codebook, and then again with the pad. It may be that the decryption of BRIDE, and of Soviet signals traffic in general, becomes a long-term project; at the very least, a wider dissemination of this material is to be welcomed if BRIDE is ever to be properly understood and used. But any decryption will provide investigative leads for the FBI as the identities of cover names in BRIDE traffic become more obvious. I am informed by the FBI here in Washington that they are already following up new information that the agent known as Sohnchen has a wife named Lizzie.
Yours sincerely,
Earle F. Cooke,
Lt. Colonel Commanding B Branch
I took a deep breath and read the letter again, slightly astonished that G -2, SIS, and the OSS were all prepared to disobey the spirit, if not perhaps the letter, of a presidential order regarding spying on the Russians. I asked myself what Roosevelt would have said if he had become aware of Cooke’s letter, and then decided that it was as likely as not that Roosevelt knew about it anyway. I had already formed the impression that saying one thing and then doing another seemed fairly typical of FDR. He might even have authorized this particular intelligence initiative against the Soviet Union.
That scared me. Spies of any shade were taking a big risk in America.
I read the letter a third time. They had already managed to determine that Sohnchen had a wife named Lizzie. Mrs. Philby was not called Lizzie, but Litzi, and since Philby wasn’t an American, the FBI effort would, very probably, not get very far. That was good. And Colonel Cooke had written that he was cautious about the chances of successfully decrypting Bride. That was good, too. But the letter worried me all the same.
I rewrapped the parcel carefully and considered my options. Losing the case was out of the question; besides, that would only draw attention to me. Indeed, if they already had suspicions about me, losing the case would only confirm them.
I returned the parcel to the leather suitcase and then relocked it before placing it beside the front door. Then I went upstairs to pack my own bag, telling myself that I might easily be robbed in Cairo. Failing that, I might perhaps rely on British red tape and bureaucracy to slow things down a little, perhaps even frustrate them completely. It wasn’t much to rely on. But for the moment it was all the hope I had. But I also had to admit there was a part of me that didn’t care.
Later that same evening I drank too much and got out the part of me that didn’t care and had a closer look at it. Underneath the bright lights of my living room it didn’t look nearly so blase. Which was how it came to me that I should write Diana a letter before I crossed the Atlantic again, just in case a German submarine decided to gather me to the Lord.
As love letters go, it wasn’t Cyrano de Bergerac, but it was not bad for someone as out of practice at writing that kind of thing as I was. The last time I had dipped a pen in a bottle of blind adoration before applying the nib to some finely laid notepaper I’d been about nineteen years old and in my first year at Harvard. I don’t remember the girl’s name, or what happened to her, except to say that she never replied.
I sat down at my desk and let my heart run around the room naked for a while so I could describe how this looked as accurately as possible. Then I picked up my best pen and started to write. Probably I played up the secrecy and danger of the mission ahead of me more than I should have, but the part about how stupid I thought I had been and how much I cared for Diana read accurately enough. I wondered that I hadn’t thought of writing to her before. I might even have used the word “love” once or twice. More if you counted the corny little poem I started, finished, and then tossed in the wastepaper basket.
I laid my letter to Diana on the hall table with a note to Michael asking him to post it first thing in the morning. Ten minutes later I crumpled up the note and tossed it in the wastepaper basket alongside my crummy attempt at a love poem. I had decided that I would post the letter myself on my way to Hampton Roads the next day. Finally, I tossed the letter on the front seat of my car and drove up to Chevy Chase, intending to put it in her mailbox so that she might read it over breakfast and realize the justice of giving me a second chance.
It was raining by the time I got to the little town of Chevy Chase and the 1920s-vintage colonial where Diana lived. By now I had convinced myself to forget about the letter. If her car was there I was going to ring her doorbell, throw myself on her mercy and my knees, and ask Diana to marry me. In a church, if she wanted. With witnesses present to make sure we both meant it.
I parked on the street and, ignoring the rain, walked toward the verandah, trying not to make a mountain out of the molehillshaped Nash coupe that was in the driveway behind Diana’s ruby red Packard Eight. A dim light burned behind the plush velvet curtains in her drawing room window, and as I approached the house I could hear the sound of music. It was easy, unhurried music. The sort of music you like to have in a seraglio when you don’t want to listen to anything except someone else breathing softly in your ear.
I stood on the verandah and, forcing myself to play the Peeping Tom, looked in through a fissure in the curtains. Neither of the two people lying on the rug in front of the fire saw me. They were too busy doing what two people do when they have decided to see just how far they can throw their clothes across the room. Doing what I’d done myself on that same rug just a few weeks before. And the way they were doing it, it looked as if it was going to be a while before Diana was free to listen to my proposal of marriage.
Suddenly I seemed ridiculous to myself. Especially the notion about asking her to marry me. It was quite obvious to me that the very idea of marrying me couldn’t have been further from her mind. With no other idea in my head I returned to my car and, for quite a while, just sat there trying but failing to detach my mind from what was happening on that rug. Half of me hoped that the man would come out so that I could get a better look at him. I even constructed a little scene that had me facing them both down, but the more I thought about that, the uglier it seemed. And as the dawn came up I took the envelope, placed it in her mailbox, and drove quietly away.
XIII
I had missed the boat. Leaning on the hood of my car, I smoked a cigarette and looked out at the waters off the southernmost point of Maryland’s Western Shore where the USS Iowa was now no more than a trail of smoke on the burnished horizon. It was hardly my fault; the Iowa had sailed early. Or so the pierman had told me.
I was still pondering my next move when a couple of black Hudsons rolled up and discharged four tough- looking men with nervous eyes and tight lips. They were wearing dark suits, hats, and ties that matched their less than sunny dispositions.
I threw aside my cigarette and straightened up. So this was how the FBI arrested you. They got you to drive seventy miles out of Washington on a wild-goose chase and then, when you were waiting somewhere quiet, they picked you up without any fuss. True, I had a gun in my shoulder holster, but there was less chance of my using it to resist arrest than there was of my not being able to complete the crossword puzzle in the Post.
“Professor Mayer,” one of the men asked, with a voice that contained no inflection. He had a hard, neat, well-kept face, like the picket fence in front of the American Horticultural Society. He tried to put a smile in his blue eyes but it came off looking sarcastic.
“Yes,” I said, bracing myself. I almost held my wrists out in front of me.
“Could I see some identification, please, sir?” While he waited, he pulled his finger until the knuckle cracked.
I took out my wallet. I was sure they were about to inspect Donovan’s suitcase and inform me I had failed to notice something concealed in the wrapping of the parcel that would prove I had opened it.
The man looked at my ID card and then handed it to one of his colleagues; finally he produced his own ID. To
