HE LEFT EARLY, suddenly tired. The travel back and forth had caught up with him, and he swept a stack of memos into his briefcase, explaining to Marie that he was heading home. His car, an ageing Buick sedan, was parked around the corner and thankfully started up at once. It was dark by the time he passed the White House, and he could see the lights on in the living quarters upstairs where Roosevelt would be sitting now, before the cocktail hour he enjoyed with cronies and anyone interesting who was passing through town.
He drove through Georgetown, not far from the house where Nessheim had boarded for several months in 1940. Frankfurter had helped the young agent find accommodation there, and Guttman felt a sense of déjà vu about the re-emergence of the connection between the three of them. Crossing the bridge, traffic was light, and ten minutes later he was home, at the new house he’d bought over ten years before on the outskirts of Arlington. It was part of a suburban development that had stalled during the Depression, but now the once-empty lots all held houses.
He parked his car in the driveway, outside the garage he’d had built next to the side of the house. In a sudden inexplicable fit of busy-ness he had started to clear the contents of the garage before leaving for Chicago, and now boxes full of old clothes filled the space where the car usually went. He stopped outside at the twin mailboxes, propped at chest height by the sidewalk. Both were empty and he wondered what had happened to his newspaper. Inside, there was a light on in the living room and one in the front hall. It soothed him momentarily, but then he realised there would be no one there; nowadays the lights were just a beacon to mislead burglars into thinking someone was home.
When he walked through to the kitchen he saw mail on the table in a neat stack, a folded copy of the evening newspaper waiting for him, and a telegram envelope. Annie had been in, even though he’d told her not to bother. A plate sat covered by a dish towel; when he lifted it he saw a big sandwich of ham and cheese, some carrot sticks and a handful of potato chips. Bless her; the last thing he felt like doing was cooking.
He went outside through the kitchen door and stood on the little deck, peering into the dark of his backyard. A nice suburban plot, decent neighbours, a still night; it seemed difficult to believe that seventy feet away by the back of his garage someone had fired a bullet at his head. The unreality of it had grown since he’d been alone.
Most nights now he paced the yard, almost willing his assassin to return and finish the job – such was his misery since his wife’s death. But something had changed: as he surveyed the yard, its shapes gradually emerging as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he gave a slight shiver when he looked over to the dull dark patch of grass by the garage. An odd feeling filled him, one which he dimly recognised as fear. He hadn’t thought he would ever feel that again.
He went back inside and took the plate with his dinner to the living room, where he poured himself two inches of Johnny Walker, turned on the radio, and ate while a reedy voice told him American soldiers fighting on Guadalcanal were making advances against fierce opposition from Japanese troops. When he started to nod off, he got up and turned off the radio and lights and went into the bedroom. He took his clothes off, put on fresh pyjamas, brushed his teeth and got into bed in the dark, not even pretending to read. He waited for a moment on what had always been his side of the bed; he was trying not to give in.
He yielded at last, rolling over to lie face down on what had been Isabel’s side. People would think it was nutty if they knew, but it was the only way he had to try and reach his wife. On his belly he kept still for a moment, inhaling as deeply as he could, his nose pressed against the bottom sheet, hunting for the faintest perfume.
It was no good; the traces of Isabel weren’t there. Lately they hadn’t been. Either the sheets had been washed too often since her death or enough time had passed to make her scent disappear. He sighed and turned on to his back, moving over to his side of the bed, even though he could have the whole of it now if he wanted.
Someone had told him it would be two years before he felt any better at all. Somebody else told him he had to take life a day at a time. Heeding that advice, he lay still on the bed, wondering what the next day – number 117 since the death of his beloved wife Isabel – would bring. He wasn’t optimistic.
In the morning the phone woke him. He sat up, shaking the sleep fog out of his head, then looked at his watch: 6.15. It must be Nessheim or Marie, he thought, but why were they calling him this early? He reached for the phone and grabbed it on the third ring.
‘Harry?’ The voice was mild, mid-Atlantic, familiar. Neither Nessheim nor Marie.
‘Who’s that?’ he demanded. It was still dark outside.
‘It’s Bill Stephenson. We’ve been playing tag with the telephone. I thought I’d try again before I left town.’
‘Hi, Bill,’ said Guttman, slowly regaining his composure. ‘How are you?’
Stephenson chuckled down the line. ‘More awake than you from the sound of it.’
‘Sorry. I’ve been away.’
‘Anywhere nice?’
‘Not really. Business. Kind of unofficial business.’
‘Ah – I’ll ask no more questions. So how can I help?’
‘I need to check up on some people,’ he said hesitantly. He had asked Stephenson for assistance before, but still felt uncomfortable that it was so obvious he couldn’t use the Bureau’s own resources. It felt peculiar to be trusting a foreigner more than his own colleagues, but it was not the first time.
‘Here?’
‘In Europe. You know we haven’t got people over there. I was hoping you could help.’
‘Is there a list?’
‘I’ll send it to you tomorrow.’
‘What are we looking for?’
‘Confirmation mainly. That people are who they say they are. But it could also be that they’ve left people behind who could be used against them.’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘We’re talking about recent émigrés to America then?’
Guttman just grunted.
‘Jews?’
It was a factual enquiry; Guttman knew Stephenson well enough to recognise that. ‘Yes, pretty much all of them. It’s a question of whether the Nazis could put pressure on someone over here by threatening people who got left behind.’
‘In normal circumstances they probably could. The thing is, from what we’ve learned, they’re going to kill all the Jews they can anyway.’
‘I think you’ll find they’ve started.’
‘These people I’m checking for you – are they all working on the same thing?’
‘Yeah.’
Stephenson sighed. ‘Is this still a safe line, Harry?’
‘Absolutely.’ He’d had it put in under his wife’s maiden name several years before. ‘All right,’ said Stephenson. ‘We’re talking scientists, aren’t we?’
How on earth did he know that? Taking Guttman’s silence for assent, Stephenson went on. ‘You know we’re cooperating with you on this project.’
‘Yeah?’
‘You don’t have to say anything, Harry. We’re on the same side. Though it would help if General Groves saw things that way.’
Guttman was flabbergasted. ‘I don’t know what to say, Bill.’
‘I know you don’t. It will all be a lot clearer when we can talk face-to-face. Unfortunately, I’m leaving today. I’ll be back in ten days. But send the list tomorrow to Katie, and we’ll get started.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Bermuda. We’ve made some interceptions you can hear all about when I’m back. I may have some other news for you then as well. From Norway.’
‘Norway?’
‘Yes, news from Norway. I think you’ll be surprised. By the way, what’s happened with the problem you told me about?’
They each knew what he was talking about. Guttman said, ‘Nothing. I’ve been wondering if I’ve got it all wrong.’
‘Really? It didn’t sound that way to me.’
Guttman felt something niggling at the back of his mind. For no reason he knew of he said, ‘There is one other guy I’d be grateful if you could check out for me – here on home soil, I mean.’
Stephenson waited a moment to reply. It was a big thing to ask, and begged as many questions as it hoped to answer. ‘Okay. Send me that name too. I’ll be in touch when I’m back next week.’
Guttman said goodbye and hung up the phone. He remained sitting on the edge of his bed, thinking about ‘the problem’.
It had begun with a telex sent from Washington under Clyde Tolson’s name to the Office of Naval Intelligence in Hawaii, requesting that surveillance of a suspected German agent be called off. The agent was thought to be meeting with Japanese intelligence officers, and the failure to continue surveillance meant both that Agent James Nessheim had nearly lost his life and that information had been received too late to prevent the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
The problem was that Tolson had been in New York when the telex was sent from D.C. He denied all knowledge of it, and of ordering it to be sent by proxy. At Bureau HQ, moreover, no record could be found of the telex in the logbook kept of all official communications with other government agencies – including the Office of Naval Intelligence. When Guttman had asked the recipients in Hawaii to send him a copy of the original text, they had explained that, along with 80,000 other documents, the telex had been destroyed in the Pearl Harbor attack. Someone had been both careful and lucky.
That, it seemed earlier that spring, was that, but Guttman had hoped that if he worked away at it something would emerge. He could be bloodhound-like once he found a hint of a trail. But then he’d been sidetracked, for almost four months; not by the lack of leads but by Isabel’s death. One week she was sitting peacefully in her wheelchair, reading the society column out loud while he made stew; the next week she was in Walter Reed in a hospital bed with a tube in her mouth; the week after that it was all over. Guttman had barely had time to say goodbye to his wife.
She would want me to follow this up, he decided, feeling uplifted by the thought – even though he’d always told her he had no causes when it came to work. Except, of course, to find and punish the bad guys. ‘Like a Western,’ she’d said with a smile; his favourite kind of picture show. ‘That will do just fine as a reason. You go and round ’em up.’ And for the first time since he’d lost his wife Guttman felt he was back in the saddle again.
He got dressed and went out into the kitchen, where he saw the telegram Annie had left on the table. It would be from Nessheim, he figured, telling him no. He wondered what had happened between Nessheim and Annie. For a while he had thought they would end up together – Nessheim had been eager to, Guttman was sure of that. But then he’d gone away and probably tomcatted around – and Annie’s mentions of him had grown infrequent. Guttman thought Nessheim was a fool not to have seized his chance.
Still, Nessheim had unique abilities as an agent – at least in Guttman’s view. He earned people’s trust, and he could read the fine print of somebody’s character like Helen Keller touching Braille. He took the initiative and required little direction; he was adaptable, even ingenious; and he could look after himself. It was the perfect mix for an undercover man, yet now it looked as though he meant it when he said he didn’t want to stay with the Bureau.
What a waste. He would be a perfectly competent lawyer, but the kind who was a dime a dozen in the city practices Guttman knew. Though it was more likely (he had declared the ambition often enough) that Nessheim would become a big fish in a little Podunk pond up in Wisconsin. There was something special about the guy; it was just a shame Nessheim didn’t know that himself.
Guttman opened the telegram at last. He read its terse message with surprise.
Count me in. JN