The TIME-LIFE Conspiracy

Contents

AN ELECTION OF PATRIOTS novel

A CRIME OF INFLUENCE screenplay

PIVOT radio script

Extras:

The Author, and More Books

On the early morning street in front of the Rockefeller Center sheets of newsprint harry the chill wind. Only people make New York even marginally bearable and now, before the office workers arrive, the city is naked and hard-edged. Yesterday’s detritus offers no relief.

Inside the building the night-watchman comes to the glass doors and without opening them peers out towards the growing light at the end of the concrete and glass canyon. Down the street a cleaning truck sprays water on its whirling brushes sweeping the gutter as it approaches slowly along the curb. The driver curses when he is forced to swerve around the television team setting up in front of the Rockefeller Center. They are bundled up against the Fall chill as much as against the early morning. Their equipment is clumsy, painfully heavy and awkward. They have their own trailer-generator to provide power for the big cameras on mobile tripods and the heavy lights on stands they man-handle into position. The year is 1951 and one of the Woody station wagons in which they came is parked half into the street so that the hooked-up generator-trailer can be handy to the cameras and lights. Cables snake everywhere.

At last they finish and light cigarettes. They lounge in the manner of men used to waiting but not like soldiers, not resignedly; there is a certain arrogance even in their relaxation. They are television. They do not have to observe the rules and courtesies by which lesser people abide.

Harry Luce shaves with an electric razor, glancing often at his watch, face up on the basin beside him, chain neatly folded. Harry Luce is a man in his early fifties, his figure and bearing good but not overtly athletic. He wears a crimson woolen dressing gown over his suit pants, white shirt and a tie already knotted and pulled up tight to his collar, but he is still barefoot.

This bathroom is Harry Luce: austere, cast-iron with white enamel, a glass shelf, spotless white walls, everything squeaky clean.

In an ashtray next to the watch a cigarette smolders. Harry Luce is a chain-smoker and it has given him a persistent cough which he beats when he speaks the same way he beat his childhood stammer, by pure will-power. On a shoe-shine stand in the corner brushes and tins of polish are neatly squared up; Harry cleans his own shoes, which wait already shined on top of the stand, together with a pair of socks turned inside out ready to put on.

Harry puts the razor down and switches on the radio on the glass shelf beside him. While the radio crackles to operating temperature, Harry cleans his electric razor over the trash basket with a brush. He clips the razor closed, puts it in its box, closes the box and places it squarely on the shelf just as the first comprehensible sounds come from the radio.

‘ — with the seven o’clock news.’

Harry shakes his watch beside his ear, then puts it into his waistcoat pocket, clips on the chain, and reties his dressing-gown.

‘Good morning. Today we start with the presidential hopefuls who aim to put themselves forward for their party’s nomination. With me is America’s best-loved radio voice, Ed Murrow. Ed, is it true that running for the presidency has now become a four-year job?’

‘If not four, then at least two years.’

Harry is impatient. ‘Come on, get to it, Ed.’

Murrow’s voice is a tool of great range. ‘But as always, the men with a real chance are holding their hand, waiting to be asked, as surely they will be. Senator Kefauver is considered a maverick by the Democratic Party managers and needs to use the radio and the newspapers to go over their heads to the people. He’s trying to turn the primaries into a power base, to lock up his own delegates and so force himself upon the men in smoke-filled rooms.’

Harry, standing straight before the radio, his whole attention on it, nods his head slowly, judiciously.

The radio announcer is not satisfied. ‘Will the Democratic machine bring forward their own candidate?’

‘Don’t interrupt,’ Harry snaps. ‘Don’t interrupt!’

‘They’ll have to,’ Murrow says on the radio. ‘The Democratic Party’s organization men will unite behind Adlai Stevenson.’

Harry presses his thumb thoughtfully against the glass shelf, then looks at the impression in his flesh, then fingers his chin with the same hand, though not to feel if he is clean-shaven.

‘Daley’s man and from Chicago too. What about the Republicans, Ed?’

‘Don’t expect any surprises from the GOP. The Republican nominating convention will reward Senator Taft for his magnanimity in 1948 and his manifold other services to the party by giving him the nomination if only he asks for it.’

Clare Boothe Luce’s bedroom is large and extremely elegant, decorated without reference to expense. A table, laid with breakfast for two, stands at the foot of the four-poster bed. Through an open door her own luxurious bathroom may be seen beyond the linking dressing room. Near the closed doors to the terrace, against the backdrop of Central Park, Coco the pet cockatiel preens himself in his cage.

Clare Boothe Luce, fully dressed and coiffed, sits at the table, eating a croissant quickly but without making any mess. She is in her forties and very beautiful. She is elegant rather than merely smart, her self-possession enough to make many men feel inferior. ‘Anything on the radio that will require remaking your cover?’

Harry, still barefoot in his dressing gown over the rest of his clothes, reads the papers while he eats a proper breakfast of porridge, bacon and eggs with grilled tomato, and toast. It is a habit: he shovels in the food without tasting it. He replies through his food, ‘Nothing. But they led with Ed Murrow saying the Democrats will nominate Adlai Stevenson.’

‘Stevenson’s a regular party man. He only appears to be as much a maverick as Estes Kefauver.’

‘Democratic politics have been about appearances ever since Franklin Roosevelt, damn the man.’ Harry lowers his paper. ‘The Daley machine created Stevenson. His seeming distance from them is an appearance the Democrats will trade on. The party professionals will use Adlai to smash Kefauver. But that’s not the point.’

‘No. They can win with Stevenson.’

Harry is savage. ‘The point is, with Stevenson they will win.’ He pauses to recover himself. ‘Ed then goes on to say the Republican convention will anoint Bob Taft. All he has to do is turn up.’

‘You’ve always been for Bob. He’s a good man.’

‘But can he win?’

She looks silently at him, waiting. He opens his mouth, then closes it without speaking. When he raises the paper, she puts her finger gently in the fold. ‘I’m a Republican too, Harry.’

‘And you can hardly remember when we were last in power.’ He is immediately contrite. ‘I’m sorry.’ He gestures as if to touch her hand but does not. Even with his wife, Harry Luce is awkward.

Coco bursts into gravelly song. After a moment Harry and Clare recognize the tune as Stars and Stripes Forever.

‘You flatted again,’ Harry says sadly to Coco.

The bird huffs its feathers, turns its back on them, and shuts up.

Harry turns back to Clare. ‘Something vital goes out of a democracy when there is no effective opposition. Four more years in the wilderness and nobody will believe we could ever again be a viable opposition. That’ll be the end of the two-party system. Another defeat will damage not only the Republican Party but the very fabric of the Constitution.’

She sits silently digesting this. He watches her, his paper still in his hands but now resting on the table.

At last she speaks, very softly. ‘And we have no one but Bob Taft. Poor Harry.’ She rises, walks around the table, holds his head to her bosom. ‘Carrying the world and worrying you’ll drop it.’

Harry fidgets but Clare ignores that.

‘It’s broad daylight, Clare, and the curtains are open. At least throw the cloth over Coco.’

The hall of the Luce apartment is another impressive room, not as lush as Clare’s bedroom, not as bare as Harry’s bathroom. There are a few good-quality Chinese artifacts on display but Harry, hurrying towards the cupboard for his overcoat, this morning merely touches the vases briefly in passing. Even with disturbing thoughts in his head, he pauses longer before the portrait of his late stepdaughter, Anne, pain flashing across his face before he turns to the maid taking his overcoat from the cupboard.

‘You’re late this morning, Mr. Luce.’

Harry is not at ease with the concept of personal servants; this is an additional handicap to his inability to strike up easy relationships with people. ‘I’m not so old and decrepit I can’t get my own coat.’

‘Folks got to make a living, Mr. Luce,’ the maid says with dignity.

That stops Harry. Reluctantly he puts his arms in the sleeves as the maid holds the coat for him. ‘Listen, I’ll send my people to talk to you. You don’t tell them anything about us here, but give them introductions to others you know who serve white people and they can go ask them questions. Is that all right?’

‘If you’re doing an article in your magazines about black people, I sure wouldn’t mind seeing my face in there, Mr. Luce. Lot of black people read Life.’

‘What’s that? What’s that?’

The maid is taken aback at Harry’s mannerism but holds her ground. ‘They think you’re on our side, your article on the Court’s decision about desegregation.’

Harry smiles in genuine pleasure. ‘All right, if you want your picture in Life, I’ll tell my people.’

In front of Rockefeller Center there are now a few more people on the street but it is still too early for the crowds of office workers; those who are out stare at the television cameras, which they have never seen before.

Harry Luce’s car is a plain sedan, not a limousine. He sits in the back stubbing out his cigarette, watching with his permanent curiosity as the television crew comes alive at the sight of his approaching car. It does not occur to him that they are there to interview him until he climbs out of the car and the interviewer approaches him.

‘Mr. Luce, can you spare us a few moments. We are making a program about the men who are shaping America today and would like — ’

Harry has to force an agreeable answer. ‘I make my living by interviewing others, so how can I refuse.’

‘Thank you sir. We set up before dawn to be ready for you. We’ll start with a few routine questions to warm up.’

‘Get to the meat of it, man. I haven’t all day.’

‘All right.’ The interviewer glances at his unit director who in turn checks that the red light is on above the camera lens before he points his finger at the interviewer as a go-signal. ‘Mr. Luce, don’t you think you have too much power for one man?’

Harry can hardly suppress his anger. ‘That seems to me a very abstract question.’

‘No, I think it is a very practical question.’

‘How can you measure power? You can’t weigh it.’

‘You surely have great power, do you not?’

Harry pretends to stop to think. He is pale and his lips are pinched. ‘Well, I wouldn’t even say power.’

The interviewer gestures at the building towering over them. ‘You wouldn’t say this is power?’

‘Influence perhaps and upper responsibility,’ Harry agrees reluctantly. ‘I associate power more clearly with political office.’

‘Yes, but your magazines certainly influence public office.’

‘Well, if you like the word so much.’

‘One yardstick of power is how many minds a man can influence. What is the combined readership of your magazines, Mr. Luce?’

‘That, young man, is an impertinent question.’ Harry walks briskly around the interviewer and into the building. The interviewer spreads his hands at the unit director but continues to smile uncertainly at the camera until the light goes out.

Alison is in her late twenties and rather obviously pregnant. She enters the lift. ‘Thirty-two, please.’

The lift man punches the number. Other floor numbers on his board are already alight for the other workers in the lift.

Tom Matthews enters. ‘Morning all.’ He nods to the lift man, who punches thirty-four without being told.

All the others greet him. Everyone in the lift works for TIME-Life.

‘Any more?’ the lift man asks and punches a button. The doors start closing. Then the lift man sees Harry stride across the foyer towards him and opens the doors again by holding his hand urgently against the safety section.

Harry enters and stands head down, deep in thought, not greeting or speaking to any of his colleagues and employees, who give him plenty of space. Their chatter stops the moment he enters and, though there are more people outside walking towards the lift and it is by no means full, the operator closes the doors, cancels all the buttons already punched, and punches only 34. Everyone seems used to this.

Tom Matthews, grave, dignified, reading a tightly folded New York Times, stands next to Harry. Matthews is also given a wide berth by the others in the lift. Alison studies them both keenly.

On the Time executive floor the lift doors open. Harry strides out. After a pause, the rest of the people in the lift who work on this floor also walk into the office, Tom Matthews leading. The rest, Alison among them, wait for the doors to close and then the lift descends again, the numbers in the abacus over the door falling and stopping, falling and stopping.

Harry stops beside an office door and waits impatiently, fingers tapping against his briefcase, for the incumbent to arrive. Tom stops next to him and lowers his paper. ‘Morning, Harry.’

Harry is gleeful. ‘I bet you didn’t know that we have a black readership.’

‘All right, I’ll bite. Where do you hear that?’

‘Clare’s parlor-maid. Send someone to talk to her. She makes the point that people have to make a living, no matter how menial the task. Set someone else to investigating the education available to Negroes. Let’s do an article on what determines their place in society, something to reinforce the Supreme Court desegregation rulings.’

‘Nothing will give me greater pleasure.’

‘Good.’ Harry walks towards his own office. Tom is halfway through his door when Harry turns. ‘Tom!’

Tom comes out of his office.

‘Something else. Have someone reliable make a list of all possible presidential candidates for both parties.’

Tom’s mouth turns down at the corners. ‘It’s a bit early for that. The conventions are nine months away.’

‘We don’t want to be caught unawares.’

‘Come on, Harry. Next year’s nominations are a foregone conclusion. Taft for the Republicans, Stevenson for the Democrats.’

Harry pounces on the admission. ‘Stevenson for the Democrats. Is that set?’

‘We — the Democrats don’t have anyone else and Truman burns to destroy Kefauver. Who else is there of the necessary stature except Adlai? Christ, Harry, even in this deeply Republican journal we have praised Stevenson for clearing out the Cook County rats’ nest.’

Harry walks back towards Tom, nodding his head. Tom watches him closely.

‘Stevenson deserved our plaudits then. All the same, we could reg — .’ Harry catches himself. ‘Never mind.’

‘It’s a waste of time, creating an artificial excitement about the nominations. Our readers will catch us out and we’ll lose credibility.’

Harry purses his lips. ‘I’ve seen too much politics to stake a plugged nickel on even one nomination nearly a year away, never mind two. Let’s be prepared.’

‘I’ll attend to it today. Emmet Hughes?’

‘Ideal, if he can be spared.’

Harry walks towards his office. Tom remains at the door of his, watching Harry. When Harry is at his office door, Tom comes to his conclusion. ‘You think Stevenson can beat Taft, don’t you?’

Harry turns in his door and stares inscrutably for several long moments at his friend and subordinate. Then, without answering, he turns and stomps through the door. Tom Matthews smiles, grimly victorious.

Harry Luce’s is an austerely elegant office, only its corner position and size betokening the position of its incumbent. The single splash of color is a map of the world completely covering one wall. Different colored flags are stuck into various parts of China — and only into China.

On the opposite wall is a single large photograph framed in a thin edge of black wood. In the photograph Harry and Bob Taft, dressed in rough fishing gear, are in the fishing cockpit of a gigantic yacht pulling in a huge fish one of them has caught; Harry laughs open-mouthed and Taft smiles at his exuberance. Dave Ingalls stands a couple of feet back, calling advice but giving them space to work. The Reverend John Courtney Murray, complete with dog collar, in a corner of the cockpit holds his Bible in both hands high above his head in shared triumph. To one side stands Bill Paley, wearing yachting whites, blazer and peaked cap, obviously the owner of the yacht, smiling approvingly but not quite certain what all the hullabaloo is about. The enlargement was made from an original after it had been clearly signed by all the men in white ink below their positions, the signatures blown up in the process. Underneath Taft’s signature he had written the date, August 1950.

Harry, in his shirt-sleeves, is on his feet before the photograph but not really seeing it; this is his habitual standing place. His secretary sits near his desk, a Pitman pad on her knee. She is a forbidding lady, older than Harry, her gray hair drawn into a cowed bun.

‘I remain, my dear Bishop Pike, yours in the faith, etcetera.’ Harry turns to the secretary. ‘D’you know, he truly believes that one can talk to the dead?’

Harry studies her face keenly for her reaction and she looks up at him but her face shows nothing. It is a game between them.

‘The apocalypse arrived in San Francisco today and tomorrow will reach New York,’ Harry tries again.

The expression on the secretary’s face does not change. After a moment she returns to her work, reading back from her pad, ‘The editorial policy of my magazines stands in the great liberal tradition — with what some theologians might call Christian presuppositions. My own political hero was Theodore Roosevelt, who, fallible though he was, did not hesitate to assert that righteousness is relevant to politics and all the public affairs of men and actions. Paragraph. I remain, my dear Bishop Pike, yours in the faith, Henry R Luce, Editor-in-Chief.’

Meanwhile Harry sorts through the neat stack of papers on his desk before his chair, finds what he wants and turns once more towards the photograph. He registers the contents of the photograph and stops in midstep. A look of pain passes his face, and instead he strides to the window-wall to stand looking out over New York. He tramps a bit, as if making a comfortable place to stand in the new position on the carpet. Behind his back the secretary raises an eyebrow at this break in recognized routine but does not comment.

‘This is to Tom Matthews and all the managing editors.’ He looks over his shoulder to check she is ready. Turning back to look out over his city, he does not see Tom Matthews enter and stand behind the secretary. ‘Head it McCarthyism.’ He dictates, ‘It’s time now to hit this hard. But our aim must be accurate. The fact is that communism is no longer a real issue in America. It is a phony, good only for journalistic and other demagogues. International communism is the danger and we should concentrate on that.’ Harry turns back to his desk and sees Tom. ‘Sit. I’m just about finished.’ To the secretary he says, ‘D’you need to read that back?’

She closes her pad and rises. ‘No. Harry, you must leave no later than eleven-thirty to reach the Waldorf in time for your speech. I’ll have the car downstairs at twenty past.’ She flips through the papers on Harry’s desk and takes an armful.

Harry walks across the office to open the door for her, then strides back and drops into a chair beside Tom. ‘There’ll be no coffee here. She’s retyping my speech. What have you got?’

Tom gently waves a rough-torn teletype sheet. ‘Things are rotten in the kingdom of television. Apparently the Sixty-four Thousand Dollar Question was rigged right from the beginning. It’s bound to be a very big scandal. The wire services suggest even in their first flash that somebody will go to jail. How do you want us to handle it?’

Harry is surprised. ‘Why, give it to them hard for being crooked.’ He takes the wire service tear-off and reads it.

‘Far be it from me... Bill Paley is your friend.’

‘Oh yes. But he and all those sanctimonious sons of bitches at CBS have had it coming for a long time.’

Tom keeps his voice neutral. ‘Television is a powerful medium.’

‘Damn right, television is a powerful medium!’ Harry says triumphantly. ‘And do they use it to educate, to improve the quality of American life, to elevate the moral and intellectual tone of our nation?’ Now he is angry. ‘No, they bloody well do not. Their greed drives them to vapid quiz shows — and even those they can’t run honestly!’ He breathes deeply to calm himself. ‘Tom, this is more than merely commercial maladministration. It’s a symptom of something much worse, something rotten. Hit them with everything we’ve got.’

Tom nods, rises, walks to the door. At the door he passes the new Berlin Bureau Chief for Time Inc.

The bureau chief hovers near the door. ‘Mr. Luce, Harry. I just got the letter and wanted to say thank you for the raise. I hadn’t expected more money right after getting the Berlin Bureau.’

‘I was poor once and didn’t like it. Why should you?’

The bureau chief is embarrassed at this revelation and starts turning to go. ‘Well, I just wanted say my and Mary’s thanks to you in person. We’re on the one o’clock plane, so — ’

Harry strides across the office to take the bureau chief by the elbow and hold him a moment longer. ‘When you get to Berlin, remember you’re second only to the American ambassador. Behave accordingly.’

As Harry, shrugging into his suit-coat, comes from the inner office, his secretary whips the last card from a second typewriter on a side-table. The typewriter is called Orator and uses special large capital characters for speakers to read easily. She gives Harry the stack of cards. ‘You’re early. The car will be downstairs in ten minutes.’

‘I’ll walk a bit to settle my nerves. Send him after me. He knows where I walk.’

‘It’s a good speech. Important?’

‘Thanks. Very. We’re about to double our advertising rates and I’m speaking to the paymasters.’