The House of Special Purpose

by Paul Christopher

  ‘And no one with proof to claim it.’

  ‘The real key is, the claims might be factual, or at least that’s the banks’ stance. Ergo, until a claim is proven beyond a doubt the money and the gold and the jewels and the stocks and bonds and everything else stay right where they are.’

  ‘My God, now I see.’ Jane lit another Camel. ‘The film is proof that all the claims are false. No one survived. All the claimants are bogus.’

  ‘Exactly, at which point the deposits, here, in England and everywhere else you’d like to look are forfeit to the governments of the countries where the money is deposited.’

  Fleming lit one of his Morlands. ‘England has been liquidating its assets and selling off its gold for the better part of three years now. We’re almost bankrupt. Even if America comes into the war, we’ll be hideously debt-ridden until the end of this century and perhaps beyond. A billion dollars or so would go a long way towards relieving some of the strain.’

  ‘Find the film, save the world,’ Jane said. ‘I’m game. What’s the first step?’

  ‘School,’ Fleming answered. ‘For both of you. Tomorrow will be your first day.’

  * * *

  In 1906 a Mr Frank O. Lowden of Illinois was elected to Congress. His wife was the daughter of George M. Pullman, the inventor of the Pullman sleeping car. Needless to say, Mrs Lowden had an almost bottomless well of money to draw on and for some reason assumed that she and her husband would be staying in Washington forever.

  They purchased an empty lot at 1125 Sixteenth Street and Mrs Frank O. Lowden proceeded to order up a gigantic eighteenth-century-style Italian-French monstrosity of cupid and swag, richly encrusted with gilt accents, marble staircases and mahogany panelling on the walls.

  Sadly, within two years ‘poor health’ forced Lowden out of Congress – poor health being the pseudonym of a young congressional page named Kevin Starr with whom Congressman Lowden had a brief dalliance up in the congressional attic. Thus the mansion on Sixteenth Street between L and M was put up for sale and the Lowdens moved back to Illinois. Lowden seemed to recover quickly from his poor health, becoming governor of the state for a number of years as well as running an unsuccessful campaign for president. Mrs Lowden seemed very much interested in coming back to Washington in any capacity, including as first lady.

  In 1913, the tsar Nicholas II purchased the pseudo-Italianate conglomeration of towers and turrets for use as an embassy but never had time to implement his plan. The newly created Soviet Union took over the building in 1917, shortly before the tsar and his family were assassinated, but since the United States refused to recognise the USSR, the building languished, empty except for a single caretaker until 1933. When the Soviets decided to move in they wanted the entire interior redone in a hard-edged Stalinist version of art deco but they couldn’t find an architect willing to do it. In the end they gave in and used the embassy as it was.

  Vassili Zarubin, who secretly enjoyed the irony of the building’s utterly bourgeois aspect and decadent history, sat in a straight-backed wooden office chair on the south-west corner of the roof of the embassy, his powerful and expensive British ‘Heath’ Binoculars raised to his eyes. If the Sheraton Hotel on K Street had been located only a few yards farther to the west rather than locating its parking lot there, Zarubin’s surveillance would have been ruined but as it was the NKVD Rezident had a clear view all the way to the seven-and-a- half-storey roof of the triangular Apex Building at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street, some ten blocks to the south and east.

  Zarubin’s signalling system was as simple and basic as he could make it. An empty package of Lucky Strike cigarettes left underneath the mailbox at the single Constitution Avenue entrance to the building would tell Stowaway that a meeting was required immediately.

  In turn, as soon as he could manage it, Stowaway, supposedly an avid gardener, would climb to the above-the-attic roof of the building and place a pot of red geraniums at one of the three corners of the roof. Each position represented one of their meeting places. To add to the number of possible rendezvous sometimes a second pot of geraniums would be added to one or more of the corners. In this case Zarubin spotted two pots of geraniums on the south-west corner of the building. Stowaway had chosen the Pierce Mill site in Rock Creek Park. The time for their meetings was always the same: four in the afternoon.

  * * *

  Riding the elevator down from his fifth-floor office in the Apex Building, Maurice Halperin pushed his bifocals up onto his nose and lifted his wrist, reading the time off the Tiffany-Longines wristwatch his father had given him when he received his Ph.D and became Dr Maurice Halperin, professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. It was three thirty, plenty of time to get to his meeting.

  Maurice Halperin had been a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America – CPUSA – since the early twenties and long before gaining his doctorate he was well known for his support of extreme left political causes, although on direct orders from his CPUSA superiors he never publicly admitted to being a member of the party.

  A year before, with communism coming under close scrutiny after the Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Halperin’s embracing of the left led to his removal from the university faculty. Halperin loudly and falsely denied his membership in the party at the time of the investigation into his affairs but the Oklahoma legislature was adamant and insisted that he be fired.

  The university president, however, believed that Halperin wasn’t a party member and arranged a fully paid year’s sabbatical and a job with the newly formed Coordinator of Information in Washington. Donovan immediately made Halperin head of the Latin American Division of its Research and Analysis section. Three days after being hired by Donovan, Halperin was met in Washington by a man named Bruce Minton, one of the editors of the intellectual journal New Masses in New York. Through Minton, Halperin was covertly introduced to Zarubin, known to him only as Maxim, and was given the code name Stowaway, which both men thought suited Halperin and his position well.

  The elevator reached the basement, and Halperin stepped out into the gloomy underground garage. As a division head, he had a choice parking spot close to the elevator and a few moments later he was driving his six-year-old Chevy Master DeLuxe up the ramp to the Seventh Street exit.

  He drove quickly but carefully, piloting the dark green two-door north and turning left onto K Street just below Mt Vernon Square. From there he followed K Street all the way across the city to the ravine at Rock Creek, taking the newly built cloverleaf down to the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway and heading north. He veered to the right, skirting the National Zoological Park, and eventually reached Beach Drive, following its snaking path along the tree-lined creek to Pierce Mill.

  Only a few years ago the mill and its outbuildings had been rat-infested ruins but a WPA project soon changed that and with its overshot wheel and mill race back in operating order it was now a small tourist attraction for families looking for a cool picnic spot.

  It was a pretty place, the mill set on the banks of the burbling creek in a small meadow, surrounded by mostly undisturbed woodland where dogwoods flowered in the spring and wildflowers bloomed in abundance through three seasons. Secluded footpaths wound through the forested areas and around the picnic sites with their fireplaces and rustic outdoor furniture. It was a perfect place for children to play while their parents relaxed and it was just as perfect for spies.

  Maurice Halperin followed his chosen footpath to the bench at the foot of a narrow, lonely ravine, a huge boulder looming over the pathway. The trees on either side of the ravine blocked the meeting place from view and because it was almost always in deep shade the bench was rarely occupied. Maxim was already waiting for him, legs crossed, reading the latest copy of Life magazine, the cover of which depicted a woman with the unlikely name of Eros Volusia, a Brazilian dancer, leaning on a Romanesque column, dressed in a costume that appeared to be made entirely of beads. Had Maxim been carryin
g the previous week’s edition of the magazine Halperin would have kept on walking, knowing that danger was present or that one or the other of them had been followed to the bench.

  Halperin sat down on the bench, reached into his jacket and took out a package of Old Golds. He turned slightly towards Maxim and shook a cigarette halfway out of the package. ‘May I offer you one?’

  Ignoring the agreed-upon sign/countersign protocol, Zarubin flipped the magazine closed and stared at the voluptuous woman on the cover. ‘Do you really think she was born with the name Eros Volusia?’

  ‘That’s not the countersign,’ said Halperin, irritated.

  ‘I’m not quite sure why we really need all of this cloak-and-dagger stuff.’

  ‘It’s established procedure.’

  ‘And Iron Feliks, the man who invented it, is long dead. Comrade Beria has taken his place and cares for nothing except results.’

  ‘Still…’

  ‘You put a great swot of geraniums on top of the building you work in and I understood what it meant. Don’t be silly. I know who you are and you know who I am.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Fleming picked up a woman at the airport yesterday. A man arrived today. Presumably some of Mr Donovan’s new recruits.’

  ‘I wouldn’t presume quite so much,’ Halperin answered. ‘The woman is a one-time press photographer named Jane Todd. She just arrived from New York after attending her sister’s funeral.’

  ‘Why is Donovan interested in her?’

  ‘It would appear that she comes with some experience. I’m not sure of what sort.’

  ‘Find out, please.’ Zarubin bent his head, took a last puff of his cigarette then dropped it on the ground.

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ Halperin said bitterly. ‘I’m not promising anything.’

  ‘What about the man?’

  ‘A different sort of fish altogether.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Until a few days ago he was working in one of the Strategic Operations Executive training schools in England. Before that he was involved in some very hush-hush operation involving MI5. That’s where he knows Fleming from.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Black. Morris Black.’

  ‘You seem to know quite a bit about them.’

  ‘I’ve been assigned to them. It would appear that they will be travelling south after they complete their training at the Farm.’

  ‘Where in the south?’

  ‘Mexico.’

  ‘Specifically?’

  ‘Mexico City.’

  ‘Any idea why?’

  ‘I’ve been asked to prepare a brief for them on the Trotsky assassination. Both attempts.’

  * * *

  The two men wearing casual shirts and trousers stood a hundred yards away on the far side of the ravine, almost completely hidden by trees and underbrush. Both men were focused completely on the two men sitting at the bench under the looming boulder. One of the men was using a Bolex H-16 16mm movie camera with its three- lens turret set on the 50mm close-up size, while his companion had an expensive pair of Zeiss binoculars up to his eyes, a mechanical pencil in his other hand and a stenographer’s notepad in his hand.

  ‘What are they talking about?’ asked the man with the camera.

  ‘The two new people, the Brit and the woman. I can’t tell the details but we can pick it up later when we see the film. Something about Mexico and Trotsky.’

  ‘When they’re done, you take the camera to the lab and get the reel processed. I’ll follow Halperin and see where he goes. The boss is going to want to know about this PDQ.’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  The man continued to film and the other man continued to take down Maxim and Stowaway’s lip-read conversation in shorthand. Ten minutes later, the meeting was over.

  * * *

  After their meeting at the Willard, Fleming had delivered Jane Todd and Morris Black to an elegant town house on the Thirty-third Street end of Dent Place, a one-block-long and clearly very exclusive address. The house had three floors plus a full basement that included a breakfast room, kitchen and laundry. A dining room at the rear of the first floor overlooked a small back garden with a high brick wall surrounding it. The furniture and appointments were bland, neither masculine nor feminine, and the walls were painted a neutral eggshell white.

  ‘If a house could be a hotel room this would be it,’ said Jane. She’d found the refrigerator in the basement and the pantry fully stocked so she’d brewed them a pot of coffee, which they were now enjoying in the dining room. A single magnolia tree stood at the rear of the little patch of soil, its white blossoms lying around its base like a slowly yellowing shroud.

  ‘Fleming mentioned that it was Donovan’s place when he worked with the Department of Justice here some years ago,’ said Black. ‘He’d donated it to the cause. Visiting potentates such as ourselves.’

  ‘I don’t feel much like a potentate,’ Jane grumbled. ‘For some reason I feel as though I’ve been handed a bill of goods.’

  ‘Bill of goods?’

  ‘Lie. Bull puckie.’

  ‘Bull puckie?’

  ‘Crap, shit, old man.’ She laughed, shaking her head. ‘Am I going to have to teach you how to speak American on top of everything else?’

  Black smiled back. Jane was surprised at how nice it made him look, not to mention ten years younger.

  ‘Perhaps I should be teaching you the King’s English instead,’ said the detective. He turned the smile up a few degrees. ‘After all, we did invent the language.’

  ‘Yeah, but we won the Revolution in 1776.’

  ‘We tend to leave that out of our history texts,’ said Black. ‘At most it’s referred to as a small colonial aberration.’

  Jane stared at her companion thoughtfully. ‘Do you really believe all of this stuff we’ve been handed?’ Jane asked after a moment. She lit a cigarette and Black immediately followed suit.

  ‘The bill of goods, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No. Not entirely,’ Black said, the smile slowly fading. ‘It’s all too carefully put together, even Fleming being here. It’s like a set piece for our benefit.’

  ‘You mean Fleming being your friend and all?’

  ‘He helped me through a bad time – let’s just leave it at that.’

  ‘Can I ask you a personal question?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Black answered but the smile was back again.

  ‘What exactly were you doing before you came over here?’

  ‘Not to go into too much detail but basically I was teaching soldiers how to react to interrogation by the Gestapo.’

  ‘Using your experience as a detective for Scotland Yard, right?’ She shook her head.

  He smiled. ‘Using my experience as a right bastard is more like it.’

  ‘And I was taking kiss-and-tell shots and occasionally shooting pictures of nitwit movie stars, usually the ones on the way up or on the way down.’

  ‘So why were we drafted into service for Mr Donovan and Mr Stephenson, is that what you mean?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I have been wondering something of that sort myself,’ said Black.

  ‘No offence, but we really are being a pair of yutzes – idiots – about all of this. I helped bring down an assassin a couple of years ago and that makes me a spy?’

  ‘And I was a copper who found the wrong body at the wrong time, nothing more than that really.’

  ‘And now here we are in Bill Donovan’s town house in Georgetown. I mean, when you get right down to it, what do they need us for? Us in particular?’

  Black sat back in his chair, slowly smoking his cigarette and occasionally taking a sip from his coffee cup. He was staring up at some blank point in the ceiling and Jane knew he had, for all intents and purposes, left the room. She let her eyes move over him like a photographer, picking up details. His clothes didn’t quite fit him; his collars were a little frayed an
d loose around his neck and the suit was too roomy in the shoulders, while his white shirt belled out too much. The button cuffs on the shirt were as frayed as the collar but she could tell that the shirt itself was an expensive one and the pen in his pocket was recognisably a Montblanc Meisterstuck. The watch he wore on his right wrist was a solid gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual. Scotland Yard copper or not, there was money somewhere in the detective’s background.

  He was wearing only one ring: a simple gold wedding band on the third finger of his right, not his left, hand. Didn’t that mean he’d been married but was now a widower? His face looked a little drawn but there were none of those chicken wattles hanging down and the faint lines around the corners of his eyes just made him look a little sad, not old. His hair was thinning up into a widow’s peak but it was still dark and well cared for. The only real flaw she could find was a faint nicotine stain between the index and second fingers of his left hand, below the knuckle.

  ‘Well?’ said Black, his voice bland. ‘What do you see?’

  Jane flushed slightly at being caught out in her inspection. She cleared her throat and lit another Camel. She took a couple of puffs, organising her thoughts. ‘Okay,’ she said finally. ‘You’re in your early forties. You have very blue eyes, which is a little odd since I’ll bet you’re a Jew.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m a Jew?’

  ‘Your name is Morris. Nobody except a Jew is named Morris, believe me. It’s like there are no Jews named Christopher.’

  Black smiled. ‘Go on.’

  ‘You come from a wealthy family. You’re recently a widower but you still take care of yourself, which makes me think there’s a bit of vanity going on, but not enough for you to buy your own clothes. Your wife did all your shopping for you, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was a faint hint of nostalgia in his answer and Jane was almost sorry she’d said anything. ‘Anything else?’