by Philip Kerr
Until now we have regarded the cipher used by the Amtorg as most complicated, possessing the greatest secrecy of any within our knowledge; and it is hoped that even in the limited amount of time available to us the British crypto-analysts might make some headway with BRIDE. They should be apprised of the following information: 1) there appear to be several variants of the Soviet onetime pad cipher; and 2) the Soviets may be using a two-stage encoding procedure, encrypting a message from a separate codebook, and then again with the pad.
It may be that the decryption of BRIDE, and of Soviet signals traffic in general, becomes a long-term project; at the very least, a wider dissemination of this material is to be welcomed if BRIDE is ever to be properly understood and used. But any decryption will provide investigative leads for the FBI as the identities of cover names in BRIDE traffic become more obvious. I am informed by the FBI here in Washington that they are already following up new information that the agent known as Söhnchen has a wife named Lizzie.
Yours sincerely,
Earle F. Cooke,
Lt. Colonel Commanding B Branch
I took a deep breath and read the letter again, slightly astonished that G -2, SIS, and the OSS were all prepared to disobey the spirit, if not perhaps the letter, of a presidential order regarding spying on the Russians. I asked myself what Roosevelt would have said if he had become aware of Cooke’s letter, and then decided that it was as likely as not that Roosevelt knew about it anyway. I had already formed the impression that saying one thing and then doing another seemed fairly typical of FDR. He might even have authorized this particular intelligence initiative against the Soviet Union.
That scared me. Spies of any shade were taking a big risk in America.
I read the letter a third time. They had already managed to determine that Söhnchen had a wife named Lizzie. Mrs. Philby was not called Lizzie, but Litzi, and since Philby wasn’t an American, the FBI effort would, very probably, not get very far. That was good. And Colonel Cooke had written that he was cautious about the chances of successfully decrypting Bride. That was good, too. But the letter worried me all the same.
I rewrapped the parcel carefully and considered my options. Losing the case was out of the question; besides, that would only draw attention to me. Indeed, if they already had suspicions about me, losing the case would only confirm them.
I returned the parcel to the leather suitcase and then relocked it before placing it beside the front door. Then I went upstairs to pack my own bag, telling myself that I might easily be robbed in Cairo. Failing that, I might perhaps rely on British red tape and bureaucracy to slow things down a little, perhaps even frustrate them completely. It wasn’t much to rely on. But for the moment it was all the hope I had. But I also had to admit there was a part of me that didn’t care.
Later that same evening I drank too much and got out the part of me that didn’t care and had a closer look at it. Underneath the bright lights of my living room it didn’t look nearly so blasé. Which was how it came to me that I should write Diana a letter before I crossed the Atlantic again, just in case a German submarine decided to gather me to the Lord.
As love letters go, it wasn’t Cyrano de Bergerac, but it was not bad for someone as out of practice at writing that kind of thing as I was. The last time I had dipped a pen in a bottle of blind adoration before applying the nib to some finely laid notepaper I’d been about nineteen years old and in my first year at Harvard. I don’t remember the girl’s name, or what happened to her, except to say that she never replied.
I sat down at my desk and let my heart run around the room naked for a while so I could describe how this looked as accurately as possible. Then I picked up my best pen and started to write. Probably I played up the secrecy and danger of the mission ahead of me more than I should have, but the part about how stupid I thought I had been and how much I cared for Diana read accurately enough. I wondered that I hadn’t thought of writing to her before. I might even have used the word “love” once or twice. More if you counted the corny little poem I started, finished, and then tossed in the wastepaper basket.
I laid my letter to Diana on the hall table with a note to Michael asking him to post it first thing in the morning. Ten minutes later I crumpled up the note and tossed it in the wastepaper basket alongside my crummy attempt at a love poem. I had decided that I would post the letter myself on my way to Hampton Roads the next day. Finally, I tossed the letter on the front seat of my car and drove up to Chevy Chase, intending to put it in her mailbox so that she might read it over breakfast and realize the justice of giving me a second chance.
It was raining by the time I got to the little town of Chevy Chase and the 1920s-vintage colonial where Diana lived. By now I had convinced myself to forget about the letter. If her car was there I was going to ring her doorbell, throw myself on her mercy and my knees, and ask Diana to marry me. In a church, if she wanted. With witnesses present to make sure we both meant it.
I parked on the street and, ignoring the rain, walked toward the verandah, trying not to make a mountain out of the molehillshaped Nash coupe that was in the driveway behind Diana’s ruby red Packard Eight. A dim light burned behind the plush velvet curtains in her drawing room window, and as I approached the house I could hear the sound of music. It was easy, unhurried music. The sort of music you like to have in a seraglio when you don’t want to listen to anything except someone else breathing softly in your ear.
I stood on the verandah and, forcing myself to play the Peeping Tom, looked in through a fissure in the curtains. Neither of the two people lying on the rug in front of the fire saw me. They were too busy doing what two people do when they have decided to see just how far they can throw their clothes across the room. Doing what I’d done myself on that same rug just a few weeks before. And the way they were doing it, it looked as if it was going to be a while before Diana was free to listen to my proposal of marriage.
Suddenly I seemed ridiculous to myself. Especially the notion about asking her to marry me. It was quite obvious to me that the very idea of marrying me couldn’t have been further from her mind. With no other idea in my head I returned to my car and, for quite a while, just sat there trying but failing to detach my mind from what was happening on that rug. Half of me hoped that the man would come out so that I could get a better look at him. I even constructed a little scene that had me facing them both down, but the more I thought about that, the uglier it seemed. And as the dawn came up I took the envelope, placed it in her mailbox, and drove quietly away.
XIII
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12-
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1943,
POINT LOOKOUT
I HAD MISSED THE BOAT. Leaning on the hood of my car, I smoked a cigarette and looked out at the waters off the southernmost point of Maryland’s Western Shore where the USS Iowa was now no more than a trail of smoke on the burnished horizon. It was hardly my fault; the Iowa had sailed early. Or so the pierman had told me.
I was still pondering my next move when a couple of black Hudsons rolled up and discharged four tough-looking men with nervous eyes and tight lips. They were wearing dark suits, hats, and ties that matched their less than sunny dispositions.
I threw aside my cigarette and straightened up. So this was how the FBI arrested you. They got you to drive seventy miles out of Washington on a wild-goose chase and then, when you were waiting somewhere quiet, they picked you up without any fuss. True, I had a gun in my shoulder holster, but there was less chance of my using it to resist arrest than there was of my not being able to complete the crossword puzzle in the Post.
“Professor Mayer,” one of the men asked, with a voice that contained no inflection. He had a hard, neat, well-kept face, like the picket fence in front of the American Horticultural Society. He tried to put a smile in his blue eyes but it came off looking sarcastic.
“Yes,” I said, bracing myself. I almost held my wrists out in front of me.
“Could I see some identification,
please, sir?” While he waited, he pulled his finger until the knuckle cracked.
I took out my wallet. I was sure they were about to inspect Donovan’s suitcase and inform me I had failed to notice something concealed in the wrapping of the parcel that would prove I had opened it.
The man looked at my ID card and then handed it to one of his colleagues; finally he produced his own ID. To my surprise, he was a U.S. Treasury Agent—not from the FBI at all.
“I’m Agent Rowley,” he said. “From the Presidential Secret Service detail. We’ve come to escort you on board ship.”
Relieved that I was not going to be arrested, I laughed and waved my hand at the empty dock. “That I’d like to see, Agent Rowley. The boat is gone.”
Agent Rowley managed a sort of smile. His four teeth were small and sharp and far apart. I could see why he hadn’t put his mouth into the smile before. “I’m sorry about that, Professor. The Iowa had to offload oil to allow her draft to make it up the Chesapeake. So now she’s gone on to Hampton Roads to take on more fuel. I’m afraid you’d left home before we had a chance to inform you this morning.”
It was true. I’d left just before eight o’clock that morning. After my romantic evening in Chevy Chase, I’d made an early start. Which was easy enough, given that I hadn’t actually gone to bed.
“But that’s on the other side of the bay. Is there another boat to take us there?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. We’re going to have to drive. One of these agents will take your car back to Washington. If you don’t mind, sir, we’ll hold on to your identity card for now. It’ll make things easier for us supernumeraries when we go on board the Iowa.”
“You’re going, too?”
“Four of us. Ahead of the president, who’s going aboard after midnight. The boss is an old Navy man and he’s kind of superstitious. Friday-night sailings are bad luck.”
“I’m not so crazy about them myself.”
Three hours later we passed through a naval security checkpoint and were directed to the quay where the Iowa was to be found. All of us fell silent as, turning onto the quay, we caught our first sight of the Iowa’s distinctive clipper bow and, behind it, the forecastle and fire-control tower that rose a hundred feet above a deck bristling with gun batteries. But the height of the Iowa’s superstructure looked compact compared to its enormous nine-hundred-foot length, which, together with the 212,000-horsepower engines, gave the battleship its high speed.
Alongside the battleship, last-minute stores and other supernumerary passengers were going aboard under the watchful eyes of a group of armed sailors. A couple of tugs spewing smoke were attaching lines alongside the crocodile’s nose that was the bow. Above all these, on three different decks, sailors leaned on rails observing the comings and goings below. As I walked up the port gangway underneath the massive antiaircraft battery, I felt as if I had arrived in an oceangoing shanty town built of armored steel. A strong smell of oil filled my nostrils, and somewhere above the primary conning position flue gases were venting noisily into the gray November sky. The ship felt alive.
At the end of the gangway, one of the Secret Service agents was already handing over my bags and my ID to a waiting officer. Consulting a clipboard, he ticked a sheet of paper and then waved another sailor toward me.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” the sailor said, collecting my bags. He had the kind of Brooklyn mutt’s face you got in a choir, but only if the choir was in Sing Sing. “If you’ll follow me I’ll show you to your quarters. Please watch your step—the deck is a little wet—and your head.”
The sailor led me along a passageway. “We got you in a wardroom one level below the flag and signal bridge. Just so you can remember where that is, that’s underneath the main battery detector and behind the second uptake.”
“Uptake?”
“Funnel. If you get lost, just ask for the second uptake 4A. Four A is the forty-millimeter magazine.”
“That’s a comforting thought.” I ducked to follow him through a doorway.
“Don’t you worry, sir. The face armor on this ship is seventeen inches thick, which means the Iowa is meant to go in harm’s way and take that shit.”
We ducked through another doorway, and somewhere behind us a heavy door clanged shut. I was counting myself lucky that I didn’t suffer from claustrophobia.
“Up here, sir,” the sailor said, heading up a flight of stairs. “In there you got the head. You’ll be messing forward of here, sir, with the other supernumeraries, in the captain’s pantry. That’s in front of the first uptake, underneath the secondary battery detector. Meals are 0800, 1200, and 2000. If you want to throw up, I advise you to do it in the head and not over the side. On this ship someone’s liable to get a face full if you go puking in the wrong place.”
Mutt-face put my bags down in front of a polished wooden door and knocked hard. “You’re sharing with another gentleman, sir.”
“Come,” said a voice.
The sailor opened the door and, saluting out of habit, left me to make my own introduction.
I put my head into the cabin and saw a face I recognized, a guy from the State Department named Ted Schmidt.
“Willard Mayer, isn’t it?” said Schmidt, rising from a narrow-looking bunk and advancing to shake my hand. “The philosopher.”
“And you’re on the Russian desk at State. Ted Schmidt.”
Schmidt was a pudgy man with dark curly hair, thick horn-rimmed glasses, and eyebrows to match. I had known him briefly at Harvard and recalled a slightly thinner man with a good sense of humor and a taste for expensive wine. He was smiling, only the smile didn’t sit right beside the sadness in his twitching, bloodshot eyes, the patches of stubble he’d missed with his Rolls, and the liquor on his breath. Two o’clock in the afternoon was a little early to be hitting the cabin bottle, even for a star-crossed lover like me. He was wearing a pair of corduroy trousers, a thick checked shirt, and a pair of English brogue shoes. In his hand was an unlit nickel cigar. Apart from what he was wearing, he looked and sounded like almost anybody you might see at State. He sounded like a character in a novel by Edith Wharton.
“Welcome to second class. I suspect there are better cabins than this one. And I know there are worse ones.” Schmidt picked up Donovan’s blue leather suitcase and brought it into the wardroom. “Nice luggage. Did you steal it?” Seeing me frown, he pointed to the initials WJD.
“It belongs to General Donovan. I’m taking it to Cairo for him.” I threw my own case onto the bed and closed the door.
“There’s another guy from State, fellow named Weitz, John Weitz, who’s somewhere ahead of the chimney stack. By the look of it, he’s sleeping in a closet. There’s just me and him, from State. We’re along to translate what the Rooskies are saying. Not that I think we’ll even get near the table. Harriman’s flying into Cairo from Moscow with his own guy. Fellow named Bohlen. So Weitz and I are on the bench, I think. Until Bohlen breaks his neck or fumbles the ball. The State Department’s in pretty bad odor right now.”
“So I hear.”
“And you? What’s your function on this little mystery tour?”
“Liaison officer from General Donovan to the president.”
“Sounds suitably vague. Not that anyone’s saying very much at all. Even the crew don’t know where we’re going. They know it’s somewhere important. And that some VIPs are coming aboard. Did that sailor give you the crap about the effectiveness of our armor?”
“As a matter of fact he did. I imagine the purser on the Titanic gave his passengers the same spiel.”
“You better believe it.” Schmidt laughed scornfully and lit the cigar. It stunk up the room as if he’d put a match to a skunk. “I haven’t met a sailor yet who understands the principle guiding the Iowa’s immune zone. Put simply, our armor is compromised by the effective range of our guns. We have to get in closer to a target to use them, and the closer we get, the more likely it is that a shell will cause some real damage.
> “Then there are the torpedoes. German torpedoes, that is, not ours. The kraut fish are more powerful than the Iowa’s designers allowed for. Oh, I’m not saying we’re at risk or anything. But a direct hit is a direct hit, and no amount of armor is going to stop the effect of that. So the next time you hear some guy blowing off about the impregnability of this ship, ask him why the crews manning those gun turrets carry derringers in their boots.”
“Why do they carry derringers in their boots?” I asked. I didn’t imagine it was because they played a lot of poker.
“Take a look inside one of those turrets and you’ll understand. It takes quite a while to get out of one. They probably figure that it would be better to shoot themselves than be drowned like rats.”
“I can understand that.”
“Me, I have a real fear of drowning,” admitted Schmidt. “I can’t even swim, and I don’t mind admitting that this voyage fills me with a sense of foreboding. My brother was a sailor. He was drowned on the Yorktown, at the Battle of Midway.” Schmidt smiled nervously. “I guess that’s why the subject preoccupies me so much.”
“You won’t drown,” I said, and showed Schmidt one of the two automatics I was carrying. “If necessary, I’ll shoot you myself.”
“That’s very American of you.”
“Don’t mention it. It’s the least I can do for a Harvard man.”
Schmidt opened a small locker by his bed. “I’d say that calls for a drink, wouldn’t you?” He produced a bottle of Mount Vernon rye and poured two glasses. Handing one to me, he said, “Here’s to not drowning and not getting blown up by a torpedo.”
I raised my glass. “And to the Big Three.”
I really don’t remember much more about the rest of that day except that Schmidt and I got as stiff as a couple of cigar-store Indians. That made me feel a lot better about what I’d seen on Diana’s rug the night before, which is to say, I stopped feeling very much at all. Schmidt probably drank about twice as much as I did. For one thing it was his liquor we were drinking. For another, I figured he’d had a lot more practice. He put the stuff down his throat with no more thought than if it had come straight out of a cow.
