Redhunter : A Novel Based on the Life and Times of Senator Joe McCarthy

by Buckley, William F.

• ISBN13: 9780316115896
• ISBN10: 0316115894
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co

Summary

From William F. Buckley Jr., comes an engrossing and unexpected historical novel about one of the most controversial figures in American political history - Senator Joe McCarthy.
Senator McCarthy rose and fell in just four years, yet he gave a name, lastingly, to an era. It wasn't until February 9, 1950 in Wheeling, West Virginia, that McCarthy bewitched a nation - and unleashed a crusade - with his claim that Communists had infiltrated the United States government.
In The Redhunter, a blend of fact and fiction, Buckley tells the story of Harry Bontecou. Freshly graduated from Columbia, Bontecou joins McCarthy and remains at his side for three critical years. But when McCarthy's judgment becomes clouded by prosecutorial zeal and reckless extravagance, Bontecou delivers an ultimatum: McCarthy must choose between Bontecou and Roy Cohn, McCarthy's ruthless aide. By then we have seen at close hand Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, and Dean Acheson in memorable portraits of leaders in action.

Author Biography

William F. Buckley Jr. is the founder of the National Review and host of TV's longest-running program, Firing Line.

Excerpts

Chapter One

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 ex-actly 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 dif-ferent 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 responsi-bility 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 dis-courage trespassers to freedom. They included land mines and elec-trical 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 farsighted and courageous enough to resist McCarthy and McCarthy-ism."

"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.

Copyright © 1999 William F. Buckley, Jr.. All rights reserved.