Pantheon

by Sam Bourne

Now they were by a long, ornamental stretch of water with grass on either side. James estimated the length at less than half a mile, perhaps a third. The sunlight was reflecting off the water, making it hard to see. He used his left hand to shield his eyes, aggravating his shoulder, and forced himself to ignore the pain. All he had to do, he told himself, was keep McAndrew in view.

  They were no more than two hundred yards from the end when he heard a voice that made him shudder.

  ‘Stop right there.’

  It was from behind him. James pictured a gun, silencer attached, as it had been on the train, aimed at his back. Or perhaps it was the police: they had found the corpse by the railway, had realized that no one else had been riding the overnight train. He turned around slowly.

  ‘Eddie Harrison as I live and breathe! Well, I’ll be.’

  Standing, arms outstretched, was a round-faced man in a white suit, his face glistening with sweat in the clammy Washington heat. ‘Congressman, always good to see you,’ Harrison said. James let out a gale of air in relief.

  ‘Now, Ed, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this metal embargo for Japan. You sure you can’t get Luce to run something-’

  James looked over his shoulder to see that McAndrew was still striding ahead. This delay had cost him valuable seconds and therefore yards. He wanted to sprint, to catch up, but feared that could trigger another bellow from this blasted congressman: ‘Hey, where you off to, son?’ It would be disastrous to make any kind of scene. Raised voices and McAndrew would turn around.

  Eventually desperation propelled him. He muttered an excuse, swivelled round and carried on walking. He could hear protests from the Congressman, the reporter apologizing on his behalf, as James quickened his pace. He looked ahead but could see McAndrew nowhere.

  James’s heart began to thud. In front of him was a crowd of women, advancing in that slow amble characteristic of out-of-towners. They were blocking his view. Had the Dean realized he had been tailed and deliberately shielded himself behind this group of sightseers? Damn.

  James broke into a jog, always a calamity during surveillance. At intervals he leapt, endeavouring to see over the heads of the women. No sign of McAndrew. He looked to his left and right: had the Dean taken a different route or, realizing he had been discovered, aborted his plan altogether?

  James had come to the end of the Reflecting Pool now. Before him was a vast edifice in white stone, a Greek Doric temple of columns, fronted by a wide, steep staircase. So this was the memorial to their President Lincoln. How ingenious of the Dean to choose this place for whatever move he planned to make, rather than skulking about in some back alley. Jorge would have been impressed: hide in plain sight.

  But McAndrew had vanished.

  Suddenly the pain in his shoulder violently asserted itself. James put his hand to the wound as he squinted up to look at the staircase. There were too many people, all in motion. If you checked one side you risked missing someone on the other. Scan one section and the section above or below had already changed. In this shifting throng, McAndrew had concealed himself. James’s shoulder was screaming. He had been outwitted.

  Now Harrison was at his side. ‘Where is he?’ he asked unhelpfully. James nodded toward the steps, then added ‘Come on!’ He took the first two in a single leap.

  Maybe the Dean had ascended to the memorial itself, entering the temple at the summit, but even as they climbed the steps James forced down the fear that they might have lost their subject for good.

  Behind him, he could hear the reporter breathing heavily. James guessed they were both thinking the same thing. That Preston McAndrew had received Nazi documents with a direct bearing on the war effort and, thanks to their failed attempt at surveillance, was about to get away with it.

  ‘Keep walking,’ Harrison said suddenly, his tone urgent. ‘Ahead, two o’clock.’

  James’s heart raced in anticipation at seeing his prey again. He could see a man — brown suit, felt hat even in this heat — walking with an intent that set him apart from the tourists, but it was not McAndrew.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Brown suit.’

  ‘I see him, but-’

  ‘Just a hunch. Keep an eye on him.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Karl Moran, Chicago Tribune. Biggest anti-war paper in the country.’

  ‘I don’t-’

  ‘Just watch.’

  They slowed their pace, letting Moran reach the top first.

  ‘Give me the camera,’ James said. ‘I’ll go right, you go left. Remember, McAndrew won’t recognize you. If Moran sees you, it’s a coincidence.’

  James dipped his head and climbed those last two steps. A moment later he was aware of a change in temperature, the close, muggy heat replaced by the cool of marble. His eyes took a second to adjust to the shade.

  He stole only the briefest glance upward, to see the largest statue he had ever seen: a seated, stone Lincoln the size of a mythic god. He and the others in here looked like ants at the president’s feet. And there, on the other side of this shaded space, next to the engraved words of the Gettysburg Address, stood Karl Moran, talking to a man whose hat was pulled low over his face — a man who, James knew at once, was Preston McAndrew.

  James raised the camera, just in time to see the men shake hands and part. He did not catch the moment of exchange, but in Moran’s hand there now rested a white, foolscap envelope. The journalist turned sharply and headed for the staircase.

  Now, James told himself. Now. It would be so easy to walk those few paces, grab McAndrew, bring him to the ground if necessary, watch him gasp for air. The desire for revenge bubbled up inside him once more, hot and red. He would make that man pay for whatever wicked trick he had just performed, for depriving him of his wife and child, for murdering George Lund…

  He took a step forward, ready to do it, even here, with all these people. He could feel himself throbbing, the blood thumping through him. But reason, the same rationality he had come to curse, held him back. He repeated to himself what he had to remember: that the threat to his country now was not McAndrew, but those documents. It was the envelope, and whatever dastardly information it contained, not the Dean, that had to be stopped. McAndrew had given those papers to Moran because he wanted them to be published so the goal now — the only goal that mattered — was preventing that from happening. To reveal himself at this moment, by apprehending, even killing McAndrew would not stop that. Rage could not help him now.

  And so, biting down hard, he smothered the urge seething through him, watching instead through the viewfinder of this heavy, newsman’s camera as Preston McAndrew adjusted his hat, touched the cuff of his jacket and, with the tiniest smile of satisfaction on his lips, walked just a few yards away from him out of the shade, back down the steps and into the sunlight. How James longed to wipe the smirk off that face, to shatter it with the same force with which he had despatched that goon on the train. He swallowed the rising bile of frustration that rose in his throat.

  Looking down, he could see Ed Harrison heading down the steps too. James caught up with him. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I think we need to have a word with my esteemed colleague, Mr Moran.’

  ‘What are you going to say? How on earth are you going to persuade him to-’

  The slower-footed Moran was within sight and within reach now. Harrison smiled. ‘Oh, I’m not going to say anything. It’s just I know one thing about the man from the Trib that your Professor McAndrew does not.’ He glanced at James. ‘That for Karl Moran, it’s never too early for a martini. I hope you can hold your drink, Zennor.’

  This, James concluded with admiration, was the secret of Edward P Harrison’s success. He had noticed it even in Spain, when Harrison was thumping away at the double bass in that impromptu Olympians’ jazz band, knocking back the Sangre de Toro with the rest of them — yet somehow remaining standing when everyone else was keeling over, upright enough to woo one of Florence’s swimming team
-mates once he had regretfully concluded that Florence herself was immune to his rugged adventurer charms.

  Now James could only look on in awe as Ed filled and refilled the glass of the Chicago Tribune ’s correspondent in Washington. He had made a brilliant show of running into Moran on the walk back down Constitution Avenue, calculating that it would be too much of a coincidence for them both to be at the Lincoln Memorial at the same time.

  ‘Moran! Hold up,’ he had cried, slapping him on the back. ‘I need a man to celebrate with me and you’re just the fellow. What do you say to a pick-me-up at the Old Ebbitt Grill? Oh, and I’m buying.’

  Moran — his hair ginger, his skin florid and his nostrils permanently flared — had glanced guiltily at the white envelope in his hand. ‘I really ought to get back to the office, Edward.’

  ‘Please, it’s Ed. And I shall have you back at your typewriter within the hour. That’s what, Karl, eight hours before deadline? That should be enough, even for you. And remember, today’s the first day of August. And what do we always say?’

  ‘Nothing happens in August,’ the two men chorused.

  ‘Now, meet my friend Jim, photographer for the Picture Post.’ James raised a silent hand, not sure if he was meant to risk the revelation of his accent. ‘And let’s get ourselves some refreshment.’

  Ed kept chatting away, clearly keen to get to the bar before Moran had a chance to change his mind. Then, as they turned onto 15th Street, the three of them walking three abreast heading north past the White House, Ed looked over at James. ‘Oh, you needed to pick up some supplies, didn’t you, Jim?’

  ‘That’s right,’ James answered, entirely baffled. ‘Some new film.’

  ‘And you were going to get some stationery for me, weren’t you?’ At that Harrison had given the merest glance in the direction of Moran’s hands and James understood.

  So now he watched as Moran downed what, by James’s count, was his fourth martini. At long last, the reporter who had been expounding on the scandal he was sure was brewing in Henry Morgenthau’s Treasury Department, how he reckoned Harold Ickes must hold some ‘stinking dirt’ on the president to have stayed in the Cabinet so long and why he couldn’t stand his father-in-law, finally rose to his feet and, swaying, moved towards the men’s room. To the horror of both Harrison and James, he took the white envelope with him.

  ‘That’s it,’ Harrison said, so sober he might as well have been drinking tea. ‘We’re just going to have to prise the damn documents from his hand. I’m going to pay a visit to Mr Moran in the men’s room.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ James said immediately. ‘You do that and, two minutes later, Moran will be telling McAndrew we’re onto him. He’ll have time to rethink.’

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘He mustn’t know we know.’

  ‘Damn, damn, damn.’

  ‘Here,’ James said, handing him the white envelope he had bought nearly an hour ago. ‘Let’s stick to the original plan.’

  Harrison quickly opened his briefcase and pulled out a series of papers, which he scanned and assessed, then deposited inside the envelope. ‘At least these should keep him busy,’ he muttered.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Just a story I’ve been working on.’

  ‘A real one?’

  ‘Real enough to confuse Moran, even when he straightens up. Sprat to catch a mackerel.’

  Moran was back. James had known only one or two dipsomaniacs in his time, one a friend of his parents, but they all had the same telltale trait: the smell of alcohol oozed from their pores. Moran was no different. But he was still sufficiently alert that, as he sat down, his hand remained on the precious envelope.

  Harrison resumed the offensive, more talk, more laughter, more drink. But none of it was working. James, who had mainly kept quiet, murmuring his assent, adding the odd chuckle but no more, now took the floor.

  ‘You know,’ he began. ‘I was in Spain during the war.’

  ‘ Covering it, for the Picture Post,’ Harrison added quickly.

  ‘Of course. Which is how I met this reprobate.’ James pointed affectionately in Ed’s direction. ‘And I got talking to some of the men, the volunteers. You know, you were deemed unfit for service if you couldn’t stand up straight, touch your toes, stand up straight, touch your toes — five times in ten seconds. They all had to do it. Hemingway, all of them. Not as easy it sounds.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Moran. ‘Anyone can do that.’

  ‘Harder than you think,’ said James.

  Moran drained his glass and rose, with surprising grace, to his feet. There were others in the bar now, the early lunch crowd, a few of whom turned around to watch. In a gesture that was almost balletic he sent his arms soaring towards the sky, then flung them down in the direction of his toes, then pulled himself back upright. There was a small smattering of applause from the other end of the room.

  ‘You didn’t touch,’ said Harrison.

  ‘What?’ Moran slurred.

  ‘Your toes. You didn’t touch your toes.’

  ‘Come on.’

  Moran had another go, his nostrils flaring wide as he went down as if to draw in more oxygen. This time he lingered as his fingertips drew level with his calves, seeking to find the extra flexibility that might carry them to his feet. Keeping his eyes on the Tribune reporter, James picked up Moran’s envelope and replaced it on the table with the one he and Harrison had just compiled.

  Moran was back up again now, his face red from the exertion.

  ‘Three more,’ James said, pretending to time the Tribune man’s efforts on his watch.

  Down he went, giving James a second to slip the original envelope — the one that had passed from Stoiber to McAndrew to Moran — into Harrison’s briefcase. Then he sat back, heart beating. At last it was done.

  ‘See, I did it,’ said Moran, exultant as he returned to his regular altitude.

  ‘As good a man as Hemingway,’ said Ed, admiringly.

  ‘And now I’ll be on my way.’ Moran picked up his envelope and walked towards the exit, where the sun was streaming in to drown these noontime drinkers in reproving light. He took a peek inside the envelope and then turned back towards the table, a furious look on his face.

  James’s heart skipped a beat.

  ‘You didn’t let me pay for my shout,’ he said to Harrison, in mock admonition.

  ‘My treat,’ said Ed, raising his hand. ‘Like I said, I felt like celebrating.’

  Ed insisted they wait a good five minutes before repairing to the private snug known only to the bartender’s favourite guests, just in case Moran came back for more.

  James could not help but stare at the briefcase, inside which lay McAndrew’s secret. ‘Patience, Jimbo,’ Ed said, more than once. ‘We gotta play this one real cool.’

  To make the minutes pass, James asked the American what papers Moran would now be looking at in the office of the Chicago Tribune. What sprat had he served up in place of the mackerel they were waiting to examine?

  ‘Not a bad story, as it happens, though it will confuse poor Karl Moran and confuse his bureau chief even more. It’s evidence there’s a German agent working on the staff of a United States congressman.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. And very active he is too. Writing full-page advertisements for the national newspapers, timed to appear during the Republican convention — all bought and paid for by the government of Germany, no less.’

  ‘And you gave that to Moran?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been working on it for days. Mind you, I don’t think he’ll use a word of it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because the Tribune is the Defend America First paper: they’re not going to crap on their own doorstep, if you’ll pardon my French.’

  ‘So he’ll know it’s fake straight away?’

  ‘It’s not fake. The papers are real. But he won’t understand why McAndrew will have leaked them. If I were him, I’d gues
s there was some kind of tension among the America Firsters, and that I was being used by one faction to damage another. He may think McAndrew has a beef with my senior congressman. And if he knows the Dean’s little parcel comes from the Embassy-’

  ‘He’ll think the Germans are trying to discredit the politician.’

  ‘Maybe my congressman has outlived his usefulness. The point is, it will take time for Moran to decode. Which is what we need. So long as McAndrew didn’t give any hint to Moran about what he was getting; if he did, Karl will be disappointed as well as confused. Nothing we can do about that. Come, that’s our five minutes.’

  They walked through the wood-panelled booths, past a small staircase and then into a room no bigger than a first-class rail compartment. There was a fireplace, mercifully unlit in this moist summer weather. Doubtless, this town was full of rooms like this, where the business of power was played out.

  Harrison placed his briefcase on the table, pulled out the white envelope and passed it to James. ‘Reporters’ code of honour. You reeled this fish in, Jimbo; you get to slit it open.’

  James was surprised to see that his hands were trembling. He was nervous, he was excited; but above all he was exhausted. He had had next to nothing to drink, slipping most of his martinis into Moran’s glass, but he was light-headed. Taking a deep breath, he pulled out the wad of papers.

  There were six separate documents, each consisting of two or three sheets paperclipped together. He read the first lines on the first page: London May 15th 1940, 6pm Most Secret and Personal. President Roosevelt from Former Naval Person Although I have changed my office, I am sure you would not wish me to discontinue our intimate, private correspondence. As you are no doubt aware, the scene has darkened swiftly…

  It took him another paragraph or two to realize what he held in his hands. If necessary, we shall continue the war alone and we are not afraid of that. But I trust you realize, Mr President, that the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long…

  ‘Good God up above,’ James said, covering his mouth. ‘Good God.’

  Harrison read each sheet after James had finished, alternately gasping and swearing, swearing and gasping. When they had both read Franklin D Roosevelt’s secret message of June 13th, with its language of redoubled efforts to help because of ‘our faith in and our support of the ideals for which the Allies are fighting’, Harrison shook his head silently.