The Accidental Agent

by Andrew Rosenheim

  Fermi seemed to relax. Then his chest began to shake like jelly, and Nessheim realised he was trying to keep from laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny, Professor?’ he asked, bewildered.

  Fermi tried to recover his composure. He said, ‘I should not be telling you this, but I think you will appreciate it.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Because Kalvin had only just arrived in America, we did not know the man himself – only his work from the journals. It is very good – no question. We asked him if there was someone in this country who could speak on his behalf, someone who could supply a …’ He hesitated and looked to Nessheim for help.

  ‘A reference. To recommend him.’

  ‘Exactly. And it happened there was such a man, a physicist of high reputation. The letter he wrote came and the reference was outstanding. It praised Kalvin up to the clouds.’ He lifted a hand above his head with a dramatic flourish. ‘I told the military idiot about it and he was pleased. Kalvin was let through.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I felt much better about the earlier injustice. You see, the letter came from Princeton University. It was written by Professor Grant.’

  Nessheim hurried back to the Kimbark apartment to phone Guttman but when he reached the office in D.C. Marie answered. She explained that Guttman had left early.

  ‘Can I get him at home, Marie?’

  ‘You could try. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, you know.’

  ‘They have it out here too, Marie,’ he said, and she laughed. ‘Where’s he spending it, anyway?’

  ‘Beats me, Jim. Maybe with some neighbours in Arlington.’ Annie, thought Nessheim, and realised that the thought of her no longer stirred him. Marie added, ‘I don’t think he’s going to his mother’s in New York. I’m not sure she even recognises him any more.’

  Guttman had a mother? Nessheim was taken aback. Someone had once said Guttman’s wife had been an orphan, and without thinking much about it Nessheim had always assumed Guttman had been one too. He’d figured that he and Isabel had found each other in some unspecified institution, a connection that had proved to be Guttman’s lifeline to the human race. To Nessheim, Guttman was a self-creation, one refined by the ministrations of his wife over the years, but always an independent agent uninfluenced by his past. Nessheim decided Marie must have got it wrong about the mother.

  24

  ‘YOU KNOW WHAT tomorrow is?’ Nessheim asked, coming into the kitchen where water boiled for spaghetti and Stacey was stirring a small pot of tomato sauce.

  ‘They call it Thanksgiving,’ she said, enough acid in her voice to make him look at her.

  ‘You going to your mom’s?’ he asked, trying to sound uninterested.

  ‘No. You going to yours?’ The asperity was unmistakable now.

  ‘Of course not. She’ll be with her cousins in Bremen. And their kids and grandkids and God knows who else.’ He waited but Stacey kept stirring the sauce. ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘About Thanksgiving?’ She put the spoon down. ‘I guess I’ll spend the day at my apartment.’

  He realised she was angry. ‘You can’t do that. There are mouths to feed. Mainly mine.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ There was the first hint of humour in her voice.

  ‘I’ll do the dishes if you cook. That’s a promise.’

  She was wavering; he could tell. He went up behind her and put his arms around her shoulders, and she turned slowly, feeling soft as soap in his winter-chapped hands. He said, ‘I think we should spend tomorrow together. Just to make sure I count my blessings.’

  She leaned up to meet his lips with hers as he tucked his head down to kiss her. She didn’t let go, and he realised she wasn’t going to let him get away with just a kiss. Eventually she stood back and dropped the wooden spoon into the pot of sauce, then grabbed him again. He only just managed to turn the stove-top burner off before she had him, half-pulling, half-pushing, into the bedroom, his tie off and his shirt unbuttoned.

  Later they lay in bed, side by side, exhausted.

  ‘And you say I’m the hungry one,’ he said lightly.

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Do I have to explain?’ Inexplicably she looked close to tears.

  ‘Sure you do.’ He was hoping to kid her out of the moodiness he sensed descending.

  She took a deep breath. ‘When I was a girl my father would get a craving for clams once a year or so. He’d drive all the way down here and buy a great sack of them from Jesselson’s Steamers. He’d come home and give the cook the night off, then boil them up in a kettle the size of a ship’s cauldron. I liked them well enough but my mother only ate a few – she didn’t like the briny taste. My father ate them by the dozen. He’d tie a napkin around his neck and sit down with half a loaf of bread he’d use like a sponge to soak up the broth.’

  ‘And the point is?’ he asked like a benevolent Professor Fielding.

  ‘Nothing else would do. Not a T-bone steak or oysters wrapped in bacon or veal kidneys – the other things he loved to eat. That night it had to be clams.’

  ‘So?’ asked Nessheim, wondering where this was going. ‘Am I your clam?’

  She didn’t laugh. ‘You’re the type who’d take the oysters or the steak or the kidneys – or the clams. You’re just hungry period.’ She added, ‘But I only want the clams. Even if they’ve got a gritty kind of shell.’

  He didn’t say anything. After a while she got out of bed and put on her robe, then lit a cigarette. She stood by the window, looking out at the courtyard. He said, ‘I’m sorry I forgot about Thanksgiving. Something’s come up’.

  ‘You want to tell me about it?’

  ‘I can’t – I’m not even supposed to know about it.’

  ‘Okay, though you can trust me, you know.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I hope so.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Nessheim, are you going to take me up to Bremen some time?’

  He felt caught flat-footed; this had not even occurred to him in passing. ‘Why do you want to go there?’

  ‘So I could meet your mom and see where you grew up. Anything wrong with that?’

  ‘You’ve never done the same for me. And your mother lives ten miles away, not two hundred.’

  She turned and stared at him. ‘Do you like your mother?’

  ‘I love my mother.’

  ‘Do you like where you grew up?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Then there’s your answer.’ She was fumbling in her purse. ‘When can we go?’

  He hesitated, visualising Stacey’s first encounter with his mother. Stacey read his thoughts. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll behave. I’ll even dress the part.’

  ‘What part’s that?’

  ‘I’ll let you know – I’ve got the feeling auditions aren’t quite over. But the costume’s easy – I was thinking a dirndl, with no make-up. So how about it?’

  ‘Let me give it some thought,’ he said with even less conviction than he felt. He didn’t want to rush into this. For him, Stacey meant his present, not his past.

  ‘Are you paying me back?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For leaving you when we were first together.’

  He thought about this for a moment, then said slowly, ‘Maybe. Why did you do it, anyhow?’

  ‘I felt I didn’t deserve you.’

  He laughed. This sounded just like the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ that girls liked to tell guys to let them down easy. ‘I didn’t realise I wore a halo back then,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry – I don’t wear one now.’

  ‘I’ve noticed.’ But then she grew serious again. ‘I didn’t want to be with you because it made me feel bad about myself and bad about what I was doing to you.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have said so? You weren’t doing anything wrong as far as I was concerned. I was crazy about you.’

  ‘So have you been in love since?’

  ‘Since when?’

&n
bsp; ‘Since you were in love with me?’

  Nessheim looked at her sceptically. ‘What’s all this love talk anyway, Stacey? You told me once you didn’t believe in love.’

  ‘We all say stupid things, especially at that age. And even later on if we’re scared.’

  ‘Scared?’ He looked at her and laughed. ‘What are you scared of?’

  ‘Not you,’ she said, as if stung. She looked as though she was through explaining, and stubbed out her cigarette on the little porcelain ashtray she had once lifted from the Palmer House. ‘So let’s have Thanksgiving together. But I really do need to go to my apartment for a while. I love Drusilla but she never could clean worth a damn, and now she’s turned seventy she doesn’t even pretend.’

  25

  THEY HAD THANKSGIVING dinner the following day at supper time. While the rest of the nation, full to the gills from their mid-afternoon meal, sat around listening to Radio City Music Hall, Stacey cooked their meal and Nessheim kept her company in the kitchen, fortifying them both with a couple of bourbon highballs. She’d found two turkey legs at the butcher’s on 53rd Street, and after cutting pockets along their meaty ends she stuffed them with mushrooms and breadcrumbs, then roasted them slowly in the oven while she made succotash and a box of wild rice she’d saved for a special occasion.

  When they sat down to eat, she brought out a bottle of Chianti from the drawer she used in the bedroom. Nessheim filled two sherry glasses from the straw-encased bottle and toasted Stacey. As they started to eat he said, ‘How did you find the Chianti?’

  ‘Top secret.’

  ‘Was it Mrs Fermi?’

  ‘That’s classified information. You won’t get a word out of me.’

  He laughed. ‘You like her, don’t you?’

  ‘Very much. We’re having lunch next week.’

  ‘You told me. She seems great. Enrico – I don’t know about him. I like him well enough – he’s friendly, and a pretty regular guy for someone who’s won a Nobel Prize.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I just sense there’s something going on with him. I don’t mean his work – he’s not allowed to talk about it in any case. But I think something else is bothering him, and I wish I knew what it was.’

  ‘It has to be tough for him living here. He’s not your average immigrant, now, is he? There’s a lot riding on his work.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I wasn’t born yesterday. I can tell from the way the others defer to him. Not just because he’s their boss – he’s also their leader. I don’t have the faintest idea about it, but I know it’s important. And I don’t think you have to worry about him. It’s the other guys I’d be watching.’

  ‘Which ones?’ He was amused and intrigued by the thought of Stacey sizing them up.

  ‘That moose man.’

  ‘Nadelhoffer?’

  ‘That’s the one. And the creepy guy – Kalvin. Though there’s nothing Calvinist about him. He looks at women like they’re turkey legs – what bit’s chewable, what bit’s bone?’

  Nessheim laughed. ‘So what are you doing tomorrow?’

  ‘There’re no classes because of the holiday. I thought maybe I’d knit you a muffler.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘What about you?

  ‘I was going to drive up to Fort Sheridan and try to find a soldier for Guttman.’

  ‘Is that the guy who called?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So he’s your boss? Now I get it.’

  Nessheim didn’t react.

  ‘Can I come?’ she asked.

  ‘No way. I can do it Monday instead – then we could spend tomorrow together.’

  ‘Did Guttman say it was important?’

  ‘Guttman says everything’s important.’ Like Groves, he thought, recalling Fermi’s description.

  ‘Then you’d better do it tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m a law student, remember. Fielding thinks I’m a good one, too.’

  ‘Law school’s faute de mieux for you, Nessheim. You wanted to do your bit. Well, Guttman’s giving you a chance to.’

  ‘I’d rather spend the day with you.’

  ‘There’s a war on, remember. Until it’s finished, “rathers” don’t count. You can have them in your head – who doesn’t? – but you have to leave them there until the war is over. Anyway, you can give me a lift downtown on your way.’

  ‘Why? What are you doing in the Loop?’

  ‘Christmas is in a few weeks, you ninny. If I’m not knitting you a muffler, I’d better buy you the equivalent. Hyde Park may have a great university and a superior intellectual life, but the shopping’s lousy.’

  The Drive had been well ploughed and there was for the moment no more snow. He drove his own car, an old but reliable Dodge, and dropped Stacey outside Marshall Field’s, arranging to meet her at one o’clock outside Carson Pirie Scott. It took him forty minutes to reach Fort Sheridan, and once there he had trouble locating anyone who would help. The original ‘fort’ had been swamped by the emergence of a small city – Nessheim had read that over 100,000 soldiers had already been processed through the place, and the empty lots and parkland surrounding the original fort now held row after row of barracks. A military policeman with a white helmet and olive green uniform directed him through the complicated grid of new streets to the commander’s headquarters, underneath an enormous water tower that had been built in the previous century. Inside, he found the offices full of clerks scurrying in semi-panic, like the newsroom in The Front Page.

  He also found that his credentials didn’t cut much ice in this military environment. FBI badge or no, a domestic cop didn’t hold much sway among people getting ready to go to war – or preparing others to do so. After a runaround from the Commander’s office and a blank refusal from the Quartermaster’s secretary, he tried the payroll department in desperation. A young woman with wavy hair and a corporal’s stripes proved more receptive than her colleagues. Taking the slip of paper from Nessheim, she went to check it against a table full of shoeboxes, each holding several hundred index cards. She came back with three of them. ‘More than one Bergen, I’m afraid. Do you have a first name?’

  Nessheim shook his head. ‘No. But I think he’d probably hail from New York. Does that help?

  The woman looked at the cards. ‘A bit. I’ve got one from Iowa, one from Jersey, and one from New York.’

  ‘New York City?’

  ‘Beats me. It says Liberty, New York.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’ Nessheim knew it well; it was the town nearest a resort where he had once been unofficially trained on a mission for Guttman. It was also a hundred miles from New York City, and since Guttman had said the man Bergen worked as an elevator serviceman in Manhattan, he could not have commuted. Nor have moved there to work – Liberty was a nice spot, but a little one, and Nessheim doubted there would be a single elevator to service in the town.

  ‘How about the third guy?’ he asked.

  The woman picked the card out as though it was a winning raffle ticket. She was enjoying herself. ‘Elizabeth, New Jersey,’ she said like a bingo caller.

  ‘That’s the one. Now can you tell me where I can find him? Or has he been shipped out?’

  She was studying the card and her face suddenly darkened. ‘Was he a friend of yours?’

  ‘Never met him in my whole life. Why’d you say “was”?’

  ‘He died.’

  ‘In combat?’ That was quick, he thought. Americans had only just arrived in North Africa; and how quickly could Bergen have made it to the Pacific?

  ‘No, he died here.’

  ‘Natural causes?’

  ‘It doesn’t say. What it does say is it involved the MPs.’

  ‘How do I find them?’ he asked, dreading the thought of finding his way again through the morass of buildings.

  She saw his face and laughed. ‘Don’t look so gloomy. The MPs are right next door.’

  He had to wait a good half-hour while
the captain in charge, a man named Percival with a Kentucky twang, decided he needed to finish his early lunch, brought in on a tray by one of the ranks, all by himself. When at last Nessheim was ushered in, Captain Percival said curtly, ‘State your business.’

  Nessheim explained who he was. Percival made a point of not examining his credentials. Nessheim said, ‘A soldier died here in the last few weeks. I wanted to know about the circumstances of his death.’

  The Captain exhaled to show his indifference. ‘His name?’

  ‘Bergen – Edward Donald Bergen, native of Elizabeth, New Jersey. I don’t know the regiment or what he was doing here – Basic Training, I assume.’

  ‘Do you know how many new recruits come through here each week? Pick a number, add a zero, and you’ll still be short.’

  ‘Sure, but how many of them die while they’re here? I can’t believe it would be hard to check this.’

  The Captain shook his head. ‘But it takes time, valuable time. Maybe I haven’t got that kind of time, mister, even if you do.’

  ‘I’m just asking for a little cooperation,’ Nessheim said levelly.

  ‘And if I say no?’

  Nessheim sighed and sat down, without invitation. ‘If you say no then I’ll leave. Empty-handed and unhappy. You don’t want that.’

  ‘Aw, don’t I now?’ said the Captain sarcastically. ‘You Feds really get to me, you know. You come in with your dark suits and white shirts and shiny ties and tell us what to do. If we baulk then you go all tough guy, just like you’re doing to me. Yet you have no jurisdiction here – none at all. So don’t try and scare me, bud. J. Edgar Hoover could walk in here himself and I wouldn’t be obliged to dance. Got it?’

  Nessheim sighed and took a deep breath. Then he looked at the wall behind Percival as he spoke quickly but quietly. ‘I got it, all right. And that’s why, when I leave here empty-handed, I’m not going to call the Bureau in Washington. I am going to pick up the phone and call General Leslie Groves. He’s a big bullish sonofabitch nobody likes, but he gets the job done. In case you haven’t heard of him, he built the Pentagon. Right now he’s got thirty thousand men building things all over the country. I will tell him how at his direct request I came here, looking for information about the death of his wife’s beloved nephew, but that unfortunately a certain Captain Percival felt he could not help me out in this slightly embarrassing task – embarrassing because I know there are more important things to do, for both you and me. Anyway, after this General Groves will go up against your commanding officer, and unless your guy’s a general too, I’d put my money on Groves – though you know better than me how the army works. So it’s your call what I do next, Captain.’