Restless (19 page)

'Good old Angus. Say hello from me.'

In Manhattan the taxi dropped Romer at the Rockefeller Center – where the British Security Coordination, as it was blandly called, now occupied two full floors. Eva had been there once and had been amazed to see the number of personnel: rows of offices off corridors, secretaries, staff running around, typewriters, telephones, teleprinters – hundreds and hundreds of people, like a real business, she thought, a true espionage corporation with its headquarters in New York. She often wondered how the British government would feel if there were hundreds of American intelligence staff occupying several floors of a building in Oxford Street, say – somehow she thought the level of tolerance might be different, but the Americans had not seemed to mind, had raised no objection, and the British Security Coordination accordingly grew and grew and grew. However, Romer, ever the irregular, tried to keep his team dispersed or at arm's length from the Center. Sylvia worked there but Blytheswood was at the radio station WLUR, Angus Woolf (ex-Reuters) was now at the Overseas News Agency, and Eva and Morris Devereux ran the team of translators at Transoceanic Press, the small American news agency – a near replica of the Agence Nadal – that specialised in Hispanic and South American news releases, an agency that BSC (through American intermediaries) had quietly acquired for Romer at the end of 1940. Romer had travelled to New York in August of that year to set everything up, Eva and the team following a month later – first to Toronto in Canada before establishing themselves in New York.

Unable to pull out because of a passing bus, her taxi stalled. As the driver restarted his engine Eva turned to look through the rear window, watching Romer stride along the concourse into the main entrance of the Center. She felt a warmth for him flood her suddenly, watching his brisk progress as he dodged the shoppers and the sightseers. This is what Romer is like to the rest of the world, she thought, a little absurdly – a busy, urgent man, suited, carrying a briefcase, going into a skyscraper. She sensed her privileged intimacy, her private knowledge of her strange lover and she briefly revelled in it. Lucas Romer, who would have thought?

Angus Woolf had arranged to meet her in a restaurant on Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street. She was early and ordered a dry Martini. There was the usual small commotion at the door as Angus arrived: chairs were moved, waiters hovered, as Angus negotiated the doorway with his twisted body and splayed sticks and made determinedly for the table where Eva was waiting. He swung himself into his seat with much grunting and puffing – refusing all offers of help from the staff – and carefully hung his sticks on the back of an adjacent chair.

'Eve, my dear, you look radiant.'

Eva coloured, ridiculously, as if she were giving something away and muttered excuses about a cold coming on.

'Nonsense,' Angus said. 'You look positively splendid.'

Angus had a big handsome face on his tiny warped torso and specialised in a line of extravagant polished compliments, all uttered with a slight breathy lisp as if the effort it took to inflate and deflate his lungs were another consequence of his disability. He lit a cigarette and ordered a drink.

'Celebrating,' he said.

'Oh, yes? Are we doing well, all of a sudden?'

'I wouldn't go as far as that,' he said, 'but we managed to get an America First meeting closed in Philadelphia. Two thousand photographs of Herr Hitler found in the organisers' office. Irate denials, accusations of a set-up – but, still, a little victory. All going out on the ONA wire today if you people want to pick it up.'

Eva said they probably would. Angus asked her how life was at Transoceanic and they chatted unguardedly about work, Eva admitting to a real disappointment about the response to the
Kearny
attack: everyone at Transoceanic had seen it as a godsend, thought it would provoke more shock. She told Angus about her follow-up stories, all designed to stir up a little more outrage. 'But,' she said, 'no one seems that concerned, at all. German U-boat kills eleven neutral American sailors. So what?'

'They just don't want to be in our nasty European war, dear. Face it.'

They ordered T-bone steaks and fries – still two ravenous Britons – and talked circumspectly about interventionists and isolationists, of Father Coughlin and the America First Committee, pressures from London, Roosevelt's maddening inertia, and so on.

'What about our esteemed leader? Have you seen him?' Angus asked.

'This morning,' Eva said, unthinkingly. 'Going into head office.'

'I thought he was out of town.'

'He had some big meeting to go to,' she said, ignoring Angus's implication.

'I get the impression they're not very happy with him,' he said.

'They're never very happy with him,' she said, unreflectingly. 'That's how he likes it. They don't see that his being a wild card is his strength.'

'You're very loyal – I'm impressed,' Angus said, a little too knowingly.

Eva had regretted the words the minute she had uttered them – she became flustered suddenly and spoke on, instead of shutting up.

'I mean, only that he likes being challenged, you know, likes being awkward. It puts everybody on their mettle he says. He functions better that way.'

'Point taken, Eve. Steady on: no need to defend yourself. I agree.'

But she wondered if Angus suspected something and worried that her uncharacteristic volubility might have given more away. In London it had been easy to be discreet, hidden, but here in New York it had been harder to meet regularly and securely. Here they – the British – were more conspicuous and, moreover, objects of curiosity too, fighting their war against the Nazis – with, since May of this year, their new allies the Russians – while America looked on concernedly but otherwise got on with her life.

'How're things generally?' she said, wanting to change the subject. She sawed away at her steak, suddenly not quite so ravenous. Angus chewed, thinking, looking first frowningly thoughtful, then slightly troubled, as if he were a reluctant bringer of bad news. 'Things,' he said, dabbing at his mouth prissily with his napkin, 'things are pretty much as they've always been. I don't think anything will happen, to tell the truth.' He talked about Roosevelt and how he didn't dare risk putting entry to the war to the vote in Congress – he was absolutely sure that he'd lose. So everything had to remain confidential, done on the sly, backhandedly. The isolationist lobby was incredibly powerful, incredibly, Angus said. 'Keep our boys out of that European quagmire,' he said, trying and failing for a convincing American accent. 'They'll give us arms and as much help as they can – for as long as we can hold out. But you know…' He tackled his meat again.

She felt a sudden impotence, almost a demoralisation, hearing all this and wondered to herself, if this was indeed the case, what was the point of all this stuff they did: all the radio stations, the newspapers, the press agencies – all that opinion and influence out there, the stories, the column inches, the pundits, the famous broadcasters, all designed to bring America into the war, to cajole and nudge, persuade and convince – if it were not going to make Roosevelt act.

'Got to do our best, Eve,' Angus said brightly, as if he were conscious of the effect of his cynicism on her and trying to counterbalance it. 'But, short of Adolf declaring war unilaterally I can't see the Yanks joining in.' He smiled, looking pleased, as if he'd just heard he'd been given a huge raise. 'We have to face it,' he lowered his voice, glancing left and right. 'We're not exactly the most popular people in town. So many of them hate us, detest us. They hate and detest FDR too – he has to be very careful, very.'

'He just got re-elected for the third time, for God's sake.'

'Yes. On an "I'll keep us out" ticket.'

She sighed: she didn't want to feel depressed today, it had started so well. 'Romer says there are interesting developments in South America.'

'Does he, now?' Angus affected indifference but Eva could sense his interest quicken. 'Did he give you any more details?'

'No. Nothing.' Eva wondered if she had blundered again. What was happening to her today? She seemed to have lost her poise, her balance. They were all crows after all, all interested in carrion.

'Let's have another cocktail,' Angus said. 'Eat, drink and be merry – and all that.'

But Eva did feel strangely depressed after her lunch with Angus and she also continued to worry that she had given away information, subtext, hints about her and Romer – nuances that someone with Angus's agile brain would be able to turn into a plausible picture. As she walked back to the Transoceanic office, across town, crossing the great avenues – Park, Madison, Fifth – looking down the wide, unique vistas, seeing everywhere around her the hurry, chatter, noise and confidence of the city, the people, the country, she thought that maybe she too, if she had been a young American woman, a Manhattanite, happy in her work, cherishing her security, her opportunities, with all her life ahead of her – perhaps she too, however much she might sympathise and empathise with Britain and her struggle for survival, would think: why should I sacrifice all this, risk the lives of our young men, to become involved in some sordid and deadly war taking place 3,000 miles away?

Back at Transoceanic she found Morris busy with the Czech and Spanish translators. He waved at her and she went to her office, thinking that there seemed to be every kind of community in the United States – Irish, Hispanic, German, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, and so on – but no British community. Where were the British-Americans? Who was going to put their case to counter the arguments of the Irish-Americans, the German-Americans, the Swedish-Americans and all the others?

To cheer herself up and to deflect her mind from these defeatist thoughts, she spent the afternoon compiling a small dossier on one of her stories. Three weeks previously, in a feigned-tipsy conversation with the
Tass
New York correspondent (her Russian suddenly very useful), she had let slip that the Royal Navy was completing trials on a new form of depth charge – the deeper it went the more powerful it became: there would be no hiding place for submarines. The
Tass
correspondent was very sceptical. Two days later, Angus – through the offices of ONA – covertly placed the story with the
New York Post.
The
Tass
correspondent phoned to apologise and said he was cabling the story back to Moscow. When it appeared in Russian newspapers, British newspapers and news agencies picked it up and the news agencies cabled the story back to the USA. Full circle: she ranged the clippings on her desk – the
Daily News,
the
Herald Tribune,
the
Boston Globe.
'New deadlier depth charge to obliterate U-boat menace'. The Germans would read it now, now that it was an American story. Maybe U-boats would be instructed to be more cautious as they approached convoys. Maybe German submariners would be demoralised. Maybe the Americans would root for the plucky Britons a little bit more. Maybe, maybe… According to Angus it was all a waste of time.

A few days later Morris Devereux came into her office at Transoceanic and handed her a cutting from the
Washington Post.
It was headlined: 'Russian professor commits suicide in DC hotel'. She skimmed through it quickly: the Russian's name was Aleksandr Nekich. He had emigrated to the USA in 1938 with his wife and two daughters and had been an associate professor of international politics at Johns Hopkins University. Police were mystified as to why he should have killed himself in a clearly low-rent hotel.

'Means nothing to me,' Eva said.

'Ever heard of him?'

'No.'

'Did your friends at
Tass
ever talk about him?'

'No. But I could ask them.' There was something about the tone of Morris's questioning that was untypical. Something hard had replaced the debonair manner.

'Why's it important?' she asked.

Morris sat down and seemed to relax a little. Nekich, he explained, was a senior NKVD officer who had defected to the States after Stalin's purges in 1937.

'They made him a professor for form's sake – he never taught at all. Apparently he's a mine of information – was a mine of information – about Soviet penetration here in the US…' he paused. 'And in Britain. Which is why we were rather interested in him.'

'I thought we were all on the same side now,' Eva said, knowing how naive she sounded.

'Well, we are. But look at us; what're we doing here?'

'Once a crow always a crow.'

'Exactly. You're always interested in what your friends are up to.'

A thought struck her. 'Why are you concerned about this dead Russian? Not your beat, is it?'

Morris took back the clipping. 'I was meant to meet him next week. He was going to tell us about what had happened in England. The Americans had got everything they wanted out of him – apparently he had some very interesting news for us.'

'Too late?'

'Yes… very inconvenient.'

'What do you mean.'

'I would say it looked like somebody didn't want him to talk to us.'

'So he committed suicide.'

He gave a little chuckle. 'They're bloody good, these Russians,' he said. 'Nekich shot himself in the head in a locked hotel room, gun in his hand, the key still in the lock, the windows bolted. But when it looks like a hard-and-fast, grade-A, genuine suicide it usually ain't.'

Eva was thinking: why is he telling me all this?

'They'd been after him since 1938,' Morris went on. 'And they got him. Shame they hadn't waited an extra week…' He gave a mock-rueful smile. 'I was quite looking forward to my encounter with Mr Nekich.'

Eva said nothing. This was all new to her: she wondered if Romer was involved with these meetings. As far as she was concerned Morris and she were only meant to be preoccupied with Transoceanic. But then, she thought – what do I know?