Designated Targets

When he was finished, he put the paper down and said nothing. His small mouth puckered once or twice, but mostly his lips remained pressed tightly together. Assistant Director Tolson sat nearby and stared at the carpet. Agent Clayton, the bearer of bad news, waited for the hammer to fall.

“Despicable, filthy, gutter talk,” Hoover managed to squeak out at last.

Clayton’s mouth worked like that of a fish that had been snatched out of its bowl.

“I’m sorry, sir,” was all he could say.

“Filthy!” Hoover roared now. “Get out of my office, and never set foot in this building again.”

Clayton gaped and blubbed some more, but finally he had no choice but to bow and exit at high speed, with the director’s red-rimmed eyes boring into his back as he fled.

“Is it as bad as people have been saying?” Tolson asked when the other man was gone.

Hoover turned on him like a spitting cobra, but as Tolson flinched, the director got a hold of his temper. It wasn’t Clyde’s fault, after all. As best anyone could tell, it was some egghead named Pope who was ultimately responsible, and he was dead. Hoover had briefly contemplated assigning a team of agents to track down this Pope fellow’s parents or grandparents, just to ensure they never met, but he’d been told such efforts would be futile. This accursed time travel didn’t work like that. Even if Pope was never born, it wouldn’t return any semblance of sanity or balance to the world.

No, he was stuck with things the way they were, with a colony of perverts and half-castes spreading the most terrible lies about him, and poisoning America with their toxic philosophies and practices.

He again read the first page of Clayton’s report, gripping the papers so tightly, his hands were trembling. Twenty-two subversive bookstores had been caught stocking copies of these awful books about him. They were cheap, pulpy copies, and there was no publisher’s imprint on the spine, but the booksellers were all known Communists or fellow travelers, so there was no doubt the reds were behind it. He could hardly bring himself to look at Clayton’s description of the latest “biography” that had surfaced out of California. American Tyrant by this so-called Professor Forstchen. A dime-store novelist of some sort, according to Special Agent Clayton. A purveyor of filth and fiction, even when he was writing alleged history like American Tyrant: The Biography of J. Edgar Hoover.

Again, if only he could stop this Forstchen’s parents from meeting . . .

The director read Clayton’s summary of the book.

It claimed that he was a blackmailer. That he befriended criminals and that he had suppressed evidence about the assassination of a President John F. Kennedy—the son of that bootlegging villain in London, no less! It said he was corrupt, and a liar, and had nothing at all to do with the killing of Dillinger or the capture of the Lindbergh baby’s kidnapper, two of the greatest triumphs of his career so far.

There was even one claim that his mother had twisted his mind, and that he was a . . . a homosexual, and a pervert who dressed in women’s clothing.

His head reeled. It was practically unbearable.

“Eddie, people have always gossiped,” said Tolson, who looked worried even when he wasn’t. “You can’t let it get to you. It’s just words.”

Hoover’s eyes were nearly brimming with tears as he regarded his constant companion. For once he spoke slowly. “Junior, words . . . they are . . . grossly insufficient to express the thoughts in my mind and the feelings in my heart for you. But mark me well, words can be weapons, too, every bit as deadly as a knife or a gun.

“Look at this, just look at it, would you. They’re saying I knew about Pearl Harbor before it happened. That little weasel Popov is behind that, or that bastard Stephenson, or both of them, believe you me. And that Jewish rat Kolhammer is pulling their strings, and . . .”

He was beginning to heat up again, accusations and insults spilling out of him in a cascade of high-pitched, verbal machine-gun fire.

Tolson rubbed his eyes and shook his head from side to side. It was unusual for him to play an assertive role in their relationship. He was loyal, but very much the subordinate partner, two steps behind and one to the side. “Eddie, Eddie, please, you’ll kill yourself. Come on, now, we’ve faced worse than this before. And besides, these people are vulnerable. They’re a rabble. There’s not a genuine hero amongst them, not like you and me. You know what it’s like in California now. Those sort of degenerate shenanigans might play well with the Hollywood set, but decent Americans won’t stand for it. You need to rally the people against this menace. You know Roosevelt won’t do it. Why, he’s half a red himself, what with that awful wife of his. The New Deal was naked socialism, no less. And then there’s this desegregation garbage.”