WHEN NESSHEIM ENTERED the Executive Wing office the next morning, Dinah greeted him breezily. There was no sign of Mueller. Nessheim worked desultorily until eleven o’clock examining the recent logbooks of the White House Mansion; it was impossible to concentrate. Then he phoned Marie.
‘Mr Nichols was asking after you,’ she said.
‘Oh?’
‘I explained you were working for Mr Mueller now.’ She sounded as if someone else was in the room with her.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Listen, Marie, I need to come over and check some files for Mr Guttman. If I came by at five, do you think that would be okay?’
‘Of course, Mr Finsterwald,’ she said. Finsterwald? Someone was in the room with her. ‘If you could come an hour later, that would be ideal.’
‘See you at six, Marie.’ He looked at his watch. If he got moving he should be just in time for his earlier appointment. Not that it was scheduled.
He was just getting up to leave when Mueller walked in. ‘You,’ Mueller said, pointing a finger. ‘I want a word.’
They went out in the corridor. Mueller asked, ‘So what’s the story with the Hopeless Hebrew?’
‘What do you mean?’
Mueller frowned. ‘Don’t play hayseed with me, Nessheim. If I’ve heard the news so have you – your boss is no longer your boss.’
Nessheim shrugged. Suddenly Mueller started to sing, to a tune from The Wizard of Oz: ‘Ding dong, the Heeb is dead/ The useless Heeb, the Heeb is dead.’
He stopped suddenly, and looked at Nessheim. ‘What I can’t understand is why you’re not reporting to me.’
‘I don’t know,’ Nessheim said blandly.
‘Who are you reporting to?’
‘Louis B. Nichols,’ he said, confident that Mueller wouldn’t challenge this – Nichols was an assistant director.
‘It doesn’t make much sense – with you over here most of the time.’ He sounded angry. ‘I wouldn’t count on its lasting, pal. In the meantime I’m keeping an eye on you.’
Nessheim shrugged again, but his stomach was churning. The last thing he needed was to have Mueller checking up on him. ‘Anything else, Mule?’ he said, trying not to bait the man, or to show the fear he felt.
He made it seem pure coincidence, and she bought it. She would have picked up little Jeff from nursery school twenty minutes before, and he managed to time his arrival at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue perfectly. Nessheim didn’t look in her direction, but he didn’t need to.
‘Jimmy!’ Annie called out.
His face was a pantomime of surprise as he turned to find her standing, holding Jeff’s hand, only 50 feet down the sidewalk.
‘Hi!’ he said, sounding surprised. I should be in Hollywood with Purvis, he thought without pride. Jeff let go of his mother’s hand and scooted towards him, beaming.
‘Hey, sailor,’ he said, bending down and ruffling the little boy’s hair.
‘We’re on our way home,’ said Annie. ‘But what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work protecting the rest of us?’
‘I was conducting a gunfight in the neighbourhood.’
‘Did you plug him?’ asked the little boy.
‘Jeff! What a way to talk,’ said Annie.
Nessheim laughed. ‘How do you know it was a him? Ma Barker was as tough as any man.’
‘Which way are you going?’ asked Annie. She was wearing a pale blue dress and clutch coat that highlighted her dark hair.
‘Beats me,’ confessed Nessheim. ‘I was through for the day and just taking a walk.’
‘Walk with us then,’ said Annie, and they set off. While Jeff babbled on about robbers and guns, Nessheim talked with Annie – it was small talk, about where Frank was (in Montana, talking to the owners of silver mines), and about Justice Frankfurter’s cold, and then, briefly but gloomily, about Europe, where the German advance was now engulfing western Europe – France was falling, the British Army was being pushed back on every front.
When they reached the gates of Belvedere, he stopped. Jeff piped up, ‘Aren’t you coming home with us?’
Perfect, thought Nessheim. ‘Well …’
‘Mom, please,’ the boy pleaded.
‘Why don’t you come in?’ she said. ‘Sally’s at Five Forks today.’
‘We got cake,’ said Jeff.
‘Cake?’ said Nessheim with mock-astonishment. ‘What are we waiting for?’
With Sally Cummings in Virginia, the staff were also away, except for Mrs O’Neill, who whisked Jeff off to have cake and a mug of milk in the empty kitchen, while Annie and Nessheim went upstairs. She had put china cups and saucers and a full teapot on a tray with a strainer, and Nessheim dutifully carried it up to the landing. Next to the newly installed lift, the door to the adjacent bedroom was open, and looking in he saw Shaker-style furniture and a two-poster bed.
They went into Annie’s study next door, where she took the tray and put it down on her desk, motioning him to sit on the small settee against the wall. She seemed in such a good mood that he hesitated before spoiling it. But there was never going to be a good time for this. So he plunged in as soon as she had poured out the tea and sat down behind her desk.
‘Annie, you know at the FBI I’m what they call a special agent.’
‘Yes, Jimmy,’ she said like an indulgent mother. She added with a laugh, ‘We call you “The G-Man” behind your back.’
‘I bet you do. But you probably don’t know that I work in counter-espionage.’
‘For Mr Guttman, right? The man who came to see the Justice.’
‘That’s right. You know what counter-espionage is.’
She gave him a look. ‘I saw The Lady Vanishes, Jimmy. I hope your work is not quite that exciting.’
‘Hitchcock has nothing on us. The thing is, I’m working on detecting Nazis who may be here in the States.’ He was keeping it vague; there was no point alarming her yet – that would come soon enough.
‘Okay,’ she said equably.
He paused, unsure how to proceed. ‘Some of them are in contact with other sympathisers – by letter, I mean. The people receiving these letters may be entirely innocent, but we have to make sure.’
There was still a half-smile on her face but she seemed to sense his seriousness. ‘Okay,’ she said again, slowly.
‘Your aunt is one of these people receiving letters.’
‘Are you trying to tell me Aunt Sally is a Nazi spy?’ she asked, laughing a little nervously.
‘Of course not. But we think an Englishwoman she corresponds with may be.’
‘And who’s this English lady, Jimmy?’
‘Her name is Lady Dove.’
She stared at him with a look of incredulity. ‘Are you serious? Lady Dove a spy? Justice Frankfurter, and Doobs and Frank – anyone who’s been to Oxford knows Lady Dove. She’s no spy – at least not for the Nazis! God, Jimmy, her husband is a Socialist.’
‘I’m not thinking of Sir Henry Dove,’ Nessheim said, and he found his voice sounding shaky even to himself. ‘Her first husband is now a major figure in the British Fascist movement – people call him Oswald Mosley’s right-hand man. And we have evidence that Lady Dove’s sympathies are also with Hitler.’
‘Believe me,’ he said, trying to sound soothing, ‘we’re not saying your aunt’s doing anything wrong. But we do think she might be being used by Lady Dove. And unless we know what Lady Dove is telling her, we won’t be able to help.’
Annie considered this for a moment, then said briskly, ‘I see – you want to read her letters. Lady Dove’s to Aunt Sally. That’s what you’re asking, isn’t it?’
He didn’t want to look her in the face. She went on, with almost analytic detachment, ‘Yes, that’s what you’re asking for. And since Aunt Sally’s not about to grant such a request – you know as well as I do what she’d think of that – you’ve decided to sidle up to her niece instead.’
‘Hey now …’ he began, wanting to pre-empt the anger he sensed behind the precision in her voice.
‘Come off it,’ she said, suddenly impatient. ‘Though why you think I’d actually help you spy on my aunt is incomprehensible.’
She said this so definitively that he waited, hoping she might add some softening words. She sat there, looking at him, as if seeing him afresh for the bastard he was starting to feel he was.
But he had no choice. ‘Part of my job involves reviewing security arrangements, and that means checking into people who know the President.’
His tone must have been a giveaway, for she looked alert again, viewing him with wary eyes. ‘And …?’ she asked.
‘It means we learn all sorts of stuff about people. Most of it is completely irrelevant, but we hear about it all the same. That makes it kind of tough.’
‘Makes what kind of tough?’ she asked.
‘In my case, learning things about people I actually know. That’s unusual – normally, it’s just a file, you can’t even put a face to it.’
‘You know my face well enough by now, Jimmy.’
Her lower jaw was moving and she was clicking her teeth nervously. He said, ‘We talk to friends and relatives, and sometimes go back to the person’s home town.’ The words were sticking in his throat like magnets to an iron bar.
There was a long pause, and then she said, ‘So you know.’
He nodded.
‘He’s just a little boy, Jimmy. I don’t care if my name is mud, but I can’t have it sticking to him.’
‘We wouldn’t do anything to hurt him,’ he said urgently. ‘But you’d tell Frank, wouldn’t you? That would ruin everything.’
‘Frank doesn’t know?’
‘Frank doesn’t know,’ she said dully.
Nessheim remained silent. Guttman had been right. But how could you marry a man under such a canopy of lies?
Annie said, ‘I’m glad to know this is official business. I’d hate to think you were acting like such a sleazeball of your own accord.’
The words hit home. Part of him wanted to make his excuses, tell Guttman that all bets were off, re-tender his resignation, and go and try to make an honest living somewhere else.
But then he thought of what it was that Guttman feared was really happening, and of the man’s helplessness, confined to his little ranch house on the edge of Arlington with his sick wife. ‘Annie, please, I—’
‘You don’t have to be polite, Jimmy. In the circumstances, it would seem more than a little ridiculous. I’ll go get the letters.’
He nodded dumbly and said nothing; having shown an iron fist, it was too late to hold up a velvet glove.
‘Wait here,’ Annie said, and she left the room. He heard her walking down the corridor, towards her aunt’s suite of rooms at the back of the house. He sat there, feeling about as virtuous as a customer in a whorehouse, waiting for the girl he’d picked.
When Annie came back she was holding a stack of tissue-thin blue writing paper, held together by an oversized paper clip. She handed them over with an expression of distaste.
‘Thanks,’ he said. Annie was heading for the door when he said, ‘Please don’t go. I may need you to explain things I don’t understand.’
She sat down silently. He began reading the letters – there were almost three dozen. The first one began formally:
Dear Mrs Cummings,
How nice it was to meet you this past year, and I do hope you will let me know when you are next again in England …
Sally Cummings must have replied promptly, for the next letter was dated five weeks later and thanked Sally for her reply. After this, the letters came at a rate of roughly every two or three weeks, and very quickly they shed their formality for an established intimacy. The tone of the Dove letters was chatty, high-spirited, and a little naughty, which didn’t alter even when war broke out.
For this was a correspondence between two society ladies with a shared penchant for people, parties, and prolific gossip. None of the letters was remotely traitorous, and Lady Dove’s sympathies, whatever her unsavoury associations in the past, seemed entirely patriotic, leavened only by a keen eye for the absurd.
We’re much more hungry than afraid, she wrote pluckily to Sally two months into the conflict, explaining that:
Louisa the cook discovered that the cat had eaten the bacon ration, so being a practical Polish girl she used the uneaten rinds and powdered eggs to make a quiche for a lunch I was giving (why one’s social life should evaporate because of Herr Hitler is beyond me). Among my guests was the Home Secretary, a grim little Scot named Anderson. He lapped up the quiche without batting an eye, then asked – this is the God’s truth – if he could have the recipe for his wife.
In the same vein, she recounted how the local war-time bureaucrats had switched round all the Oxford street signs, intending to confuse future German invaders, but succeeding only in getting her new cleaning lady completely lost. Blackouts were in force but the evenings never dull: her friend Jorge the manager of the Mitre reserved a dozen oysters and half a lobster for Lady Dove and her friend Nancy – You’ll remember her, the one with the handsome husband who ran off with a Soho dancer.
Jorge had produced a bottle of Chablis as well, and later the two ladies had weaved their way down the blacked-out High Street, then sat in the dark in the Principal’s Lodgings, listening to the broadcasts from Berlin:
Lord Haw-Haw indeed – we laughed until we cried. How Herr Goebbels would have been annoyed at this reaction.
Yet even in the early letters there was another focus – references to a shared ‘project’ – which slowly came to dominate the correspondence.
‘Do you know what she means here?’ he asked Annie at one point, holding up an airmail page.
‘I wouldn’t dream of reading her letters without her permission.’
‘Don’t you want to know what they say about Frank?’ ‘Not in the slightest. I already know Sally thinks the world of Frank.’
‘Oh, she does. But I don’t understand what project he’s helping her with.’
‘What do you mean?’ she demanded, as curiosity vied with scruples.
‘Just this,’ and he read from one of the letters:
… I think you’re quite right to think that telling the whole story would not have the desired effect. Honesty is by no means always the best policy. Even the finest men would run a mile, and it would be too cruel if a mistake in early life, however bad, created an immovable obstacle. As well as scare him off the project for good!
He looked up to find Annie looking uncomfortable. She didn’t say anything, so he read from another:
How sweet that he has confided in you, little knowing how much you’ve done to steer him in this direction …
He thought at first that Annie wasn’t listening, for she was looking out the window, as if there was another voice outside which she’d rather hear. But a tear was forming in one of her eyes.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked as gently as he could, though by now he had a good idea.
She shook her head.
Then finally he read from a long letter which had been written in March, not long after Nessheim had first visited Belvedere:
How good he has gone public at last, and it sounds a marvellous occasion – senators, Presidential assistants, even a jewish Justice (you must allow me my little prejudice or two). But seriously, well done you – I’m only miffed this damn war kept me from seeing the fruits of our labour.
This time when he looked up, he saw tear tracks on both her cheeks. She wiped them with her fingers, leaving her cheek shiny. She said, ‘What do you think she’s talking about, Jimmy?’
‘You and Frank – you’re the project.’
‘What did you think it was, a big Nazi plot?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, sitting back in his chair with the sheaf of letters in his lap.
‘So, do you still think my aunt’s a spy?’
‘No,’ he said quietly.
Annie nodded absently, no longer willing to look at him. She said, ‘And I thought you were such a nice guy.’
‘You’ve got Frank, and he is a nice guy. He’s got a great future.’
‘Sure he does. Shares in Plympton Holdings are always rising.’
‘You make it sound like a business decision.’
She said impatiently, ‘That’s right, Jimmy, just like you – I’m all business. But I’m not the only employee I have to think about. My boy is four years old. He needs more security than I can give him.’
‘I hope it’s about more than security.’
Annie shrugged. ‘I think you’ve got what you wanted, Agent Nessheim. You should go now. You must realise you’re no longer welcome here.’