The Crook Factory

by Dan Simmons

  Dr. Hans Wesemann was as good as his word; he had said he would get me out of the country and he did—by train, car, and foot to Mexico, where I was told to report to a certain Franz Schiller for further duties. I did so. In the next ten months, with the help of the BSC and the regular FBI office there, we rounded up fifty-eight of the Abwehr agents in Mexico, effectively destroying their operation in that country.

  Hoover looked up from the file. “Krivitsky,” he said again, looking at me. The sun had gone behind the clouds again, and I could see the director’s dark eyes as they bored into me. My report described how I had talked to Krivitsky for three days and convinced him of the hopelessness of his position. The gun found near his hand had been mine, of course. I could see the question in Hoover’s black eyes—Did you kill him, Lucas? Or did you hand him a loaded gun, not knowing whether he would use it on himself or you, and sit there while he blew his brains out?

  The moment stretched. The director cleared his throat and flipped pages in the file.

  “You trained at Camp X.”

  “Yes,” I said, although it had not been a question.

  “What did you think of it?”

  Camp X was the BSC special operations center in Canada, near Oshawa, on the north shore of Lake Ontario not too far from Toronto. Despite the center’s melodramatic name—“Camp X” always sounded like something from a cheap movie serial to me—the place was deadly serious in its work: training British guerrillas and British counterintelligence experts for deployment all over the world, and sharing that training with some FBI personnel who were new to this harsher, meaner world of spycraft. All of us in the SIS received our initial training at Camp X. The basics included chamfering mail—intercepting and photographing it, then returning it to the normal delivery channels—as well as the art and science of carrying off black bag jobs; physical, photographic, and electronic surveillance techniques; training in lethal hand-to-hand combat; advanced cryptography; exotic weapons training; radio procedures; and much more.

  “I thought it was very efficient, sir,” I said.

  “Better than Quantico?” said Hoover.

  “Different,” I said.

  “You know Stephenson personally,” said Hoover.

  “I’ve met him several times, sir.” Stephenson was William Stephenson, a Canadian millionaire and head of all BSC operations. Winston Churchill had personally sent Stephenson to the United States in 1940 with two objectives: the public one was to set up an extensive MI6 operation in the United States to keep track of Abwehr agents; the private one was to get America into the war come hell or high water.

  I did not guess at these objectives. One of my goals while at Camp X was to spy on the British, and I did this—it was the most difficult and dangerous work of my career to that point—and I photographed not only Churchill’s private memo to Stephenson but also the special operation center’s plans to insert guerrillas into Czechoslovakia in 1942 in order to assassinate the Gestapo chief, Reinhard Heydrich.

  “Describe him,” snapped Hoover.

  “William Stephenson?” I said stupidly. I knew that Director Hoover knew Stephenson, had worked with him when the Canadian had first come to the country. Hoover liked to brag that it had been he who had suggested the name British Security Coordination for the operation.

  “Describe him,” repeated the director.

  “Good-looking,” I said. “Short. A bantamweight. Likes to wear three-piece Savile Row suits. Quiet but very confident. Never allows himself to be photographed. He was a multimillionaire by the time he was thirty… invented something to send photographs via radio. No formal background in intelligence, but he is a natural, sir.”

  “You boxed with him at Camp X,” said Hoover, looking at the file again.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who won?”

  “It was just a few rounds of sparring, sir. Technically, neither one of us won because—”

  “But in your mind, Agent Lucas, who won?”

  “I had the reach on him, sir. And the weight. But he was the better boxer. He would have won every round on points, if anyone had been scoring. He seemed to be able to take any amount of punishment without going down and liked to work in close. He won.”

  Hoover grunted. “And you think that he is a good director of counterintelligence?”

  Almost surely the best in the world, I thought. I said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know some of the well-known Americans he has recruited, Lucas?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Errol Flynn, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich… a mystery writer named Rex Stout… and he uses Walter Winchell and Walter Lippmann to plant items he wants aired. He has a couple of thousand people working for him, including about three hundred American amateurs like those I named.”

  “Errol Flynn,” muttered J. Edgar Hoover, shaking his head. “Do you go to the movies, Lucas?”

  “Occasionally, sir.”

  Hoover twitched that smile of his again. “You don’t mind indulging in make-believe as long as it’s on the screen, not on the printed page, eh, Lucas?”

  I did not know how to answer that, so I said nothing.

  Hoover sat back in his chair and closed the thick file. “Special Agent Lucas, I have a job for you in Cuba. I want you to fly down there tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, thinking Cuba? What was in Cuba? I knew that the FBI had a presence there, as it did everywhere in the hemisphere, but fewer than twenty agents, certainly. I remembered that Raymond Leddy, a legal attaché at the embassy in Havana, was the Bureau’s chief liaison from that island. Other than that, I knew nothing about operations in Cuba. Certainly the Abwehr had not been very active there—at least to my knowledge.

  “Do you know about a writer named Ernest Hemingway?” said Hoover, leaning on his right elbow in the heavy chair. His jaw was clenched so tightly that I could almost hear his teeth grinding.

  “Just newspaper reports,” I said. “Big game hunter, wasn’t he? Makes a lot of money. Friend of Marlene Dietrich. His books get turned into movies. I think he lives in Key West.”

  “Used to,” said Hoover. “He moved to Cuba a few years ago. Has been spending time there for years. He and his third wife live there now, just outside of Havana.”

  I waited.

  Hoover sighed, reached over and touched the Bible on his desk, and sighed again. “Hemingway is a phony, Special Agent Lucas. A liar and a phony and probably a Communist.”

  “How is he a liar, sir?” And why does it matter to the Bureau?

  Hoover smiled again. It was the briefest upturn of his lips and an even briefer glimpse of his small, white teeth. “You’ll see the file in a minute,” said the director. “But one example… well, this Hemingway was an ambulance driver in Italy in the Great War. A trench mortar round exploded near him and put him in the hospital with shrapnel wounds. In the years since, Hemingway has told reporters that he was also hit by heavy-caliber machine gun bullets—including some that hit his kneecap—after which he carried a wounded Italian soldier a hundred and fifty yards to a command post before he collapsed himself.”

  I could only nod. If Hemingway had said this, he was a liar. A knee wound is one of the most painful injuries imaginable. If this Hemingway had received shrapnel in the knee and walked even a few yards, much less carried a wounded man, he was a tough son of a bitch. But machine gun bullets are massive, high-velocity nightmares, designed to smash bone and muscle and spirit. If this writer said that he was machine-gunned in the knee and leg and had carried someone a hundred and fifty yards, the man was a liar. But so what?

  Hoover seemed to read my expression, even though I was sure that I had shown no expression except polite alertness.

  “Hemingway wants to set up a counterespionage ring in Cuba,” said the director. “He talked to Ellis Briggs and Bob Joyce at the embassy there on Monday and has an interview with Spruille Braden on Friday to formally propose it.”

  I nodded. This was Wednesday. Hoover
had cabled me on Tuesday.

  “You know Ambassador Braden, I believe,” said the director.

  “Yes, sir.” I had worked with Braden when he had been stationed in Colombia the previous year; now he was U.S. Ambassador to Cuba.

  Hoover said, “You have a question?”

  “Yes, sir. Why is a civilian… a writer… being allowed to take up the ambassador’s time formally proposing the asinine idea of running an amateur spy ring?”

  Hoover rubbed his chin. “Hemingway has a lot of friends on the island,” said the director. “A lot of them are veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway claims that he set up a network of covert operatives in Madrid in 1937—”

  “Is that true, sir?”

  Hoover blinked at the interruption, started to speak, then shook his head before saying, “No. Hemingway was in Spain, but only as a correspondent. The intelligence network seems to be a figment of his imagination, although he was in touch with more than a few Communist agents there. The Communists used him quite shamelessly to get their message out… and he allowed himself to be used quite shamelessly. It’s all in the file I’ll give you to read today.”

  Hoover leaned over his desk and folded his hands again. “Special Agent Lucas, I want you to go down to Cuba and be a special liaison to Hemingway and his silly operation. You will be in an undercover role, assigned to Hemingway by the embassy but not representing the FBI.”

  “Who am I supposed to be representing, then, sir?”

  “Ambassador Braden will tell Hemingway that your involvement will be a condition of the embassy’s approval for his scheme. You’ll be introduced as an SIS operative specializing in counterintelligence.”

  I had to smile. Hoover had said that this was an undercover role, but that was my real identity. “Won’t Hemingway recognize that SIS is FBI?”

  The director shook his massive head so that his oiled hair caught the overhead light. “We don’t think that he understands even the most basic facts about espionage and counterespionage, much less the details of organizational jurisdiction. Besides, Ambassador Braden will assure Hemingway that you will take orders only from him—from Hemingway—and that you will not be reporting to the embassy or any other contacts without Hemingway’s permission.”

  “And who will I be reporting to in reality, sir?”

  “You’ll be contacted once you’re in Havana,” said Hoover. “We’ll work outside the embassy and local FBI chain of command. Essentially, there will be just one controller between you and me. The contact details will be in the briefing papers that Miss Gandy will give you.”

  My expression did not change, but I was shocked. How could this be so important that I would have only one buffer between me and the director? Hoover loved the system he had created and hated people who went around it. What would justify such a violation of chain of command? I kept my mouth shut and waited.

  “You have a reservation on tomorrow morning’s flight to Havana by way of Miami,” said the director. “You’ll make contact with your controller briefly tomorrow, and then be present at Friday’s meeting when Hemingway presents his plan to the ambassador. The plan will be approved. Hemingway will be allowed to play his silly game.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. Perhaps this was the demotion I had been expecting—being channeled into a completely irrelevant sidewater, asked to play silly games until I could not take it any longer and resigned or enlisted in the army.

  “Do you know what Hemingway told Bob Joyce and Ellis Briggs he wants to call his organization?” said Hoover tightly.

  “No, sir.”

  “The Crime Shop.”

  I shook my head.

  “Here are your orders,” said Hoover, leaning farther over the desk toward me. “Get close to Hemingway, Special Agent Lucas. Report to me on who the man is. What he is. Use your skills to ferret out the truth about this phony. I want to know what makes him tick and what he really wants.”

  I nodded and waited.

  “And keep me updated on what this silly organization of his is doing in Cuba, Lucas. I want details. Daily reports. Diagrams, if necessary.”

  The director seemed finished, but I sensed that there was something else.

  “This man is meddling in an area where various sensitive operations or national security initiatives may be contemplated,” said the director at last, sitting far back in his chair. Thunder rumbled from beyond the blinds behind him. “All Hemingway can do is foul up things,” continued Hoover. “Your job is to let us know what he is doing so that we can minimize the damage his amateur meddling is bound to create. And—if necessary—intervene at our command to stop much meddling. But until that command is given, your job will be what it will be sold to Hemingway as—adviser, aide, assistant, sympathetic observer, and foot soldier.”

  I nodded a final time and lifted my hat from my lap.

  “You’ll need to read the O/C file on this writer today,” said the director. “But you will have to commit it to memory.”

  That went without saying. None of the O/C files ever left this building.

  “Miss Gandy will sign the file out to you for two hours,” said Hoover, “and show you to a quiet place to read it. I believe that Associate Director Tolson is out of his office today. It’s a large file, but two hours should be adequate if you read quickly.” The director stood.

  I stood.

  We did not shake hands again. Hoover came around the desk with the same quick efficiency he had used to greet me, only this time he crossed the room and opened the door, calling to Miss Gandy for the file while keeping one hand on the doorknob and using the other to fiddle with the handkerchief in his breast pocket.

  I stepped through the door, turning as I walked so that my back would not be toward the director.

  “Special Agent Lucas,” said Hoover as Miss Gandy hovered nearby.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “This Hemingway character is a phony, but he’s reported to have a certain crude charm. Don’t get caught up in that charm so you forget who you are working for and what you might have to do.”

  “Yes, sir… I mean, no, sir.”

  Hoover nodded and shut the door. I never saw him in person again.

  I followed Miss Gandy into Tolson’s office.

  4

  THE FLIGHT FROM Washington to Miami was crowded and loud the next morning, but the connecting flight to Havana was almost empty. In the few minutes before Ian Fleming sat down next to me, I had time to think about J. Edgar Hoover and Ernest Hemingway.

  Miss Gandy had stayed in Associate Director Tolson’s office with me long enough to make sure that I took a seat in one of the guest chairs, not in Mr. Tolson’s seat, and then she almost tiptoed out, closing the door softly. I took a minute to look around Clyde Tolson’s room: the usual Washington bureaucrat’s office—walls covered with trophy pictures of the man shaking hands with everyone from FDR to a very young Shirley Temple, lots of photos of citations and awards being handed to him by J. Edgar Hoover, and even one photograph of a nervous Tolson standing behind a massive movie camera in Hollywood, obviously there as an adviser for some FBI-sanctioned film or documentary. Hoover’s office had been a noticeable exception to this standard photographic, office-wall busyness: I remembered that there had been only one photograph on the wall—an official portrait of Harlan Fiske Stone, the former attorney general who had recommended Hoover for the job of Bureau of Investigation director in 1924.

  There were no photographs in the associate director’s office of Clyde Tolson and J. Edgar Hoover kissing or holding hands.

  As far back as the 1930s, there had been rumors, innuendos, and even a few nasty published articles—one especially in Colliers by a writer named Ray Tucker—suggesting that Hoover was a fairy and that something funny was going on between the director and his closest associate, Clyde Tolson. Everyone I knew who had known the director and his assistant for years thought that the stories were unadulterated bullshit. So did I. J. Edgar Hoover was a mama’s boy—
he had lived with his mother until her death when he was forty-two, and both he and Tolson were said to be shy, socially inept types out of the office—but even in my few minutes with the director I had sensed an undercurrent of Presbyterian Sunday school correctness that would have made such a secret life all but unthinkable for him.

  Both my personality and my SIS training had theoretically made me an expert in assessing people—in getting close to a possible deep-cover agent and sensing the submerged personality deep within the carefully constructed persona. But it was absurd to think that a few minutes in Hoover’s presence and even fewer minutes in Tolson’s office could tell me anything about the two men. Nevertheless, after that day I never again questioned the director’s and associate director’s relationship.

  Finished with admiring Tolson’s walls, I had flipped open Hemingway’s file and begun reading. Hoover had signed the file out to me for two hours. It was not an especially thick file, but it could have taken the full two hours for someone to read all the single-spaced field reports and the tear pages of printed articles. It took me less than twenty minutes to read it all and remember it all perfectly.

  In 1942 I had not yet encountered the phrase “photographic memory,” but I knew that I had that talent. It was not a skill… I had never learned it… but remembering pages of print or complex photographs with absolute precision, actually seeing them again in my mind when I called them back, was a talent I had possessed since childhood. Perhaps this was one reason I had been repelled by make-believe storybooks: remembering tomes of lies, word for word and image for image, was a tiresome burden.

  Mr. Ernest Hemingway’s file was not especially titillating reading. There was the standard dossier background bio sheet—which I had learned to assume was filled with factual errors: Ernest Miller Hemingway had been born in Oak Park, Illinois—then a separate village just outside of Chicago—on July 21, 1899. It was noted that he was the second of six children, although none of the siblings’ names were listed. Father’s name: Clarence Edmonds Hemingway. His father’s occupation was listed as “Physician”; his mother’s maiden name had been Grace Hall.