CHAPTER 8
The Applicant
THE CARRIER
As the taxi turned left onto Connecticut, I pressed two fingers to my wrist the way Mama had taught me when I was a child and carsick. The feeling intensified when we hit Dupont Circle. I thought about getting out and walking, but that wasn’t the plan. I couldn’t deviate from the plan—not unless I was being followed.
I was told to hail a taxi at the corner of Florida and T at seven forty-five and take it to the Mayflower Hotel. The hotel was only a short walk from there, but the optics, they said, were better if I got out of a taxi.
I was told to avoid wearing anything that would make me stand out: flashy jewelry, too much makeup, an ostentatious hat, ostentatious shoes, anything ostentatious. I thought of all those sequined gowns filling our basement apartment, of all the women coming by to try them on and buy them from Mama. I didn’t own a single item of clothing that could be classified as ostentatious. My instructions were to dress well but not too well, to look nice but not too nice. I was to look like the type of woman who frequented the Mayflower’s bar, the Town & Country Lounge. The tricky part was that I was the type of woman who hadn’t even heard of the Mayflower Hotel, let alone the Town & Country Lounge.
For the night, I was no longer Irina; I was Nancy.
The taxi came to a full stop midway through the circle and I checked my hair in my compact, still unsure I’d gotten the look right. I wore Mama’s old fur, which I’d spritzed with Jean Naté—an attempt to mask the mothball smell. I wore the periwinkle and white polka-dot dress I’d worn to every wedding I’d attended for the last five years. My hair was pulled back in a French twist and secured with a silver comb, another item borrowed from Mama. Reapplying the new shade of orange-red lipstick I’d purchased from Woolworth’s, I frowned into the mirror. Something was still off. It wasn’t until the taxi pulled up to the hotel and a doorman opened my door that I looked down and realized it was my shoes: dull black pumps. Dull black pumps with a scuffed left heel. And I hadn’t even thought of shining them. The kind of women who went for drinks at the Town & Country on a Wednesday night wouldn’t be caught dead in anything dull. As I entered the Mayflower’s grand lobby, decked out in red and white roses for Valentine’s the next day, I couldn’t stop thinking about my shoes. At least I’d been given a nice purse—a quilted black leather Chanel bag with a double flap and a gold chain, large enough to hold an envelope.
I told myself to project confidence, to become someone who belonged with the well-heeled set—to become my cover, to become Nancy. Gripping the Chanel like a talisman, I passed the bellboys in their tasseled caps, the honeymooners checking in, the huddled men conducting after-hours meetings, the glamorous brunette waiting for one of those men to take her upstairs, the large potted palms lining the mirrored corridor. I walked through the lobby and into the Town & Country like the kind of person whom the bartender knew by name.
I already knew the bartender’s name. It was Gregory, and there he was: prematurely gray hair, white shirt and black bow tie, standing behind the bar pouring a Gibson.
The lounge was busy, but the second-to-last high-backed chair at the bar was free, as they said it would be.
“What’ll it be?” Gregory asked, his nametag confirming what I already knew.
“Gin martini,” I said. “Three olives, with one of those little red swords.” One of those little red swords? I scolded myself for going off script.
In front of me was a thin glass vase containing a single white rose. I picked it up, turned it clockwise in my hand, sniffed it, and put it back—as instructed. Then I hung the Chanel by its gold chain on the chair back’s left side. Then I waited.
The man to my left hadn’t so much as glanced my way when I sat down. He was reading the sports section of the Post and looked like every other man in the place—a lawyer or businessman on a one-night trip in from New York or Chicago or wherever those types came to the District from. The word to describe him would be nondescript, and I wondered if he’d describe me that way too. I hoped so.
Gregory set my drink down on a white napkin with the Mayflower’s gold insignia, and I took a sip. “You make a damn fine martini,” I said. I hated martinis.
I’d been told there wouldn’t be any sign of it—that the man sitting next to me would slip the envelope into my purse without detection, that if I didn’t notice it, he’d done his job. The man closed his newspaper, swallowed the last of his Scotch, threw down a dollar, and left.
I waited fifteen minutes then finished my drink and told Gregory I was ready to settle-up.
Reaching for the Chanel, I half expected it to feel different. But it didn’t, and I wondered if I’d done something wrong—that maybe the man reading the sports section was just a man reading the sports section. I resisted the urge to check and left the Town & Country, passing the potted palms, a man waiting for the elevator with the glamorous brunette, a retired couple checking in, the tassel-hatted bellboys.
Walking up Connecticut, I did my best to keep my cool, to not let the adrenaline cause me to break into a sprint. Stopping at P Street, I looked at my watch, a Lady Elgin given to me along with the Chanel. Within seconds, the number fifteen bus pulled up to the curb. I took the second-to-last seat in the back, in front of a man holding a green umbrella in his lap. As the bus passed the two stone lions guarding the entrance to the Taft Bridge, the man behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked the time. I told him it was a quarter after nine. It wasn’t. He thanked me and I set the Chanel down and pushed it back with my heel.
I got off at Woodley Park and walked toward the zoo. At a red light, I held out my hands to let the newly falling snowflakes hit my gloves, then dissolve into minuscule puddles. I wondered: Is this what it’s like to have an affair, to have a secret? I felt a rush and could see why Teddy Helms had told me that one could get addicted to this line of work. I already was.
I’d applied to be a typist, but they gave me another job. Had they seen something in me that I hadn’t seen in myself? Or maybe they just looked to my past, to my father’s death, and knew I’d do whatever was asked of me. Later, I was told that such deep anger ensures a type of loyalty to the Agency that patriotism never can.
Whatever they’d seen in me, for my first few months at the Agency, I couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d chosen the wrong person for the job.
The Mayflower test changed that. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I had a greater purpose, not just a job. That night, something unlocked in me—a hidden power I never knew I had. I discovered I was well suited to the work of a Carrier.
During the day, I took dictation, transcribed notes, stayed quiet during meetings, and typed and typed and typed—all the while making certain I didn’t retain any of the information I was typing. “Just picture the information passing through your fingertips to the keys to the paper and then disappearing from your mind forever,” Norma had instructed me on my first and only day of training. “In one ear and out the other, you know?” And all the typists said the same thing: Don’t retain what you type; you’ll type faster if you’re not thinking about what you’re typing; it’s classified information, so even if you remember it, you’d better pretend you don’t.
“Fast fingers keep secrets” was the Pool’s unofficial motto. And yet I wasn’t sure any of them followed their own credo. Even in my first few weeks, as I was just getting to know the girls, it was clear they knew everything about everyone.
Did they know everything about me, too? Did they know about my other position? The extra fifty dollars per paycheck? Did my typewriter dinging a beat slower than theirs make them wonder? Did they notice I drank two more cups of coffee than they did and had bags under my eyes?
Mama sure noticed. She brewed a pot of chamomile tea and froze it into ice cubes to place on my eyelids. She thought I was dating a new man, and implored me to bring him home to meet her before I disgraced her name in the neighborhood.
But what did the women in the typing pool think?
Was it the reason they hadn’t exactly accepted me into their ranks? Of course, they were always polite and friendly, saying Hello in the morning and a Have a good weekend on Fridays. But I can’t say they were overly welcoming. I wanted to be part of the group, but didn’t want it to seem like I wanted to be part of the group. One might think this scenario plays out only in high school or college, but the politics of friendship are tricky at every age.
The Pool invited me to lunch with them a few times, but that was before my first paycheck, when I had only enough money for my bus commute. By the time I did have money to spare, the lunch invites had dried up.
I wanted to believe their standoffishness was a product of my having taken their friend Tabitha’s place, though couldn’t help but think it was something else, something that had plagued me my entire life: the feeling of being a constant outsider, of being most comfortable alone. Even as a child, I preferred to play alone. I’d pretend our small kitchen pantry was a fort. I’d create elaborate plays with puppets cut from brown paper bags and glued to Popsicle sticks. I was happiest playing by myself. When my little cousins would try to play with me, I’d end up scolding them for messing up one of the puppets or not playing the character exactly how I’d wanted them to. They’d get mad and leave, and I’d tell myself that that was fine. It was easier to convince myself that it was I who didn’t want to play with them.
Regardless of feeling out of place, I took to the day job fast. And although I typed slower than the other women, I was steady and accurate.
There was more of a learning curve with my after-hours work.
On my first day, when I asked just how I’d be trained, I was given a slip of paper with the address of an unmarked tempo office that overlooked the Reflecting Pool—the office where I was to meet the officer Teddy Helms each day after I clocked out.
The first time I met Teddy, I was struck by how much he resembled a movie star playing a spy. He was a few years older than I—tall, with brown hair, long delicate fingers, and handsome in the way men like that are expected to be. Several members of the typing pool were absolutely gone for Teddy, but I never really saw him like that. He did look like the type of man I’d fantasized about as a young girl, though—not as a lover or boyfriend, but as the older brother I’d always wanted. Someone who’d teach me how to fit in, how to be less painfully awkward, someone to protect me from the high school boys who’d flip up my skirt in the hallway. Someone to help support Mama and ease our financial burdens that came and went with each spent paycheck.
Teddy was quiet at first, saying I was the first woman he’d ever trained. In the OSS days, women had been entrusted with blowing up bridges, but just a few years later, the Agency was still testing the waters to see what we were capable of.
Teddy was different. “If you ask me, women are well suited to be Carriers,” he said. “No one suspects that the pretty girl on the bus is delivering secrets.”
Teddy and I got to know each other well in those first few weeks of ’57. He was the kind of man one feels comfortable with from the get-go—someone you’d find yourself telling more in the space of an hour than people you’d known your whole life.
Teddy had come to the Agency after being recruited by one of his lit professors at Georgetown. He studied political science and Slavic languages and spoke fluent Russian with a practiced accent that could fool any Muscovite. During our trainings, Teddy would switch between English and Russian, saying he enjoyed any opportunity to practice. It was a joy to be able to talk to him in the language I used only with Mama. He’d ask question after question: about my mother’s dress business, my childhood in Pikesville, my college days at Trinity, my shyness. No one had ever asked me questions like that before, and at first I balked at his boldness. But before long, I found myself unspooling my personal history to him.
Perhaps I felt so comfortable because he had offered up facts of his life so willingly. I discovered he had an older brother who’d died a few years back. How Julian had returned from the war a hero just to get drunk one night and wrap his car around a tree. How Teddy felt that he’d never live up to the reputation his brother had left behind, how his parents chose to remember only the hero Julian had been by enshrining his photo above the mantel next to the folded flag they’d been given. Teddy said he initially wanted to follow in his brother’s footsteps and enlist in the Army, or join his father at the law firm that carried their last name, but ended up drawn more to literature. As a result, his college mentor guided him toward a different profession.
Teddy would pour us whiskeys from the bottle he kept in his desk and wax poetic about the role he believed art and literature played in spreading democracy, how books were key to demonstrating that great art could come only from true freedom and how he joined up with the Agency to spread that message. He’d say Russians valued literature as Americans valued freedom: “Washington has its statues of Lincoln and Jefferson,” he said, “while Moscow pays tribute to Pushkin and Gogol.” Teddy wanted the Soviets to understand that their own government was hindering their ability to produce the next Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky—that art could thrive only in a free nation, that the West had become the king of letters. This message was akin to sticking a knife between the Red Monster’s ribs and twisting the blade.
During the day, Teddy treated me as he treated all the typists when passing through SR: a nod in the morning, maybe a wave goodbye at night. But after hours, he’d give me his full attention in training me to pick up and deliver internal messages for the Agency.
He’d have me practice putting an envelope under a table, bench, chair, barstool, bus seat, toilet. He started me out with the standard white letter envelope. Then I graduated to pamphlets and manila folders, then books, then packages. He compared what we were doing to a magic trick, telling me the Agency had studied the sleight-of-hand greats like Walter Irving Scott and Dai Vernon, adapting their techniques. He showed me how to let a package slide down my leg and hit the ground without a sound. “It’s all a trick,” he said.
He taught me how to tell if someone was following me—to look out for anyone suspicious, anyone watching, and especially to be careful of LOPs. “Little Old People have a lot of time on their hands,” he explained. “They sit in parks for hours and will call the cops at the drop of a hat if they see something out of the ordinary.”
When I’d make a mistake, he’d tell me that all it takes is practice. And practice I did. Every night, when Mama was asleep, I locked my bedroom door and practiced sliding envelopes of various sizes into books, my purse, Mama’s purse, a suitcase, and every pocket in my wardrobe. When I demonstrated for Teddy how I could slip a tiny scroll of paper from a hollow lipstick tube into his jacket pocket, he told me I was ready for a real test.
“You sure?”
“Only one way to find out.”
That was the Mayflower drop: not a real mission, but a test to see if I was ready. Teddy told me he’d be watching, although I wouldn’t see him. And he was right; there’d been no sign of Teddy that night at the Mayflower. But the next day, I came into the office to find a white rose propped against my typewriter with a tiny red plastic sword sticking through its stem like a thorn.
“Secret admirer?” Norma asked.
“Just a friend,” I said.
“A friend, huh? Not a secret Valentine?”
“Valentine?”
“It’s today, you know.”
“Oh,” I said. I’d forgotten. Thankfully, Norma got called into a meeting before she could ask another question. But the mystery of the rose was revisited again that afternoon. “I hear you’re dating Teddy Helms,” Linda said, peeking over the partition that separated our desks. When I looked up, the entire typing pool was standing there, waiting for an answer.
“What? No. We’re not.” I was taken aback, worried I’d blown my cover.
“Gail said Lonnie Reynolds said she saw Teddy leave the white rose this morning.”
“I mean, he wasn’t exactly keeping it hush-hush,” Gail said.
“When did you two start dating?”
Overwhelmed, I excused myself to the ladies’, hopeful they’d forget all about the rose by the time I got back. They hadn’t, and they continued peppering me with questions I had no answers to until it was time to clock out.
“Wanna come to Martin’s with us?” Norma asked. “Two-for-one oysters and a bartender who pours us doubles ’cause he has a thing for Judy. And seeing how you say you’re still single, you probably won’t have Valentine’s Day plans, right?”
“I can’t,” I said. “I do have plans, but not a date. Not anything like that.”
“Uh-huh,” Norma said.
I was furious at Teddy for putting me in the typing pool’s crosshairs. Why had he done it? What was he getting at? I made up my mind to ask as soon as I saw him, but lost my nerve when he greeted me with a glass of whiskey and a toast to a job well done at the Mayflower.
“You did good, kid,” he said, clinking my glass. “There are a few things we need to work on, but you did a damn fine job. Anderson’s pleased. We think you’ll be ready for the field soon, for a real mission coming down the pipeline.”
“Got it,” I said, knowing not to ask for details but not knowing what else to say. “And thank you.” I could tell Teddy wasn’t sure if I was thanking him for his compliment or for the white rose. An awkward pause opened between us.
“By the way, you didn’t say anything,” Teddy said, breaking the silence.
“About?” I asked dumbly.
“The rose.”
“The typing pool was quite enthralled.”
“But you weren’t?”
“I don’t…I don’t really like being the center of attention.”
Teddy laughed. “The talent you were hired for,” he said. “But really. Sorry about that. People here latch on to a rumor like a dog to a mailman.”
“A dog?”
“I mean, I’m sorry. I thought it would be nice.”
“It was nice…it’s just that…do we want people knowing we know each other?”
He scratched his chin and leaned forward. “Maybe it could work as a cover. If people think we’re dating, they won’t suspect anything out of the ordinary if they see us together. Nothing serious—no harm done, right? Unless you have a real boyfriend who might get upset?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend, but—”
“Perfect,” he said. “Wanna start now? We could get a drink at Martin’s. Don’t they all congregate there?”
“I don’t know.”
Teddy held up the now empty glass. “Let’s just stop by for a minute.”
“Isn’t that the kind of thing that’s frowned upon in the workplace?”
“Pardon my French, but half the Agency wouldn’t get laid if we didn’t date each other. Besides, we’re not really dating, are we?”
Teddy took my hand as we crossed the threshold into Martin’s. The bar was crowded with K Street lobbyists—Teddy said you could pick them out by their finer suits and shoes so new they still squeaked on the waxed floor. They took up real estate at the bar while their poorly dressed government counterparts occupied the tables. Law interns mingled at the buffet, loading up on oysters. And the typing pool was still there, sitting at a booth to the left of the bar.
“How ’bout we sit there?” I asked, pointing at a two-top across the room.
“Let’s grab a drink at the bar first.”
“They have waitresses, I think.”
“This’ll be quicker.” We squeezed ourselves in and Teddy signaled for the bartender to bring us two whiskeys. He paid and held up his glass. “To new friends,” he said. And just as we clinked, I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Irina,” Norma said. “You finally made it to Martin’s. Come on over and join us.” She looked at Teddy. “You, too, Teddy.”
“It was a last-minute sorta thing,” Teddy said. “We have dinner reservations at Rive Gauche. Just stopped in for a drink.”
“Rive Gauche? How’d you land that on Valentine’s?”
“Friend owed me a favor.”
“Why don’t you join us for your drink? There’s plenty of room at our table.”
We looked over at the table and the girls looked away. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
“Look who the cat dragged in,” Norma said, escorting us to the booth. The girls scooted around to make room. I took a seat, but Teddy remained standing. “Excuse me for a moment, ladies.” We watched as he went to the jukebox and started feeding it change.
Judy elbowed me. “Nothing going on with you two, huh?”
Norma gave Judy a told-you-so look. “White rose on the desk in the morning? Rive Gauche at night?”
“Rive Gauche?” Kathy said. “Fancy.”
Teddy returned just as the jukebox clicked on a record. He took his jacket off and handed it to Judy, who forced a smile. Was she jealous? Of me? “Wanna dance?” he asked.
“But no one’s dancing,” I said.
“They will be,” Teddy replied, extending a hand. “Come on! This is Little Richard!”
“Little who?” Without waiting for my answer, he took my hand and led me to the dance floor: a square of parquet with no tables on it. I was never a very good dancer—all arms and legs that never seemed to cooperate with each other—but I still loved to try. And boy, could Teddy dance. Not only was every pair of eyes in the typing pool on us, it seemed everyone in the place was watching. Teddy spun me around as if he were Fred Astaire and I felt I was playing a role—and playing it well. I ate up the feeling just as I had at the Mayflower drop. Teddy pulled me closer. “They’ve bought it,” he whispered.
After another dance and another drink, we left the bar. Out on the sidewalk, I said goodbye. Teddy interrupted. “You don’t want to grab some dinner?”
“I thought that was just something you said.”
“What if I said I really do have reservations at Rive Gauche?”
I thought of the leftover borscht Mama would be reheating, then looked down at the pea-soup-colored dress I’d worn that day. “I’m not really dressed for that kind of place.”
“You look beautiful,” he said, and held out his hand. “Let’s go.”