The Once and Future Spy

by Robert Littell

  “The candles,” the landlady announced, nodding toward the two tapers in pewter holders on the table, “are extra. You can settle up when you leave.”

  As soon as the landlady had departed Molly turned on Nate. “How can you be sure?” she demanded, picking up the argument where it had been left off.

  “There are two things we know about the lobster General Howe,” Nate insisted. “He’s an expert on amphibious operations—he’s already proven that twice, once in shifting fifteen thousand troops to Graves End to attack Long Island, the second time in the landing at Kipp’s Cove to attack Manhattan.”

  “Just because—” Molly started to say, but Nate plunged on.

  “The second thing we know about Howe is that he was badly shaken by the losses the lobsters suffered assaulting Breed’s Hill. He shies from frontal assaults against fixed positions the way a horse shies from a stone fence. He showed this when he forced our boys on Long Island to retreat behind the Brookland Heights fortifications, and then failed to assault the heights, giving General Washington time to slip his entire force across the river to Manhattan.”

  “I still don’t see—”

  “Let me finish my reasoning. Howe has installed his forces on Manhattan facing the colonials on the Haarlem Heights. The way I see it, he has two choices. He can launch a frontal attack on the heights and risk running into the kind of fire he faced at Breed’s Hill, risk suffering the same kind of losses—and don’t forget, when Howe loses a man, killed or wounded, he has to look to England for a replacement. Or he can mount another amphibious operation—ferry a mess of soldiers past the Hell Gate rapids, land them at Frog’s Neck and set up a blocking line between Frog’s Neck and King’s Bridge. With the British warships patrolling the East River and the North River, and lobsters in front and behind, Washington would be trapped on the Haarlem Heights. Morale, already low, would deteriorate even more. Desertions would increase. Food supplies would dwindle. Congress would blame Washington, Washington would blame Congress. If Howe were patient enough there is every chance the Colonial army would wither on the vine without a shot being fired. The rebellion would be over.”

  Molly walked to the window and stared out at the weather cocks on the roofs opposite. “I am obliged to admit your reasoning is persuasive,” she finally said.

  “I am obliged to agree,” Nate said gloomily. “At least it explains the presence of the hundred and eleven longboats, and the five thousand five hundred fifty lobsters, hidden in the Newtown Creek. If Howe was only going to ferry them across to Manhattan to reinforce his bridgehead at Kipp’s Cove, he could accomplish that from the Brookland ferry landing.”

  Molly turned to face Nate. Her smile was a hedge against tears. “If you are right everything is lost.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said thoughtfully. And he outlined for her the scheme that he had been concocting: What if he were to compose a report, in Latin, giving details of Howe’s dispositions, and most especially a description of what he had seen at the Newtown Creek? What if he were to draw the conclusion, supported by snatches of overheard conversation, that the lobsters planned to land a force at Frog’s Neck with the intention of cutting off Washington in Manhattan? What if he were to append a notation to the report saying it was a duplicate, that the original had already been dispatched to Washington? Molly could write out in her hand a second letter purporting to come from A. Hamilton. Let them come, it could say. Breed’s Hill will look like a picnic in comparison. Or words to that effect. A. Hamilton could hint in his letter that Washington had already taken precautions against Howe’s forces—had hidden cannon on the Two Brothers to rake the lobster longboats as they passed Hell Gate, had fortified Frog’s Neck and every likely landing place within twenty miles. Nate could hide the rough notes from his notebook, along with these two documents, between the inner and outer soles of his shoes, and allow himself to be captured. The papers would fall into Howe’s hands. The British would be convinced that Washington was aware of their plans and was waiting for them, and would call off the amphibious operation. Washington would have time to reinforce the army on the Haarlem Heights, train recruits, organize an orderly retreat through Westchester. Howe would lose by not winning; Washington would win by not losing.

  Molly shivered. “They’d hang you as a spy.”

  “There is as much chance of my being exchanged as hanged,” Nate insisted. “In either eventuality, it is the custom to let prisoners send letters back. Your friend Captain Hamilton fixed up some coded phrases for me to use. If I saw that Howe had fallen for my story, I could signal Washington by employing one of the codes in a letter.”

  In the fading light Nate caught the expression of horror on Molly’s face. “Put yourself in my place and say honestly whether you would not act as I propose to act,” he pleaded.

  “It is too high a price to pay,” Molly declared passionately.

  “Where I come from they have another saying,” Nate told her. “What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly.”

  Molly saw there would be no talking him out of his scheme. Perhaps she could discourage him by picking on details. “How do you propose to get yourself captured?” she demanded. “By walking up to the first lobster you see and turning yourself in? They will smell a rat.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” Nate said. “I have a cousin from Portsmouth, one Samuel by name, a through and through Tory, who holds the post as Deputy Commissary of Prisoners here in New York. He knows me for a rebel and an officer in the Continental Army. If he caught sight of me he would surely turn me in.”

  Molly breathed a sigh of relief. “There must be ten or fifteen thousand souls in New York. It could take weeks before you discovered your cousin’s whereabouts. By then, if your reasoning is correct, the lobsters will be manning the line between Frog’s Neck and King’s Bridge and the rebellion will be all but over.”

  Nate looked preoccupied. “Hamilton gave me the name of someone in New York to turn to in an emergency. He ought to be able to find my cousin Samuel for me.”

  Here, now, is Molly contributing to the rebellion:

  MOLLY WATCHED FROM THE SHADOWS of an alleyway across the street as Nate strode up to number 22 Wall Street and boldly knocked on the front door. A flickering light appeared in a window, the door opened and Nate disappeared inside. He emerged twenty minutes later. Checking to be sure there were no patrols in sight, he crossed to the alley, took Molly by the arm and started back toward the rooming house. After a while Molly asked, “Now will you deign to tell me who you saw in there?”

  “A Jew broker named Haym Salomon.”

  Molly seemed surprised. “I have never yet met a Jew. What is he like?”

  “He seems civil enough. He read my letter of introduction and agreed to help me. By good fortune he is personally acquainted with my cousin’s superior in the Commissary of Prisoners, a man named Loring. Salomon said if I returned at sunrise he’d tell me where I could find cousin Samuel.”

  “Oh,” Molly said. She had been praying Nate would run into a dead end.

  Back in their room Nate lit the two candles and set out paper, ink and a quill on the table. Molly’s lower lip trembled. Tears threatened to overpower a sad smile as she observed him from the window. He was really going through with it.

  Nate’s quill scratched across the paper as he wrote out, in Latin: “Exemplum litterarum missarum ad ducem Washington.” “That should turn the trick,” he said. “ ‘Copy of original report sent to Washington.’ “ He looked up and collected his thoughts and continued writing, in Latin: “Howe preparing amphibious operation designed land large body at Frog’s Neck and trap you on Manhattan Island. I personally saw 111 longboats hidden in the New Town Creek along with large number of troops and provisions.”

  Putting the paper aside to let the ink dry, Nate prepared another sheet. “It’s you who will write out this one,” he told Molly, and seating her in his place, pacing behind her, peeking occasionally over her shoulder, he spelled out the
Latin words as she wrote them: “For the eyes of Captain Hale,” he began. “Hmmm. What would Captain Hamilton say in such a letter? Something about my report being extremely valuable. And a hint that Washington had fortified the Two Brothers and Frog’s Neck.” Concentrating on his Latin, Nate started dictating.

  When Molly had finished and the ink was dry Nate carefully folded both letters, along with two pages of his raw notes, between the soles of his shoes. “All that’s left,” he said, “is to organize things so that the letters fall into Howe’s hands.”

  Taking a deep breath, Molly announced in a hoarse whisper, “If you are absolutely set on going through with this mad scheme of yours, I propose that we marry ourselves.”

  Nate’s eyes widened. “Marry ourselves? Are such things done?”

  “The world,” Molly reminded him, “is upside down.” She smiled at his discomfort. “You are clearly a virgin,” she added. “The least I can do is make sure you don’t die one. Consider it my contribution to our common cause. But before I can bed you we must exchange vows.”

  Nate, insulted, said, “What makes you so sure I am a virgin?”

  Molly limped over to him and put a hand on one of his shoulders. “The way you looked at me through the window when I was at my toilet makes me think it.”

  “You saw me looking and did nothing?”

  “You must understand: Before I was ambushed by grief I grew accustomed to living the life of a married woman… there are things you miss when fate deprives you of a husband.” She added anxiously, “Contrary to what is generally supposed, women have appetites too.”

  Nate reached impulsively for her hand. “The moment I saw you I knew I would have liked to love you. What vows would you have us say to each other?”

  “I would have us pledge to govern our house, in the unlikely event the Lord ever gives us one, according to God’s word.”

  “I pledge it,” Nate declared eagerly.

  “I too pledge it. I would have us renounce all pride, ostentation and vanity in apparel and behavior. I would have us promise to give honest attention to friendly rebuke and admonition.”

  “I pledge it.”

  “I too pledge it. Finally I would have you pledge to love and honor me. And I would pledge in return to obey you in so far as obeyance does not trespass on principles dearly held.”

  “I do pledge it and with all my heart,” Nate said urgently.

  “I too pledge it with all my heart,” Molly whispered.

  She studied his face and said, “If the spirit moves you, you may kiss me now.”

  Still holding her hand, he leaned forward and touched his lips to hers.

  Molly turned away so he wouldn’t see the tears brimming in her eyes. She crossed the room and removed the framed line drawing of George III and set it down facing the wall. Then she blew out both candles.

  Nate said with panic in his voice, “I must have light.”

  Molly lighted one of the candles and placed it on the floor next to the ceramic basin. Shadows danced on the walls. Nate said something about how he loved shadows, about how you needed light to have them. Molly worked the hand pump until she had half filled the basin with water. That done, she began to remove her clothing-first came her pointed pumps, then her sand-colored thigh-length stockings. She undid the tiny buttons down the front of her dress and slipped out of it. She reached down and grabbed the hem of her shift and straightening, drew it over her head. Bare-chested, wearing only homespun knickers, she looked across at Nate, standing in the middle of the small room, his mouth agape, his head angled as he stared at her shadow dancing on the wall and on the ceiling.

  “I have never before seen anything so beautiful—”

  “It is unnecessary, even undesirable, to speak at moments such as this.”

  She turned away from him and undid the ribboned waistband of her knickers, and let them fall to the floor and kicked them away. Then she stepped into the ceramic tub and, bending to wet a sponge, she began to wash herself. Her voice drifted back over her bare shoulder. “You may undress now, Nathan, and turn down the bed.”

  She heard his shoes, his clothing falling to the floor. She felt his trembling hands on her shoulders turning her around. She smiled to hold back the flood of tears but it was no use. She pressed her wet skin to his dry skin, she fitted her body into the curves of his, she burrowed under his chin with her face, she pressed her lips to the hair mole on his neck, she sobbed as she had sobbed only twice before in her life.

  13

  To the Admiral’s bulging eyes, Wanamaker’s outer office wasteland looked as if it had been hit by a tidal wave. Desks, coffee tables, swivel chairs, filing cabinets, magazine racks, the telephone switchboard, the two standing lamps, the government-issue metal coat tree (duly stamped Mark something or other, Mod. something or other) had all washed up in the middle of the room. The pile was covered with white paint-stained canvas drapes. Two men in white paint-stained overalls, with paint-stained cigarettes glued to their lower lips, were wielding rollers, methodically covering the grimy walls with a fresh coat of cerulean blue. Admiral Toothacher paused in front of the miniskirted receptionist, who was sitting on the only uncovered chair in the room painting her fingernails a shade of metallic gray best described as pewter. She looked up, suppressed a smile at the sight of the chalky hair flying off in all directions, asked, “So what do you think, Admiral?”

  “What do I think about what?” the Admiral inquired starchily. He was a bit put off at being addressed so directly, and so familiarly, by a secretary.

  ‘The color, natch.”

  Toothacher glanced at the walls, found the color unremarkable, admitted as much.

  “I’m not talking about the walls. I’m talking about my fingernails.” And the secretary waved one drying hand, fingers spread-eagled, in his startled face.

  “I have seen worse, I just don’t remember where,” the Admiral commented with premeditated gracelessness. (It was one of the quirks of his personality that the happier he felt the ruder he became.) “Can I interrupt your work“ -he emphasized the word insultingly- “long enough to inform me if R for Roger Wanamaker has arrived yet?”

  The secretary regarded the Admiral with undisguised disdain, shook the stiff locks of her home permanent to indicate that the promotion policies of her government were an unfathomable mystery to her, cast a devastatingly bored look at the door leading to the inner sanctum to suggest that the early bird was digging for worms somewhere behind it. The Admiral directed his bulging eyes on the door with such intensity that the secretary suspected him of having X-ray vision. By the time she realized how ridiculous the idea was he had disappeared into the room and slammed the door emphatically behind him.

  Inside, one look at Wanamaker’s sidewalk-drab two-day stubble was enough to convince the Admiral that something was amiss.

  “You look as if you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders,” he commented as he dusted the lopsided armchair facing Wanamaker’s desk with his handkerchief and gingerly fitted his body into it.

  “I’m having a bad day with gravity,” Wanamaker conceded.

  The Admiral decided he would be generous and break the ice. “Aren’t you going to offer me a choice of coffee, tea or something with a kick to it?” he asked. He flashed what his wife had once laughingly described as his smile of complicity.

  Wanamaker thrust a Schimmelpenninck between his teeth and lit up. A perfect halo of smoke wafted into the Admiral’s face as Wanamaker pushed a telegram across the desk. Toothacher ducked under the smoke ring, leaned forward, angled his head and read the telegram out loud. “ Tm alive and well. Stuffbingle is not. The Weeder.’ “

  “Bingle, of course, should be tingle, as in Stufftingle,” Wanamaker noted glumly. “The t got replaced by a b somewhere between here and Boston, which is where the telegram came from.”

  “Someone is pulling your leg,” Admiral Toothacher ventured with a sinking heart.

  Another halo of smoke eme
rged from Wanamaker’s puffy lips. Some words leapt like trained circus dogs through it. “There-is-no-corpus-delicti!”

  “No corpus delicti?”

  “In the rubble. In Boston. I checked.”

  “That is simply out of the realm of possibility.”

  Wanamaker pried open a paper clip with his thick, squared-off fingernails and began twisting it into various shapes. He worked the metal back and forth until it snapped and discarded the halves in a desk drawer. “You have let me down badly,” he told the Admiral. Wanamaker’s expression was totally expressionless, but his voice had slipped into a range normally associated with eulogies. “I used to idolize you,” he said. “You were an icon for me, a father figure. I thought you were the only thing standing between us and the Bolshevik hordes.” Wanamaker shrugged a shoulder to indicate that times had changed. “Now you can’t even arrange things so I can explode a relatively small atomic device in the city of my choice.”

  Trying to avoid Wanamaker’s eye, Toothacher let his gaze drift across the room. It settled on the tacky photograph of the President the Admiral batted both his eyes to bring it into focus, then caught his breath in surprise-the President appeared to be blinking back at him. Toothacher plucked a large handkerchief from a pocket of his blazer and wiped away the perspiration that had accumulated on his brow. He bitterly regretted this visit to Wanamaker’s office. He should have taken the first plane back to Guantánamo and retreated into the boredom of its happy hours without saying good-bye to his former man Friday. Now his clothes, his hair, would smell of fresh paint, of tobacco. His clothes could be dry-cleaned, his hair washed with soap and water. But the stain on his reputation-that was another matter. Watching Wanamaker suck on his cigar, the Admiral was suddenly overwhelmed by the sensation that he had been wasting his time; wasting his life. How he longed for the halcyon days when everyone used code names-his, he remembered, had been Parsifal- and was required to give a sample of his Morse “fist” so that no one could send messages in his place. In those days an espionage agent had to be something of a metaphysician, shoring up, against his ruin, seemingly unrelated fragments to get a handle on the ultimate nature of reality, of existence. It had all been very pure, very beautiful even. But the world had moved on.