by William Boyd
‘Celebrating,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes? Are we doing well, all of a sudden?’
‘I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ he said, ‘but we managed to get an America First meeting closed in Philadelphia. Two thousand photographs of Herr Hitler found in the organisers’ office. Irate denials, accusations of a set-up – but, still, a little victory. All going out on the ONA wire today if you people want to pick it up.’
Eva said they probably would. Angus asked her how life was at Transoceanic and they chatted unguardedly about work, Eva admitting to a real disappointment about the response to the Kearny attack: everyone at Transoceanic had seen it as a godsend, thought it would provoke more shock. She told Angus about her follow-up stories, all designed to stir up a little more outrage. ‘But,’ she said, ‘no one seems that concerned, at all. German U-boat kills eleven neutral American sailors. So what?’
‘They just don’t want to be in our nasty European war, dear. Face it.’
They ordered T-bone steaks and fries – still two ravenous Britons – and talked circumspectly about interventionists and isolationists, of Father Coughlin and the America First Committee, pressures from London, Roosevelt’s maddening inertia, and so on.
‘What about our esteemed leader? Have you seen him?’ Angus asked.
‘This morning,’ Eva said, unthinkingly. ‘Going into head office.’
‘I thought he was out of town.’
‘He had some big meeting to go to,’ she said, ignoring Angus’s implication.
‘I get the impression they’re not very happy with him,’ he said.
‘They’re never very happy with him,’ she said, unreflectingly. ‘That’s how he likes it. They don’t see that his being a wild card is his strength.’
‘You’re very loyal – I’m impressed,’ Angus said, a little too knowingly.
Eva had regretted the words the minute she had uttered them – she became flustered suddenly and spoke on, instead of shutting up.
‘I mean, only that he likes being challenged, you know, likes being awkward. It puts everybody on their mettle he says. He functions better that way.’
‘Point taken, Eve. Steady on: no need to defend yourself. I agree.’
But she wondered if Angus suspected something and worried that her uncharacteristic volubility might have given more away. In London it had been easy to be discreet, hidden, but here in New York it had been harder to meet regularly and securely. Here they – the British – were more conspicuous and, moreover, objects of curiosity too, fighting their war against the Nazis – with, since May of this year, their new allies the Russians – while America looked on concernedly but otherwise got on with her life.
‘How’re things generally?’ she said, wanting to change the subject. She sawed away at her steak, suddenly not quite so ravenous. Angus chewed, thinking, looking first frowningly thoughtful, then slightly troubled, as if he were a reluctant bringer of bad news. ‘Things,’ he said, dabbing at his mouth prissily with his napkin, ‘things are pretty much as they’ve always been. I don’t think anything will happen, to tell the truth.’ He talked about Roosevelt and how he didn’t dare risk putting entry to the war to the vote in Congress – he was absolutely sure that he’d lose. So everything had to remain confidential, done on the sly, backhandedly. The isolationist lobby was incredibly powerful, incredibly, Angus said. ‘Keep our boys out of that European quagmire,’ he said, trying and failing for a convincing American accent. ‘They’ll give us arms and as much help as they can – for as long as we can hold out. But you know …’ He tackled his meat again.
She felt a sudden impotence, almost a demoralisation, hearing all this and wondered to herself, if this was indeed the case, what was the point of all this stuff they did: all the radio stations, the newspapers, the press agencies – all that opinion and influence out there, the stories, the column inches, the pundits, the famous broadcasters, all designed to bring America into the war, to cajole and nudge, persuade and convince – if it were not going to make Roosevelt act.
‘Got to do our best, Eve,’ Angus said brightly, as if he were conscious of the effect of his cynicism on her and trying to counterbalance it. ‘But, short of Adolf declaring war unilaterally I can’t see the Yanks joining in.’ He smiled, looking pleased, as if he’d just heard he’d been given a huge raise. ‘We have to face it,’ he lowered his voice, glancing left and right. ‘We’re not exactly the most popular people in town. So many of them hate us, detest us. They hate and detest FDR too – he has to be very careful, very.’
‘He just got re-elected for the third time, for God’s sake.’
‘Yes. On an “I’ll keep us out” ticket.’
She sighed: she didn’t want to feel depressed today, it had started so well. ‘Romer says there are interesting developments in South America.’
‘Does he, now?’ Angus affected indifference but Eva could sense his interest quicken. ‘Did he give you any more details?’
‘No. Nothing.’ Eva wondered if she had blundered again. What was happening to her today? She seemed to have lost her poise, her balance. They were all crows after all, all interested in carrion.
‘Let’s have another cocktail,’ Angus said. ‘Eat, drink and be merry – and all that.’
But Eva did feel strangely depressed after her lunch with Angus and she also continued to worry that she had given away information, subtext, hints about her and Romer – nuances that someone with Angus’s agile brain would be able to turn into a plausible picture. As she walked back to the Transoceanic office, across town, crossing the great avenues – Park, Madison, Fifth – looking down the wide, unique vistas, seeing everywhere around her the hurry, chatter, noise and confidence of the city, the people, the country, she thought that maybe she too, if she had been a young American woman, a Manhattanite, happy in her work, cherishing her security, her opportunities, with all her life ahead of her – perhaps she too, however much she might sympathise and empathise with Britain and her struggle for survival, would think: why should I sacrifice all this, risk the lives of our young men, to become involved in some sordid and deadly war taking place 3,000 miles away?
Back at Transoceanic she found Morris busy with the Czech and Spanish translators. He waved at her and she went to her office, thinking that there seemed to be every kind of community in the United States – Irish, Hispanic, German, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, and so on – but no British community. Where were the British-Americans? Who was going to put their case to counter the arguments of the Irish-Americans, the German-Americans, the Swedish-Americans and all the others?
To cheer herself up and to deflect her mind from these defeatist thoughts, she spent the afternoon compiling a small dossier on one of her stories. Three weeks previously, in a feigned-tipsy conversation with the Tass New York correspondent (her Russian suddenly very useful), she had let slip that the Royal Navy was completing trials on a new form of depth charge – the deeper it went the more powerful it became: there would be no hiding place for submarines. The Tass correspondent was very sceptical. Two days later, Angus – through the offices of ONA – covertly placed the story with the New York Post. The Tass correspondent phoned to apologise and said he was cabling the story back to Moscow. When it appeared in Russian newspapers, British newspapers and news agencies picked it up and the news agencies cabled the story back to the USA. Full circle: she ranged the clippings on her desk – the Daily News, the Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe. ‘New deadlier depth charge to obliterate U-boat menace’. The Germans would read it now, now that it was an American story. Maybe U-boats would be instructed to be more cautious as they approached convoys. Maybe German submariners would be demoralised. Maybe the Americans would root for the plucky Britons a little bit more. Maybe, maybe …According to Angus it was all a waste of time.
A few days later Morris Devereux came into her office at Transoceanic and handed her a cutting from the Washington Post. It was headlined: ‘Russian professor commits suicide in
DC hotel’. She skimmed through it quickly: the Russian’s name was Aleksandr Nekich. He had emigrated to the USA in 1938 with his wife and two daughters and had been an associate professor of international politics at Johns Hopkins University. Police were mystified as to why he should have killed himself in a clearly low-rent hotel.
‘Means nothing to me,’
Eva said. ‘Ever heard of him?’
‘No.’
‘Did your friends at Tass ever talk about him?’
‘No. But I could ask them.’ There was something about the tone of Morris’s questioning that was untypical. Something hard had replaced the debonair manner.
‘Why’s it important?’ she asked.
Morris sat down and seemed to relax a little. Nekich, he explained, was a senior NKVD officer who had defected to the States after Stalin’s purges in 1937.
‘They made him a professor for form’s sake – he never taught at all. Apparently he’s a mine of information – was a mine of information – about Soviet penetration here in the US …’ he paused. ‘And in Britain. Which is why we were rather interested in him.’
‘I thought we were all on the same side now,’ Eva said, knowing how naive she sounded.
‘Well, we are. But look at us; what’re we doing here?’
‘Once a crow always a crow.’
‘Exactly. You’re always interested in what your friends are up to.’
A thought struck her. ‘Why are you concerned about this dead Russian? Not your beat, is it?’
Morris took back the clipping. ‘I was meant to meet him next week. He was going to tell us about what had happened in England. The Americans had got everything they wanted out of him – apparently he had some very interesting news for us.’
‘Too late?’
‘Yes …very inconvenient.’
‘What do you mean.’
‘I would say it looked like somebody didn’t want him to talk to us.’
‘So he committed suicide.’
He gave a little chuckle. ‘They’re bloody good, these Russians,’ he said. ‘Nekich shot himself in the head in a locked hotel room, gun in his hand, the key still in the lock, the windows bolted. But when it looks like a hard-and-fast, grade-A, genuine suicide it usually ain’t.’
Eva was thinking: why is he telling me all this?
‘They’d been after him since 1938,’ Morris went on. ‘And they got him. Shame they hadn’t waited an extra week …’ He gave a mock-rueful smile. ‘I was quite looking forward to my encounter with Mr Nekich.’
Eva said nothing. This was all new to her: she wondered if Romer was involved with these meetings. As far as she was concerned Morris and she were only meant to be preoccupied with Transoceanic. But then, she thought – what do I know?
‘The Tass people haven’t mentioned any new faces in town?’
‘Not to me.’
‘Do me a favour, Eve – make a few calls to your Russian friends – see what the word is on Nekich’s death.’
‘All right. But they’re just journalists.’
‘Nobody’s “just” anything.’
‘Romer’s rule.’
He snapped his fingers and stood up. ‘Your “German naval manoeuvres off Buenos Aires” story is doing well. All of South America very angry, protests all over.’
‘Good,’ she said flatly. ‘Every little helps, I suppose.’
‘Cheer up, Eve. By the way – the lord above wants to see you. Eldorado diner in fifteen minutes.’
Eva waited in the diner for an hour before Romer turned up. She found these professional encounters very strange: she wanted to kiss him, touch his face, hold his hands, but they had to observe the most formal of courtesies.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, sitting down opposite. ‘You know – it’s the first time in New York, but I think I had a shadow. Maybe two. I had to go into the park to be sure I’d lost them.’
‘Who would put shadows on you?’ She stretched her leg out under the table and rubbed his calf with the toe of her shoe.
‘FBI.’ Romer smiled at her. ‘I think Hoover’s getting worried about how large we’ve grown. You’ve seen BSC. Frankenstein’s monster. You’d better stop that, by the way, you’ll get me excited.’
He ordered a coffee; Eva had another Pepsi-Cola.
‘I’ve got a job for you,’ he said.
She covered her mouth with her fingers and said softly, ‘Lucas …I want to see you.’
Romer looked fixedly at her; she sat up straight. ‘I want you to go to Washington,’ he said. ‘I want you to get to know a man there called Mason Harding. He works in Harry Hopkins’s press office.’
She knew who Harry Hopkins was – Roosevelt’s right-hand man. Secretary of Commerce, notionally, but, in reality, FDR’s adviser, envoy, fixer, eyes and ears. Quite probably the second most important man in America – as far as the British were concerned.
‘So I have to get to know this Mason Harding. Why?’
‘Approach the press office – say you want to interview Hopkins for Transoceanic. They’ll probably say no – but, who knows? You might meet Hopkins. But the key thing is to get to know Harding.’
‘What then?’
‘I’ll tell you.’
She felt that little flutter of pleasurable anticipation; it was the same as when Romer had sent her into Prenslo. The strange thought came to her: maybe I was always destined to be a spy?
‘When do I go?’
‘Tomorrow. Make your appointments today.’ He passed her a scrap of paper with a Washington telephone number on it. ‘That’s Harding’s personal line. Find a nice hotel. Maybe I’ll pop down and visit. Washington’s an interesting town.’
Mention of the name reminded her of Morris’s questions.
‘Do you know anything about this Nekich killing?’
There was the briefest pause. ‘Who told you about that?’
‘It was written up in the Washington Post. Morris was asking me about it – if my Tass friends had anything to say.’
‘What’s it got to do with Morris?’
‘I don’t know.’
She could practically hear his brain working. His mind had spotted some link, some connection, some congruence that seemed odd to him. His face changed: his lips pouted then made a kind of grimace.
‘Why should Morris Devereux be interested in an NKVD assassination?’
‘So it was an assassination – not a suicide.’ She shrugged. ‘He said he was due to meet this man – Nekich.’
‘Are you sure?’ She could see that Romer found this unusual. ‘I was meant to meet him.’
‘Maybe you both were. That’s what he told me.’
‘I’ll give him a call. Look, I’d better go.’ He leant forward. ‘Call me once you’ve made contact with Harding.’ He raised his coffee-cup to his lips and spoke over the rim and mouthed something at her, an endearment, she hoped but she couldn’t make it out. Always cover your mouth when you have something important to convey – another Romer rule – against lip-readers. ‘We’ll call it Operation Eldorado,’ he said. ‘Harding is “Gold”.’ He put his cup down and went to pay the bill.
7
Super-Jolie Nana
I WAS RATHER HOPING that Hamid would cancel his tutorial – perhaps even put in a request for a change of tutor – but there was no call from OEP so I worked my way, somewhat distractedly, through Hugues’s lessons, trying to keep my mind off the advancing hour when Hamid and I would meet again. Hugues seemed to notice nothing of my vague agitation and spent a large part of his tutorial telling me, in French, about some vast abattoir in Normandy he had visited once and how it was staffed almost exclusively by fat women.
I walked him to the landing outside the kitchen door and we stood in the sun, looking down on the garden below. My new furniture – white plastic table, four plastic chairs and an unopened cerise and pistachio umbrella – was set out at the end under the big sycamore. Mr Scott was doing his jumping exercises around the flowerbeds
, like a Rumplestiltskin in a white coat trying to stamp through the surface of the earth to the seething magma beneath. He flapped his arms and leapt up and down, moved sideways and repeated the exercise.
‘Who is that madman?’ Hugues asked.
‘My landlord and my dentist.’
‘You let that lunatic fix your teeth?’
‘He’s the sanest man I’ve ever met.’
Hugues said goodbye and clanged down the stairs. I rested my rump against the balustrade, watching Mr Scott move into his deep-breathing routine (touch the knees, throw back arms and inflate lungs), and heard Hugues bump into Hamid in the alleyway that ran along the side of the house. Some trick of the acoustics – the tone of their voices and the proximity of the brickwork – carried their words up to me on the landing.
‘Bonjour, Hamid. Ca va?’
‘Ca va.’
‘She’s in a strange mood today.’
‘Ruth?’
‘Yeah. She’s sort of not connecting.’
‘Oh.’
Pause. I heard Hugues light a cigarette.
‘You like her?’ Hugues asked.
‘Sure.’
‘I think she’s sexy. In an English way – you know.’
‘I like her very much.’
‘Good figure, man. Super-jolie nana.’
‘Figure?’ Hamid was not concentrating.
‘You know.’ At this point Hugues must have gestured. I assumed he would be delineating the size of my breasts. Hamid laughed nervously. ‘I never really notice.’
They parted and I waited for Hamid to climb the stairs. Head down, he might have been mounting a scaffold.
‘Hamid,’ I said. ‘Morning.’
He looked up.
‘Ruth, I come to apologise and then I am going to OEP to request a new tutor.’
I calmed him down, took him into the study and reassured him that I wasn’t offended, that these complications happened between mature students and teachers, especially in one-on-one tutorials, also given the long relationships that the OEP teaching programme necessitated. One of those things, no hard feelings, let’s carry on as if nothing has happened. He listened to me patiently and then said,