Harold did not speak of George at work, except as a friend; but he felt there was an understanding, with his closest colleagues, that they were attached. Once or twice they were invited, together, to some social event. At night they went to films, to concerts, to coffee shops or bars. They walked through the gates of the Hamilton Arms and felt as if they had entered an embrace: no one inside of it minded who they were, what they did. They had friends there. Compatriots. They stayed up late in George’s apartment, in great numbers, talking, debating.
Many of them, including George, were anarchists, revolutionaries. George had never paid taxes, on the premise that taxes funded wars. All the money he made was under the table; he operated entirely in cash. He would, he maintained, for the rest of his life. He did not begrudge Harold’s tendency toward conformity, he insisted. “To each his own,” said George.
“But if you get sick,” said Harold. “If you get caught?”
“I won’t,” said George simply. Or, sometimes, “I’ll go to Mexico. I’ll go to Canada. I’ll hide.”
Harold laughed at him, his impracticality, his idealism, his bravado. But there was a part of him that admired George; that wished to be like him. George laughed loudly in public; he tossed his head back with a pride that simultaneously alarmed and attracted Harold.
Each morning, Harold left early from Hamilton Arms, trudging back to his place, feeling like he was waking from a dream. He smiled at the memory of the previous night, took a quick shower (cold as often as hot: the building was old, the systems inside it unreliable), and then left again for work. And he felt, for the first time in his life, content. Long days of work ended in long and satisfying conversations, emotional and physical fulfillment, acceptance. They ate well. They slept well. They left the bedroom window open well into November, and opened it again in March.
In the late 1940s, the House Un-American Activities Committee turned its focus from rooting out Nazi sympathizers to rooting out Communists. And in February of 1950, a senator from Wisconsin made a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in which he declared that he held in his hand a list containing the names of 205 Communists currently working in the State Department.
At that time there was an overlap, in the mind of the public, between Communists and homosexuals—the term then used by politicians to signify deviance, perversion. Both categories triggered some deep-seated unease in the minds of both politicians and the public, some fear of the unknown. The Second World War had just ended; the Cold War had just begun.
A specific campaign was begun to eradicate homosexuals from the State Department—especially those who dealt with high-level information. The stated reason: homosexuals were said to be weak, incapable of keeping secrets; or able to be extorted, out of a fear of their personal secrets being revealed to friends and family; or, simply, immoral. Corrupt. In some way evil. “Loyalty risks,” they were called.
A newspaper headline read “Pervert Elimination Campaign Begins.” And Harold thought, abruptly, of his father—of people like his father—throughout the country, sitting by their radios, reading their newspapers. Nodding, approving. Urging McCarthy on.
All around Harold, his friends in government, both gay and straight, began to make plans. The talk was low and furtive: in bars, at home. He began to feel paranoid, nervous that he was being watched, being tailed. For several weeks he stopped going to George’s, until his loneliness overwhelmed him; then he only went after dark, and left before the sun rose.
What would he do, he wondered. What would he do if he was a part of the great felling then taking place all around him?
George didn’t have to worry. He was an artist, a bohemian; he worked for no organization that could fire him, aside from the coffee shop—which itself was owned by two radicals. He was lackadaisical, unafraid. Harold wondered if these qualities came out of growing up rich.
“Just drop out of the system,” said George one night, placing a gentle hand on Harold’s head. “Just stop caring. Make a different living.”
“Maybe I will,” said Harold, but in fact the thought made him miserable. There was only one kind of work that satisfied him, and it was the work of the mind: the sort that required the support of an institution. Without this kind of work, he sometimes thought, he would go insane.
If he were simply fired—that would be one thing. But the problem was not the firing; it was the blacklist. They kept you on it, Harold knew, for your whole life. It was a risk-mitigation strategy: they didn’t want their decryption techniques getting out. The high-level information they all had access to. They wanted to stifle you, discredit you. Make you look crazy. They made sure you never worked again.
The first wave of firings in the Signal Corps took place in the summer of 1950, and it quickly became a plague. John and Larry. Eddie Townes. Margaret Graves, who was married, for heaven’s sake, but said to be masculine in some unquantifiable way.
Eddie Townes came to George’s apartment for dinner after he was fired, and he wept. “What will I do now?” he said.
In the end he moved back to North Dakota to help at his father’s gas station. This was a cryptanalyst, like Harold.
“I’m next,” Harold said, after Townes had left, still bleary, mildly drunk, giving them a brave salute from just outside the door. There was no question, he thought, that they would come for him next. He imagined a life without work: bleak and uninteresting and endless. A return to his dusty, blighted childhood.
George contemplated him for a while. “What if,” he said, and took a breath.
On October 9, 1950, Harold arrived at work to find that two men in suits were waiting for him. The man on the left was wearing a toupee; Harold was almost sure of it. His hair sat on his head too heavily; he moved his head slowly, carefully. The other was handsome, impeccably dressed.
“Mr. Canady,” said the first man. “I’m Ted Doherty, and this is Art Tillman. We’d like to have a word.”
Moments later, a third person entered the room.
It was Conrad Lewey, Harold’s boss—the same man Harold had seen at the Horseshoe. Briefly, he caught Lewey’s eye.
That night he went to George’s house and told him what had happened.
We know what you know, they had said. We know whom you’ve shared it with.
They were referring to the high-level information he had been intercepting for a decade. It was a lie: he had shared his findings, of course, with nobody—not even George. He never would.
Tillman was holding a file stuffed full of papers, which he shook at Harold as if to indicate that it was full of evidence that could be used against him.
It was a bluff: presumably it was a bluff.
Still, it shook him.
“A full investigation into these matters will be conducted in the coming weeks,” said Tillman. “In the meantime, your job will be suspended.”
“I’ve done nothing,” said Harold, holding open his hands, turning up the tender white palms, as if to display their emptiness.
“Then you have nothing to worry about,” said Doherty. Lewey, in the background, shifted slowly back and forth.
On the way out, Harold tried to catch his eye. He knew what was happening: Lewey, alarmed, was framing him, pointing a finger preemptively, assuming that Harold would otherwise have thrown the book at him.