He looked at his dinner companion but she wouldn’t meet his eye. So they sat in silence, as she ate her main course and Guttman spooned up his soup. He was remembering the end of his conversation with Frankfurter. It seemed clear that Frankfurter had apprised Roosevelt of Guttman’s fears that the Bureau had been compromised. Equally clear, Roosevelt must have taken this to mean it was compromised by Nazi sympathisers. Since Roosevelt’s source of information (and what exactly was it?) claimed a Nazi had infiltrated the project in Chicago, then naturally the President wouldn’t want to engage the Bureau in smoking him out.
Which made sense – sort of. For if the President distrusted the Bureau, why had he continued to add to the power Hoover wielded? The President had in recent years expanded the FBI’s powers enormously, undermining his own Attorney General’s efforts to keep Hoover under control. Why had FDR done that? It seemed a direct contradiction of what Guttman had learned from Frankfurter.
Unless … Guttman chewed thoughtfully on a piece of stewed beef and then reached the only conclusion. The President was scared of Hoover.
When he’d finished his pot roast Guttman broke down and ordered dessert, writing ‘One peach pie’ on the pad just as a woman came into the car from the far end, passing the galley and almost colliding with a waiter coming out with a hot plate. She was wearing an eye-catching, peacock-blue cocktail dress. Her thick black hair was brushed back in a wave, with a long ivory clip to hold it in place, and her eyes had enough mascara applied to make her lashes shine like dark stars against the pale skin of her face.
Two of the soldiers, at a table for four, looked up at her with interest, and one of them opened his palm wide to show there was a free seat. The dining-car steward was about to lead her there when she said something and he nodded, then led her past the soldiers’ table and pulled out the aisle chair next to the old lady.
‘Hope you don’t mind,’ she said, impersonally addressing the table. The old lady didn’t respond, and Guttman felt obliged to say he didn’t mind at all.
The waiter was back with Guttman’s pie and the menu card, and the new arrival looked at it intently for a moment. Her features were strong: a long nose, flattened very slightly at the end, a mouth lipsticked cherry red, and a strong chin that was saved by a small dimple that broke the blunt monotony of its cleft. No one would ever have called her beautiful, but she certainly served to brighten up the dining car, which was filled with soldiers, sailors and bureaucrats.
She put down the menu with a neat slap on the white linen tablecloth and unfolded a starched napkin across her knees. ‘Well, at least there’s a choice,’ she said chirpily, with a voice more youthful than the rest of her – Guttman figured her for forty and a bit. ‘Going west we had sandwiches until Utah.’
The old lady looked disapproving, as if an unpatriotic complaint had been voiced. The woman in peacock blue winked at Guttman, and he half-smiled and looked down at his plate.
‘You start out in Chicago?’ she asked him, and he nodded. She nodded back, then turned to the old lady. ‘Where are you travelling to?’
‘Washington, then New York,’ the lady said. ‘And then home – thank goodness.’
‘You don’t like New York?’
‘Not much. Not my kind of people.’
Guttman said nothing. The younger woman extended her hand to him. ‘I’m Lois,’ she said.
He stuck a mouthful of pie behind one cheek and put down his fork to shake her hand. ‘Harry,’ he said.
The old lady ignored the exchange, but the woman named Lois seemed determined to include her, asking, ‘Have you come far?’
‘Just Chicago.’ The voice was like flint. ‘My grandson’s stationed at Great Lakes.’
‘Nice of you to visit him,’ said Guttman. Maybe she would warm up now that he was not her sole dinner companion.
She shook her head. ‘Not when I had to tell him that his brother’s dead.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Guttman, slightly stunned.
The old lady glared at him. ‘He was a marine, killed by the Japs in the Solomon Islands.’
Guttman didn’t know what to say. Lois turned to him and broke the silence. ‘So where are you getting off, Harry?’
He said, ‘Washington.’
‘What are you doing there?’
‘I work for the government.’
‘That sounds exciting.’ She said this without sarcasm – or conviction – then looked at her menu. ‘What’s it gonna be?’ she mused out loud. ‘Shrimp for me, I think. Don’t see that on the trains much.’ She looked at Guttman. ‘Any chance I could borrow your pencil?’
‘Sure,’ he said, blushing slightly, and handed it over. Lois scribbled her order on the little pad, and handed it back to him. When he took the pencil she seemed to make sure their fingers touched.
Seeing that he’d finished his peach pie, the waiter came and asked if he wanted coffee. Guttman hesitated, feeling the woman Lois’s eyes on him. Part of him wanted to stay and talk to her; suddenly he felt his loneliness like a running sore. But part of him – irrational but large – felt it would be a betrayal. And he had papers in his compartment to look at, and God knows he could use some sleep, something he couldn’t get at home these days.
So he shook his head and stood up, leaving a quarter on the linen tablecloth, while the white-jacketed waiter moved aside to let him out, clutching the hot silver coffee jug with a linen napkin.
‘Excuse me,’ Guttman muttered as he edged out into the aisle.
The old lady didn’t reply, but Lois looked surprised, even disappointed. ‘Going so soon?’
He nodded. ‘I had a long day.’ He got a curt smile in return as he said goodnight.
The Pullman porter had been in his compartment to make down the bed with freshly laundered linen, fluffed-up pillows and a brownish-pink blanket. Guttman took off his clothes, reaching absent-mindedly for his holster and gun only to remember that he hadn’t brought them with him. His business had been too unofficial for that. He put on his pyjamas, a blue flannel pair his wife had bought from Hecht’s. He turned off all but the night light above his bed and got in, deciding the stuff he’d brought from work could wait until the morning, when he would be back behind his desk. He took Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down to bed with him, but found it hard to concentrate on the book. He was tired.
He wondered if he had been right to make the trip. You and your missions, Isabel had said once, fondness and concern vying in her voice. It made a change, anyway, for in the last months his regular duties had become emotionally meaningless to him – war or no war. It had reached the stage where recently he had thought seriously about leaving the Bureau. Not that he knew what he’d do then. He couldn’t hang out a lawyer’s shingle; it was twenty years since he’d taken his night-school law degree, and he doubted he would even be able to pass the Washington Bar. A job as security chief for a department store had been his mental fallback each time he thought Hoover was about to get rid of him. And with so many ex-cops now in military uniform, it was true that he could walk into that kind of post for the asking. But the prospect appalled him – of days spent in an office tucked behind women’s lingerie or the shoe department; eight hours interrogating shoplifters and contemplating the place his life had come to.
He was dozing off now, starting to dream about his childhood down on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His friend Max was there, and they were playing stickball. The same Max who got polio ten years later and now lived in calipers. But the dream had the Max of old, whipping the ball in while Guttman stood over the sewer top they used for home plate. He swung and missed with the broomstick, then swung and missed again. Guttman was growing frustrated, desperate to hit the ball … suddenly there was a knock on the compartment door.
He came to with a start, to find the night light still on and his book sitting like a flattened gable on his chest. Had he imagined the noise? He waited tensely. Then there was another knock.
He got up, feeling in his ove
rsized pyjamas like the ten-year-old boy in his dream. He shuffled to the door, still groggy. ‘Who is it?’ he asked.
‘Open up, please.’ It was a woman’s voice.
Guttman opened the door a crack and looked out cautiously. It was the black-haired woman from the dining car. He opened the door wider. The corridor lights had been dimmed, but he could see that she was alone.
She was smiling at Harry, pyjamas and all, and seemed to be swaying slightly. He wondered if she were drunk, though she hadn’t had anything but coffee at dinner. She said, ‘I thought you might like some company, Mr Guttman.’
The lines seemed out of a bad movie. He felt embarrassed. ‘I was going to bed. Sorry.’
‘Won’t you stay up a while for me?’
He didn’t answer. He didn’t want a scene but he also didn’t want this woman inside his compartment. She said, more sharply now, ‘What’s the matter? We could have some fun.’
‘Nothing’s the matter. I’m married, that’s all.’ The lie seemed necessary.
‘I guess I got it wrong then. You sure you’re still married?’
He bristled slightly. ‘I’m sure. Goodnight.’
He closed the door and locked it, hoping she wouldn’t knock again. When he got back into bed, he realised he was shivering. Had the woman mistaken him for Groves?
Then suddenly he sat up. When the woman had sat down at dinner, she’d introduced herself. I’m Lois.
Harry, he’d said.
So how did she know his last name?
3
IN THE MORNING the dining car was nearly empty – the soldiers were taking the rare opportunity to sleep in and there was no sign of the woman named Lois. Guttman returned to his compartment just as the train went through the Ivy City locomotive coach yard, full of dark Tuscan-red Pennsylvania Railroad coaches and, above them, a cat’s cradle of overhead wires for the new electric line between D.C. and New York. Ten minutes later they arrived at Union Station. On the platform he couldn’t see Lois either. Maybe she had got off in the early hours; he dimly remembered they had stopped at Harrisburg while it was still dark.
He went through the crowded hall, a blur of bustling khaki-clad soldiers, past the sign for the Servicemen’s Lounge and the long line at the ticket window, and got into one of the taxis waiting outside. He’d left his car at the Bureau, hoping no one would notice that it had been there since Sunday. The cab moved slowly towards the Capitol, the driver complaining that the war had brought too many people to town. When Guttman suggested that must help business, the driver said he’d gladly sacrifice the extra fares for lighter traffic.
Guttman got out discreetly at 12th Street and walked the long block to the Bureau. The temperature was in the mid-sixties, and chances were the coming winter would not be harsh – it very rarely was in what was essentially a southern city. A good thing, thought Guttman, since he hated snow – its association with a childhood spent struggling with hand-me-down galoshes and buckled rubber boots.
At the Bureau he found Marie behind her desk in the anteroom outside his office. There was a young agent standing by her desk. Probably a new recruit from one of the field offices, making the rounds. Guttman didn’t recognise him, though the way this guy was hanging around Marie was familiar enough. The field guys would hover in the little anteroom like bees around a honeypot, drawn to the mixed kind of attraction Marie exuded, part lustworthy, part maternal – most of the agents were younger than Marie, who Guttman figured was in her early forties (he could never bring himself to ask). She was a well-built redhead with a pleasant, lived-in face; attractive in a way that made even the ugliest rube feel it was not inconceivable he had a chance with her. She was welcoming, gemütlichkeit; to a raw-boned kid in from the Butte office for the first time she must have seemed soothing and redolent of home – like a reassuring malted milk at a soda fountain.
As Guttman came in, the young agent stopped talking.
‘Morning, Marie,’ Guttman said.
‘Morning, Mr Guttman.’ This was unusual – Marie only called him Mr in Tolson’s presence.
Guttman turned to the agent, who wore a dark blue suit, white shirt and a tie without discernible pattern. The young man stood there confidently, a good four inches taller than Guttman, and handsome in a Clark Kent kind of way.
‘You waiting to see me?’
‘No, sir. I was just dropping off a memo with Miss Boudreau from Mr Tolson. It’s to all the assistant directors.’
‘I see. Have you managed to do that now?’
‘Sir?’
Guttman nodded at the memo on Marie’s desk. ‘Message received, Mr …?
‘Adams, sir. Thomas Adams.’ He extended his hand and Guttman shook it grudgingly.
‘Was there anything else requiring your presence here, Mr Adams?’ Guttman said laboriously.
The young man blushed. ‘No, sir. I’m all through. Thanks, Marie,’ he said and scooted out of the room.
Marie looked knowingly at Guttman. ‘You’re in a good mood. Was your trip that bad?’
‘Don’t know yet. Who was that kid?’
‘T.A.?’
‘Is that what he’s called? They’re taking them young these days.’
‘You’re just feeling your age. You see the resemblance?’
‘To what? Of whom?’ Miss Lewalski from the sixth grade, strict with a ruler and a stickler for grammar, came flooding back.
‘Doesn’t he remind you of someone?’
‘My nephew Seymour?’
‘Go on, be serious. Can’t you see it?’
‘No, Marie, I can’t. Who does the young T.A. remind me of?’ He felt grumpy, and was getting grumpier.
‘Frank Sinatra.’
‘I think I’ve heard of him. Scrawny guy, yeah?’ But it was hard to put a face to the name; he thought of Sinatra as a syrupy voice on the radio.
Marie shook her head. ‘Sometimes, Harry … Even you know who Sinatra is. All the girls in the pool think so. Down to the Adam’s apple.’
‘Has our “Sinatra” finished high school yet?’
‘You sound jealous.’
This was true. Guttman had never looked as young as this guy. Even in his early twenties, Guttman’s hair had been deserting him. What remained were long strands, splayed across his pale-coloured pate like black threads on an ivory pillow. ‘I’ve seen the guy before, I think.’
‘Of course you have. He worked for Mr Tolson a few years back, then went to the Chicago Field Office.’
‘Did he now?’ Tolson specialised in young male assistants. Clean-cut individuals, usually former athletes, as Tolson liked to pretend he was as well.
‘Yeah,’ said Marie, ‘I think he was out on the Coast for a while too. But I guess Mr Tolson thought he was wasted out there, and brought him back to work for him again.’ Marie played it straight, but her eyes were mischievous.
‘Other than the arrival of young Sinatra in your life, did I miss anything yesterday?’
Marie shook her head. ‘Don’t think so. The mail is on your desk. You’ve got the Executives Conference at ten-thirty. Otherwise your day is clear.’ He started to move through the doorway to his office when she added, ‘Oh,’ and he noticed her voice had lowered. ‘There was a call for you. I didn’t want to leave the message on your desk.’
‘Who was that?’
‘Your Canadian friend.’
It had taken J. Edgar Hoover over fifteen years to recognise the importance of counter-espionage and to accept that operating within America’s borders were foreign agents who the FBI needed to do something about. Through the Depression of the thirties, Hoover would not countenance the idea. His objectives were combating conventional crime (especially bank robberies) and accruing power for the organisation he ran.
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, however, Hoover had created a new division, separate from the all-encompassing General Intelligence Division. It was named Division Five and was run by Edward Tamm, a trusted Hoover lieutenant. Div 5 comprised fou
r sections, and Guttman ran the one devoted to counter-espionage. Yet he still reported to Tolson, not Tamm – which Tamm resented.
Guttman’s anomalous status had come after intense negotiations in the spring of 1942 with Hoover himself, when Guttman’s priority had been to arrange his own transfer from running the Strategic Intelligence Service, or SIS, another new division created after America’s entry into the war to track German activities in Latin America. With an invalid wife back then, the last thing Guttman had wanted was to traipse around Caracas or Santiago looking for Nazis. He was in any case more comfortable fighting the enemy at home. In his own way, he supposed, he was an Isolationist himself.
At 10.30 he went upstairs for the weekly Executives Conference. It was chaired by Clyde Tolson and was held in a meeting room down the corridor from the Director’s quarters, a suite of rooms that included Tolson’s own office. The meeting was attended by all the assistant directors and a few other senior Bureau officials. The only junior person usually present was Miss Caccioppo, a legendary stenographer said to hold the unofficial world record for shorthand speed, so Guttman was surprised to see Tolson’s new assistant there, the kid T.A.
The rest were all familiar faces, and most of them had been at the meeting every week for the last ten years. Only Pop Nathan was missing from the old days; he was in San Diego, where he’d gone to be Special Agent in Charge. An early Hoover appointment, he had been the only other senior Jew at the Bureau, but Guttman didn’t miss him much, since Nathan had always displayed a loyalty to Director Hoover which was both blind and impermeable.
Tolson began with a summary of the field office reports, focusing on crime trends. The most recent ones were a surge in war-related fraud, including a rash of scams in which phoney life-insurance policies were sold to newly drafted soldiers.
Then each of the assistant directors reported on their own bailiwicks. Normally Guttman’s attention would have wandered by now, but he found himself studying the faces round the table, as old hands like Glavin from personnel and Louis B. Nichols, the Bureau’s head PR man, gave their reports. Did Guttman really know these old familiars as well as he thought? Could not one of them have some terrible secret? Not the usual kind of secret – the hidden liking for a morning whisky; a fondness for other men’s wives, or for teenage basketball players; even an undeclared conviction for petty theft – but something on an incalculably larger scale.
The Accidental Agent Page 5