5:00 P.M. EDT September 27, 1957 — Washington, D.C.
The telex in the Associated Press Washington D.C. bureau burst to life, waking Bert Novich from his unintentional cat nap at his desk. He began to read the words while the keys still chattered. He was wide awake a minute ter when he tore the sheet from the printer and raced back to his desk.
AP WIRE BULLETIN
DATELINE: LONDON – 27 SEPT 1957
FLASH – BBC AIRS CLOSED US SENATE FOOTAGE
BBC journalist REYNOLD SHARPE tonight broadcast what he described as unedited film from a CLOSED SESSION of the United States Senate hearing on INHUMAN ACTIVITIES.
Source of the footage unknown.
Program included SHARPE inviting Senator JONAH MERRIN to appear live on his broadcast OCT 7 at 1900 GMT, offering alternate dates if Sunday conflicts with senator’s religious observance.
Broadcast seen by London correspondents. Immediate reaction in Washington expected. Copy of program requested by AP London bureau.
“Lenny!” he called to his colleague across the room. “Who do we know in Jonah Merrin’s office?”
Leonard Casamassa looked at the torn sheet held down on Bert’s desk by paperweights and ashtrays and coughed out half of an excmation.
“Holy sh—”
“Stop gawking and think. Who do we know. That guy we buy drinks. The one who gives us scoops.”
Lenny snapped his fingers repeatedly in a vain attempt to jog his memory.
“Bobby—no, Robert something. He hates being called Bobby.”
Bert was searching his desk for something as he spoke. “Then why do you keep doing it?”
“To get under his skin. Bruce! Robert Bruce,” Lenny excimed.
Bert loaded a new sheet of paper into his typewriter before picking up the phone handset from his desk and handing it to Lenny.
“Well, call Bobby Bruce and ask him what’s going on, and does the Senator want to comment.”
Across the Northeast seaboard of the US simir conversations were underway as major news organizations received simir bulletins from their London bureaus. When the CBC received their own alert, they knew they’d waited too long. They’d vacilted on whether to use the film they already had, and in the end “The second mouse gets the cheese” had won out over “The early bird gets the worm.” Now the early bird had struck — and the CBC hadn’t even begun to assemble their own program. Still, they were not above pcing a call to Senator Merrin’s office, asking him to comment on the BBC program they themselves had not yet seen. They had the film. They knew Reynold Sharpe. Their imagination was up to the task of guessing what he’d said, and how he’d said it.
At any rate, it was 5PM on a Friday, and the two junior members of his staff still present to answer the phones quickly became overwhelmed. They resorted to The Senator has no comment at this time but if you would like to leave you name and a phone number where you can be reached he will return your call as soon as possible.
“See if Debbie is still next door!” the more experienced of the pair shouted at the other one. “If she’s there tell her to call Ted Burton at home. He needs to get back here. Tell her to tell him it’s an emergency!”
It wasn’t her pce, or Debbie’s for that matter, to tell Senator Merrin’s Chief of Staff to do anything. Never in a million years would Debra Everett ever consider telling her own Senator’s COS to do anything. But desperate times...
The young pair of staffers had little time to think of anything else as they answered calls, recited their line, and scribbled names and phone numbers on pads of paper. By the time help arrived two hours ter they were a frazzled mess with barely one working voice between them.
10:05 P.M. GMT September 27, 1957 — Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.
Lillian Davies couldn’t remember the st time she stayed up past 10 PM on a Friday night talking with a man.
She had loved Sol very much, but no one would ever describe him as the loquacious type. Her memories of him were already beginning to fade, and tonight, almost four years after his death, the longest sentence she could remember him speaking was, Lovely bit of ham this, Lil.
Ed Martell had no trouble remembering the st time he’d stayed up past 10 PM talking to a woman. Between work and school he met a variety of them both in and out of those two pces. But those conversations rarely ventured into deep waters, and never dove headfirst into existentialism.
“When Henry died I felt like I’d lost a part of myself. My dad wouldn’t mention his name, not for almost a year. Then when the war ended and I came home almost the first thing he did was to tell me that Maggie, Henry’s fiancee, was my responsibility. Her parents felt the same way. So we got married. Had a daughter. But it didn’t st. It never felt right to me. Nor to Maggie. Like I’d gotten on the wrong bus, and I could see my house in the rear window, getting further away. I was going in the wrong direction.”
Lillian patted his hand as she gave him a knowing nod. “It wasn’t your fault, love. You were living a life that was meant for someone else. I never knew two brothers who were so close in body and mind that you could pluck one out and put the other in without a lot of broken crockery. But it’s how we do things here in the north. How we’ve always done things. When the HMS Kelly went down in ’41 it took Alfie Reed with it. His brother stepped in and married Alfie’s intended, Elsie. They had two bairns, and stayed together. But you could see there was no love there. Friendship, but not love.”
Ed shook his head and drank his sherry. “Doesn’t make it right. Wasn’t fair to either of us.”
“No,” she answered, “it doesn’t and it wasn’t.”
Ed’s mood brightened suddenly.
“But We got Roz out of it. That’s worth all the grief ten times over. And once the divorce was over I started to get my bearings. But even then I wasn’t sure what path to take, not until tonight. Not until Reynold Sharpe blew away the fog. I can see where I am, where I want to go, and now I have a star to steer by.”
Lillian smiled at the change in Ed. “Must have been some program. And for all it confused you, it seems to have done you some good. So what’s this new bright star shining you towards?”
Ed rubbed his hand over the closed leather cover of the worn textbook. He wondered what had drawn him to physics. Why he found it so easy, and what he would use it for once he left university.
“It’s lighting my path towards demystifying persons with enhanced abilities. Understanding them, and then showing the world that they need not fear them. Because without that fear Jonah Merrin, and the men like him, are powerless.”
Lillian smiled before a ugh escaped her painted lips.
“Didn’t have enough of fighting tyrants in the st war, love? Ready to start a new one?”
Ed stopped rubbing the cover and began to drum his fingers against it—slow, steady, with the rhythm of men marched out before a firing squad. His smile tightened. If Jonah Merrin could see it he would be unsettled.
“If I have to.”
Across the ocean, the sun was sinking over Washington, D.C., even as the commotion was rising within Senator Merrin’s office.
9:17 P.M. EDT September 27, 1957 — Washington, D.C.
Hugh Carver hung up the phone. His face told everyone in the room all they needed to know.
“He got to Camp David an hour ago. They informed him, The President is meeting with Senator Ransome and is unavaible. They said he caused a bit of a scene and the Secret Service told him to leave. He’s probably on his way back.”
“Who’s they? Who were you talking to?” Ted Burton asked.
Hugh replied slowly, leaving a pause between the two words. “Anne Whitaker.”
Deputy Press Secretary, first woman in the role. Ted knew her by reputation—as most Senate staffers did. She never appeared on camera; she didn’t have to. She kept people like him in line by applying pressure quietly but firmly.
If Senator Merrin wants the President’s support on this, he knows what he has to do.
He’d heard that phrase—or variations of it—spoken in her New York accent enough times that even thinking of it made a muscle in his cheek twitch.
And now the President was rewarding Eleanor Vaughan Ransome with a private meeting at Camp David to thank her for denouncing Jonah Merrin—her own party’s member, the President’s ally—on the Senate floor. The optics were brutal: her star was rising, his was falling. Reynold Sharpe’s broadcast, and the footage it contained, would only accelerate the slide.
The door opened. One of the junior staffers hurried in from Senator Collins’ office next door. They’d borrowed a phone line. She carried a sheet ripped from a steno pad.
“This is what Sharpe said—as much as he could remember of it,” she told Ted.
Her handwriting was neat. The words were not reassuring.
...unchecked powers of a U.S. Senator...
...cims to be the defender of freedom...
I invite Senator Jonah Merrin to appear on my show...
Not a transcript. But enough. Too much.
A respected—beloved, even—in Britain—journalist questioning America’s dedication to freedom. Challenging Merrin to appear on live television, in Engnd, where the Senator held no sway and no license to threaten.
If he accepted, he’d be walking into enemy territory.
If he refused, he’d look afraid.
A trap, pin and simple.
And he was going to have to walk straight into it.
