‘The Russians. Who else?’
Groves blinked in disbelief. ‘Sorry?’
‘The Russians seem remarkably well-informed about what you’re doing, particularly at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. But what they don’t know is that our Department of Applied Mathematics in Berlin has been breaking their ciphers for the last three years.’ He paused and looked first at Oppenheimer and then at Groves. The look of stupefaction on both their faces was plain for all to see. ‘Oh my God,’ said Standfluss. ‘You didn’t know, did you?’
Groves made no reply but walked over and pressed the buzzer next to the door. ‘Sir?’ a metallic voice answered through the loudspeaker.
‘General Groves here. Escort our two visitors back to their rooms.’ The two Marines reappeared and the scientists were led away. Groves picked up the telephone and as he dialled he spoke to Oppenheimer. ‘Robert, you’d better stay here. You need to listen to this.’ The operator came on the line. ‘It’s General Groves. Put me through to the President’s office: it’s urgent.’
Chapter Three
To Britain – irony not lost on anybody. Food even worse than the Americans’. No coffee, just vile black tea with milk – revolting. Accommodation dry, warm and have had first bath in days but no clean clothes. Heavy rain.
Never want to see another aircraft as long as I live. Interminable flight via Iceland to Newfoundland and then on to somewhere in America – they won’t tell us where we are and A. suspects the worse. R. and S. still with us but have been told they’re moving on tomorrow. Frustrating not to understand what anyone says and without R. and S. to translate for us, things are going to be difficult. Bitterly cold but our hut is over-heated. Clean clothes at last. Food marginally better. Homesick, tired, frightened.
*
Maryland USA – the present day
New Horizons Magazine journalist Lisa Greenberg looked nervously in the rear-view mirror of her silver BMW. They were still there, four cars back, just like they’d been on the way towards the town of Cunningham two hours earlier. Then, she’d dismissed it as a coincidence. Now she was certain it wasn’t. The events of the last couple of weeks had made her jumpy enough and this was all the confirmation she needed. She slowed down, the black Lexus slowed down; she accelerated, the black Lexus did the same. When she pulled into a gas station it went past but the next time she checked her mirrors a few miles down the road, it was back.
She had to do something – the question was what. Approaching the outskirts of Frederick she turned left across the traffic and headed towards Walkersville. For about half a mile her mirrors were empty, but when she looked again, there they were. Panic rose in her throat. As she scrabbled on the passenger seat for her handbag to try and retrieve her cell-phone she took her eyes off the road and it was only the hooting of the truck’s air-horns that averted a head-on collision. She dropped the bag and fixed her eyes on the road once more. As she rounded the bend she saw ahead the familiar bill-boards and garish neon of yet another shopping mall spread across the landscape.
It wasn’t a particularly beautiful stretch of countryside and the mall was no uglier than any other. Ironic, really, she thought. It was just the kind of thing that poor Arnie Hillman and his wife were fighting their hopeless rearguard action to keep out of their back yard. She felt bad about misleading them. They’d been genuinely touched that she’d driven all the way from DC to Cunningham just to interview them; that a national magazine like New Horizons would be interested enough to tell the story of a mom and pop store that was about to be put out of business by a mall opening up on their doorstep – that’s what she had led them to believe, anyway.
Lisa caught sight of the familiar blue and white sign of a post office and pulled into the parking lot it shared with three other shops and a diner. Behind her, the black Lexus cruised serenely past and out of sight. Slowly, her breathing returned to normal and she wiped her clammy palms on her skirt.
It was the fact she’d been able to talk her way into the Hillmans’ confidence that made it worse. She’d recorded what they’d said and had even taken notes. What she knew and they didn’t, was that the recorder’s memory had already been purged, the notes were in the trash of the gas station six miles south of Cunningham, the mall was going to get built and by her reckoning their store would last no more than another eighteen months. She’d duped them and then she’d stolen from them: well, not really stealing, not anything that mattered, she reasoned, but it had to be done. She’d asked to use the bathroom and, once there, had taken the head from Arnie’s razor, dropped it into a plastic food bag which she’d sealed, and then replaced it with a new one from the pack on the shelf above the sink. Not really stealing.
With trembling hands she took out her cell-phone and was about to dial but then stopped. Who was she going to call? The police? They’d think she was crazy – maybe it was the police or even the FBI who were following her. Then what? She hadn’t seen the Lexus’s licence plate, no one had harmed her and now the car was long gone. Phone the magazine’s office? And say what? She could hear the conversation. You’re being followed – ok, so where are you, what the hell are you doing out there when you’re supposed to be in DC talking to Senator Pauli about such trivial matters as whether or not he’s going to run for the Democratic presidential nomination; and anyway, what the hell are we supposed to do about it? If you think someone’s stalking you, call the goddam police for chrissakes.
She put the phone back in her bag and took out her notebook. She scribbled a note to her colleague, Cathy Stenmark, got out of the car and went into the post office where she bought an envelope and some stamps. She folded the plastic food bag as small as it would go and, along with the note, stuffed it into the envelope, which she addressed to Cathy at the New Horizons office and put it into the mail.
Nervously, she returned to the parking lot. There was no sign of the Lexus so she started her car and ignoring every speed limit in the county, headed back toward Interstate 270, DC and, she hoped, safety. By the time she reached the Beltway the evening rush-hour traffic had already started to back up and so she decided to head for home rather than the office; after all, since Senator Pauli was in town for the rest of the week, there was no rush. Every few seconds she checked her mirrors for any hint of someone following, her heart leaping at the presence of any black sedan, but despite the scares there was no sign of the Lexus.
Night was falling as Lisa turned onto 95 South and for the first time in several hours, she began to relax. Taking the spur onto US1, she turned off the car radio and started to mull over the delicate task that lay ahead. It wasn’t going to be easy and she’d have to confront Senator Pauli with what she’d found eventually, but to do so she’d need concrete proof, proof that she didn’t yet have but which was almost within reach.
She hadn’t been sure about Pauli at first – backing into the limelight was the expression that Time magazine had used – but the more she learned about him, the more he had seemed as decent and as straightforward as he made himself out to be. After all, his home state didn’t exactly have a long history of returning Democrats to the Senate, so he must be doing something right to have won a second term. And now, if the rumours were correct, he was about to throw his hat into the electoral ring against a one-term Republican presidential incumbent and potentially against a list of heavyweight fellow Democrats who’d been waiting for just this chance since the last round of primaries.
Lisa smiled as she thought about the controversy her most recent article for New Horizons magazine had sparked. By concentrating on his past life as a businessman and its possible effects on tactical voting and fund raising, she had pushed Senator Pauli even further into the limelight’s unforgiving glare. Because of his background in banking, she had written, Senator Eric Pauli had not only the knowledge but also the right connections to help fund a campaign, should he choose to stand. The article quoted “unnamed sources” among the hedge fund and broker communities who felt that if the GOP’s Presid
ent Christina Lopez and her government really were going to get kicked out of office after one term, as some of the polls suggested, then it might be better to throw their weight behind a moderate Democrat who at least understood banking and international finance. The alternative might be a big-government liberal in the Oval Office, just itching to use the financial sector as a bottomless pork-barrel. But for now, the hedgies and Lisa alike would have to be patient: the senator was keeping them all waiting.
From their first meeting at his rooms in the Russell Senate Office Building in DC, Lisa had been aware of his desire to keep her and the rest of the media at arm’s length. During subsequent meetings and as she got to know him better, the rapport between them had grown to the point where he had agreed to an exclusive – she would never have dared to ask, but the idea had come from Pauli himself. But now, what she had found meant everything had changed – his campaign might be dead before it had even started.
A snake of glowing tail-lights: the line of traffic came to another halt. How was she going to break it to him? How would he react? Maybe the people in the Lexus were onto the same story. Then what? Ahead, the traffic signals turned green and the impatient hooting from the car behind snapped her back to reality. Nearly home now.
When she had bought an apartment in Woodbridge ten years earlier, her friends had questioned her sanity. So it had views over the Occoquan River but it was a nose-to-tail grind of a commute into downtown DC each day and the town had seen better times – a tired industrial sprawl clinging to a muddy river would be the kindest thing anyone could’ve said about it. But that was ten years ago. A combination of speculative development and families looking for somewhere safer than DC to raise their kids had brought an influx of new money, and Woodbridge had begun to move up-market: the low-rent boat-yards were now expensive marinas, scrubland had been transformed into manicured green and fairway. Real estate values in the area were now a one-way bet and that suited Lisa Greenberg just fine.
She left the BMW in the underground garage and took the elevator to the fourth floor of the apartment block, all thoughts of being followed gone from her mind. As she unlocked the door she noticed the lights were still on – wasn’t the first time she’d left the house with an early-morning fuzzy head and either left the door unlocked or the lights on so she thought nothing of it. However, as she went into the kitchen to start rounding up some left-overs to transform into supper, a noise from the hallway made her start. As she swung round, she saw the pistol levelled at her face. ‘Don’t move, don’t say a word or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off.’
Lisa dropped the plate she was holding and it shattered on the kitchen floor. Rooted to the spot with fear she slowly raised her hands.
‘Good,’ said the intruder. ‘Now where’s the letter?’
The Prince William County Police Marine Unit were first on the scene. ‘Where did you find it?’ asked the Lieutenant.
The fisherman jerked his thumb back downriver from the Woodbridge marina towards the twin arches of the railroad bridge over the Occoquan River. ‘Down there: I’ve been out all day, striped bass are running. So I’m coming back upstream an’ saw something snagged against the centre pile of the bridge. Y’know how it is – in the dark I thought it was just a yacht tender broken loose so I hooked it up, got a line aboard and towed it back.’
‘Then what?’
He shrugged. ‘Y’know, just tied it to the dock. Didn’t seem to be a boat’s name or anything on it and I was gonna go in the office an’ tell ’em when I saw what I thought was a shoe or something. Well, I takes a closer look and there’s this poor lady head down in the water with her foot caught in the grab rope. So I fetched a couple of guys from the bar and we pulled her out … but she was long gone. Then I called 911: that’s it.’
The police surgeon held up a wallet in a gloved hand. ‘Driver’s licence belongs to one Lisa Sarah Greenberg. Mean anything to you, Lieutenant?’
‘Nope. I’ll go check.’ The Lieutenant went over to the car and picked up the radio. A few moments later he returned. ‘We’ve got a missing persons for a woman of that name – Woodbridge resident reported missing by a colleague on Wednesday: not been coming to work, not answering her phone and lights on 24/7 in her apartment. Single, white, aged thirty-nine.’
‘That checks with her licence,’ said the surgeon. ‘There’s an Alcoholics Anonymous card in here too. Guess she fell off more than the wagon.’
Chapter Four
Allowed out for a walk but A. having problems with bad back so came in after five minutes. Still cold and wet so not as if we could get very far even if we did try to leave. German-speaking officer came back with radio today. A. hates jazz so he kept turning it off. Nothing to read but American newspapers. Don’t understand a word and no idea who the pictures are of.
*
London, the present day
James Atkinson looked up from his array of four computer screens and swore. The bottom right screen, which displayed prices on his Bloomberg monitor, was the problem: the way things were going, he was going to close the position out at a £30,000 loss. One of his junior traders had taken the position, had miscalculated the hedge and things were moving further offside with every minute. Owing to the illiquid, volatile nature of the stocks and the fact that he was bored, James had decided to trade out of it himself.
A few weeks ago, a loss of that size would have hurt; conversations would have been had off the floor and desk head and product manager would have had one of their usual heart-to-hearts about bonus cuts and formal written warnings, but now none of it mattered. It was Thursday of an interminable week: his last week on the proprietary trading desk, the last week for all five “prop” traders, their three assistants, Sophie the secretary, and the last week of the team’s contribution to a positive cashflow of £25 million per year for the bank. But by one of those strange anomalies whereby investment banks so effortlessly create chaos out of order, the payroll budget came out of one pot, the profit went into another. So when the divisional head who owned the payroll threw his teddy harder and further than the owner of the positive cashflow, the board decided to close the desk and fire its staff.
As is the way when a profitable unit is shut down because of a clash of egos, the bank’s senior managers did their poor best to put a positive spin on events by claiming in the press release that the decision had been prompted by “a mature and considered desire to reduce the bank’s exposure to activities which involve balance sheet risk and to concentrate fully on servicing our clients”: no one inside the industry was fooled for a moment, no one outside the industry even cared – they just carried on hating bankers.
James had been head of the equity proprietary trading desk for the last three years. He was thirty-five and knew that his age and seniority were going to make it almost impossible to get a job at a similar level unless market conditions suddenly changed for the better: all their competitors in the City, Canary Wharf and even New York were letting people go – at times the decisions as to who went and who stayed seemed to owe more to teams of monkeys sticking pins in lists of names than any form of logic known to anyone outside HR or the banks’ senior management. Even the hedge funds were getting a mauling as volatile markets over-reacted to every rumour. As James never tired of telling his team, “The markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” and in the current climate it remained just as true as on the day that Keynes had first said it.
Thursday afternoon: not long now, he thought. Since the axe fell, they’d spent the last ten days closing out positions, unwinding derivative hedges, eliminating pairs trades and discreetly removing any trace of their passage, or even their very existence, from the market. By the end of the day, James planned that all their stock and cash positions should be flat and if there were any settlement issues in the aftermath, well that was what operations and the equity finance desk were there for. They’d all agreed to come in at ten on the following day in order to wrap up any loose end
s, collect all the relevant tax and end-of-employment forms from HR, say their goodbyes, call their head-hunters again, listen to the pious and entirely bogus best wishes of the head of the equity division and then go out for lunch: a Friday lunch that if all went well should see them well into Saturday morning.
James was still asleep, fully clothed and with the lights on, when at half-past eleven on Saturday morning he was woken by the phone. Miraculously, the beer scooter had delivered him home in one piece – how, he had no idea. Of the previous evening, he remembered nothing beyond the point at which the restaurant had closed and they’d gone on to a club somewhere. Right now, all that mattered was finding the phone and answering it without being sick. When he picked it up, a voice he didn’t recognise was calling his name.
‘James, James. Is that you? Can you hear me? Have I got the right number? Is that James?’
It was a man’s voice, one he didn’t recognise, and he mumbled a reply.
‘It’s Bill,’ said the voice. If that was supposed to clarify things, it didn’t. The caller sounded elderly – silly old sod’s got the wrong number, he thought. The voice continued. ‘You know, Bill. How are you? Haven’t spoken to you for ages.’
James racked his brains. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong number.’
‘That is James? James Atkinson?’
‘It is, yes.’
‘It’s Bill. Bill Todd. Your uncle, you clot.’
James’s head slowly cleared. ‘Bill, I’m terribly sorry, I was expecting someone else that’s all. It’s been simply ages – this is a lovely surprise,’ he lied. ‘How are you anyway?’
‘Bloody awful, that’s why I’m calling you.’
James held the phone to his ear and flopped his head back onto the pillow. The room was in a terrible state and his head was splitting: the last thing he needed was a call from a relative he’d not seen in five years and who’d chosen now of all times to treat him to a detailed inventory of his ailments.
The Manhattan Deception Page 3
