The Snowfly

by Joseph Heywood

  I was not going to complain. I had found M. J. Key’s manuscript among Sir Thomas Oxley’s books in Vietnam. Oxley was English and at one time, at least, there had been a trust in his name—and the Oxley Trust was a trail to the manuscript. A cold trail, but a trail nevertheless. I should have been questioning my motivation, but I didn’t, for reasons not at all clear to me. All I knew was that solving what I thought of as the mystery of the snowfly had become very important to me. London was the next logical choice in an illogical search and I wasn’t going to turn down the assignment. I agreed to go there. Yetter was visibly relieved.

  There were details like a visa and work permit to finalize, but Yetter would handle them. He gave me my ticket. “Daly will meet your plane.” We shook hands. “Let’s get back to the game.”

  “You go. I need sleep.”

  Yetter looked shocked. “You know how much these tickets cost me?”

  “Not out of your pocket,” I said sarcastically.

  Yetter’s face hardened and he stuck out his hand. “Be careful, kid. Cowboys die ugly.”

  There was no word from Danny when I got back to the hotel from the Garden. Life was a series of disappointments, large and small. I tried to watch TV, but I’d never appreciated the medium. I liked my entertainment on a big screen and my news on paper. I decided Danny would not be calling. I was asleep when the phone rang.

  “Mister Rhodes? This is Danny. Did I wake you?”

  I looked at my watch. It was two a.m. “I was just catnapping.”

  “I’m sorry to take so long. When are you leaving?”

  “Tomorrow, late afternoon out of La Guardia.”

  “Super! Do you think we could meet?”

  “How about at the library when it opens?”

  “How about breakfast at your hotel?” she countered.

  •••

  “Delish,” Danny said with her mouth jammed full of western omelette.

  She ate more in one sitting than most Vietnamese families.

  “You’re not hungry, which doesn’t surprise me in the least,” she said. “I looked you up. Awful stories.” She immediately winced, rolled her eyes, and circled her forefinger around her temple. “Call me Dumbo Danny. I meant to say your stories were great, but your experiences must have been awful. Datelines suggest you were there quite some time. I guess this is all a major readjustment for you. How do you feel about all the protests?”

  I didn’t answer and she politely moved on. “Want to know what I found?” she asked.

  A straight-backed waiter interrupted us and poured more coffee.

  “Your Mister Key is exceedingly obscure and biographical information is difficult to come by, but I found a book called Scholars or Charlatans? It was published in 1939 and barely mentions Key, but it’s indexed and there he was. He had a doctorate in biology from Princeton and taught for a time at Michigan Agricultural College, now Michigan State. The author contends that Key was interested in eugenics and was a Germanophile. The not-so-subtle inference is that Key was pro-Nazi.”

  I knew about Key’s teaching. I tried to remember what Nash had said about Key’s leaving. Sometime before World War II and either resigned or forced out? That question seemed to be answered.

  “There’s more,” she said, plowing on enthusiastically. “I mined our so-called morgue as best I could and found a story out of Detroit. Key resigned from the college in 1938. He wasn’t the only academic under fire back then. There were a dozen or so others from Michigan colleges forced out because of alleged pro-Nazi sympathies. In the clipping Henry Ford defended the professors and the Nazis, maintaining that Nazi efficiency was to be admired, not their ethics. This isn’t much, but what struck me is that the other ousted professors protested and vehemently denied the allegations, but your Mr. Key said nothing. He was the only one to remain silent. If I dug more and had more time, I’m sure I could find more.”

  “I appreciate this,” I said. Key was a Nazi lover. What did that have to do with trout and snowflies?

  “I love to dig,” she said. “My mother says I was born nosy and I won’t deny it. I found more, but I’m not certain it applies. There was a journal published by the University of Chicago math department. It was called Variables. I found an article by a man named Vijver and coauthored by M. J. Key of MAC. This was in early 1937 and I assume this is your professor, but I can’t verify it.”

  “A math article?” By a biologist? I wondered.

  She glanced up and her eyes narrowed. “Not exactly. The article talks about the use of plain language codes in the field of cryptography. The authors claimed they could write clear-text messages that professional cryptoanalysts would not be able to decipher.”

  Danny wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin and inhaled deeply. She dug into her bag and extracted a dusty journal, propped her eyeglasses on top of her head, and began to read.

  “ ‘Shakespeare wrote: “Brevity is the soul of wit,” and in this regard the most effective codes reside in clean, plain language. Poets have comprehended this for centuries. Rhyming schemes devised in Ireland in the seventh century have never been equaled anywhere in the world since. Not only can a code exist in the most mundane language, it can also exist in the meter of the language, meter serving as a kind of cryptographic Morse Code—to employ a crude metaphor.’ ”

  She continued reading: “ ‘The monks of Greavy achieved the penultimate of linguistics in the seventh century and their work gave rise to English poetics, of which the Great Bard, Mr. Shakespeare, is the crowning example, his work more than adequately demonstrating the use of double and triple entendre, which is, loosely speaking, a form of code intended for those few in the audience knowledgeable enough to comprehend the entire content.’ ”

  I interrupted her. “What’s Greavy?”

  Danny said, “I did some snooping and even called my friend at the Medieval Center at Yale. There are no references to Greavy and my friend says she’s never heard of it. You think the name is somehow connected to a code?”

  “I don’t know.” In fact, the more I learned, the less I knew.

  Danny paused at this juncture and said, “I’m skipping ahead here. ‘One could pen a daily column in the New York Times, for example, that could convey information diametrically different from the apparent content. In fact, this article may contain such a code and if so, we challenge our colleagues and readers to read the true content.’ ”

  Danny briefly looked up at me to see if I was still tracking and, apparently satisfied, resumed where she had left off. “ ‘Information can be conveyed most efficiently in language,’ ” she read, “ ‘which means that the true and ardent study of cryptography should rightfully fall into the realm of poets, not engineers or mathematicians.’ ”

  I couldn’t sort it all out. Key was a biologist, trout fisherman, conservationist, German-speaking Nazi sympathizer who happened to dabble in writing codes? Who the hell was he, James Bond? He had left the college under a scandal’s cloud, but what had happened to him after that? Nash had suggested matter-of-factly that Key might have been a spy. Maybe Nash had been right, but on whose side was Key? I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I saw in my mind the woman in the red Cadillac and tried to figure out how one stupid statement had led me down this bizarre, twisting path.

  “You look confused,” Danny said.

  “I am,” I admitted.

  “There’s a bit more,” she said. “I found references to the 1892 and 1943 books you mentioned and I got them off our shelves and in one of them, the 1943, I found a partial note, unsigned and handwritten. It said a new manuscript by Key was nearly done and that a working title had been assigned: The Myth of the Snowfly. The note wasn’t dated, but it was on H. Hixson letterhead. Hixson was the publisher of the second Key book in 1943, so it could be a note from an editor or someone in the house around that time.”

  “You got
all this in one day?”

  “I’m sorry there’s not more. If I just had more time.”

  I laughed out loud. I had no idea how any of this fit, but she had just pushed me forward by a huge margin in my quest for Key. In one night. “This is amazing,” I said. “Is Hixson still publishing?”

  “I anticipated you’d ask that,” she said with a flash of her eyes. “The firm went out of business in 1947. It was not bought or absorbed by another publisher; it simply folded. And,” she said, “it only began to publish in 1938. It was very unusual for a publisher to have such a short business life in those days.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I don’t know, but my instincts say that a publisher being in business only during the war years is an interesting fact that should not be ignored.”

  I agreed with her and tried to sort through what she was telling me. I had held Key’s snowfly manuscript at the Goodwins’ Trout House. It sometimes seemed unreal to me: While knew I had had the evidence in hand, I had not gotten more than a glimpse at the cover. Danny’s findings at least confirmed that the manuscript had not been a hallucination.

  “Thus endeth the take,” she said, sliding the dusty journal across the table.

  “You’re letting me have this?”

  “Well, it’s not strictly according to Hoyle, but I trust you to send it back. I pride myself in judging character, and you seem trustworthy.” She handed me a piece of paper with an address and phone number. “Home,” she said. “If you let me know where you are, I’ll send along anything else I dredge up. You would like for me to keep digging, wouldn’t you?”

  If Key had been forced away from the college, where had he gone? “Is there a way to find out if Key left the U.S. after he resigned from the college?”

  “If it’s findable,” she said, “I’ll find it.”

  “You’ll be a great lawyer one day. Can I pay you?” I asked.

  She gave me a dismissive wave of the hand. “Hush about money. This is an intellectual challenge.”

  That afternoon I left for London; I read the Vijver-Key article several times during the flight and with each reading became more and more confused. The more I learned, the less I knew. What the hell was I chasing? More to the point: Why?

  •••

  UPI’s bureau chief in London was Joe Daly, a Bostonian, barely five feet tall, stocky and freckled with a broad flat face, bushy red hair, and a long shiny forehead. He was standing outside immigration with my name scribbled almost illegibly on a piece of cardboard.

  We traded names and shook hands hard and he growled, “Follow me.”

  Daly had a small dark high-roofed sedan with numerous dings and scratches. The thing tipped like it would roll at the slightest provocation. Stability wasn’t helped by my driver’s rough manners with the clutch and gears. He had short, thin fingers with thick pads that flattened at the ends, an almost nonexistent chin, and small dark eyes covered by thick eyelids that opened and closed lugubriously. The overall effect was that of a small toad.

  “Good work in Vietnam,” he said, nam rhyming with lam, a pronunciation that grated on my ears.

  He continued, “There’re two schools of thought in the wire service business. First school says that they want people who can dig up facts and let editors and rewrite yoyos polish the words on paper. The other school says that diggers ought to be able to write what they find. You got a position on this?”

  “School two,” I said.

  Daly nodded his approval. “Good answer. That saves me work. I don’t mollycoddle my people, Rhodes. We’re all pros. You know anything about the peace movement here?”

  “Not really.”

  Daly hardly waited for my answer. “This country,” he said wistfully. “It’s a beaut. Flower power moved across the Atlantic. Dope, free love, peace, the whole shebang. In the States there are always people with a beef and looking for a fight. The younger generation back home doesn’t trust older generations and nobody except cretins trusts our government. Here? Too much respect!” He laughed out loud and banged the heel of his left hand on the steering wheel. “Back in the States students take to the streets and the government shits its pants. Here the government says, ‘By jove, we’d best hear what the young blighters have to say.’ The peacies here are left, socialists, commies, who knows what all? The average Brit wants peace, racial equality, Eden on earth. ‘Veddy’ left, you see? ‘Veddy propah, old boy.’ ”

  The bureau chief looked to see if I was paying attention and rambled on. “Naturally the pinky peacies here figured to link up with the lefty unions, only the unions here are up in arms over immigration, very pissed that wogs are taking proper English jobs. The lefty unions here are fascist when it comes to skin color. They hate everything but white. Result? The peace movement here is stillborn and the country is headed downhill.”

  “Not a story, then.”

  My new boss cleared his throat. “Maybe. This country’s going to hell fast. Rule Britannia and all that folderol. In their hearts the Brits remain certain that the empire exists and the sun never sets on it. The silly sods live in the past. Meanwhile, across the channel, the rest of Europe is fashioning itself into an economic union. The Brits, of course, want no part of it. Things have been good here for a long time, but deep down there’s big trouble. The Brits are losing capital fast. Immigration is stirring serious discontent. The students here are very elite. Not like back home, where just about anybody can get into school somewhere. Here you’re in by blood or big smarts, period. This is a class society. Per capita income doubled for the middle class after the big war. But that’s not going to last. The damn country’s caught in a time warp. The Brits look at how their music has moved into America and become the rage. The queen gave medals to the Beatles, can you believe that? Members of the British Empire. Geez. The Brits think this music thing and the fashion industry, which you will not believe, prove that they are still top of the heap. What the Brits don’t recognize is that American culture has a powerful beachhead here. We’re dug in and we’re gonna get deeper and deeper. Rest of Europe too. What I want you to do is to go among the people, find out what they’re thinking. Let them tell their stories in their own words. The way you did with soldiers. This is the world capital of eccentrics, Rhodes. Peculiar ideas abound and virtually all of them get automatic respect because that’s how Brits are. Get your talented butt into the streets and countryside and write about what you see and hear.”

  “It’s not exactly a breaking news beat.”

  Joe Daly frowned. “Breaking news? Anybody can cover that shit. TV will kick our asses on a breaking story every fucking time. We have to put words in print and that takes time. They just have to break into their programming. To survive, we have to go deeper than breaking news. The world’s shrinking like a tomato in the sun. Homogenizing. It’s happening slowly, but it is happening and that’s news. Hell,” he added, “a lot of reporters would kill for an assignment like this.”

  “I had thought I was going to Northern Ireland.”

  “You were, but I waylaid your ass.”

  “I thought the shift to London was Yetter’s idea.”

  Daly guffawed and shook his head. “That’s Grady for you. He fought like hell to put you over there, but I read your stuff. Great reporting. I want you to take people on patrol here. Besides, there was a better candidate for Ireland.”

  “Who?”

  “Benita Hamill. She was born there, educated in the States. Boston College and Columbia. Smart as they come and she’s one of them. She’s as ruthless as Churchill and writes like Keats,” he said. “She’s also my daughter,” he added. “I met her mother during the Blitz. We never married, but I made sure my kid got taken care of.” He looked at me and wagged a stubby finger. “She belongs over there and you belong here. This isn’t nepotism, it’s professional judgment.”

  “Yetter sai
d he didn’t want me to become a blood junkie.”

  Daly’s shoulders sagged. “I put that idea in his head.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what Yetter is and I knew it would hit home.” Daly looked over at me again. “Don’t misread this, Rhodes. I want you here. My daughter got the job only because I wanted you.”

  “Should I feel grateful?”

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t give a shit how you feel. I just want you to know how it is.”

  I appreciated Daly’s forthrightness. After Del Puffit, he would be fresh air in my working life. Besides, this might be an easy tour of duty and I had personal business here. At this point my interest was more in the line of the mystery, but in the back of my mind I knew that once it was solved, I wanted to fish the snowfly hatch—if such a thing existed. Why else would I go to all this trouble?

  “You were here during the Blitz?” I asked Daly.

  “Came over in ’39 and pretty much been here ever since.”

  “Do you know much about the codebreaking effort during the war?”

  Daly smiled. “No, but I know somebody who knows all there is to know about that stuff. Why?”

  “Something I scraped against in Vietnam,” I lied. I was thinking about Vijver-Key. They said they could write codes. Had anybody believed them? “Can you arrange an introduction?”

  “I can try,” Daly said, pulling into a parking lot. “Here’s home, Rhodes.”

  We left the car in a lot with a female attendant in a black uniform and walked down Fleet Street, home to most of Britain’s major newspapers. About halfway down Middle Temple Lane we turned left into Wine Office Court. The building housing UPI’s offices was an old structure, four stories high with a nondescript entrance and no signage to indicate who or what might be inside. We trudged up narrow, dark stone stairs, worn in the middle by what I imagined to be centuries of foot traffic.

  “Expensive real estate,” Daly said as he huffed and puffed. “But it’s owned by an old broad who worked for us during the war and she leases it to us for next to nothing. Brits are loyal. Remember that.”