by Susan Isaacs
“Mr. Weekes, I don’t see any point in—”
“And furthermore,” Norman went on, “it would be in your best interest to get your handsome husband away from the, um, House of Leland, shall we say. My dear, the word is seeping out that my dear old friend Quentin’s pretty little wife is somewhat discontent. Yes, isn’t that surprising? Young Nan is rumored to be on some quiet island in the Caribbean right now. ‘Thinking things over,’ as they say.” Norman took my hand in his; his skin was horribly dry, like something dead for a long time. He spoke so softly his voice was hardly louder than a hiss. “Rumor has it the sweet thing may just decide to visit wise old Père Edward, to get some fatherly advice. Who knows, she may stay in Washington for some time. It’s so exciting here.” He squeezed my hand tight. “I know you’re listening, my dear, even though you don’t like what I’m saying. But do your best to persuade John. I promise you, if we have any…sweet young visitors to our beloved capital, I’ll see to it that John has to make an urgent trip out of town. For as long as is necessary.” He turned my hand over and scraped the nail of his index finger across my palm. “And when the cat’s away,” he said in his high-class Boston accent, “the mice can have a most stimulating time. Do consider that possibility, dear Linda. You look like a girl who can appreciate…stimulation.”
So what was I supposed to do—say to John, Want to hear some terrific gossip about Nan Leland Berringer Dahlmaier? That was the last thing in the world I wanted him to hear.
My husband had never stopped loving his first wife. On good nights, when John didn’t roll over and sleep right at the edge of the mattress, when he stayed in the middle of the bed with his arm slung over me in his sleep, his hand resting on my shoulder or, once, on my cheek, like a night-long caress, I’d think: Okay, so Nan will always be his ideal woman. Big deal. It’s not her as a person John loves; it’s the idea of her. When he talks about her, he talks about her mind: her passion for music and art; her misery at having to go through the debutante ritual (as if Edward held a carving knife to her throat and said, Have a tea dance or die). And he thinks she’s beautiful, because she almost is, with her pale, flawless features and delicate, small-boned body.
On good nights I’d think that sure, maybe every day with me wasn’t New Year’s Eve, but he never really had fun with Nan. He never mentioned long walks or picnics—or grabbing her the minute he got home and doing it standing up.
As for Nan, my guess was that John’s big attraction for her (besides whatever culture he had that made her intellect squeal with pleasure) was exactly what made me crazy about him: his beauty; his quiet seriousness, so you were always dying to know what he was thinking, because you were never sure of where you stood; his powerful appeal to all women, so by picking you he had somehow shown the world—and you—how special you were; and, finally, his real gift: his ability as a lover. But in that department, even though he would never go into it (Linda, this is not a subject for discussion), I knew Nan never set him on fire. He adored her, and it must have given him enormous reassurance to know he had such a hold over her, but…Okay, so maybe I was reading between the lines, but I was good at that, and I knew Nan wasn’t woman enough for him. And I knew I was.
But on bad nights, I knew Nan was everything John wanted and loved in the world. He loved her nanny; her father’s town house on Washington Square, where she grew up; her romantically-dead-at-an-early-age rich Theodore Roosevelt cousin of a mother; her dancing lessons, her harp lessons, her boarding school; her summers in Europe, her winter vacations skiing in Vermont; and her horse, Daisy, who died in a stable in Central Park when both Nan and the horse were fifteen. John loved how Nan’s eyes would fill up whenever she spoke about Daisy. And he loved—worshiped—her father.
To have been taken up into that family was the acceptance John had always dreamed of. He’d been allowed to be one of them; it was too bad wives take on husbands’ names, because he would have loved nothing more than to be John Leland. But then Nan got rid of him. It must have been like an angel being tossed out of heaven, doomed to live in the workaday world after knowing paradise.
So I wouldn’t talk to John about Nan. And I couldn’t tell any of my forty-seven Alabama neighbors, who I hardly ever saw anymore with my crazy work hours and who anyway didn’t know my husband had been married before and, besides, wouldn’t say anything more than “Ah do declare!” and then run out and give the other forty-six the big news bulletin. And I couldn’t tell my mother, because even though I wrote her every day, I doubt if she looked at or even listened to Cookie read my letters. I called her once a week, but her voice was so faded, so thin, that even if she had the strength to concentrate on what I was saying, I didn’t have the heart to tell her: Mom, maybe you were right about John.
And I couldn’t tell Edward. Listen, Ed, did you hear about my husband’s ex-wife? The sweet petunia may be on the loose again. You got any of that famous Edward Leland wisdom for me? Any ideas about whether this little intellectual flower is going to come for a comforting visit to her daddy and screw up my life? Huh, Ed?
“Linda,” Edward said to me. It was the Monday morning after his dinner, and Pete was driving up over a narrow, hilly, icy road somewhere in Virginia horse country at sixty miles an hour. “I need a breath of fresh air.” I was about to crank down the window when he added, “Pete, pull over for a minute.” The Packard skidded to a stop. Edward opened the door and said, “Come on.”
I followed him, and we walked for a few minutes in silence. Then he turned right, onto a dirt road. After another few minutes, he stopped and leaned against a white fence. I buttoned the top of my coat and fished my gloves out of my pocket. I had no idea how long I’d be breathing fresh air.
God knows Edward needed some. Since Pearl Harbor, his job had become a horror. Before December 7, he had been head of counterespionage for all of Europe, to make sure that the agents who were feeding us information were really ours—and to make sure their information was accurate, that someone, somewhere, in German intelligence hadn’t discovered that a diplomat or a prostitute or a chauffeur was a spy and was allowing him to pass us misleading information.
But now Donovan and the President wanted more. Edward would continue to oversee Europe, but he’d also have to take on the United States. That was the FBI’s job, of course, but the three men had agreed a little extra coverage couldn’t hurt.
Meanwhile, Norman Weekes and ten men just like him signed up agents—lawyers, writers, college professors—free-lance agents living in America and coming out of the woodwork to offer us wonderful secrets, agents for desk work, like John, and agents, spies, to be slipped into whatever dark cracks we could find in enemy territory. Edward would have to make sure they were what they claimed: good Americans, or dedicated anti-Fascists.
I blew on my hands and glanced up at him. He had deep circles under his eyes. He’d nicked himself shaving in three or four places on his bad side, where he had no feeling. I’d never seen him look tired before.
“Tell me about Friday night.” He spoke so suddenly I jumped.
“Oh. It was…” I tried to think of one of those appropriate words, like grand, or divine, and I did, but they sounded jerky, so I said, “…a terrific party. Your house is beautiful. Felice was very nice.” I couldn’t believe I was standing right near a horse field in December telling him what a great host he’d been, but if that’s what he wanted…“And the dinner—”
“Oh, stop it!” he snapped. “Do you think I’m fishing for compliments?”
“How am I supposed to know what you’re fishing for? I thought I’d give compliments a try.” I turned up my collar.
“Are you cold?”
“I’m okay.”
“Tell me what Norman Weekes said to you.”
“Oh, God!” I said. “Please.”
“I’m not talking about his…advances toward you. It’s obvious he finds you…whatever.”
“He makes me want to throw up!” I suddenly said. Edward examined
the painted wood of the fence. “I apologize,” I said. “That just slipped out.”
“Understandable,” he muttered. “He makes me want to throw up too.” I stared at him. “Norman Weekes is a foul human being. Now that we have that established, please go on.”
So I told him. I told him about Norman’s saying how lucky he was to have me as a secretary. Naturally, Edward didn’t say, Well, at least Norman’s right about one thing. He just waited for me to continue. “Look,” I said, “this isn’t my favorite kind of conversation.”
“I’m sorry, Linda. I have to know what he said.” He waited. And he knew how to wait, until you became so uneasy with the silence that you’d do anything to stop it.
“He wants John to come and work for him.”
“Goddamn it! All right. What precisely did he say about John’s leaving me to work for him? Don’t waste my time, Linda. I know when you’re…when someone’s holding back on me.” I gazed out at the field. “As you know, I have a very full schedule today. Don’t make it more difficult.”
“You’re being unfair,” I blurted out. But I didn’t take it back. “I told you what’s important.”
“It’s all important.”
“Some of it’s personal stuff.”
“I want to hear it.”
“Why?”
“Because Norman Weekes would like nothing better than to destroy me.” He glanced at me and said, “You look cold. Let’s walk.” He chose the direction: farther down the dirt road. “I suppose you’d like an explanation.”
“Only if you want to give me one.” I took a deep breath of cold air. “Don’t you know I’d take anything you said on faith?”
“I appreciate that.” He walked fast, and I had to hurry along the road to keep up with him. Finally he spoke. “For years, Norman’s been doing business with a banker in Munich. A conservative, a Catholic and, according to Norman, a man contemptuous of the Nazis. And yet this man has been close to the government—through his contacts at Krupp, United Steel, I. G. Farben. In late ’39, he met Norman in Switzerland with a briefcase full of documents—page after page of statistics on industrial production. He swore to Norman he was a good German, a good Catholic, and precisely because of this he was morally obliged to take a stand against Hitler’s regime. He told Norman: I know you have friends in Washington. Please see that these fall into the right hands.”
I stopped for a second to take off my shoe and shake out some gravel. “The statistics—were they important?”
“If they were accurate, they were an invaluable picture of German industry—and from that, we could derive quite a clear idea of their military strength. And so, throughout ’39 and ’40, we accepted these figures—and passed them on to the British. And Bill Donovan asked Norman to come to Washington and do more of the same.”
“But he wants to destroy you. So you must have found out that his statistics…?”
“I did my homework. To this day I don’t know what made me do it. A hunch. And through the years I’ve come to trust my hunches. I had John and an economist compare this banker’s information with data we’d gotten from different sources. Linda, none of it gibed. The figures were grossly understated. The Germans were far stronger than we had been led to believe.”
“Did you go to Norman?”
“Not right away. I did some checking on this man from Munich—nothing terribly difficult; the sort of investigation someone in Norman’s position ought to have done.”
“But he hadn’t.”
“No. He was so damned sure of this friend of his, this honorable, refined, old-money banker. When I finally brought my findings to him, he told me, ‘Ed, please. The fellow’s wife’s a von Schleicher, for Chrissake.’” He stopped and turned to me. “How was my accent on von Schleicher?”
“Terrible,” I told him. “As usual.” I paused. “What finally happened?”
“Ultimately, Norman did himself in with his own arrogance. He went to Donovan and issued an ultimatum: Either Ed Leland goes or I do. Well, the next day the three of us got together for a drink. Bill was being congenial, trying to minimize our differences; Norman was saying his honor was at stake, and that his source was a Catholic. He looked right at Bill when he said it.”
“Real subtle.”
“Yes. And then I did what I’d come prepared to do: I handed Bill my documentation and said, ‘Forget the statistics. Look at the pictures.’”
“You got pictures?”
“Yes. Some photos of Norman’s friend with his good friends: high Nazi officials—including Göring.”
I tucked my hands under my armpits to keep them warm, but it wasn’t just the weather. “Where did you get the pictures, Ed?”
“Linda, everyone remarks what a bright girl my secretary is. So you tell me: Where did I get the pictures?”
“You had someone go into the man’s office or house—”
“Very good. His house.”
“And they stole—”
“I prefer to say appropriate.”
“How did Donovan react when he saw them?” I asked.
“Gracefully. The we-all-have-our-bad-days approach.”
“But Weekes must have looked like something less than a bargain.”
“Considerably less. Bill had relied on Norman, on his judgment, and it was faulty—in the extreme. And we simply cannot afford that. Look, you’ve seen how we’ve had to operate. Until last week, when we declared war, we were the most rudimentary operation. We had no great network of agents, no committees to assess intelligence. All we had was a few men. Norman Weekes was one of them. Still is. But no longer, shall we say, the force he once was.”
“You’re right,” I said. “He does want to destroy you.”
“Yes. But look on the bright side. If he succeeds, you’ll have time to read or go to the dressmaker or whatever it is working for me keeps you from doing.”
I didn’t smile. “The scary thing about Norman Weekes is that he’s very smart, but he’s not intelligent. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes. I’ll tell you what it is. He sees small pieces with…well, amazingly acute vision. But he has no sense of the big picture—or even that there is one.” He paused. “Now, Linda…will you tell me what he said about John?”
“I’ll tell you because you have to know what this guy is doing, what knife he’s going to stick in your back.”
“Thank you.”
“But I hate doing it. I want you to know that.”
“I understand.”
“He said counterespionage was boring, and that John would be better off with him. Not just because of the boring part. Because…he said…John can’t be the man he could be if he’s…working for you.”
Edward’s voice was much colder than the frigid air. “The implication being that I somehow…what?”
“Take away John’s independence. He looks up to you too much to be his own man.”
“And?”
“And…the family business. That maybe it’s—you know—awkward for me because John was married to your daughter.”
“What else?”
“That’s it.”
“No. There’s more. You and he were talking a long time.”
And that’s where I decided to stop. I wouldn’t tell him. Hey, Norman tells me someone besides Santa Claus may be coming to town. “That’s all.”
He turned abruptly and we hurried back along the long dirt road to the main road, and the car. We didn’t have anything else to say. But when we reached the car, Edward stood at the rear of the car and put his foot on the bumper. “You know, I used to close my eyes at night, and in two minutes I’d be sound asleep. Now…sometimes I’m up for hours. It’s not just the business about Norman. The whole damned COI is filling up with men like him, men who are still playing Cowboys and Indians. Norman says, Trust my blood brother…and look what happens.
“Last August, he had a boy, fresh out of college in Maine. French-speaking parents. He sent him into occupied France,
someplace outside Paris where a German official kept a mistress. He tells the boy—a good-looking youngster—to seduce the mistress and get all he can on the German. It was an idiot plan…created by Norman but approved with great enthusiasm by two of our top men. Well, the boy was caught the first day. Caught and killed. And Norman says, ‘At least we tried. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.’”
I wished I could have taken his hand and held it. “I’m sorry.”
“I meet with men like myself, men who should know better, and they’re hatching half-baked schemes. Playing games. I like games. I’m good at them. Golf, bridge, chess…But these games they’re playing use people as pawns. I sit at a conference table and hear things that make me sick, and when I object, I’m told, Ed, old man, you’ve lost your nerve.” He looked at me and suddenly aimed his finger at my heart. “Bang! You’re dead! Cowboys and Indians. That’s how these lawyers and bankers and businessmen are going to win the war. With clever strategies. Games. Bang! But when the Germans and Japs go bang…”
“You really are dead,” I murmured. He nodded. “But the other men in COI…some of them are like you, aren’t they?”
“Some of them are.” He stared straight and motioned me to the car door. Before he opened it, he said, “I don’t know if we’ll ever make the omelet, but we’re going to have dozens—hundreds of dozens—of broken eggs before this war is over. Linda, it’s going to be a mess.”
17
John had a new office, but that was only to be expected. He was now running the counterespionage operation in Germany and France—that part that could be run from behind a desk in Washington. Technically, of course, the entire world was still the Edward Leland Show, but Edward was busy flying around, not only looking for concealed enemies but also trying to calm down a close-to-berserk J. Edgar Hoover and his pet politicians, who were convinced that anytime anyone from COI breathed in the United States, he was stealing the oxygen, the life, out of the FBI.