Dreamers and Deceivers (27 page)

But as soon as he saw the antagonistic expression on the policeman’s face, Alan regretted his candor. Everyone knew there were gay people in England, and English society was not, by the standards of some countries, aggressively hostile toward them. Alan had never gone out of his way to hide his sexual orientation. But nevertheless, it was most unconventional to come right out and admit it.

It was also illegal.

“Well,” said the policeman contemptuously, “if that’s the case, you’ll
have to come down to the station with me. You’ve just confessed to the crime of ‘gross indecency.’ ”

“Now wait just a moment! I’m the one who got robbed here!”

“And that’ll be dealt with, don’t you worry,” replied the cop. “But we’ve got to deal with you, too, Mr. Turing. Your robber’s problem is his problem. And your problem is your problem. And the law is the law.”

“The police actually
arrest
people for this? Who are you, Oliver Cromwell?!”

“Never was one for history, Mr. Turing,” said the officer. “Not sure I follow you. But what I need now is for
you
to follow
me
downtown. You’re under arrest.”

The ironies were not lost on Alan. He had answered his prime minister’s war cry in 1939 to defend “the right” against bad faith, injustice and persecution, and yet now his decision to call a blackmailing burglar’s bluff was about to land him in jail, courtesy of the government he had served indispensably.

Manchester, England

June 7, 1954

Alan sat alone in bed, staring at the apple on his nightstand. It was half past one o’clock in the morning, right around the time he’d done some of his best work at Bletchley Park.

The Government Code and Cipher School seemed like a distant memory to him now. He had gone from cracking Nazi codes to writing computer codes. In the seven years since the war ended, Alan and a small team of mathematicians and engineers at Manchester University had designed the blueprint for what he called an “electronic brain,” but what his colleagues called a “Turing machine.” Outside of academic circles it was becoming known as a “computer.” These were heady, exciting times for him. But it all came crashing down after the police officer in his living room put him under arrest.

To avoid prison, Alan had pleaded guilty and accepted a reduced punishment: a cocktail of chemicals unlike any he’d experimented with as a boy on Christmas morning or as a student playing with iodates at
secondary school. The primary ingredient in the compulsory cocktail was estrogen, which was supposed to eradicate his libido.

In effect, it was a successful nonsurgical form of sterilization. But it had embarrassing side effects: It made the marathon runner fat. Worse than that, it caused him to grow breasts. The physical deformities on his chest were like a scarlet letter, a constant reminder to everyone of his punishment for a sex crime.

There were other changes in his life that were less obvious to observers, but even more painful to Alan. He had always been discreet, and although he wasn’t ashamed of his private life, he was horrified at seeing its details splashed across the pages of local newspapers. Even more difficult to bear was the reaction of his brother John. Upon receiving a letter from Alan explaining the arrest, John made it clear that Alan repulsed him and deserved the government’s punishment.

Perhaps most troubling of all was the scrutiny he received from Britain’s national security apparatus, which viewed men who committed crimes of “moral turpitude” as security risks. Because Alan’s work at Bletchley had given him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, officials in London required him to keep them apprised of his whereabouts. They were particularly concerned about his trips abroad to countries that allowed sex criminals to visit.

He may not have become a “different man,” but his life was certainly very different now.

After the arrest, the public humiliation, and the exacerbation of a loneliness he had felt for most of his life, Alan didn’t have as much to lose as most men. Certainly, he felt, he didn’t have as much to live for as the man who was protected by the police and whose government repaid his selfless service with something better than persecution, forced sterilization, and feeble attempts at social engineering. Two years after his arrest, the simple fact was that Alan no longer wanted to be surrounded by a society of simpletons.

“Dip the apple in the brew,” he whispered, sitting on the side of his bed. “Let the sleeping death seep through.”

When his housekeeper arrived the next morning, she found him lying in bed—asleep forever.

Beside him was an apple with a single bite taken from it.

It had been dipped in cyanide.

EPILOGUE

There is a modest tribute to Alan Turing at Manchester University, where he spent the final nine years of his life. It is a bronze statue of him sitting on a bench, staring into the distance and holding an apple.

Turing’s accomplishments will also undoubtedly receive a new wave of attention later this year when
The Imitation Game
, a major motion picture about his role in breaking the Enigma codes, opens in theaters.

But the true Turing monument is the world we now live in: a world free of the fascism that he, perhaps as much as Patton or Bradley or Eisenhower, helped to defeat. And in a world where Windows means more than framed glass apertures in buildings, where Deep Blue can compete with Russian chess master Garry Kasparov, and where a lovely female voice on your phone can tell you anything from the name of Britain’s prime minister to the winner of last year’s Super Bowl.

Every time a computer searches the Internet, plays music, or processes words by retrieving an encoded application from its “memory,” a small tribute is made to the man who imagined tape with an ever-changing code that a machine can read, rewrite, and obey.

Perhaps the most striking, if possibly coincidental, memorial to the man who invented the first computer is that anytime someone looks at an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook they find the image of an apple on the back.

It is missing a single bite.

I had attacked an intellectual and a liberal. A whole generation felt itself on trial.

—Whittaker Chambers

Yalta, Soviet Union

February 4, 1945

While the barrel-shaped British prime minister droned on, the American diplomat stole glances at the magnificent view outside the windows. The Black Sea looked menacing and cold from the warmth of Livadia Palace. With antique mirrors, crystal chandeliers, and the finest in Soviet hospitality, the palace was a grand setting. The American figured it was the perfect place for leaders seeking to carve up the world to meet. It was here, he recalled, where the last Russian czar and his family enjoyed many summers, basking in their decadence while their people starved. At least until Soviet communists rose up and conquered them.

The Soviets were now using the same apartments in the same decadent palace for themselves. That irony did not even cross the mind of
the forty-year-old American diplomat, Alger Hiss, who viewed the communist leadership as a force for good.

The three titans of the world—Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin D. Roosevelt—along with their respective military brass and diplomatic corps, had cause to celebrate. After five years of grinding war, it was finally coming to an end. The fascists were all but defeated. The only question left was how to divide up the spoils.

“These are among the most important days that any of us shall live,” Prime Minister Winston Churchill thundered. Hiss rolled his eyes. It wasn’t even noon and he was convinced that Churchill had already downed one too many Johnnie Walkers. He had a penchant for grandeur, hyperbole, and self-importance. Someone ought to just tell the senile old man he was losing his empire.

Then it was the Soviet leader’s turn. Hiss fixed his eyes on the commanding presence of the mustachioed Stalin. It was the first time he had been in a room with the powerful Soviet leader, and he wasn’t disappointed. Stalin had nearly ended his monologue, which had been accentuated by the loud pounding of his fist on the table, when the English translation began:

For the Russian people, the question of Poland is not only a question of honor but also a question of security. Throughout history, Poland has been the corridor through which the enemy has passed into Russia. Poland is a question of life and death for Russia.

Hiss thought that Stalin was a man of strength and composure. The Baltics. Poland. Eastern Europe. Stalin insisted on having it all. Soviet blood—20 million martyrs—had earned it. Meanwhile, the Brits and Americans had been content to fight from afar, letting the Soviets do the hard work against Hitler.

Across the round table, Churchill looked irritated. Hiss knew what he must be thinking:
Wasn’t this precisely the reason the Allies had entered the war? To preserve the freedom and independence of nations like Poland?

The stage was now set for the third member to speak, a man Hiss had gotten the opportunity to observe closely since being assigned to the Yalta delegation by the State Department. The crippled, ailing
American president looked unperturbed. Gaunt and drawn, Franklin D. Roosevelt turned his head and beckoned Hiss to come closer.

Hiss revered the old man. Though FDR was a capitalist, he had done his best to promote social justice for the masses, a new social construct. Roosevelt always thought the best of people, and that included Stalin. But Hiss could see that Stalin’s expansive demands to control all of Eastern Europe seemed extreme, even to Roosevelt.

“Mr. Hiss,” Roosevelt asked, his voice stronger than his body, “what are our objections on Poland?”

Hiss leaned forward, whispering into the commander in chief’s ear. “None really, Mr. President. The Soviets have assured us they will hold free and fair elections in whatever territory they are currently occupying. What we need is Soviet agreement on the creation of the United Nations.” The UN was FDR’s passion, the diminished heir to the grandiose League of Nations for which his predecessor Woodrow Wilson had vainly given his life.

Roosevelt took a drag on his long cigarette. “Very well,” he said.

Hiss leaned back in his chair and did his best to suppress a smile.

16 Years Earlier

Cambridge, Massachusetts

June 14, 1929

Commencement exercises were under way and Alger Hiss could not help but feel a moment of validation. Not only for the stellar grades he’d received at Harvard Law School, although even he had to admit they were impressive, but rather because he had survived it all: his father’s suicide when he was just two years old; his sister’s suicide twenty-two years later; the death of his brother from Bright’s disease; and the sad, dreary existence of growing up in a Baltimore neighborhood that seemed to be in a constant state of decline.

Hiss scanned the crowd of beaming, proud parents. In their top hats, morning coats, and exquisitely crocheted lace dresses, this was a portrait of privilege. Adams. Cabot. Choate. Eliot. Lowell. Putnam. Weld.
Williams. Winthrop. They were all there. They had sent their children to Exeter and Andover. Then to Princeton and Yale. Now, with Harvard Law degrees in hand, these children would be unleashed into the world to become industry magnates, bankers, and governors. Hiss knew it wasn’t because they worked harder or were smarter; it was because they happened to have names that usually traced back to the
Mayflower
.

His mother sat a dozen or so rows back, stone-faced and grim. In the creased lines of her face were the unmistakable signs of suffering, although you would never know it from talking to her. She was the one who had taught her children to rise above their circumstances. Forty years ago, she might have fit in here. She had grown up with wealth but, without a husband to provide income for the family, her inheritance had dwindled to nothing. A widow with five children to raise, Mary Lavinia Hiss had good reason to be mad at the world, but had never shown an ounce of it. She taught Hiss and his siblings that self-pity was for the weak.

Perhaps more so than his brothers and sisters, young Alger took his mother’s advice to heart. He’d been a scrapper for much of his life—aided by a keen mind, a natural charm, and appealing looks. Few knew that he lived a nearly penniless existence, even selling spring water from his little wagon to earn money when he was a boy. From an early age, he’d learned to ingratiate himself to get ahead. He was the kind of guy who was everyone’s best friend, and was named the “most popular” student while earning top marks at Johns Hopkins. He also learned to look the part. Hiss realized that if he surrounded himself with people of wealth and taste and status, then others would assume he had it as well.

“Hiss,” the dean called out, shaking Alger from his childhood memories and his resentment for just about every other student sitting alongside him on the stage. Hiss stood and strode with purpose to the podium. He forced a smile when he caught the eye of Professor Felix Frankfurter, sitting in the first row.

Professor Frankfurter had known how far Alger’s talents could go, even if he wasn’t from one of New England’s wealthiest families. Hiss had been introduced to the revered liberal law professor by a mutual friend and had quickly become a regular at the Frankfurters’ Sunday teas—which featured the professor’s favorite authors, friends, and
fashionable leftist views on issues of the day. Hiss and Frankfurter saw most of these issues the same way. For example, they shared the firm belief that anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti had been falsely convicted at their famous Boston murder trial.

When the ailing Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the legendary jurist appointed to the bench by Theodore Roosevelt, had delegated the selection of his law clerks entirely to Professor Frankfurter, it came as no surprise to anyone that his top recommendation was his protégé, Mr. Alger Hiss.

Now, at twenty-four years old, with a tall, lean frame, wavy dark hair, large ears, and expressionless eyes, Hiss had not only attained a coveted law degree from Harvard, but he was about to clerk for the most famous and esteemed Supreme Court justice.