The Accidental Agent

by Andrew Rosenheim

  At the edge of the neighbourhood, where it was about to join the better parts of Georgetown, he came to a commercial stretch, the block filled with grocery stores, a hardware store, a diner that was empty inside, two corner bars, and finally, set back slightly from the street, a low row of units, built like a series of bungalows, which had a stand-alone neon sign that announced ‘The Winking Eye Motel’. The sign, almost inevitably, winked slowly on and off.

  Across the street a stretch of barren ground served as an informal parking lot for half a dozen cars – residents of the apartments above the stores and shoppers who hadn’t found a space on the street. Guttman turned in and then pulled around on the bumpy gravel to park facing the motel across the street. He doused his lights after he saw Stephenson get out of his own car and gesture like a traffic cop for Guttman to stay put. The Canadian disappeared in the jumble of cars parked further along the lot, then reappeared suddenly by the passenger-side door and got in.

  He was dressed impeccably, as always, unbuttoning a fine wool overcoat to reveal a dark suit with matching vest and a steel-blue tie. It was hard to say where the man looked more out of place – in Katz’s, the Jewish deli, on the Lower East Side, or here, across from a sleazy motel near the Potomac.

  ‘We found out why your friend is using bedbug joints. He’s got a regular visitor – or two. Ladies. No boarding house landlady’s going to put up with that.’ Stephenson, for all his worldliness, sounded as though he wouldn’t have put up with it either. ‘He’s in his room now, and not alone. It’s the one with the Oldsmobile right outside. If he stays true to form he’ll be out shortly – it seems he times these rendezvous to a T.’

  A line of cars parked outside the rooms stretched along the walkway of the motel, but he saw the one Stephenson had referred to.

  ‘It could just be a meeting,’ said Guttman.

  ‘I don’t think so. Young Fletcher – he’s sitting in a car at the other end of the lot – is an enterprising fellow. He bribed a maid to let him into the room. He said the evidence was incontrovertible.’

  Guttman said, ‘You said he had more than one visitor.’

  ‘That’s correct. Fletcher didn’t go quite so far with the other lady, but he didn’t need to. He walked by the room on the way to the soda machine. Fletcher said there was enough noise coming from inside the room to make it clear what was going on.’

  ‘Golly,’ said Guttman. ‘The boy’s got energy.’

  ‘You sound surprised.’ Stephenson laughed.

  ‘I am,’ Guttman admitted, wondering what Tolson would make of his protégé’s way of ending the day. But he was also wondering what the point of spying on this was. It smacked of voyeurism, and seemed faintly prurient. T.A. liked to shack up of an afternoon with some dollies – what of it?

  Guttman glanced at Stephenson, who was looking around in every direction, but slowly, barely noticeably. For an amateur he was very careful. Guttman said, ‘When we met in New York you said there was a reason we were cutting off your information supply.’

  ‘Did I?’ Stephenson’s eyes grew watery, a habit they had when he didn’t like a question.

  ‘Yes,’ said Guttman firmly.

  Stephenson said reluctantly, ‘We had a problem that your guys in the military found out about.’

  ‘Oh? What sort of problem?’

  ‘Some secrets travelled east from England. Scientific information – about the project we were all cooperating so nicely on.’

  ‘How far east?’

  Stephenson said, ‘Well, it went past Berlin without stopping, if you get my drift.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that? They’re our allies now,’ he said, trying to parrot Tolson’s party line.

  ‘But not privy to the project. As you must know.’

  ‘So what’s the upshot?’

  ‘Groves learned about the leak. He managed to get an interdict on any further exchanges of technical information – there’s been a transatlantic working group. It seems a bit unfair, since we helped get your guys started in the first place.’

  Guttman wouldn’t have been able to tell either way. Stephenson went on, ‘We raised it eventually with Churchill himself. He took it up with the White House.’

  ‘I thought he and Roosevelt get on like a house on fire.’

  ‘They do, but your President knows he’s holding all the valuable cards. We figured he wouldn’t directly override his Military Intelligence people’s recommendations – or Groves’s – unless he had other advisers telling him to.’

  ‘Which ones?’ Guttman asked. During the New Deal, FDR’s kitchen cabinet had been famous – or notorious, depending on one’s view. Tommy the Cork, Ben Cohen, and such a slew of Frankfurter acolytes that they were known as the ‘hot-dog’ boys, in vernacular recognition of their patron’s surname. But by now many had either left government or taken senior positions in the administration outside the White House. According to Annie, Frankfurter had recently been lamenting his loss of a coterie around the President.

  Stephenson said, ‘Harry Hopkins visited London last winter.’

  ‘I remember.’ He had praised the pluck of the English loudly at the time. ‘He loves you Brits.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Stephenson cryptically. Guttman couldn’t read his expression. Stephenson said, ‘In any case, he’s helped try to overturn the edict. We’re hoping normal practice will resume early in the New Year. By that time, the project should be based in one place.’

  ‘Really?’

  Stephenson said flatly, ‘They can’t exactly keep it on the South Side of Chicago.’

  Guttman was dismayed that Stephenson knew so much more about it than he did. He consoled himself that Hoover knew even less. ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re right – the Germans don’t have anyone in Chicago. Or anywhere else for that matter. Though I still worry about that note Nessheim received.’

  ‘It could be a stray thing – some hangover from his work undercover in the Bund. You said so yourself.’

  ‘I still think something’s not right in Chicago.’ He took a deep breath and then told Stephenson about his two visits to the Upper West Side building where Arthur Perkins had died. ‘If Perkins was murdered, I decided it was to let someone take his place. I thought I’d found the substitute – his name is Grant, and he’s a Professor of Physics at Princeton. There’s just one problem – he’s still in Princeton.’

  ‘Who would have been trying to get him into the Chicago lab?’

  This sounded oddly naive of Stephenson, and Guttman looked at him disbelievingly. ‘The same people who received your classified info. As I think you know already. In fact, I think you’ve known all along.’

  The ensuing silence was so suffocating that Guttman wanted to get out of the car. But he needed to hear Stephenson first.

  The Canadian exhaled a long spiral of air, his breath misting on the windscreen. ‘I tried to tell you – when we talked on the phone here and then in New York. If you look back I think you’d have to admit that. If I was a bit elusive, understand that I was – I am – in a difficult position. Here were your guys in Military Intelligence ordering the head of the project to cut off all ties with us – because they think we’re a leaky sieve. So if we said you were leaky too, they’d just think we were trying to get our own back. And since the Bureau doesn’t even know about the project, I couldn’t express my concerns to you. You can see that.’

  Guttman grunted sceptically. ‘But you talked to me before.’ After the debacle of Pearl Harbor, Stephenson had done more than talk – he had helped spirit Nessheim away from the military authorities when they’d decided the younger agent was a spy.

  ‘Sure I did. But you’re out in left field, Harry – sometimes I think you live there. It’s not a question of trust – I trust you plenty. But from what I know of the man, Hoover will be gunning for you. You know too much. I hate to be so blunt, but I have to figure that one of these days you’ll be out on your ear.’

  Guttman felt a crus
hing sense of disappointment, though he wasn’t sure why – nothing Stephenson had said was unreasonable. In the past Guttman wouldn’t have minded Stephenson’s candour, yet here he was dismayed that Stephenson felt forced to hedge his bets. Was Guttman going soft? He had never needed allies at work, except for tactical reasons. Isabel had been his ally through everything: work, money, their joint childlessness, all the problems of life. He must have got needy, he decided, living on his own. How pathetic.

  ‘There’s another thing,’ said Stephenson, perhaps sensing Guttman’s introspective gloom. ‘It’s the other problem we talked about. In the Bureau. I can’t move on that – only you can, Harry. And for a while I wasn’t sure you could be bothered.’ He added gently, ‘After Isabel died.’

  Guttman didn’t respond. There was nothing to contest. He knew he had been out of touch; he knew he had stopped following the trail.

  ‘Hang on!’ Stephenson said, and he pointed through the windshield towards the motel. A man had come out of a room, but instead of closing the door he stood holding it open. After a moment a woman also came out, hastily buttoning up her overcoat. They moved off along the walkway, the man striding fast, until he stopped to wait for his companion, gesturing for her to get a move on. They were hard to see as dusk began to darken the scene, but then they passed through a disc of light cast by an overhead bulb.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Stephenson demanded, and Guttman realised he had gasped involuntarily. ‘Don’t tell me we’ve got the wrong guy.’

  ‘No, it’s him all right.’ T.A. from the Bureau, as he had guessed long before. The only surprise was that T.A. liked humping girls, when Guttman had taken him for Tolson’s protégé in more than strictly professional ways.

  That wasn’t what had made him start, though he wanted another look to be sure. By now the couple had reached the motel office at the walkway’s end. T.A. went inside – to lodge his key or ask for change or maybe even check out – and the woman remained standing outside, motionless in the yellow light of the outside lamp.

  She moved her head to throw her hair back, and Guttman remembered when he’d seen her last. There was no longer any doubt in his mind. And as T.A. came out of the motel office and took the woman’s arm, Guttman wondered how the Tolson protégé had come to know the black-haired temptress from the train.

  20

  MARIE LIVED ON the northern fringes of the city, near Rock Creek Park, in one of a series of three-storey apartment buildings erected just before the Depression hit. She had a long bus ride to work, but she’d explained that the neighbourhood was safe and the school for her little boy Jack was good. Guttman had never been there before, and when he parked outside on the street he found it nicer than he had imagined.

  He brought a box of chocolates since it seemed an anodyne gift – booze would have suggested he was presuming an intimacy that didn’t exist. When he pressed the buzzer he heard Marie shout for her son to answer it. The boy answered the door and stood staring at Guttman. He couldn’t have been more than seven years old.

  ‘Hi,’ said Guttman.

  ‘Are you Mr G?’

  Is that what Marie called him at home? ‘I guess so,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s your gun then?’

  ‘If I tell you, will you let me in?’

  Marie came down the corridor from the back of the apartment. She had changed for dinner, and wore heels and a navy blue crepe dress half-covered by an apron – she was drying her hands on it as she walked towards him.

  ‘Jack,’ she exclaimed, ‘invite Mr Guttman in! He’s our guest.’

  While Marie took his coat and hung it in the hall closet, Guttman walked into the living room. It was modestly furnished but comfortable, with a three-seater sofa with soft cushions and a couple of decent second-hand chairs. On the mantelpiece there was a line of small china figures, including a little painted Madonna which reminded him that Marie was Catholic. A card table with a mended leg was set for dinner.

  ‘I bet you could use a drink,’ Marie said, as Jack stared up at Guttman. She went to the kitchen and brought out an ice tray and a pitcher of water, and he poured himself a stiff drink and made Marie a weaker one at her request. They sat down on the sofa, while Jack buzzed around them. She was going to Quebec for Christmas, to see her parents and siblings. Instead of asking him what he was doing then, she asked about Thanksgiving, the following week.

  ‘Gosh,’ he said, then suddenly thought she might be thinking of asking him over again. ‘I’ll probably be down seeing Mom in New York.’

  For dinner, Marie had gone to a lot of effort, giving him three courses, starting with pea soup. Then she brought out a big casserole dish, holding it away from her with oven mitts, while Guttman steadied the table. When she took the lid off, steam rose like a genie’s breath. Jack laughed. Marie served, putting a big chop on each plate, with sauerkraut and potatoes that came from the casserole. She was handing Guttman his plate when suddenly she froze.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry. It’s pork chops. Is that a problem?’

  What? He was merely flattered that she’d used her ration cards on him. But then he got it. ‘No, that’s fine, Marie. Isabel made pork all the time.’

  ‘She did?’ Marie said, looking as though she thought he was just being polite.

  ‘Sure. She wasn’t Jewish, after all.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  She didn’t? Guttman was surprised. How many times had Marie helped him buy his wife a Christmas present? How many times had he joked about what the nuns who’d brought up Isabel would make of her ‘unsuitable’ marriage? None of which had made a dent on Marie, it seemed.

  He said forcefully, ‘I eat anything, believe me. And it smells delicious.’

  For dessert Marie had pushed the boat out – to the far shore, thought Guttman. She served grands-pères, sweet dumplings in maple syrup with vanilla ice cream. Marie explained that they reminded her of Canada, where her father had been a logger. With them she passed around a plate of whippet cookies, sweet biscuits topped by marshmallow that had been coated in a hard shell of chocolate. They were impossible to find in Washington, Marie explained, because the pure chocolate didn’t survive the shipping, and she’d brought them down from her last visit home. Guttman nodded, struggling to clean his plate, feeling that if he ate one more spoonful of the sugar-filled dessert he would crystallise.

  After dinner Marie put Jack to bed, then made coffee, which she brought out on a tray that held little china cups, two snifters and a pint bottle of brandy. ‘Have a nightcap, Harry,’ she said.

  She sat down on the sofa next to him. Not too close, but not very far away. Guttman was starting to feel uncomfortable.

  He turned down the offer of brandy, and to shift the mood he asked, ‘How’s your young friend, T.A.?’

  She looked bemused. ‘Okay, I guess. Very busy – Mr Tolson sends him all over the place.’

  ‘I bet he does.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just wondered. You made it sound like half the gals in typing were sweet on him.’

  She shrugged and gave a half-smile. ‘I guess they are. He’s a nice boy.’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘How about me what?’ He saw she didn’t like the question.

  ‘Are you sweet on him too, Marie? He’s a good-looking kid.’

  ‘I’m almost old enough to be his mother, Harry,’ she protested.

  ‘Nah. Big sister maybe.’

  ‘Flatterer,’ she said and moved almost imperceptibly closer on the couch.

  ‘I’m sure he’d be interested, Marie. It’s obvious he likes you.’

  ‘Well, I’m not interested,’ she said firmly. ‘Whatever you say, it would be robbing the cradle. Besides, I don’t think you’re right about him.’

  ‘What, about being interested in you? Of course he is. No one in typing holds a candle to you.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, he lives w
ith his mother.’

  ‘You can’t tell a lot from that.’ Guttman shrugged benignly. ‘It’s not something I’d have wanted to do at his age. But each to his own, eh?’

  ‘He’s not really interested. A woman can tell, Harry. I don’t just mean me – the other girls would say the same thing.’ She added slyly, ‘Maybe that’s why he works for Mr Tolson.’ She put a hand to her mouth. ‘Sorry.’

  Guttman laughed. ‘That’s okay, Marie. You’re probably right about that.’ He was trying to make sense of this. Just a few hours before, he’d seen evidence to the contrary. The kid was obviously a bit of a ladies’ man, yet that wasn’t the impression he was making at work. If Marie was casting doubts, then Adams must be giving that impression on purpose. Why?

  He wasn’t going to find out talking to Marie. Then she said, ‘Did I mention, Harry, that my husband is finally divorcing me?’

  ‘No, you didn’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not. I haven’t seen the bum in five years, so it’s not like it’s going to make a difference. He didn’t even send Jack a birthday card this year.’

  ‘So maybe it’s for the best.’

  ‘It is. Especially since I’m not initiating it.’ She gave a laugh that was unlike her usual robust one. ‘I’m a good Catholic girl, after all. I couldn’t do it myself. But I’m glad he is.’

  She leaned back now, though her scent lingered like potpourri in a drawer. ‘He was a Wobbly. Worked the lumber mills, which is where he met my dad – and then me. He’s still out there, only now he’s an organiser, travelling all around.’

  ‘Listen, Marie,’ he said, glad he hadn’t had another beer, ‘why don’t I help you do the dishes before I leave?’

  He could see this startled her. She said, ‘I’ll do them in the morning. Don’t go yet, Harry.’ He could smell the scent on her neck. Lemon and sugar; it reminded him of lemonade. It was tempting for all of two seconds. During all the years with Isabel he had never found it hard to stay in line; even had he been tempted to stray, one no-go would have been anyone working for him.