The Accidental Agent

by Andrew Rosenheim

  ‘I think you’ll find they’ve started.’

  ‘These people I’m checking for you – are they all working on the same thing?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Stephenson sighed. ‘Is this still a safe line, Harry?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ He’d had it put in under his wife’s maiden name several years before. ‘All right,’ said Stephenson. ‘We’re talking scientists, aren’t we?’

  How on earth did he know that? Taking Guttman’s silence for assent, Stephenson went on. ‘You know we’re cooperating with you on this project.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything, Harry. We’re on the same side. Though it would help if General Groves saw things that way.’

  Guttman was flabbergasted. ‘I don’t know what to say, Bill.’

  ‘I know you don’t. It will all be a lot clearer when we can talk face-to-face. Unfortunately, I’m leaving today. I’ll be back in ten days. But send the list tomorrow to Katie, and we’ll get started.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Bermuda. We’ve made some interceptions you can hear all about when I’m back. I may have some other news for you then as well. From Norway.’

  ‘Norway?’

  ‘Yes, news from Norway. I think you’ll be surprised. By the way, what’s happened with the problem you told me about?’

  They each knew what he was talking about. Guttman said, ‘Nothing. I’ve been wondering if I’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘Really? It didn’t sound that way to me.’

  Guttman felt something niggling at the back of his mind. For no reason he knew of he said, ‘There is one other guy I’d be grateful if you could check out for me – here on home soil, I mean.’

  Stephenson waited a moment to reply. It was a big thing to ask, and begged as many questions as it hoped to answer. ‘Okay. Send me that name too. I’ll be in touch when I’m back next week.’

  Guttman said goodbye and hung up the phone. He remained sitting on the edge of his bed, thinking about ‘the problem’.

  It had begun with a telex sent from Washington under Clyde Tolson’s name to the Office of Naval Intelligence in Hawaii, requesting that surveillance of a suspected German agent be called off. The agent was thought to be meeting with Japanese intelligence officers, and the failure to continue surveillance meant both that Agent James Nessheim had nearly lost his life and that information had been received too late to prevent the attacks on Pearl Harbor.

  The problem was that Tolson had been in New York when the telex was sent from D.C. He denied all knowledge of it, and of ordering it to be sent by proxy. At Bureau HQ, moreover, no record could be found of the telex in the logbook kept of all official communications with other government agencies – including the Office of Naval Intelligence. When Guttman had asked the recipients in Hawaii to send him a copy of the original text, they had explained that, along with 80,000 other documents, the telex had been destroyed in the Pearl Harbor attack. Someone had been both careful and lucky.

  That, it seemed earlier that spring, was that, but Guttman had hoped that if he worked away at it something would emerge. He could be bloodhound-like once he found a hint of a trail. But then he’d been sidetracked, for almost four months; not by the lack of leads but by Isabel’s death. One week she was sitting peacefully in her wheelchair, reading the society column out loud while he made stew; the next week she was in Walter Reed in a hospital bed with a tube in her mouth; the week after that it was all over. Guttman had barely had time to say goodbye to his wife.

  She would want me to follow this up, he decided, feeling uplifted by the thought – even though he’d always told her he had no causes when it came to work. Except, of course, to find and punish the bad guys. ‘Like a Western,’ she’d said with a smile; his favourite kind of picture show. ‘That will do just fine as a reason. You go and round ’em up.’ And for the first time since he’d lost his wife Guttman felt he was back in the saddle again.

  He got dressed and went out into the kitchen, where he saw the telegram Annie had left on the table. It would be from Nessheim, he figured, telling him no. He wondered what had happened between Nessheim and Annie. For a while he had thought they would end up together – Nessheim had been eager to, Guttman was sure of that. But then he’d gone away and probably tomcatted around – and Annie’s mentions of him had grown infrequent. Guttman thought Nessheim was a fool not to have seized his chance.

  Still, Nessheim had unique abilities as an agent – at least in Guttman’s view. He earned people’s trust, and he could read the fine print of somebody’s character like Helen Keller touching Braille. He took the initiative and required little direction; he was adaptable, even ingenious; and he could look after himself. It was the perfect mix for an undercover man, yet now it looked as though he meant it when he said he didn’t want to stay with the Bureau.

  What a waste. He would be a perfectly competent lawyer, but the kind who was a dime a dozen in the city practices Guttman knew. Though it was more likely (he had declared the ambition often enough) that Nessheim would become a big fish in a little Podunk pond up in Wisconsin. There was something special about the guy; it was just a shame Nessheim didn’t know that himself.

  Guttman opened the telegram at last. He read its terse message with surprise.

  Count me in. JN

  Part Three

  5

  THE DOSSIER GUTTMAN had given him was thin, unhelpfully so. A series of short biographical sketches with a litany of institutional names – labs and universities from Heidelberg to Vienna, Prague to Basle, from Harvard to Berkeley, and even the University of Minnesota. Nessheim had to assume the affiliations had all been verified or were being checked by Guttman; he was in no position to do so himself. But it didn’t seem likely that any infiltrator would make up a résumé, since it would be the easiest thing to check about him. If the paper trail was not going to help, he would have to hope something emerged when he got to know the Lab and its mysterious crew. If there was anything to emerge. He remained a doubter, sensing Guttman was doubtful as well.

  He rang the Bureau’s Chicago Field Office and spoke to Tatie. She had been expecting his call, she told him, even though Guttman hadn’t been confident that Nessheim would be coming aboard again. ‘I know you better than that,’ she added. Nessheim arranged to have a drink with her in the Loop the following week, begging off dinner by claiming an appointment back on the South Side. After he’d hung up, he went off to find Fermi.

  It proved unexpectedly difficult. The main home of the Metallurgical Laboratory, or ‘Met Lab’ as it was commonly known, was on Ellis and the corner of 57th Street, kitty-corner from the north-west perimeter of the Quadrangle. Before leaving his apartment, Nessheim dressed carefully in a dark grey worsted suit, a white shirt and a blue- and yellow-striped tie. He needed the jacket to cover the bulk of the shoulder holster and gun he had been wearing since finding the ‘Rossbach’ note on his kitchen table. It was still just warm enough to leave his Chesterfield at home, though as he headed down 57th he saw someone up the street in an identical coat. It was an expensive coat for a student, and the guy wearing it also had on a black homburg, something a student wouldn’t do. Curious, Nessheim was trying to get a better look but the man was walking fast. Once he turned sideways and Nessheim saw a youthful face with a long straight nose. He looked vaguely familiar.

  Then he heard thump thumpa, thump thumpa behind him.

  ‘Winograd,’ he said before he’d even turned around.

  ‘None other,’ said the man, half-breathless from trying to catch up. He wore a thick woollen sweater, corduroy trousers, and his specialised boot. He had a burly farmer’s build, with the beginning of a pot belly and forearms like Indian clubs from swinging hay bales.

  ‘Why aren’t you in Torts?’ asked Winograd.

  ‘I could ask the same of you.’ They kept walking, and Nessheim slowed his pace to accommodate Winograd’s syncopated walk.

  ‘Docto
r’s appointment. I’m off to class now.’

  ‘Mine’s the dentist,’ Nessheim said. ‘Dicky tooth.’ Winograd nodded. ‘Hey, I talked to that new girl – her name’s Stacey. Quite a gal. She was here as an undergrad. Don’t know how I missed her.’

  Winograd had taken a BA in the college and then spent a couple of years ‘bumming around’ as he liked to say, though as far as Nessheim could tell he had never gone further west than Kansas. ‘How old is she?’ Nessheim asked.

  ‘Dunno. She said she’d lived in LA for a while. I bet she was trying to break into the pictures. What do you know about that?’

  ‘Less than you,’ said Nessheim truthfully. He and Stacey must have overlapped in LA, but he hadn’t had any idea she was there. Typical, he thought; she reappears when it suits her, not a minute before.

  They reached the corner of University Avenue and Nessheim stopped. ‘I’ll see you,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s this dentist?’ asked Winograd, baffled.

  Nessheim pointed towards Washington Park. ‘Over on Cottage Grove.’

  ‘She was asking about you, you know.’

  ‘My dentist?’ asked Nessheim with deliberate obtuseness.

  ‘No, the girl. Stacey Madison.’

  ‘Great,’ said Nessheim without enthusiasm. ‘I gotta go – my tooth’s killing me. See you Monday.’

  The Lab office was housed in a new limestone building that resembled the original buildings of the university, though lacking the Gothic ornamentation – the exterior had no grotesques, finials or fleurs-de-lis – and the walls inside were bare. On the second floor Nessheim found a series of small cell-like offices running along one side of a corridor; on the other side there was a large open room for typists and junior technicians. No one asked him what he was doing there. At first, in fact, no one paid him any attention at all.

  Finally, a voice called out. ‘Are you looking for someone, young man?’

  Nessheim stopped. A man was striding down the corridor towards him, moving quickly, almost fussily. He wore an ancient three-piece suit of mocha-brown wool and heavy brogues, and looked just old enough to call Nessheim ‘young man’. He was tall but slightly stooped, as if his hunched shoulders were being gently pulled towards his abdomen. He had a bulb-shaped chin, and a downturned mouth that gave him the lugubrious look of a basset hound. A few remaining tufts of hair curled behind his ears, but the top of his head was bald, and sat like a dome above his elongated face. Dark-skinned, he might have been Greek or Italian, and he surveyed Nessheim carefully with dark brown eyes.

  ‘I was looking for Professor Fermi.’

  ‘He is not here.’ The English was precise, and sounded school-learned.

  ‘So I was beginning to discover.’

  ‘Perhaps I can be of assistance. I am Professor Kalvin.’

  So not a southern European – the dossier said that Kalvin was a Pole who had escaped from Europe by the skin of his teeth. Nessheim said, ‘No, thanks. It’s Fermi I need to see.’

  The man raised an inquisitive brow.

  ‘Very well. His office is over in Eckhart Hall. Do you know it?’

  ‘I’ll find it,’ said Nessheim, who passed it every day. ‘Thanks.’

  He left the building and walked down 57th Street. At the corner with University Avenue, he turned and passed the Reynolds Club, which had a barber shop where Nessheim had his hair cut and listened to Floyd the barber bemoan the new price controls – which extended even to haircuts. Next to it sat Mandel Hall, the biggest auditorium on campus, with a seating capacity no one who’d had high-school history could forget – it held 1,066 seats.

  He walked through into the main Quadrangle, next to the college tennis courts where the sailor had taunted him; they were empty now. Eckhart Hall was intended to blend with the other light grey, Gothic university buildings that were spread around the Quadrangle. It was four storeys high, with gables, hipped roofs, tall narrow windows and archway entrances, ornamented with symbols depicting the subjects housed within, including Euclid’s proof of Pythagoras’ theorem in honour of the mathematicians whose building it was – though they had now decamped to one of the towers of Harper Library. Above the entrance two gargoyles with sombre faces sat above the lintel of the arched doorway. The directory on the ground floor said nothing about the Met Lab, but at the bottom little wooden letters on a board read, ‘Professor E. Fermi Top Floor’.

  This time he had to show his ID and was directed upstairs. Here he found nicer quarters than in the other building, with fresh paint in the wide sunny corridor. Nessheim moved along, peering at the small typed cards held in brass holders on each door. He found Fermi at last and knocked on the door. No response.

  ‘Ah, we meet again.’ He turned to find Kalvin once more, behind him in the hallway. ‘Is the Professor not there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You are not having much luck.’

  No thanks to you, thought Nessheim. ‘Do you know where else he might be?’

  Kalvin said, ‘That’s classified.’ He saw the sceptical look on Nessheim’s face and added, ‘He could be in Commons having lunch.’ He walked past Nessheim and disappeared into another office.

  Nessheim moseyed around the floor until he found an open door. Inside, two women sat typing. Seeing Nessheim they both stopped work. The older woman said amiably, ‘You look lost.’

  He explained he was searching for Fermi. The younger woman’s eyes widened and she stood up suddenly. She was wearing a homely black dress speckled with tiny pink roses. ‘Are you Mr Nessheim?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘The Professor’s been expecting you – he wasn’t sure when you would show up. You’ll find him a block from here. Do you know Stagg Field? It’s the football stadium.’

  ‘The old football stadium,’ the older woman reminded her.

  ‘I do,’ said Nessheim. ‘What’s he doing there?’

  The younger woman shrugged. ‘I’d better let him explain. You’ll find him under the West Stands, right along Ellis – that’s one street over.’

  He knew Stagg Field all right, the vast football stadium that had been sitting unused since President Hutchins’s abolition of intercollegiate football at the U of C. One summer almost a decade before, Nessheim had played in a scrimmage there before the official season began. He had intercepted three passes thrown by an inept predecessor to the legendary Jay Berwanger, and Northwestern had won easily in a lopsided contest. The U of C players hadn’t seemed to mind; it was as if they knew they were for the high jump. It had bemused Nessheim, who had always played with intensity, to compete against a team that didn’t seem to care.

  He walked along the stadium’s west side, which could have been transplanted from the Scottish Highlands – a long exterior stone wall, crenellated and ready for archers, and octagonal corners, each the size of a castle’s keep. Halfway along, Nessheim came to an opening two storeys high, where once thousands had poured in for football games.

  He went through and found himself standing in a bare, cavernous space underneath the stands, where at last he encountered security of a sort. A soldier sat at a table just inside the entrance, wearing a sidearm – it looked like a Colt .45 from the length of the holster. Down the hall, Nessheim saw half a dozen men standing in a circle, smoking cigarettes. They were in civilian clothes, and one of them wore a long apron.

  ‘Pass,’ the soldier demanded.

  ‘I haven’t got one.’

  ‘State your business.’

  ‘I’m looking for Professor Fermi. He’s expecting me.’

  ‘And you are?’ asked the soldier, reaching for a logbook on the table.

  ‘James Nessheim.’

  ‘Nature of your visit.’

  ‘Classified.’

  The soldier shook his head wearily as he scribbled. ‘Yours and everybody else’s. ID?’

  Nessheim showed him the little wallet with his Bureau identification; the paper ID had expired, but the soldier seemed satisfied by the shiny
metal badge. ‘On you go, pal.’

  Nessheim passed by the table and walked towards the circle of men. He caught the eye of the man in the apron, who was smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Where would I find Professor Fermi?’

  The man gestured with a dirty hand at a door on the inner wall of the vaulted hallway. ‘In there.’

  Walking over and opening the door, Nessheim stepped into a high-ceilinged room, lined in dark grey slate and brightly lit. A spectator’s gallery perched above the court on its northern side. In front of him on the floor, there were stacks of dark brick-sized blocks set neatly against a side wall. An outline had been drawn on the floor in thin black paint, marking off about a quarter of the court in a circle – it looked like the floor plan of a house. Two men, one quite tall, the other quite short, both in lab coats, stood peering down at the black line. From the photographs in Guttman’s dossier, Nessheim recognised the smaller man.

  ‘Professor Fermi,’ he called out.

  The man looked up vaguely, then his eyes seemed to focus and he snapped to. Saying something to his colleague, Fermi came forward, peeling off his lab coat as he did, and shook hands. He was neatly dressed, in a grey houndstooth suit, white dress shirt and maroon silk tie. Trim and compactly built, he exuded an athletic energy that suggested a man who knew what he was doing. ‘Ah, my head of works is here,’ he said with a smile. The voice was deep, friendly but firm.

  ‘Wrong guy. I’m Nessheim. I think General Groves told you I’d be coming.’

  ‘As I say, my head of works. Just as the General promised. I need one, so let’s hope you can play the part, no?’ Fermi pointed at the other man, a tall blond young man in grey overalls who was still inspecting the outline on the floor. ‘My colleague Walter Zinn is tired of doing all the work himself.

  He wants to get back to physics – especially after this morning. We have had a small disaster.’ He motioned Nessheim to follow him out of the court. As they reached the door, he stopped suddenly. ‘People say this is a squash court, but I am told by one of my colleagues who went to Yale that it is actually a racquets court. Do you know which it is, Mr Nessheim?’