Teagarden clicked on the image of the first ring issued in 1899.
Sweet.
He clicked on the image of the final one issued in 1942. It was larger in diameter and more substantial looking, but basically the same.
Beautiful.
He flipped through web pages showing each year’s unique “come-on” pitched to kids. In 1899, it was about foiling Spanish spies “on precious American soil,” and told boys, “Now you can charge up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt.” In 1917, it was “Secret messages to help sink German U-boats.” In 1921, it promised “The secret to prevent thugs and gamblers from ever again fixing the World Series.” There was no surprise about the theme of the final toy in 1942. It was about the Nazis: “Now you can help defeat Hitler by sending super-secret messages to undercover American agents in Berlin and Munich.”
Each ring had an outer circle of letters, with an inner circle of matching numbers so that each letter in the alphabet could be encoded with its own designated number. That was it. UWHECO offered a completely new rudimentary Caesar Cipher to kids every January.
In later years, the rings became a little fancier. Instead of two static circles, an inner knob could be turned until the desired number appeared in a little window to reveal the designated letter for encoding or decoding. But the simplicity of the concept remained unchanged. It meant he’d been correct in mentioning the Morley Dilemma. This thing was simple, so simple everyone believed it to be complex. That explained why the hard copy had gone un-deciphered for the past six decades. They took a look and assumed it was either utter nonsense, or simply—too—complex, or both. Then, it was forgotten.
Well, almost forgotten.
Teagarden took his first decoded entry from the thirty-four pages and breezed through the website. He looked at enlarged images of each ring until he found one where the numbers and letters matched. The year was 1921. Every letter matched perfectly.
Even better, with that ring he finally had a date to attach to the bottom of the entry:
Dear John,
On this lovely day in June, you began recruitment for operation over easy, illegal as bathtub gin used to be.
I love you,
CAT
June, 1961
He took the entry he and Cynthia worked on the night before. The ring issued in 1912 seemed to work. He quickly finished decoding the message and added the date at the end:
Dear John,
Today your infiltration of the Mattachine Society resulted in the arrest of a founding member. You set him up of course. You are such a nasty bitch.
I love you, CAT
January, 1952
He researched the Mattachine Society and learned it was one of the first organizations in the nation to promote equality for homosexuals in the face of medieval intolerance. One website complained of a policy where FBI agents “secretly grilled neighbors of job applicants to ensure that no federal employee was, or ever would be, homosexual.” That site called it a “cruel hypocrisy drawn from the Gestapo playbook, especially since the two top agents in the FBI were closet queens.”
Teagarden researched those two top agents. From 1935 to his death in 1972, J. Edgar Hoover was the top man. His number two during that entire time was a man suspected of being his lifelong lover, Clyde Anderson Tolson.
For the third time since Sunday, a jet of ice-water shot up the middle of his spinal column.
Oh…my…God.
There it was, on the computer screen. The stark black and white letters jumped out as though they were Times Square neon. Tolson’s initials. He was the diary keeper. The pages Teagarden had been carrying belonged to the FBI’s long-serving second-ranking agent—Clyde Anderson Tolson. He was CAT, the author of every encoded entry on every page. And the “J” in J. Edgar Hoover stood for John. The man’s full name was John Edgar Hoover.
Teagarden not only saw it, but understood what he was looking at. He understood it with unequivocal certainty. The thirty-four pages was Tolson’s life insurance policy against being dumped as a lover or demoted from his lifelong spot as number two at the FBI. Once every entry was decoded, those pages would likely reveal much more than their personal sexual orientation. They’d also likely reveal how ugly things got in the twentieth century during the Hoover years. It was obvious. The FBI wasn’t certain the pages existed, but when it was learned the document really did exist—they took action. They tried to kill him because if the document were published, it would prove nothing less than institutionalized treason.
Teagarden hadn’t been running only for his own life. He’d been running for something bigger and more important. He was running because the FBI wanted to prevent publication of the wretchedly ugly story of its own crimes.
Oh…my…God.
Chapter Forty-Two
Thursday, July 25, 2019
FBI/CIA Safe House, East 64th Street, New York City
He’d waited long enough, maybe too long.
The next morning, long after Ursula departed, Donnursk resumed his plan, now delayed by nearly twelve hours. He wanted supreme authority on McCanliss as well as Teagarden. That meant betraying his partner.
So what?
The man was simply too old and too cynical. He had little respect for the job, and—no—respect for tenth-floor authority.
He searched the company apartment, again asking if anyone had seen Ice Skater.
No one had.
He poured coffee and made toast in the galley kitchen. He buttered both slices, then took his coffee and breakfast back to his bedroom, opened his laptop and logged on.
Chapter Forty-Three
Encrypted Field Communication
NSA Apache Code Ofc Baltimore, MD/Washington, DC/CoinTelSatOrbit53/New York, NY
TO: deep field cmdr
FROM: copper miner
SUBJECT: operation dear john
copper miner to deep field cmdr: u heard from ice skater? he’s mia since wed morning in sparta, nj.
deep field cmdr to copper miner: no word here at main ofc…nothing on shack-up theory?
copper miner to deep field cmdr: nothing…she’s connected lawyer…i played it by book…still got her under e-surveill…if she’s lying we’ll soon know.
deep field cmdr to copper miner: ok…catch-up w/ice skater and get teagarden…
copper miner to deep field cmdr: be advised…ice skater refused to work with me…appears he may have gone solo…off the radar…
deep field cmdr to copper miner: that is bad. if ice skater does not turn-up by tonight, you have supreme authority on both teagarden…and ice skater…understood?
copper miner to deep field cmdr: understood…
Chapter Forty-Four
The Boathouse, Sparta Township, NJ
It had to happen.
He needed a bathroom and his aching knees were killing him. They had to be stretched and exercised. He felt as though he’d sweated away five pounds in the overheated loft, worsened by the constant use of his laptop.
Teagarden lowered the ladder before dawn. On the floor, he limbered stiff muscles and limbs in the dark by stretching to the ceiling and bending to touch his toes. He put the heel of each foot on the daybed and leaned into his knees like a ballet dancer warming up at the practice bar. It didn’t stop the pain. But it helped.
At the small refrigerator in the galley kitchen, he retrieved two pieces of fruit left by Cynthia to take back to the crawlspace, an apple and a pear. He gulped over-the-counter painkillers and washed them down with tap water.
Rest break concluded, he returned to the storage loft, and pulled the ladder up behind him. When the sun came up Thursday morning, he didn’t dare risk being seen by anyone left behind to monitor the scene. He decided to wait for indication from Cynthia that it was safe to move about, g
uessing that it would come with the eventual removal of the cactus from her bathroom window.
If runaway slaves could do it, I can do it too.
Besides, he had his work cut out for him, and he could do it just as easily while in hiding. All he needed was his laptop, the thirty-four pages and a ballpoint pen. There was one problem, however. When the computer battery died, he had to drape an electric cord to a wall outlet below the loft. Should anyone return to peek in the windows, the sight might arouse curiosity. But he had to chance it.
Instead of decoding from beginning to end, he jumped around. In the course of doing that, he made another discovery. The first page was composed in the year 1938, the final page was written in 1972, the year John Edgar Hoover died. That totaled thirty-four years—one page for each of thirty-four years.
He verified that the UWHECO decoder ring he used to decode the first page was the first ring issued in 1899. The ring he needed to work on the final page for the year 1972 was issued in 1932. That also totaled thirty-four. Clyde Anderson Tolson, aka CAT, was not very creative when it came to numbers. He selected the simplest possible cipher based on an antiquated mail-order toy. Then he began at the beginning and went forward in a straight line, year after year, toy ring after sequential toy ring, until the Grim Reaper knocked at his lover’s door.
Few people realize that numbers, in one form or another, make up the beating heart of the universe. Without mathematics, there would be no food, shelter, and clothing. Numbers are the lifeblood of all that is animate and inanimate, too: Earth, stars, music, faith in God, life itself. They are all composed of and grounded in numbers.
The apple and pear were refreshing and welcome.
Now that he knew how simple the code was, he was confident that he would have eventually deciphered the entire Dear John File on his own. But because he saw a breakfast cereal advertisement in an old boy’s magazine, he’d get the job done in a few hours. Instead of slow and laborious decryption, it would be quick, clerical labor. That was eerie. Peculiar mysteries were happening to him, but so were peculiar answers to the mysteries. When this was over, provided he survived, he planned to think long and hard about what it all meant. Maybe it meant he was being guided by an unseen hand. If so—why him? Was he chosen for the job?
He forced such thinking from his mind.
That’s foolish indulgence. There’s nothing special about me.
Teagarden opened the laptop and settled down to learn what the thirty-four pages had to say about events during the reign of the FBI’s first, and longest serving director.
Lying on his back in the cramped space, he dropped the leftover fruit cores into the garbage bag. He wiped his sticky hands on Ernest Blair’s borrowed blue jeans, picked up his ballpoint pen, and went to work.
DEAR JOHN…
Chapter Forty-Five
Encrypted Field Communication
NSA Apache Code Ofc Baltimore, MD/Washington, DC/CoinTelSatOrbit53/New York, NY
TO: ice skater
FROM: deep field cmdr
SUBJECT: operation dear john
deep field cmdr to ice skater: where u?…report…
<…>
deep field cmdr to ice skater: respond…convey status…
<…>
deep field cmdr to ice skater: 10th floor now beyond tolerance…be advised, u r on report…
<…>
deep field cmdr to ice skater: last chance…snap out of it…
deep field cmdr to ice skater: ok…have it u’r way…
Chapter Forty-Six
Central Park Zoo, New York City
It was feeding time.
McCanliss saw the latest communication from the DFC commander. He ignored it, turned off his company-issued cellphone, and plopped it into his half-full coffee cup, destroying it. He replaced the lid and dropped the cup into the public waste barrel next to his favorite bench in the Central Park Zoo.
Fuck ’em all.
He knew something they didn’t know.
He knew that Teagarden was hiding in that boathouse. He knew it without confirmation. He could smell it. They, however, were too stupid to see what he saw with clarity. Now that the tenth floor has sent Donnursk to be his partner, why should he tell them anything?
He had no intention of handing Teagarden over to Donnursk. If he did, Donnursk would get the credit. Instead, he planned to get Teagarden his own way. More importantly, he’d get Teagarden—on his own.
He turned back to the snow leopards that had just received their first meal in three days. The twin shanks of meat had the contoured shape of sheep legs, each of them capped with a ragged meaty top, still shaggy with tufts of unshorn wool. Instead of attacking the flesh with gluttonous appetite, the leopards laid beside their meal, stroking it with their tongues.
It made McCanliss smile.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The Boathouse, Sparta Township, NJ
Teagarden continued decoding and reading the results of his decryption, skipping from dated entry to dated entry.
Dear John,
You are gone only two weeks and I am in deep mourning for you, my love. This is the final message in my diary. One of your operation over easy psychos ponied-up on that ass from Alabama yesterday. No one will ever suspect clever you of setting up the hit on that corn pone governor by that patsy. Lord, what a screwball that Bremer was. He makes Oswald look sane. I now see that you knew all along that no one would ever connect the dots. God, I do desperately miss you.
I love you,
CAT,
May, 1972
P.S. you would love the cherry blossoms this year, they are magnificent.
Dear John,
Ha! You nasty boy. I am always happy to cover for you. But now I hear that your date with Dorothy Lamour was an all-nighter at the Willard Hotel. Does she, John? Did she? Or didn’t she? Well, the p.r. dept is pleased with the society page press speculating that you have a movie star girlfriend. You are such a naughty boy.
I love you,
CAT
March, 1940
Dear John,
I have just reviewed the JFK files. Dear God! That man makes Casanova look like a cherubic choir boy. And the photos reveal he’s not even well endowed. Ha! Poor Irishman. If he’s elected, I think we shall keep our jobs for many years thanks to your new file on his, ahem, personal habits!
I love you,
CAT
June, 1960
Dear John,
So, you finally had your way with that new agent, the darling golden haired god you met at the Fontainebleau Hotel. Was he your winning stake at the poolside poker table? Is that how you landed him? Was he hung like a quarter horse? You are such as hussy.
I love you,
CAT
February, 1955
Dear John,
Chasing commies is one thing. But you must be careful with Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy. I don’t want you infected with their buggery bugs. They are vicious, dirty beasts. Best you stay with us good “clean” boys at justice. After all, we know what a bar of soap is—really—for.
I love you,
CAT
June, 1953
Dear John,
I fear you shall be undone with this Operation Over Easy business. It’s just too much. Doctors/agents/mobsters (and you) secretly managing six recruits? All diagnosed as marginal, anti-social and/or schizophrenic: two career criminals, a catatonic, a Christian-Palestinian, an ex-marine now living in the S.Union, and a scummy low-level Dallas mobster. All managed by you, senior agent Mark Trippler, and a few other semi-stable agents including that schizo Slade Higgins. To what end, John? I am worried about you. Oh John, please be careful with this one.
I love you,
CAT
April, 1962
Dear John,
Today your surveill of King’s subversive march in Selma was quite a success. Our men got top notch mug shots of every one of those no good trouble-makers from “The National Association for the Almighty Colored People.” Good intel for future.
I love you,
CAT
P.S., you were right to approve Efrem Zimbalist Jr. for the TV show. He is such a darling.
March, 1965
Dear John,
Oh John, oh John.
What has your Operation Over Easy done this time? I am worried for you. So what if JFK had no interest in Vietnam. And so what if he fired you after his re-election. We would have simply retired to Hialeah as great American heroes on fine government pensions. Now what? What if they trace these schizo/nut-cases back to you, Agent Mark Trippler, Slade Higgins, the headshrinkers, freelancers and ex-mobsters managing Oswald? They—too—are a bunch of marginal personalities and patsies just as he was a patsy. I hope for your sake no one ever connects those dots.
I love you,
CAT
November, 1963
Dear John,
I hope you will now completely disband Operation Over Easy. That subversive S.O.B. King was one thing. But, oh Lord, RFK? Well, of course I know why. It’s because he’d have withdrawn from Vietnam. Plus, he’d have fired us both, where Nixon will keep the war going and allow—us—to go on forever, as well we should. But John, oh John, oh John.
Flight of the Fox Page 15