

No cell was opposite us, just a wall against which a guard stood sentry, down a ways to give us a semblance of privacy. The cells on either side of Gold were vacant, possibly to further isolate him. He came over and stood facing me through the bars. He was about five eight. I didn't offer a hand to shake—I'd been told no physical contact with the prisoner—and Gold knew not to, either.

“I wasn't expecting you here at my cell,” he said. His voice was soft, a second tenor; he reminded me a little of Elmer Fudd without the lisp. Or the shotgun. “You
are
Mr. Heller, right?”

“Right. Pull up that chair and sit if you like.”

“And make myself at home?” He shrugged. “If you're standing, I'll stand. I do enough sitting.”

“Whatever you say.”

Droopy eyes fixed on me. “I admit I'm a little confused. As I understand it, you represent a group trying to get the Rosenbergs a new trial. Private investigator from Chicago, right? Yet word's come down that I'm to cooperate.”

“Word from the FBI, you mean.”

“Well, from
on high,
anyway.” His eyes were dark and, droopy or not, had an alert intelligence at odds with his unimpressive veneer. “Let me guess. You asked at the last second to see me at my cell, figuring the counsel room was bugged.”

I had to grin. “Nicely reasoned, Mr. Gold. How about your cell? Anybody but God listening in?”

He shook his head. “It's not wired. I've looked and looked, and there's just no possible way, unless a G-man's hiding down in that stool. That'd be shitty duty, huh?”

And he returned
my
grin.

Another prisoner who'd maintained a sense of humor. Which would seem necessary, to maintain sanity, too. Not that Jack Benny had anything to worry about.

“So,” Gold said, not loud, “what am supposed to tell you?”

“The truth.”

“What truth is that?”

“Whatever truth you're comfortable sharing.”

He scratched an ear. His tongue poked inside a cheek. The eyes tightened. “Unless I know who I'm talking to and why, Mr. Heller, I'm not comfortable at all.”

“Well, like you said, I'm Mr. Heller—Nathan—hired to take a last-ditch shot at clearing the Rosenbergs. Anyway, if we're not wired for sound, what does it matter what I ask, and what you say?”

He winced in thought. Maybe five seconds later, he said, “So ask.”

“Okay. Part of what I'm up to is looking for new physical evidence.”

“Not much of that in this case.”

“Hardly any. But there's been some controversy about whether you really went to New Mexico to see David and Ruth Greenglass at all. You
have
been known to tell stories.”

His expression was slackly innocent. “Have I?”

“Well, you invented a whole family for yourself.”

He shook his head quickly. “That was a cover story. I was only a liar on the job. That's what spies
do
, Mr. Heller—lie every day they're out there spying. I did it for sixteen years and I'm glad that part of my life's over.”

“Was the New Mexico trip a lie? The hotel registration card the prosecution produced was a photostat, not the original. Wasn't properly initialed and dated when the FBI agents checked it in. And the time-date stamp is off by a day.”

He smirked. “So what story does that tell you?”

“No story at all. But it is suggestive.”

“Of what?”

“The government needing to establish your presence in Albuquerque for the Greenglass document exchange. That hotel registration card could be an FBI forgery.”

He had started shaking his head halfway through that. “Look, I got to Santa Fe on Saturday and went looking for the contact address, second-floor apartment on High Street. Nobody was home. So I went looking for a bed but all the hotels were booked. Finally I got floor space at a rooming house to sack out on. Knowing some lowlife might roll me and accidentally take what I had on me … documents from
Fuchs,
you know?… I didn't sleep a wink. Morning comes, I drag my ass to the Hilton and get breakfast. Nice crowded place to disappear in, the Hilton. I registered under my own name, and got some real sleep before going back out to make contact with the Greenglasses. Which I did. That explain it, Mr. Heller?”

“It does.”

“And if that dope Manny Bloch had bothered to cross-examine me, it would've come out at the time.”

He had a point.

“Mr. Gold—”

“Make it Harry, would you? You know, I think I will sit down.”

I turned to ask the guard if I could have a chair. He nodded and went off to get me one.

“I'm Nate,” I said, and now we shook hands. His grip was a little moist but not limp or show-offy, either.

He was studying me, head to one side. “What master are you serving, Nate?”

“Why, I'm a double agent, Harry. You must know about them, right?”

He made a wry face. “I do, but they're always really working for one side or the other. Which side are you?”

My expression was pleasant. “I got in to see you, didn't I, Harry?”

He nodded three times. Was I supposed to nod back five times and whistle “Kalinka” and identify myself as a fellow Soviet agent? Maybe not.

The guard was back with my chair. I sat.

I asked, “Had you ever dealt with Julius Rosenberg before?”

He shook his head. “No. Not in my circle—didn't know him from Adam. I'd just been told to say that Julius sent me.”

“But don't Soviet spies use code names?”

He waved that off. “This wasn't a code-name situation. I guess that name was given to me because it would ring true with the Greenglass couple. Because Julius was their relative.”

“But you didn't know that then.”

“No. I mean, it became clear, but … no.”

“I heard you originally said ‘Benny sent me' … or was it ‘Joe'?”

He eyed me warily. “What am I supposed to say?”

“I just wondered why that changed over time.”

Anxiety flickered in his eyes. “When the FBI interviews you, it gets real in-depth, really intense. Things come back to you.”

“Interesting. Because this particular thing that came back to you was important. It's really all that links Julius Rosenberg to those atomic bomb documents. Everything else comes from his brother- and sister-in-law, who he was on the outs with.”

He was frowning. “Mr. Heller, I think maybe we're through here.”

“Mr. Gold, if certain FBI files got out, you could be in serious trouble over these inconsistencies. If it got out that Roy Cohn gave you the idea to substitute ‘Julius' for ‘Ben' or ‘Joe,' then—”

“Then what, I'd be in
trouble
? I'm doing thirty years for chrissake! And don't bad-mouth Roy Cohn to me—he's working at getting me a reduced sentence.”

“I'll tell you what you'll get, Harry. If the Rosenbergs go to the electric chair, and your perjury comes out? You'll be an accessory to murder. You might even get the chair yourself.”

“It doesn't work like that. I'm not a fool.”

And he wasn't.

I said, “Of course, maybe Cohn didn't feed that to you. Maybe you and David Greenglass got your stories together at the Tombs.” I gave him a wistful sigh. “Bet you wish you were back there, Harry, in one of those Songbird suites. I hear the guards pass out cigars in the afternoon.”

He lifted the weak chin. “It's not so bad in here—mornings in the hospital, afternoons in the library. And a damn
good
library.”

“I'm glad you're happy, Harry.”

For such a soft-looking man, he could summon a hard gaze. “Look. I don't know who you're really working for. But I will tell you this much. I did something bad, really goddamn bad, something I got manipulated into doing because I was confused, and misguided. But just the same, I'm ready to do my time.”

Was the “something bad” handing over atomic secrets to the Russians? Or was it helping frame Julius and Ethel Rosenberg?

He got up, pushing back the chair, which grated on the cement floor. “We
are
done.”

I remained seated, leaning back, arms folded. “Thirty fucking years, Harry. Why did you settle for such a lousy deal?”

He was almost to his cot; he turned and coldness stared back at me. “Because it's better than Death Row.”

So that was it—he'd committed treason, a capital crime, and they had him cold. Thirty years alive was better than forever dead.

“Ethel Rosenberg is no spy,” I said. “She's a housewife, Harry. You're really okay with her dying so you can keep breathing, even in a concrete box?”