Yes, there really was an obscure U.S. intelligence agency once known as the Pond, and pretty much everything fictional archivist Larry Hilliard tells Anna and Henry in chapter 42 about its origins and its history is right on the mark. John “Frenchy” Grombach started the whole thing in 1942 at the request of a general in U.S. Army Intelligence, and it might still exist if Grombach hadn’t lost out in a power struggle with the fledgling but much larger Central Intelligence Agency.
As Hilliard also points out, Grombach nonetheless managed to keep the Pond running until the CIA shut it down in 1955, and he was scrambling until the last moment to find a way to surreptitiously keep it alive, partly because he believed the CIA was too blind to Soviet infiltration in places like West Germany.
It’s also true that Grombach’s long-lost archives were discovered in a barn in Virginia in 2001, although they weren’t declassified by the CIA until 2010. They’re now available for public inspection at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, where all eighty-three boxes are filed under Record Group 263.
Grombach’s depicted mania for cryptonyms and coded language is no exaggeration. He employed as many as five names for himself: Mr. Dale, Jean, Dr. Ellis, Valentine, and Professor. As for that handy-dandy “Grombach Crib Sheet,” which Larry Hilliard attributes to “a historian,” well, it also exists, and the historian is Mark Stout, program director of the MA in Global Security Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and a former intelligence analyst with the State Department and the CIA. Stout, probably the leading authority on the Pond, generously gave me a copy of his invaluable crib sheet, or I never would have been able to make sense of the archives as I was researching this book. I also thank him for answering my questions about Grombach and the Pond.
As for the intriguing and somewhat whacky “Jewelry” file mentioned in chapter 43, in which Grombach writes in deeply coded language about his fevered attempts to keep the Pond going past its shelf life, that, too, is authentic, and I quote directly from one of Grombach’s oddball messages.
So, then. Did Grombach manage to resurrect the Pond in some privatized form after 1955? Highly doubtful, but not out of the question. And many news stories in recent years have documented the rise of privatized intelligence efforts and their use by the Pentagon in places such as Afghanistan and the Middle East.
I am also indebted to several people and sources for helping me depict what it was like to be a female employee of the CIA in 1979. The first of these is Francine Mathews, an author of many fine novels who spent four years as an intelligence analyst for the CIA. I’m grateful that she took the time to share her thoughts and observations in a lengthy email, part of which made its way almost verbatim into Helen and Claire’s conversation about their days of training at the Farm.
Declassified CIA archives offered multiple insights into the working lives of women at the Agency, and the evolution of their roles and responsibilities over the past few decades. One of the most helpful was the transcript of a panel discussion from about a decade ago by four women—Carla, Susan, Patricia, and Meredith (their last names were redacted)—who joined the Agency between 1965 and 1979. Their candid and illuminating stories and opinions helped shape several scenes and chapters.
Finishing this novel would not have been possible, nor nearly as pleasant, without the editing expertise of Sonny Mehta and Edward Kastenmeier at Knopf, and the valuable counsel of my agent, Ann Rittenberg. I am also grateful for the efforts of all of the other wonderful people at Knopf who make writing and publishing such an enjoyable and rewarding venture.