The Accidental Agent

by Andrew Rosenheim

  Not Guttman, too, thought Nessheim, remembering his colleagues ragging him.

  Guttman went on. ‘She’s expecting you to make contact. As for the Lab, Fermi will give you access to what you need. If he doesn’t, or if he can’t for some reason, then call me.’

  ‘What about Big Boy here?’ He gestured towards the bathroom.

  ‘If the General wants info from you, give it to him. But if he doesn’t ask, don’t tell. Keep me posted, however – every week or so. But no written reports. Telegrams or phone are best – you’ve got my other number at home.’

  ‘And at the office?’

  ‘So long as I answer the phone when the switchboard puts you through. Or Marie in a pinch.’ Guttman added, ‘She’s the only one who knows I’m here.’

  Nessheim nodded. Guttman was never one for prescription; that was the good thing about working for him. On the other hand, it often meant prolonged periods of bewilderment, especially at the beginning of an assignment.

  ‘So can I count on you, Nessheim?’ Guttman averted his eyes from the younger agent, looking towards the hallway instead. Nessheim heard the biffy flush and the water run in the bathroom basin. When Nessheim hadn’t answered, Guttman added, ‘I’d offer you more money but technically you’re on leave.’

  ‘How’s that? I quit, Harry. You had my letter of resignation.’

  ‘Did you ever get a letter back accepting it?’ he asked.

  Before Nessheim could respond, Groves was standing in the wide doorway. He didn’t sit down again. Looking at Nessheim he said, ‘Are we all set?’

  Nessheim said, ‘I’ll let you know. I need to think about this.’

  Groves looked at Guttman as if the Bureau man had failed his assignment. He turned back to Nessheim. ‘You got more questions?’

  ‘No,’ said Nessheim, who actually had about a hundred of them, but none that Groves would want to answer, or that Guttman would answer in front of Groves. ‘Like I said, I’ll let you know.’

  When they’d gone Nessheim sat down on the hard kitchen chair, watching out the window as his odd pair of visitors marched away towards Kimbark Avenue, Groves striding as if on parade. Nessheim thought about what had just transpired.

  Law school was hard. How could he keep up with the workload if he was engaged in a wild goose chase on the other side of the Quadrangle? For he figured that’s what it was – a hiding to nothing, searching for an infiltrator who didn’t exist. Nessheim had ample experience of Bureau suspicions that proved entirely unwarranted – arguably, Hoover owed his longevity in his post to an ability to generate false alarms. And the briefing (as usual when it came from Guttman) seemed as clear as mud. Nessheim was supposed to inveigle his way into a wartime project he couldn’t understand – and, according to Groves, wasn’t allowed to either.

  Nessheim hadn’t been a student for almost ten years; it hadn’t been easy re-entering a world where you had to read so much (and so carefully), think clearly, and write so much. Especially since he was entered in a wartime course that would see him graduate with a JD in two years instead of three. The University of Chicago had been reluctant to accept him for the accelerated programme, but he had tested well in the exams they made external applicants take. And done well so far in his coursework; he’d had straight A’s at the end of his summer quarter. No one could fault his commitment.

  But he also knew his interest was stirred by what Guttman and Groves had said. The simple fact was that law was not only difficult but often remarkably uninteresting. For the first time in months he felt excited about something, and it certainly wasn’t Fielding on Torts. Yet having rued for years the abbreviation of his education, and the removal of any prospect of a legal career, how could he admit that the realisation of this long-held ambition was actually proving so much dreary smoke?

  Goddamned Guttman, he thought, half-angrily, half-admiring the older man’s ability to work on Nessheim’s susceptibility to adventure. He got up, thinking he could use a whisky now. Maybe he should play the 78 he’d bought the day before from the new record store on 53rd Street – Billie Holliday singing ‘Until the Real Thing Comes Along’. That would calm him down.

  But as he walked through the hall towards the dining room, he saw a car through the back window, parked in the alley that ran between 56th and 55th Streets. It was the red convertible again.

  He had been taught by Guttman never to believe in coincidence – and it had stuck, even though he was a law student now, not an agent. He went back to the bedroom and drew the Smith & Wesson .38 from its holster hooked on a hanger in his clothes closet. Returning down the hall, he stopped in the dining room, standing on the little round rug which, like a rolled-out pie crust, extended beyond the circular table. He slipped out of his shoes, then tiptoed into the kitchen, aiming the gun at the open back door. As he inched his way carefully into the kitchen, slipping the safety off, he felt foolish more than scared. But he had felt that way before and almost been killed as a result. Then he saw the figure sitting on the back stairs.

  It was the woman from the law school. She was perched on the second step, with her skirt covering her knees and her hands in her lap. She looked incongruously elegant in the surroundings – like a princess visiting the palace kitchens. Looking up, she seemed unalarmed by the sight of Nessheim holding a .38 in both hands.

  She said, ‘I know things ended badly between us, Nessheim, but I didn’t expect you to carry a grudge this long.’

  He lowered the gun and exhaled, half in exasperation, half in relief. ‘You shouldn’t sneak around like that, Stacey. You could have got shot.’

  ‘I wasn’t sneaking around. I was waiting for your visitors to leave.’ She stood up, smacking dust from the backside of her coat. ‘Are you going to ask me in, or do you always entertain on the back porch?’

  He sighed and lifted the hook off the screen door. As she came through the door he saw an envelope in her hand. ‘I found this on the mat,’ she said, handing it to him.

  When he put it on the little pine kitchen table, she said with the bright curiosity he remembered so well, ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  ‘It’s the paper boy’s bill.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, disappointed. ‘There I was thinking it would be in invisible ink. You being a G-Man and all.’

  ‘My least favourite phrase. How did you know where I lived?’

  ‘I have my methods, Nessheim.’

  Then it came to him. ‘You drove here?’

  She nodded. ‘You know me. I like the great outdoors best from behind a wheel.’

  He laughed. ‘You’ve got a pretty fancy car.’

  It was Stacey’s turn to look surprised. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘That was you in the Packard Eight. The first time, on Fifty-seventh, you had the top up. Then on Kimbark you had it down.’

  ‘It seemed a clever disguise.’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t drive a car the colour of a fire engine if you’re trying not to be noticed.’

  She didn’t reply, but walked through to the dining room, looking at the textbooks and notebooks stacked on the table there. When he came in to join her she walked quickly along the corridor to the front hall, where without so much as a by-your-leave she opened the door to his bedroom. Taking a step inside she stopped and surveyed the room, while he stood in the doorway behind her. Thank God I made the bed, he thought, looking over her shoulder at the spartan room. It held a night-time side table, a small closet, a maple dresser for clothes, a couple of planks he had set up on bricks for the books of his late-night reading – a mix of what his mother called ‘proper books’ and the paperbacks being produced for the military which Woodworth’s sold illicitly on 57th Street – and the bed, an old iron one, with a white candlewick bedspread pulled tight across the blankets.

  Stacey turned to leave the room. ‘I can tell you haven’t had a lot of company here, Nessheim.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘No girl worth her salt would spend more t
han a night in a room this bare.’

  ‘I must have been waiting for you to fix it up.’

  ‘I thought you had a girlfriend in Washington.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She walked past him into the hall, then turned into the living room and went and sat on the sofa vacated by Guttman. Nessheim stood in the open doorway and looked down at her. ‘I suppose you want a beer.’

  She shook her head, and her hair swayed easily on her shoulders. ‘I’m off the sauce these days.’ She waited a beat. ‘Unless you’ve got some Scotch going?’

  ‘You haven’t changed.’

  He went to the kitchen and poured them each a good stiff inch, then filled the glasses half-full from the sink faucet – the water was cold and hard here in Chicago, almost good enough to substitute for ice.

  When he came back he found her lying with both legs up on the sofa. Her head was propped against a cushion she’d rearranged at one end. He gave her the drink, then sat in the soft chair and looked out the window. It was getting dark; in the courtyard the shadows were fading to black. ‘Chin chin,’ he said, raising his glass.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, lifting the glass and taking a long pull. She nodded her approval and pointed vaguely at the walls. ‘I was expecting a bachelor’s slum, but this is kind of nice – bedroom excepted. Too bad. I was hoping you’d need me to clean the place up.’

  ‘You mean, you’d send your maid to sort it out.’

  ‘I’ve given up Drusilla for the duration of the war.’

  ‘You let her go? After all these years?’

  ‘Of course not. But she only comes once a week now.’

  ‘A sacrifice, I’m sure. For her, I mean – she must miss the dough.’

  ‘I pay her the same amount.’

  ‘That’s big of you.’ He paused, then said, ‘So what are you doing back in school?’

  ‘A girl’s got to eat.’

  ‘I thought that’s what they had men for.’

  She looked at him with cool eyes. ‘I tried that. It didn’t take.’

  He wasn’t sure what she meant. There was always a man in Stacey’s life; once it had been Nessheim. ‘Don’t tell me you’re hard up now.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘So why law school? To help the poor and defenceless?’

  She looked at him with the studied calmness that meant she was getting annoyed. ‘Nessheim, I know you think I’m a hypocrite, a rich girl toying with the poor for amusement’s sake. But would it really be better if I thought I deserved to be rich?’

  ‘That sounds familiar,’ he said and took a long slug of his highball. It tasted soapy to him. ‘So now that you’ve found me, is there a purpose to your visit?’

  ‘Ouch,’ she said very quietly, but he didn’t look at her. She said more brightly, ‘You haven’t got a smoke, have you?’

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ he said with annoyance. ‘You must be thinking of another guy. Is it that hard to keep track?’

  ‘I’ll let you count,’ she said with a shrug, though he could tell she was still cross by the way she was trying not to show it. They sat in awkward silence for a moment, then she gave a small sigh and said, ‘You’ve changed, Nessheim, though I’m not sure it’s for the good. What happened?’

  ‘What didn’t happen? I was in the FBI for eight years, Stacey.’

  ‘Funny that, I never saw your name in the papers. You didn’t shoot Ma Barker, now did you?’ She gave a playful laugh, trying to make things light again. ‘I bet you never shot anyone.’

  Stacey saw the look on his face. ‘Oh, Jim, I’m sorry. I was being stupid, wasn’t I? And you’re still connected to the Bureau, aren’t you?’

  ‘Nope. I resigned before I came back to Chicago.’

  ‘Then what were those two VIPs doing here?’

  He shrugged and got up from his chair, and stood with his back to her, gazing out of the window. He didn’t want to look at her. Her face wasn’t flawless – she had a small curve to her nose, a dot of a mole on one cheek, one eye that was greener than the other, and little, slightly prominent teeth that she’d always complained were squirrel-like. Yet Nessheim thought she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever known. She’d also been the funniest, sexiest, most alive woman ever willing to take up with the likes of him. But then she’d done a bunk and left Chicago, returning three months later with a deep tan and a new boyfriend. Nessheim, whose spirits were usually high, had felt pancake flat for a year. More than a year, actually.

  It was dark outside now. ‘What do you want from me, Stacey?’ He kept his voice down and was trying to sound detached.

  ‘I’m three weeks behind, Nessheim. That’s a lot of Torts. Somebody’s got to help me catch up.’

  He still wouldn’t look at her; that would be fatal. ‘Hire a tutor.’

  ‘How much do tutors cost?’ There was that familiar bounce to her voice.

  ‘With you, more than any tutor can afford.’

  She laughed at the jiggled logic. ‘I had someone in mind, but he’d need to tell me the going rate.’

  Nessheim snorted. She was playing him like a fish too small to worry about if it didn’t take the bait. ‘What if he says no?’

  ‘Be positive. You mean what if he says “Yes”? That means nobody at school finds out he’s with the Feds.’

  He didn’t bother to deny it again, for he was suddenly overwhelmed by the return of old feelings. He had forgotten the extent of his desire for her. It was not only physical desire – simply being with Stacey had eclipsed any other happiness he’d known. He’d once made the fatal mistake of telling her that. ‘Even more than football?’ she’d replied, her sarcastic tone running like a piano scale across his feelings. His declaration of love reduced to schmaltz, he’d had sense enough not to go mooning on, and had merely bandied back, ‘Well, maybe not football.’

  Now he found himself moving to the sofa, and Stacey pulled up her legs to make room for him at the far end. Was she serious? He told himself that’s why he needed to look at her face, though when he did he found her eyes laughing at him. But there was a hint of warmth, maybe even generosity, he hadn’t ever seen before, and it almost took his breath away, since he thought he’d learned not to hope for anything from her.

  ‘Okay?’ she said in a whisper, and he nodded despite himself. She swung her legs off the sofa and leaned forward, and he waited for her to make the first move, trying to restrain the impulse to take her into his arms.

  But she only kissed him on the forehead, once, lightly, while he closed his eyes. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ she said, still in a whisper. ‘I’m kind of glad I found you.’

  By the time he opened his eyes she had gone. He heard the screen door slam in the kitchen, and when he roused himself and walked to the rear of the apartment, he only caught the quickest flash of her, heading towards the alley and her car.

  He stood in the kitchen for a minute, resisting the temptation to go out on the landing and watch her. He noticed the envelope she’d picked up and tore it open, idly wondering how much the newspaper bill would be. Two bucks? Four? He couldn’t remember when he’d last paid. He was surprised to find no calculations on the piece of paper which he unfolded, a piece of onion-skin typing paper. There was one typed line, and as he read it he suddenly felt a chill, warm as it was outside:

  Welcome Home, Herr Rossbach.

  We know where you are.

  Part Two

  2

  AS THE LIBERTY Limited moved east through the dark flatlands of Indiana and Ohio, Harry Guttman sat in the dark in his grand compartment. With the lights off, he didn’t have to stare at his own reflection in the Pullman window, and could see instead the occasional light of a distant farmhouse, or closer up the platforms of the stations they passed through at speed. South Bend, Valparaiso, and the improbably named Warsaw – which looked a small and sleepy town, unlike its counterpart, where Guttman knew for a fact people were being slaughtered on a daily basis.

&nb
sp; Guttman was travelling on his own nickel. He had originally reserved the last upper berth in a section sleeper, anticipating a restive night from the snoring of other passengers in the bunks behind the dark green curtains and the rowdiness of the soldiers turning in after late-night games of pinochle in the bar lounge. He needed to be back at Bureau Headquarters in Washington the next morning (a Tuesday); he’d told his secretary Marie to say he was sick today, but Hoover didn’t like illness among his staff, and had the irritating habit of calling you at home when you were out more than a day.

  Revelling in his recent promotion from colonel to general, Groves had commandeered a ‘drawing room’. But at the last minute he had decided to stay over in Chicago to compare construction notes with the executives at the new Merchandise Mart, the world’s largest commercial building – though smaller than the new pentagon-shaped headquarters built for the War Department, which Groves told Guttman proudly would eventually consist of 6.5 million square feet. Having changed his own plans, Groves had offered his compartment to Guttman – not without an almost royal whiff of condescension. The Pullman porter had looked so disappointed when the General proved a no-show that Guttman had handed over two bucks to keep him happy.

  The compartment was embarrassingly plush and spacious: wood-panelled and carpeted, with two lower berths, one of which doubled as a couch while the other lay hidden in a recess of the wall. There was a pair of deep-cushioned lounge chairs by the windows, a small writing table, and best of all, a separate, private washroom. Quarters fit for a … general, Guttman supposed, since no regular soldiers travelled this way. Director Hoover did, of course; on his trips with Clyde Tolson he went nothing but first class. His subordinates, however, were expected to pursue a relentless frugality.

  He thought about Groves and their meeting in Chicago with Fermi. The Italian scientist had been forthcoming, almost voluble in his descriptions of the set-up at the University of Chicago, where they had met in Fermi’s office. They had been introduced to no one else, since Groves was at pains to keep Guttman’s presence secret.