by Joel N. Ross
“That’s two and a half weeks. If this is true, we have no time.” He grabbed his print of the microphotograph and the notes. “I need a few pounds, Harriet, for a taxi to the embassy and— Shit, they’ll never believe me. Not after the other day.”
“They won’t be open for hours. We’ll stop at my office; I’ll file a report, and leave a copy. We’ll go to the embassy together.”
“Yeah. Good,” he said, pleased at the prospect of her company. Then he realized she wasn’t doing him a favor. She was working: She wanted to check on Earl and the COI, and was using him to open unofficial embassy channels. “Great.”
“Then shall we?” She slung her bag over her shoulder and hung Renard’s plaid coat through the strap.
“What’re you doing, collecting for the church jumble?”
Her eyes froze. “Perhaps I am.”
THREE CRIMSON PETALS clung to the flower with the crooked stalk. One lay on the glossy desktop, clenched like a tiny fist at the base of the green glass vase.
“We expected Bloomgaard,” Tom said. He needed Bloomgaard. Needed someone—anyone—to act on the information about Pearl Harbor. Even if the microfilm was sham, it meant something. And it came with a deadline.
“Mr. Bloomgaard hasn’t yet arrived.” The man in Bloomgaard’s office had tufts of white hair and a blushing pink scalp. “I’m Mr. Palk, the deputy diplomatic consul. Well, one of the deputy diplomatic consuls.”
He emitted a nervous laugh, and Harriet laughed with him, trying to put him at ease. She said it was a pleasure to meet him.
Palk assured her the pleasure was all his. “Now then, how might I be of service?”
“We have information,” Tom said. “It’s red-hot; it’s military—it’s gotta be seen, and fast, by someone who can act on it.”
“And from me you want . . .”
“We want it passed along, to Military Intelligence, the COI. We can’t vouch for it. It looks McCoy to me, but I’m infantry. Either way, it needs to be checked. It’s—it says . . . I don’t know where to start.”
“It claims that a Japanese attack force is currently under way, approaching U.S. installations at Pearl Harbor.” Harriet summed up a few of the points. “It’s not entirely clear, however—”
“Yes, but—Japanese troops?” Palk smiled weakly. “I don’t understand how you came upon this, er, bombshell. . . .”
“My husband is Earl Wall.” She slid the print and her translation across the desk.
Palk reluctantly read them and said, “Hmm.”
They waited for more. There was no more.
“Perhaps,” Harriet said, faint spots of red appearing high on her cheeks, “my husband’s coworkers might be interested in seeing this?”
“Oh, certainly, certainly. And, er, the proof mentioned, at the bottom here?”
“We haven’t found the second microdot.”
“Then this is an enlargement of a note that came from where, exactly?”
Tom sat back in his chair. They couldn’t expose the XX Committee to embassy workers, especially not in Bloomgaard’s office. Harriet planned to meet Highcastle later that day—if she could contact him—but until cleared, they couldn’t mention Sondegger or Hennessey, Abwehr agents or the SD. They’d hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, that the document would speak for itself.
“It was among my husband’s belongings,” Harriet said.
“Take the film,” Tom said. “Take the notes. If it’s true, we don’t have time to chew gum. The strike force is moving as we speak.”
“The strike force, yes,” Palk said. “If one only knew the source . . .”
“Listen to me,” Tom said. “If it’s bullshit, fine—they’ll can it. But if it’s true, it must be dealt with. I don’t wanna hear Kendall did it. I want to hear you’ll fucking do it yourself.”
The man bent a disapproving eye at Tom. “I hardly think it necessary to use such language in front of the lady.”
“You’ll have to excuse Thomas,” Harriet said. “He oughtn’t to speak as though he were raised in the fucking gutter.”
The door opened before Tom could laugh. He turned: Bloomgaard.
“Don’t bother standing, Mr. Wall,” Bloomgaard said, his pleasant expression a transparent veneer. “Mr. Knudson is on his way; he’ll help you from your chair.”
Tom attempted a chagrined smile. “I was out of line the other day. The surgery . . .” He raised his bandaged hand, looking for a spark of sympathy. “Wounded on Crete. I want to apologize.”
Harriet stood and offered Bloomgaard her hand. “Mr. Bloomgaard, Lady Harriet Wall. I hate to intrude, but I asked Tom to accompany me this—”
“I heard.” Bloomgaard tapped the intercom box on the desk. “Red-hot information.”
“It’s quite alarming. I’m not certain if my husb—”
“Who found the microfilm?”
“Does it matter? If you’ll take a moment to read the—”
“Who found it?”
“Tom,” she said, “made the initial—”
“Ex-Sgt. Thomas Wall, of the Commonwealth infantry.” Bloomgaard extracted a cigar from a case. “Of the Rowansea and the Red Army. He magically—”
Harriet tried to interrupt, but Bloomgaard spoke over her.
“—magically discovers top secret information and convinces his brother’s wife to sell it to me. Is this correct?”
“Nothing I have is for sale, Mr. Bloomgaard. Check the information. Check the codes. November eighteenth is the date mentioned.”
“Mentioned by whom, one wonders.” Bloomgaard was too adamant. Of course, he was a Hitlerite—and thought Tom a raving Commie.
“My husband will no doubt explain. Where, exactly, is my husband?”
Bloomgaard inspected his cigar. “Elsewhere.”
“I didn’t imagine he was hiding under the desk.”
“He’s unavailable. On assignment.” Bloomgaard turned to the door as Knudson and one of his men entered. “Ah, Mr. Knudson, escort my guests outside, and see they don’t return.”
Knudson and his man led them downstairs, away from the entrance. He opened a side door and Harriet stepped out.
Tom didn’t. “Knudson. You served in Haiti?”
“I work for Bloomgaard now.”
“In the Marine Corps—you know Franklin Berry? He’ll vouch for me. All I ask is—”
“Not a chance, pal.”
And Tom was outside, blinking at the morning light, as the door behind him closed and locked.
Harriet said, “We’ll speak to my people.”
“Good luck.”
“They’ll go over Bloomgaard’s head. They’ll have the document examined.”
“Without proof? When? There’s no time. This is just something mad Tom Wall found. And not being able to reveal the source . . .”
“I’ll speak with your Mr. Highcastle. I can’t think what else we might do.”
Tom could. There were powers beyond the political. He left Harriet promising she’d find Highcastle, and slid into the taxi. He told the driver his destination: Ed Murrow at CBS. The driver pulled into traffic, fuming about the firemen who’d taken over a third of the city’s fleet to tow trailer pumps, and Tom let the man’s words roll over him. He saw yesterday’s paper crumpled in the foot well, ripped and grimy, but the headline caught his attention:
U.S. CALLS FOR AN ANSWER
Japanese Forces in Indo-China
Plain Speaking by Mr. Roosevelt
He brushed the paper halfway clean. The Japanese were massing in Indo-China. Roosevelt called them on it, and the Japanese envoy said it was nothing; they still wished to avoid war if possible, as war wouldn’t settle anything.
That was news to Tom. In his experience, war settled plenty.
The article ended at a long, jagged rip, and he scanned the
next legible page. Tinned herrings were reserved for the armed forces, there’d been a big potato crop, and Noël Coward’s new play Blithe Spirit was a smash hit. The paper said he’d written it in six days, a couple weeks after the Luftwaffe blew his London office to splinters—a genial farce about death, in which the dead return to haunt the living.
Tom snorted. He knew all about farces. Was the microphotograph genuine? His gut told him it was. But his gut had been telling all sorts of lies. . . .
He read that two German POWs had escaped from a hospital on Tuesday and been recaptured on Wednesday. Lord Derby’s stallion Hyperion had won £25,836. Then he saw a headline: CHALLENGE TO U.S. ISOLATIONISTS. A new newspaper, the Chicago Sun, was being published in “the heart of isolationist America,” to challenge the circulation monopoly of the leading organ of anti-British opinion, the Chicago Tribune.
“That’s yesterday’s news,” the driver said. “For mud, not reading. You want a newsagent?”
Tom told him he was in a rush. The driver shrugged and dropped him outside the CBS building. If he couldn’t get Ed Murrow, any newsman would do, anyone to take this news and shout it from the rooftops.
The receptionist listened to his story and wasn’t impressed. He turned on the “Aw shucks” charm, angling toward Earl’s easy conviction, and she rang an assistant just to be rid of him. He waited while the strike force sliced through the Pacific. Forty minutes later, the assistant arrived. Tom showed him the print and notes.
“How confident are you of this translation, Mr. Walt?” the assistant asked.
“Extremely.”
“Translated by whom?”
“A freelance contractor.”
The assistant tapped his desk blotter. “We’d have to clear it with the languages staff, of course.”
Tom told him that was fine, as long as it happened today.
“And you have corroboration, of course.”
“Sure. Yeah. That’s on the way.”
The assistant nodded. “When it arrives, call me.”
“We’re working against a deadline here.”
“In the absence of substantiation—”
“Run it as speculation.”
“We’re a news organization, Mr. Walt, not a gossip mill. Without verification from a second source, we wouldn’t run a sentence about the sun rising.”
They went back and forth for ten minutes, and Tom accidentally lost his patience.
Back on the street, he trotted around the corner before reinforcements could arrive. He couldn’t walk away from this. He wasn’t going to watch dive-bombers turn Pearl Harbor into Hill 107. But whom could he trust? Try another newspaper? They’d never believe him without proof. He spent a couple of hours trying to track down Ambassador Winant, but couldn’t find him—and if he did, what the hell was he going to say? Sure, Ambassador, I was bughouse yesterday, but you can trust me today.
He needed proof. He needed that second microdot. Which meant he had to go back to Sondegger, or after Earl.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
MORNING, DECEMBER 5, 1941
SONDEGGER INTERCEPTED THE MAID as she exited the greengrocer. He struggled beneath his load of groceries, he wavered, and he failed. The onion dislodged from a bunch of carrots, thumped heavily at the maid’s feet. He bent to retrieve it, and lost a radish. He offered her an expression of overwhelmed good nature, and a genuine smile. He ensured she saw the stolen clerical collar he wore round his throat.
The maid lent him a hand with the errant onion. He’d discovered, earlier that morning, that she worked at the American embassy. She could confirm that Tom had whispered the microfilm’s message into the right ears.
They sat together at tea. Poor innocent girl, she imagined herself a sinner. He sighed at her confessions, as if in disapproval, and she looked at her feet. Despite the improvisation he’d been forced to perform, the scene was set. The new script was as compelling as the original. More compelling perhaps: The replacement of Earl Wall with his understudy Tom only increased the odds of success.
Sondegger spoke sternly to the maid. He understood she was employed by the Americans, but it was incumbent upon her to ensure she did not relax her own sense of probity. The girl didn’t understand incumbent or probity. She was new to England and English. It didn’t matter what she understood—as they spoke, he understood perfectly: No intelligence bombshell had been dropped at the embassy. Tom had gone to the embassy. Tom had spoken. But his message had not been heeded.
Sondegger’s mission was at risk.
He disentangled himself from the maid and engaged in antisurveillance, tutting unhappily, still in the role of the village priest. Tom had delivered the warning and been ignored, so the second microphotograph must be used; Tom must deliver that, as well. The only difficulty was time.
They would transmit tonight.
Sondegger bought a sheet of cheap paper and wrote a semiliterate letter, as if to an ailing sister. He discussed the weather at length. Plumbed the depths of his delicate digestion. Mentioned last Saturday’s rugby results with great enthusiasm and little accuracy: Westminster Bank, 9; Old Paulines, 10; Gwyn Bayliss XII, 0; Rosslyn Park, 30, with Knapp, Steel, Ward, Huxley, and Gallaher.
He was telling Duckblind, first, to ready the wireless, prepare and secure the transmission location. Second, in the remote possibility that he himself would be unable to do so, locate Thomas Wall and alert him to the location of the confirmation proof microphotograph.
The streets of Shepherd Market held nothing for Sondegger. The Rowansea Royal Hospital required too much time, as did Burnham Chase. He’d go to the nightclub, then. If he failed to locate Wall there, he’d obtain a pressure asset—Earl’s wife perhaps. He must find Thomas Wall and reveal the second microphotograph. Wall would return to the embassy, and this time they’d be unable to ignore the message; they would be forced to act.
“GOOD MORNING, good morning.” Mr. Uphill bustled toward the hat stand. “Might a spot of tea be forthcoming? I must say, Mrs. Wall, you look perfectly . . .” He paused for a moment as he opened the door to his office, and Harriet smiled to herself. She looked dreadful. “Delightful. I see the night’s rest agreed with you.”
Harriet told him it had, and slid the paperwork she’d just completed into the file—another record reviewed per the ALBANS dispatch minute. Another agent to live or die from this security breach.
She fixed Uphill his tea. She’d left messages at various offices, indicating she wished to speak with a Mr. Highcastle but knew no other way to reach him. Nothing else to be done but pour the tea, add a dollop of milk. The small comforts of daily routines—the tea, the garden—helped her carry on. Unlike Tom, who was no small comfort. She’d grown used to thinking of him as a broken Earl, a weak or second-rate Earl. Seeing him whole again reminded her how wrong that was. If Earl was a lion, Tom was a panther, dark and loose and swift. Earl was the King of Hearts, true, but Tom was the Jack of Spades. He was—
She clattered the teapot onto the Chinese lacquered tray. What on earth was she thinking? She couldn’t allow herself to become distracted, especially now—but anything was preferable to thinking about Father.
Tom said they were called Rugg and Renard, the men who’d fixed him to the chair in that detestable love nest above the Waterfall. The plaid jacket Renard had left behind was folded discreetly in the bottom drawer of her desk. She’d seen it before. The man—the builder, the “ruiner”—she’d seen approaching Father’s house had been wearing one precisely like it. He’d been walking with an overlarge tough who matched Rugg’s description exactly. And Rugg and Renard were known sympathizers of the British Union of Fascists, as was Father.
She couldn’t think of the contents of that drawer without making herself physically ill. So she would not think of it, not until she knew what must be done.
She entered Uphill’s office wit
h the tray, and he said, “Just rung off from the oddest call. You’ve been asked to a pressing meeting with a gentleman downstairs.”
“ALBANS?”
He inspected his tea moodily. “I’ve no idea.”
She collected herself and went downstairs. In the corner room, a squat, bullish man with gray hair and a rather vocal tie strode forward to meet her.
“Mrs. Wall,” he said, taking her hand.
“Mr. Highcastle. Tom described you well.”
He grunted. “Need to ask a few questions.”
She sat, straightened her skirt. “I was hoping to do the same of you. You heard I was making inquiries?”
“Needed to meet you in any case. Regarding your husband.”
“You’d do better to speak with the American embassy.”
“Already did. Got a chilly reception.”
“I know little of Earl’s work, but of course I’ll tell you what I can.”
Highcastle grunted again, then asked about Earl’s movements, about his friends, about his recent behavior and his current whereabouts.
She told him what she knew, which was essentially nothing. “Why now?” she asked. “Why speak to me now? Because Earl is missing?”
“Not sure he is.”
“Because of the document Tom and I found?”
“Only landed on my desk an hour ago.” He patted his attaché case. “Skimmed it, nothing more.”
“From what Tom tells me, it hardly comes from a trustworthy source, but—”
“You know the source.”
“Only what Tom told me.”
“You trust your father, Mrs. Wall?”
She was suddenly parched. “What has he to do with this?”
Highcastle said nothing.
“He’s my father.”
Highcastle waited. His eyes were yellow-brown, sharp as thorns.
“I . . . No. No, I don’t trust him.”
He made a noise in his throat. “Man I’ll call Sleet was an engineer with an Admiralty subcontractor. . . .” He rested his hip against the desk and told her a tale, abbreviated but compelling, about the Twenty Committee and the Double-Cross System. He spoke steadily and without inflection: “Now my partner is dead. The Hun is free. Your husband is the only link.”