My gut told me something suspicious was happening, and I should have listened to it. I really should have. We pulled up to the Worth Hotel, where Hughes/Anderson had rented his secret room.
‘Here we are,’ Clark said, parking across the street. ‘I know it’s not impressive but our friend is rarely home and you know how tough it is to find housing in the District.’
I collected my things but Clark put a hand on my arm. ‘We need to wait a few minutes. We come separately so as not to pique the curiosity of that awful female custodian. Peggy should already be inside.’ He checked his watch.
Then I saw Rose walking quickly down the sidewalk, her head bent to avoid the rain. She paused at the entrance to the hotel and checked her watch before going on inside.
‘Just a few minutes,’ Clark said to me.
Only an idiot would still think this was a social occasion! What was going on?
As Clark opened my door for me and handed me out I resisted the urge to tear my hand out of his and run wildly down the street screaming for the police. I didn’t know what was about to happen but I was sure I wasn’t going to like it. If Clark was taking me to Hughes’ room, then he must know that Hughes had a second identity, and if so perhaps he had something to do with Hughes’ murder. Unfortunately running away was not an option. After all I did work for OSS and I had to find out what was going on.
‘Thanks, Clark,’ I said, taking my hand from his as I stepped on to the sidewalk. I wanted to be free to bolt if I needed to.
Inside the hotel the custodian’s window was closed, thank God, so she couldn’t recognize me. Clark and I walked up to the second floor and turned down the hall until we got to room 2G, Hughes’ room that he had rented under the name of Anderson. The door was ajar. Inside Rose was laying out a few clothes and personal belongings on the bed. An open suitcase stood nearby. Peggy stood watch at the only window, her hands stuffed into the pockets of a trench coat. She must be expecting rain too.
‘Hi, Louise!’ Rose said, and came over to hug me. ‘Are you surprised?’
‘Yes,’ I said, my voice cracking. I coughed to cover up my nervousness. ‘Where are we?’
‘This is a safe room,’ Clark said. ‘Paul Hughes rented it for us.’
‘I’m packing up the things he kept here,’ Rose said. She loaded the suitcase quickly with the few items on the bed. Among them I noted a key ring that held three keys, a pocketknife and a cigarette lighter. Items that should have been in Hughes’ pocket when his corpse was discovered! I felt myself hold my breath while I looked for a wallet, but I didn’t see one. Did Hughes leave this room with just his wallet the night he died?
‘We’ll need to find a new safe room now,’ Rose said.
‘What for?’ I asked, dreading the answer.
‘Have a seat,’ Clark said. ‘Let us explain.’
I sat on the bed but kept my feet on the ground. I still wanted to be able to bolt. I recalled that there were three exits from the hotel – the front door, the back door and the fire escape, so conveniently located off the end of the hall not far from the door to this room.
‘Don’t look so worried, Louise,’ Rose said, sitting down next to me. ‘We’re your friends.’
‘Louise, in your work you must see all kinds of useful intelligence pass across your desk,’ Clark said. ‘Much of it would be of interest to our friends in the Soviet Union.’
Oh my God!
‘You know the Soviet Union is our ally,’ Clark continued, ‘yet so much is kept from them, despite the critical value of the Second Front. As you know there’s not a single Soviet representative at the Trident Conference.’
Oh my God. They – Clark, Rosie, Paul Hughes, and Sadie and Peggy too – were double agents! Spying for the Soviet Union! And they were trying to recruit me! Now I understood why Clark spent so much time with lowly government girls. They were his agents!
Clark was standing between me and the door, and he was a big man.
‘It’s easy,’ Rose said. ‘And we’re so very careful.’
‘I’ll give you an example of what the NKVD wants to know,’ Clark said. ‘During the Trident Conference today, when I was taking notes for Dr Soong, an American delegate reported that at current production levels it would be impossible for the US to produce the eight thousand five hundred landing craft that would be needed in an invasion of France by next spring. Don’t you think our allies should know that? Shouldn’t the Soviet Union know that the United States and Great Britain might not make the timetable of a spring invasion? How many more Russian soldiers might die on the Second Front then?’
I found my voice. ‘Shouldn’t the President and Director Donovan make the decision on what to share with the Soviet Union?’ I asked.
‘Why is there a Chinese representative at the Trident Conference and not a Soviet one? The Joint Chiefs, the British Field Marshals, Churchill and Roosevelt, they are all making decisions without the Soviets, damn it!’ Clark’s voice rose. His fists clenched and unclenched as he spoke. ‘Do you know why the Soviets are left out in the cold?’ he continued. ‘Western allied leaders are afraid of the Soviet Union. Of the new kind of democracy being born there. One where the people are really in charge. Not oligarchs who have no interest in the ordinary man or woman, except to have them work in their factories and fight in their wars. Roosevelt, Churchill, even de Gaulle are terrified that a socialist revolution will follow the war in their own countries.’
‘I don’t know about this,’ I said, stalling for time while I tried to decide what to do. What would happen to me if I refused? I found it hard to believe that Clark or Rose would harm me. But someone killed Paul Hughes!
‘Louise, it’s so, so exciting to be a part of something this important!’ Rose said. ‘To help our Communist friends! You are a Communist, aren’t you?’
They had mistaken my progressive notions for Communism.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not. I’m a New Dealer.’
‘It’s all right to hesitate to admit your allegiances,’ Clark said. ‘Especially where we work, and at your level. I understand. Let me introduce you to someone who will calm all your fears.’
Clark opened the door to the hall and a man stepped into the room. He was the stooped elderly Russian who owned the news and sundries shop. He didn’t look stooped and elderly now. With his modest suit and grey hair combed neatly behind his ears he could have passed as an insurance salesman until he spoke.
‘Louise Pearlie, let me introduce you to our colleague, Lev Gachev,’ Clark said.
‘G’! I had finally met ‘G’!
‘Mrs Pearlie knows me as Lieb Zruchat,’ Gachev said. ‘We met last week at my store. Apparently someone pretending to be Paul’s mother sent a telegram using my return address. Mrs Pearlie’s cover was very convincing. If I hadn’t spotted her when she left Rose and Sadie’s apartment after their last social evening she would have convinced me completely.’
Rose and Clark both stared at us. ‘You’ve met Lev?’ Rose asked.
‘Who sent the telegram?’ Clark asked.
Gachev sat down on the bed next to Rose, who had finished packing Hughes’ things and set the suitcase on the floor. Peggy still leaned up against the window sill, her eyes fixed on the street outside. She hadn’t said a word yet.
Gachev shook a finger at Rose and Clark. ‘What errands she has been running for OSS may matter nothing, depending on her answer to our request for her help.’ He turned to me. ‘May I call you Louise?’ Gachev said.
‘Yes.’ Can I call you spymaster? I wondered how many rings Gachev operated.
‘Let me assure you how safe your association with us would be,’ Gachev said. ‘We require nothing written from you. No notes, no documents removed from your office, no copies, nothing. You and I would meet alone, sometimes in my store where maybe you would stop by to buy another Baby Ruth. Sometimes in a safe room, like this one. You would tell me what intelligence you think our friends in the Soviet Union would be interested in knowing.
In my cables to the NKVD I would assign you a code name that no one would know but me. There would be no evidence against you at all. And, of course, you must tell us everything you know about Paul Hughes’ murder.’
Peggy clapped both hands over her mouth to keep from crying out.
‘Yes, my dear,’ Gachev said, turning to her, ‘Paul was murdered. I don’t know by whom.’
Clark was speechless, staring at me as if he couldn’t believe I knew more about Hughes’ death than he did.
‘What if I join your little spy ring and you’re arrested?’ I said.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I fought for the Bolsheviks during the Revolution. At one point I spent some months in the custody of the czar’s interrogators. They got nothing from me. In the end I became so thin I was able to squeeze between my cell wall and the iron bars of the cell and escape. Nothing you Americans could do to me could force me to talk.’
I wondered where his radio transmitter was located. Maybe at the Soviet Embassy?
‘I don’t know,’ I answered him. ‘I’d have to think about it.’
Clark was nervous, flexing and relaxing his fists over and over again. ‘Louise! I don’t understand what you have to think about!’ he said.
‘You agreed with us about everything we talked about!’ Rose said. ‘And at the restaurant you backed up those black girls with us!’
‘None of the opinions I expressed were any different from Eleanor Roosevelt’s. Why don’t you go ask her to spy for you?’
Peggy, one hand still covering her mouth, turned back to her post at the window.
‘This is a very dangerous situation,’ Gachev said to Clark, shoving his hands into his pockets where I was quite sure he gripped a gun. ‘She could report us. Me, I could take refuge in the Soviet Embassy. What would happen to you three?’
Rose stood up from the bed, her face pale as a ghost. ‘Louise,’ she said, ‘you wouldn’t!’
‘Of course not,’ I said, lying with a straight face. I turned to Gachev. ‘I don’t want anything to happen to my friends here. I’ll make a deal with you. You let me go, and I won’t say anything to OSS Security. But you all,’ and I caught Clark’s eyes, ‘must stop spying for the Soviet Union. Now.’
‘That sounds fair,’ Rose said, eagerly turning to Gachev, her eyes pleading with him.
‘Clark,’ Gachev said, ignoring Rose. ‘It is up to you to convince Mrs Pearlie to cooperate with us.’
‘I will, absolutely. I’m sure I can convince her.’
‘You have twelve hours,’ he said.
Or what? I thought. I’d wind up floating face down in the Tidal Basin like Paul Hughes? Had Hughes changed his mind about spying for the Soviet Union? Was that what his Sunday meeting with ‘G’ – Gachev – was about?
‘This is what we are going to do,’ Gachev said. ‘Peggy, you take Paul’s suitcase down the front stairs and leave through the main entrance. Make sure that scraggly woman sees you. On your way home dump the case into a garbage bin.’
Peggy still hadn’t spoken. She tied her trench coat belt, then reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a scarf splotched with yellow flowers. My God, she had been Paul’s lover! That explained her inappropriate grief after his death. I wondered if the others knew. Peggy lifted the suitcase and left.
‘Rose, in five minutes you leave by the side door,’ Gachev said.
Before Rose left she turned to me. ‘Louise, please!’
I had to drop my eyes from her face, she looked so terrified.
‘I will take my usual path down the fire escape,’ Gachev said. ‘Mrs Pearlie, remember, twelve hours.’
The door closed and we could hear the window in the hall open, then shut, as Gachev climbed out and started down the fire escape.
‘Clark,’ I began.
‘Don’t say it, Louise, I’m so sorry. I misjudged you. You seemed to agree with so much we talked about.’
‘I thought Rose just wanted to be my friend. I thought you might be vetting me for a new OSS job,’ I said. ‘Instead you were trying to convince me to become a traitor.’
‘We’re not traitors!’ Clark said. ‘The Soviet Union is our ally! The Soviet people need us, God knows the NKVD is not getting the intelligence it needs from the allies.’
I looked him straight in the eye. ‘Under no conditions am I going to cooperate with Gachev,’ I said. ‘I’d rather die first.’
‘Jesus,’ Clark said. He sank down on the bed. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘We must go to the OSS Security Office and tell Major Wicker everything.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d be ruined. Rose and Sadie’s lives would be ruined. And Peggy and Spencer’s. It’s unthinkable! There must be another answer.’
‘Was Spencer a part of this?’
‘No, he has no idea. Peggy and Paul had an affair. Spencer was always working. Paul convinced Peggy to memorize parts of the strategic memos she typed and pass them on to him.’
I edged toward the door. I could kick off my shoes and take off. Once I got out into the street I would be safe.
Clark smiled at me like a child distracting me before he stole my candy. He pulled a derringer out of his jacket pocket. ‘I have no desire to hurt you,’ Clark said, ‘but I will if I need to. I need time to think.’
‘I suppose Gachev killed Paul Hughes. Did Hughes change his mind about cooperating?’ I asked.
Clark shook his head. ‘If Gachev had killed Paul he would have done a better job of it. Shot him between the eyes and hidden his body where it would never be found. Not floating in the Tidal Basin right out in the open.’
‘Then who sent the telegram?’ I asked.
Clark’s hands shook. I could see the derringer barrel quiver.
‘I have no idea,’ he said.
‘Rethink this, Clark,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to OSS. It’s inevitable. Security can keep you all safe.’
‘Shut up,’ he said, in a harsh voice I hadn’t heard before. ‘Put on your coat.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘I’m going to stash you somewhere you’ll be safe for the twelve hours I need to figure our way out of this.’
My heart started to pound.
‘Don’t mistake me, Louise. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want Gachev to hurt you or Rose or Sadie. But I am not going to be revealed as a double agent and have my life ruined. You do as I say or I can’t protect you.’ He tossed me my raincoat.
‘Button up,’ he said. ‘The weather is turning.’
SEVEN
Be tactful in issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can’t shrug off harsh words in the way that men do. Never ridicule a woman—it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency.
‘1943 Guide to Hiring Women’, Mass Transportation magazine, July 1943.
Clark gripped my arm tightly above the elbow and shoved me out of Hughes’ room. His right hand went back into his pocket, where he no doubt retained a firm grip on the derringer.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
The custodian’s window was open but I couldn’t see her, though I could hear her radio playing distantly.
Outside the sky was dark and the wind had picked up. Trash skittered along the sidewalk. The wind lifted my hair, but I had nothing to tie it back with.
Clark urged me along the sidewalk. Instead of going to his car we walked around the corner and two blocks north. We came to an informal taxi stand, a café with four cabs parked out front. The drivers were drinking coffee inside.
Clark opened the door and lifted his hand and one of the drivers nodded, draining his coffee cup and meeting us at his taxi. Clark beat him to the rear door and opened it for me, scooting me along the back seat as he joined me. The cabbie started his cab and flipped the meter.
‘Where to?’ he asked.
‘Maine and “O”,’ Clark said.
‘You sure you want to go down to the water?’ the cabbie asked. ‘There’s a big storm coming.’<
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‘We need to check on our boat, don’t we, honey?’ Clark said, squeezing my arm.
‘Yes, yes we do,’ I said.
Maine and ‘O’ was a damn long way away, many blocks, almost to the mouth of the Washington Channel. I did not miss the irony of passing the Tidal Basin on our way. When we went under the railroad bridge, where the Pennsylvania RR tracks crossed the Potomac, we kept driving past the Municipal Fish Wharf, the Capital Yacht Club, the Norfolk and Washington Steamboat Line, the Harbor Police and the Potomac River Line. Along the way I saw boat owners tying down deck furniture and toting gear down to their boats’ cabins. Most of the boats flew American flags of various sizes; they all fluttered furiously in the wind. Raindrops began to spatter the taxi windshield.
When the taxi dropped us off the fare was about half of my monthly salary, which Clark paid in cash without batting an eye. I wondered if Gachev paid Clark for his espionage.
‘Come on,’ Clark said, pulling me down a wharf that extended out into the Washington Channel. We stopped at a small wooden runabout rolling in the swell. ‘Get in,’ he said.
‘Clark,’ I said. ‘Please don’t!’ I thought he might be planning to take me out to the middle of the Potomac River and drown me.
‘Be quiet,’ he said, climbing down beside me and tossing off the mooring line. ‘I’m trying to save your life. And mine too, for that matter. I’m putting you somewhere safe, where no one will find you, until I figure out just how to handle this.’
Clark pushed off from the dock while I crouched in the rear of the runabout. It had no awning, so soon my hair dripped from the soft steady rain. Clark reached past me to crank up the inboard motor and we slowly turned and made our way south and west, out of the Washington Channel and into the Potomac River. It was slow going. Since the war began the Potomac had become a parking lot for all kinds of vessels. Navy and coastguard ships were anchored everywhere, but also sailboats, motor launches, yachts, anything that floated where someone could live. The housing shortage in the District was that tight. We had to creep around until we reached open water where the larger yachts were moored. Then we motored further west until I could see lights on the Virginia shore.
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