WHEN THE WAR was still on, the airmen on Shemya assumed, quite naturally, that my radio unit was listening to Japanese communications. But that duty was left to the team on Adak Island. We simply forwarded the Japanese news from them to maintain our cover, because my unit, the 1085th Signals Service Company, was attached to the wartime Office of Strategic Services. I was designated the Canadian liaison, which gave me an ambiguous status that Miss Maggie found useful. In fact, I reported only to her.
I had started to share her paranoia about the Soviets. Even during the war, when the lines were more clearly drawn and our countries were united against Nazi Germany, Russia remained neutral to our other enemy, Japan. From the Shemya airfield, we sometimes ran bombing missions to Paramushiro, a Japanese island base, and the Russians let us fly over Kamchatka on the way. But due to their pact with Japan, they interned any American pilots who went down over Russian terrain. After confiscating their winter gear for Soviet soldiers to wear on the Eastern Front, they shipped the Americans to Siberian camps. They were freezing in their replacement rags and always short of rations. It was not much better than how enemy soldiers were treated.
One lost B-25 stood out in my mind. I did not normally pay attention to the comings and goings of the bombers, since it happened so often. But that night I could not sleep because, for once, there was no fog muffling the base. A distant noise woke me up, a man yelling on the runway, clear as though he was just outside my hut. The dawn blued the dorm windows just after 4 a.m., since it was June. I went for a walk in the unfamiliar brightness and watched them arming the bombers. One man I noticed in particular because he looked nervous—the seasoned pilots had learned to swagger to hide their natural fear of death. This man must have been a civilian in a non-combat specialty because he was carrying photographic equipment. I had the sudden thought that this B-25 was on an aerial reconnaissance of Russia, and the Japanese mission was merely a pretext. The rest of the squadron returned, but not that plane. It was shot down by the Japanese, they said. A crew went out later, searching, and located the plane on the ice at Petropavlovsk. The men were not in it, no sign of blood, but they never answered their portable radio. They were the only downed pilots in Kamchatka that had never been found alive or dead. Around that time, Russian cables arrived that I was not able to decipher. They had changed their coding system. I was sure they had captured our pilots, and that was when I realized Miss Maggie was right: the Russians were the enemy for the coming days.
I had to admit I enjoyed the Russian work. I was in my element. I was fluent in Russian, while my Japanese had only ever been tolerable after six months of training, so that I depended on the language specialists when I was stationed in Victoria. I was not alone in that. Most of the cryptanalysts had not been fluent speakers—the government had not trusted the naturalized Japanese in North America. We had been chosen for our skills in cracking puzzles and our ability to pick up language quickly. Some of the girls were Oxford mathematicians and I was intimidated by them. But I had studied Russian for five years before the war, and now the other cryptanalysts came to me. Well, not all of them. Some of the men had not wanted me over them as lieutenant. I knew that. The blue braid on my sleeve would always be a reminder that they need not treat me equally. The men of my rank wore gold.
I paused my pencil over my decoding sheet. It was a cable to Moscow from a Soviet agent in Germany. After the surrender, every Allied nation carved out its piece of Berlin, and the Nazis were being interrogated. Americans, British, French, and Russians all had their teams on the ground, hunting them down. There was a trial underway at Nuremberg about the death camps. It would be a new era of justice, where war crimes would be punished not by mob mentality but by rule of law. Ruthless acts would be banished forever from mankind.
That was the theory, anyway.
I put down my pencil and wiped my hands over my face. Since the surrender, the Soviets had been massing their armies and spies in Eastern Europe, and I was convinced they had dreams of empire. Meanwhile, in their coded cables, they claimed that the Americans were trying to recruit Nazi secret service agents. I hadn’t believed it, at first. It ran counter to the directives of the brass in US army intelligence, who wanted to round up every single Nazi for trial. I had told myself it was just Russian paranoia, but now the details were getting too specific to brush aside. Army intelligence was a different creature than the OSS had been. I read the cable over once more.
BERLIN—Accelerate operation POLE CAT. Agent 37 recruited von Roth, an SS officer with access to Politburo files during occupation of Ukraine. Urgent to retrieve him from American sector.
I picked up the sheet of paper scrawled with my decryption and walked across the room to Marguerite’s desk. Sergeant Hall was not here, which was good, because he did not have clearance for the Berlin cables. He only worked on Romania, which chafed him because it was less important and he knew it.
“It’s about POLE CAT,” I said.
She stared at the sheet of paper until I got tired of holding it and put it on top of her cluttered desk.
“Agent 37. That is one of ours in Berlin,” she said finally.
I slumped into the chair beside her desk. “The whole point of this damn war was to destroy the Nazis.” I pulled at my lapel to look at the new silver bar above my pocket. “Aleutian Islands Campaign” was embossed on the metal along with a lightning bolt. I had felt a surge of pride when I pinned it on the month before—I had served my country as well as any man. Our unit had gotten a letter from President Truman too, though the service we were congratulated for was left vague. We were the secret service, after all. “And now we’re recruiting them?”
It seemed beyond belief. The war was barely over, and already the Allies were enlisting Nazis for their own spy agencies. Fighting over them, in fact, such that at least one SS officer, though stationed in faraway Berlin, was already my colleague. From my front-row seat in decryption, I knew that allegiances were shifting by the hour. The war was moving from the battlefield to the backrooms. No nation, or person, was permanently classed as friend or enemy. I had come to terms with this. But to make allies of ranking Nazis from the notorious SS was too much for me. They had embraced a doctrine of pure evil, which made systematic torture and murder a norm. They had crossed over to a dark place and I did not believe they could return. I pulled off my campaign medal and shoved it in my pocket. If this was what my work had been for, I had no pride in wearing it.
“The Soviets could be lying,” Marguerite said. “If they show a paper trail that we recruited the Nazis first, then they can use them too, while making us look like the bad guys.” I was grateful to her for trying to find some better explanation. But I didn’t believe it, and I didn’t think she did either. Shortly after we got our medal, there was an executive order disbanding the OSS—officially, at least. Those of us in decryption and espionage were left in a holding pattern, transferred to the War Department under a smaller division now called the Strategic Services Unit. It was a fight to survive. Who was still relevant?
Marguerite tipped a cigarette pack and pulled one out, leaning back in her chair as she lit it. She squinted against the smoke. I noticed for the first time that her eyes looked hard. She was not the same naïve French girl I had met on the navy base in Victoria four years ago.
“Merde,” she said. “Everything is different now.”
I DIDN’T FEEL any better for having slept on the news. Winter had returned, and mornings in the Quonset hut were hard to take. Not just cold, but lonelier now. Marguerite and I had a dorm to ourselves since the other women who served on Shemya went home the month before, to become wives and mothers again. For some of them, I thought, that existence would feel pale against the urgency of their wartime mission. I dipped a facecloth in the can of water I’d put on the oil stove last night to warm, so I wouldn’t have to shock myself awake. Cold air poured through the cracks of the wood-panel floor and into the soles of my slippers. It was ironic that much of the timber for the Alaska bases came from Russia. Alaskan mills had not been able to supply wood at the pace demanded. Russia’s economy had been decimated by the war on the German front and they would take anything they could get. So now their wood became houses for the people who would spy on them.
“Has Miss M said anything about that cable?” Marguerite asked as she brushed her hair. She must have been thinking about it all night, as I was.
“Yes.” I had received a message from her in our private code, for which we each had matching one-time pads.
“And?” she paused her brush, and the engraved silver shone in the flickering light from the drum stove.
“She said not to tell Colonel Topping about it yet. We should just keep monitoring the situation.” Sometimes I wondered what Colonel Topping’s purpose was, since I never reported anything of interest to him. I supposed he had to be there so there was not a woman in charge—like me.
I whipped off my pajamas and changed as quickly as possible into my uniform to keep the freezing air off my skin. First thick wool tights, then the double-serge skirt. I buttoned up the collar shirt and knotted the tie. I had requested casual khakis like the men’s, though I tailored my skirts shorter than regulation length after they arrived. These were the small advantages of my obscure posting. Since women officers had never before served as Canadian liaisons in the American forces, I could invent my own uniform. At my request, Miss Maggie had sent it from New York, along with one for Marguerite. She included a sarcastic note about couture garments not being part of the budget, but I knew that her budget grew as the war grew.
It did not matter your nationality or branch of service: mountains were quietly moved. We were pulled from the army, navy, and air force; from America, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Valuable civilians were made officers overnight. Marguerite said there were six thousand OSS personnel working stateside, mostly out of Washington and New York, and eight thousand more served overseas. I had no idea who Miss Maggie herself reported to, but the head of the OSS, General Donovan, reported only to the President. We were a shadow army.
“Do you think that means she’s okay with it?” Marguerite asked.
Neither of us could bring ourselves to say the word Nazi out loud. Of course, we had developed a natural circumspection after years in secret work, but there was something particularly ominous about all this. If it was true that Nazis were being recruited, the person who ran the operation was cold beyond anything we had ever seen. Millions of murders were nothing to this spymaster. But the more I thought about it, the more I believed it. No one knew the Soviets better than the Nazi intelligence service, since they had occupied parts of the USSR for almost three years. The Western allies were watching Communist Russia with growing suspicion, and no one was more anti-Communist than a fascist. It was a grim logic.
“Who ever knows what she’s thinking?” I said.
I did not mention that Miss Maggie had opened a new private channel of communication with me for anything about the Nazi development. That did not tell me, though, whether she was for or against it.
“You going to the runway?” Marguerite asked as she shimmied into her tights.
“Of course. I’ll meet you there when I hear the plane.” I knew she had the day off, while my shift was starting in ten minutes. But everyone dropped what they were doing when the transport arrived, even though it was often random what supplies were on it and how much time had passed since they were ordered. We didn’t care. It was our only connection to the outside world.
I walked across the base. The Quonsets were scattered like overturned oil drums, many unoccupied, adding to the sense that my existence was a sort of rubbish. Now that the war was over, I wondered, where would the money come from to continue our work? The Russian cables were stepping up. Every country they liberated in Europe they considered fair game as wartime spoils. The Soviets were rounding up ethnic Germans and shipping them to Siberian work camps in retaliation for the invasion of Russia. Here on Shemya, I was closer to Siberia than I was to my home in Victoria. This nearness to the gulags made the future feel grim and grey.
As I entered the empty “L” Hut, the sad remnant of my decryption unit, I wondered if they would ship all the extra desks back to the Lower 48, or if it wasn’t worth the bother and one day soon we’d just pile them in a heap and burn them. I guess the Japanese work I did before was something anyone could be proud of, since we won the war against them. But really, was that not the result of dropping atom bombs? All my cleverness was just so much fancy dancing. Sitting down at my desk, I drew flowers idly in the corner of my decryption sheet, and I sighed. Since President Truman shut down the OSS and demoted us to the Strategic Services Unit, or SSU, no one knew exactly what we were supposed to do. Well, maybe Miss Maggie did, but she wasn’t telling.
From the corner of my desk I grabbed the day’s cables, which I’d retrieved from a locked cabinet on my way in. The process we had to reverse had three steps. First, the Soviet agent would consult his master codebook, where each word had a four-digit number assigned to it. Then, he would pick a page out of a second book of randomized four-digit numbers, called the additive keys, and match each master number of the message with this new number, going by sequence on the page. Finally, he would add together these two numbers, dropping any extra digit, in a technique called modulo zero. In this world, eight plus four equalled two. In that way, each word’s code remained four digits long. These random four-digit sequences were supposed to be unbreakable if you didn’t have the matching book of additive keys, but luckily for us, the Soviets sometimes used the same page twice. A new book could not always be obtained in war conditions, or people just made mistakes. We found the reuse by painstaking searches for common openings and closings, like “To Moscow” or “Part 2 of 2.” That gave us depth, so if we could find common four-digit numerals between two messages, we could determine the underlying code for those words. Then, we might wrestle out a few more based on context. We had quite a few listed in the master codebook we were constructing, which would one day mirror the Soviet’s entirely. Probably they would change encryption methods before then, but one could dream. It was my pride to fill in another page, though this might take weeks or even months of work. Sometimes we received solved batches from a unit in Berlin. A woman there was very good, and I felt competitive with her from afar. Did she also tally the number of words she unscrambled compared to me?
I was distracted by a young corporal from HQ standing in the doorway, clearing his throat.
“Ma’am?” he said, clutching his cap at his stomach, like a shield. When had I become so terrifying?
“Yes?” I stared up at him. His face was pink. It wasn’t so bad to make people uncomfortable. They knew who was boss.
“Telegram for you.”
“Leave it there.” I waved at the corner of my desk.
He approached cautiously, dropped the envelope on top of a heap of papers, and hurried off.
A telegram. No one liked personal telegrams in the war. It always meant bad news—loved ones dead and gone forever. But I had no loved ones. I ripped open the envelope to see that the note inside was handwritten.
Honeylamb.
That was the first word, and my eyes froze there. Only one person had ever called me that, and he was dead. Hung as a criminal three years ago. Bill Bagley, the only man I’d ever truly loved. The only man I’d ever truly hated, too. He turned out to be violent and crazy. He’d have killed me, I think, if I hadn’t left him when I did. Young girls don’t know how to spot these things until it’s too late. I steeled myself to read on.
“Honeylamb. I have changed. No longer on the drugs. So you should not be surprised I got out of that place in the nick of time. Made a perfect plan and did it. I can tell you about it when you come see me. In the Far East. Get to the Honolulu docks and a man will take you here. Is your mind hesitating? Reconsider. I found someone else you will want to see. You worked with him at Esquimalt until he got shipped out. He was in your line of work. Captured by the Japs but I freed him. Keeping him safe until you arrive. Couple Russkies want to speak to him but I won’t let them. Don’t like their looks. He is not well. Hurry.”
Only Bill could have written such a message. He was alive.
Where had this letter come from? I went to the door, looking for the corporal, but he was nowhere to be seen. Who was he, anyway? I returned to the desk in a daze, reminding myself the letter had been sealed. And if it wasn’t, surely it would be meaningless to anyone else. Wouldn’t it? Damn it, Bill was putting me at risk again. The room felt hot and I removed my cap. There were too many shocks in this message. I didn’t know if I would cry from happiness or frustration or fear. It sounded like Link was alive, too. A burden of guilt lifted from my shoulders. My report to Miss Maggie had not meant Link’s death. Not yet, at least. Bill said he was not well. The paper was damp against my fingertips. What exactly did the Russians say to Bill? What did he say to them?
Bill was meddling, of course. That’s what he did.
Somehow Bill knew about Link, and they were in the same place. This was alarming. I read the message through again, and there was no one else he could mean by it. How much did Bill know about what I’d done? I did not like to think of them together. Bill could get a stone to confide in him.
I crushed the letter into a ball.
Bill made it sound like an offer of help, but the last time I heard from him he had wished me dead. I had not managed a pardon for his case, despite his blackmail. He had threatened to unravel the respectable life I’d made for myself in the military. He’d been the trap Miss Maggie used to make me spy on my colleagues—on Link. If it wasn’t for Bill, I’d never have written the report that got Link in trouble in the first place.
Now it turned out Bill hadn’t even needed my help. He’d found someone else to free him. I wanted to scream.
Was this his elaborate plan to ruin me, by having me caught going AWOL? Or might he dangle Link in front of me and then throw him to the wolves, these Russians he spoke of, in some sadistic game?
I knew Bill valued loyalty above all, and I had failed him in that. He could still hate me despite his freedom.
I did not cry, but I could not trust my face. My lip was quivering, I could feel it, and I bit it lightly to still it. Luckily no one else was in the room, since most of the soldiers had been shipped out. I had to be composed, though, in case someone arrived and observed me.
How did Bill escape from jail? I supposed he had done it at least a couple of times before. It was hard to know how much to believe of his embroideries, but it was in the newspaper how he’d broken out of Walla Walla with a weapon he had made, and exited San Quentin with a fake gun waved at a guard he’d conveniently bribed to believe in it. Well, that last part was left out of the newspaper accounts. They did not like the public to know the rot was from within. Probably Bill bribed somebody at New Westminster, too, and the humiliation of losing a death-row prisoner made them suppress the news of his escape. He must have quit the coke not long after I last saw him, shaking and jittering in the New Westminster jail’s visiting room. He was not humble, but what he said in the message was true. The old Bill would have had no trouble concocting an escape plan. He’d been the mastermind of the Clockwork Gang, after all. The Dunsmuir mine payroll heist from the Royal Bank was the biggest robbery in the history of the Pacific Northwest.
I remembered the old Bill. When we met, he rescued me, in a way. I was a teller in the bank when the gang struck. I was poor and struggling, with a lecherous boss determined to bed me or fire me. When Bill left the bank with the loot, I went with him. At first, Bill took pains to learn everything about me. When he discovered my father had been a postman who lost his job in the Depression, because no one could afford to send mail any longer, it had broken Bill’s heart. He was funny that way, sentimental for the troubles of regular folk. In the month leading up to my twenty-first birthday, to show his solidarity with the postman, he sent me a letter by express every day even though we were living together. He’d stand over my shoulder as I tore open the envelope stuffed with little scraps of paper that spilled out like confetti, each one printed in his boxy unschooled hand: I love you. Then he would hug me tightly. But that was not the Bill I fled thirteen years ago.
The “Russkies,” Bill said. His slang made them sound harmless, like ice hockey players on a field trip. Did Bill understand how dangerous they were? Whatever they wanted with Link, it was bad news. From the cables, I’d seen how they operated in Germany. There were only three possibilities: They wanted to interrogate him. They wanted to recruit him. They wanted to kill him.
I was stuck in Alaska, half a world away. I had to get to Honolulu. Could Bill really be off the drugs? What would it be like to see him again? I stood up, smoothed my skirt, and fetched a glass of cool water. Finishing it, I set it on a coaster with a picture of a duckling. How had this ridiculous piece of whimsy made it into the room? It wasn’t mine. I was not sentimental. I didn’t want to see Bill—but I had to help Link. That was a matter of honour. I was the reason he’d been a prisoner of war, even if my missteps were ones anyone might have made. When I had reported his meeting with the Spanish Consul to Miss Maggie, I little believed that simple thing was really “spying.”
It had seemed a dirty word, then. Now I spied on our allies, the Russians, for a living. My adopted country of America was recruiting Nazi agents to be my colleagues in this enterprise. What was the meaning of anything?
All I knew was that if Link died, it would be my fault. I could not leave him to the Russians, or to Bill for that matter. I knew too much about both.
I resolved to be on that transport the next day.