The Hellfire Club(13)
He was rapidly coming to understand that there was nothing that he could say on this topic that didn’t sound selfish or, alternatively, insincere. So, not for the first time, Charlie didn’t say anything in response. He chuckled and tried to change the subject, and the momentum of their phone call quickly petered out.
Just after seven that evening, Charlie knocked on Strongfellow’s congressional office door. No one answered, but the door was unlocked, so he went in. Through the smog of cigar smoke, he saw a glorious view of the Capitol out the window. Twenty members of Congress were standing around and sitting at tables in Strongfellow’s reception area and conference room.
Strongfellow swung around on his crutches, greeted Charlie, and shook his hand. “Thanks for coming, Charlie,” he said, his boyishness offset by the gravity of his war wounds.
“Thanks for the invitation,” Charlie answered, looking around the room.
“We started this during freshman orientation, back in November ’52. We called it Dogface Poker because it was just me and three infantry guys. Just a way to blow off a little steam. But then it kept going and cav and then navy and air force and others joined, and they didn’t care for the name—”
“Because we don’t have hideous dogfaces like you goddamn blister-feet!” This from a handsome dark-haired man seated nearby; Charlie recognized him as Congressman Pat Sutton from Tennessee, a navy man and a Democrat. Strongfellow laughed.
“Anyway, it took on a life of its own. Bipartisan. Just vets. Everyone here fought in the war, so we know how doggone meaningless most of this Capitol Hill ‘Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay’ is. It’s a good place to unwind. The only rule is that nothing leaves here unless it’s supposed to.”
“And just so you know,” Sutton said, “this is only for real fighters. No JAGs, no cushy office jobs in personnel. If you were in the air force and you’re here, you weren’t a fucking penguin—you flew. Guns in hand, mud on boots.”
Charlie wondered if the remark had been a veiled reference to Senator McCarthy’s supposedly exaggerated war record. Sutton shifted around in his seat to shake Charlie’s hand. “Offer him some bourbon, you Mormon bastard,” he said to Strongfellow before turning back to the game and examining his cards.
“I hear Kefauver’s taken you under his wing,” Sutton said to Charlie. “I raise fifty cents.”
“He’s been very kind,” Charlie said.
“Pat’s taking him on in the primary,” said Strongfellow.
“Looks like Estes is going to get beat anyhow, so I might as well be the man to do it,” Sutton said.
Charlie looked at Strongfellow, who seemed happy and in his element, surrounded by fellow veterans.
He recalled reading Strongfellow’s widely publicized story. Part of the clandestine military intelligence Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, Strongfellow, a former Mormon missionary, had parachuted into Germany during the war to rescue an atomic physicist and bring him to Allied territory so he could be whisked to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to work with the team building the first atomic bomb. But one of his contacts was a double agent, and after a furious gun battle in which Strongfellow was gravely wounded, he was taken to the Belsen prison at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
One night during his imprisonment, Strongfellow experienced a religious epiphany. God was with him and would guide him out of the prison. Amazingly, whether through divine providence or dumb luck, Strongfellow did manage to escape and make it to safety. After he recuperated and returned to Utah, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints found his tale so compelling they took him around the state to preach the power of faith. His congressional election victory in 1952 followed easily soon after.
“I don’t drink, Charlie, but Sutton brought a bottle of what I’m told is some stellar Tennessee whiskey,” Strongfellow said, gesturing toward a half-full jug sitting on his receptionist’s desk. “We’re starting a new game over here,” he added, pointing at the couch, where another congressman was shuffling cards.
Charlie poured himself a drink and took a seat on the couch as Strongfellow grabbed a chair. The other congressman introduced himself as Chris “Mac” MacLachlan of Indiana. In his fifties, steely-eyed, balding, with bushy eyebrows and an expanding waist, MacLachlan was a Lutheran minister.
“Army?” MacLachlan asked Charlie.
“First Battalion, Hundred and Seventy-Fifth infantry,” Charlie said.
“Mac was also in D-Day,” Strongfellow said. “Hundred and First Airborne.”
“Second Battalion, Five Hundred and Sixth Parachute Infantry, under Colonel Sink,” MacLachlan said as he unpinned his cuff links and rolled up his sleeves. “Drop Zone C. Between Hiesville and Sainte-Marie-du-Mont.”
“We landed at Omaha,” said Charlie, loosening his tie. “I was in K Company—we secured the bridge over the Vire River and protected the right flank.”
MacLachlan raised his glass and waited for Charlie’s to greet it.
“To those still there,” MacLachlan said.
Clink.
MacLachlan dealt. Charlie waited until all five cards hit the coffee table before he picked up his hand. The cards were unusually thick. He studied the queen of spades.
“Is this a Map Deck?” Charlie asked. MacLachlan and Strongfellow both beamed. During the war, American and British intelligence agencies had worked with a playing-card company to manufacture a special deck of cards that hid within them maps of escape routes on German territory near POW camps. Cards could be peeled apart to produce the maps, so they were ever so slightly thicker than average.