Therein was Bobby Charles Martin, a fingerprint expert formerly of the Ohio State Police, whose hobby was cartography, and who now merrily spent his days assessing recent European maps and navigational charts. 'Just in case we have to send a few lucky souls abroad again,' Wheeler said as he handled the introduction.
Dora McNeil, the secretary of the D amp;C Division, looked up as they approached and gave Wheeler a sweet complacent smile. Then she stared at Cochrane, and fixed her posture. Dora, Wheeler explained much later, was the house floozy whom no one had the heart to fire. This month she was a strawberry blonde. She was a more than competent secretary, blessed with an ample bosom, good legs, and a pair of buttocks which, when snugly nestled into a form-fitting skirt, had just the proper air of provocation. Dora, in Bureau parlance, was that good time who'd been had by all. Her blouse never seemed to be buttoned quite properly and at least once a week her eyeliner would be slightly off or a speck of lipstick would spend several hours on a front tooth.
But no one complained.
So Dora McNeil flounced around Section Seven at will, occasionally typing a letter or reheating coffee. J. Edgar Hoover did not know about her, and Lanny Slotkin was in deep, unrequited love with her. To him, at age twenty-five, she was a classy older woman.
'Hi,' Bill Cochrane said to her as they passed.
'Hi,' Dora returned with an eager smile and a twinkle in her green eyes.
'Introductions later, Dora,' Wheeler grumbled with sudden curtness. Dora answered
Wheeler with a downward turn of her smile.
'That's something else,' Wheeler brooded. 'The Bureau rule book, again. This city is filled with young secretaries who can't keep their knees together after six in the evening. But do your prowling somewhere else. No dirtying sheets with another employee, hear?'
'I understand.'
“Do you?”
“Maybe.”
Then a smile emerged and Wheeler became the backslapping, beer-guzzling good ole boy again. 'Heck, Bill, I wouldn't mind if little Dora back there gave me a few tumbles. But we all got a directive two months ago over J.E.H.'s signature. One of the field agents from Chicago-Racketeering was in town for a month, just long enough to impregnate one of the file clerks from Central Recordkeeping.'
'These things happen,' said Cochrane generously.
'She happened to be the daughter of a big shot over at Senate Budget and Appropriations,' Wheeler said. 'Frank Lerrick got a call asking us what kind of orgy we were running over here. J.E.H. went through the roof and made us all monks and nuns. The man hates hetero hanky-panky, you know. Well, anyway. That's the entire show. I guess you can see how this all works.'
Cochrane said he did, but Wheeler recapitulated anyway.
Bluebirds were the thieves who plucked the signals out of the airwaves. Then they sent them to Deciphering and Cryptology where people like Lanny Slotkin and Hope See Ming tried to find a pattern. 'Letters, numbers, hieroglyphics, cuneiform, anything,' Wheeler said. 'There's only one principle involved. If a man can think up a code, another man can pull it apart.'
They were toward the end of the corridor and Wheeler held out his fist and knuckles just above a door as a prelude to knocking. He turned and dropped his voice to a whisper.
'I'm going to introduce you to the 'Virgin Mary,”he said. Then he rapped. An agreeable female voice from within a final chamber gave them entry.
The Virgin Mary was Mary Ryan, an eighty-one years old, a graduate of Vassar, 1882, and the only current employee of the Bureau who had spent half of her life in the previous century. Mary came and went as she pleased, Wheeler explained, and did astonishing things with numbers, sequential series, probability, factorials, logarithms, and the other numerical complexities of cryptology. She had earned an office of her own.
Mary was an elfin white-haired woman with a small impish face, dazzling deep-green Irish eyes, and ruddy red cheeks. She wore her hair pinned back into a loose bun, and despite Cochrane's protestations, she stood when they entered the room and remained standing as they spoke.
Mary's desk was an outrageous scramble of papers, clippings, pencils, erasers, and simple additions and subtractions. As they entered she turned facedown onto the table whatever it was she had been working on.
All the great mysterious things that the Virgin Mary did with numbers she did in her head-conceived them immaculately, someone from the Bluebirds had once said-and could beat Deciphering's primitive computing gadgets. Only Mary's simple arithmetic was on paper.
Mary offered Cochrane a delicate hand, lined with thin bluish veins, but surprised him with a secure, sound grip. As part of her introduction, Wheeler mentioned that Mary was an alumna of the State Department's 'Black Chamber' from the Great War of 1914-18. The Black Chamber was that dubious wing of the State Department in which the government spied upon anything and anyone for whom they were in the mood. Secretary of State Henry Stimson had disbanded the chamber in 1929 stating, 'Gentlemen do not read other people's mail.'
'Maybe gentlemen don't,' Mary Ryan had snarled back when furloughed, 'but Mary Ryan sure enjoys it. Oh, well…'
And she went quietly out to pasture, only to be called back in 1937 when the F.B.I. started picking up strange blips and dots bouncing through the stars.
'Bill Cochrane's going to be working on special assignment for us,' Wheeler informed her. 'I've assured him that he'll have the support of everyone in Section Seven.'
'Oh, how wonderful,' Mary Ryan answered. 'It's not so often that we get some handsome young men up here. What sort of assignment?'
'I'm trying to catch a spy.'
'On our floor? Figures!'
'No, no. Out in the United States somewhere.'
'I wish you luck, dear,' she said. She winked at him. 'Section Seven isn't always too good about keeping its own secrets,' she said. 'What a bunch of detectives! If the power failed in this building half the male population couldn't find its way to the street. Oh, well, a woman pays a price to be surrounded by younger men. What did you say your name was?'
'Cochrane. Bill Cochrane.'
'If you have a numerical sequence or code type, let me have the first look at it. Mary will save you a lot of time. Despite what this Mr. Wheeler tells you, you can skip Deciphering altogether. Them with their machines. Claptrap! Haven't the foggiest idea what they're about. Bring it to Mary first and Mary will help you in every way she can.'
'Thank you, Mary.'
'You are a handsome young man,' she said to Cochrane as they left. 'I do so hope that wasn't why you were hired, but I think I do see something behind the eyes.'
'Thank you, Mary,' Wheeler said this time, and he and Bill Cochrane continued to the end of the corridor.
Then Wheeler spoke again, relighting his pipe, sucking furiously to pick up the flame and then exuding a long cloud of smoke. 'Mary's got the sharpest intellect in this whole section, including yours and mine combined,' he said. He stopped, produced a key from his pocket and unlocked a final door. 'If Mary Ryan were a man she would probably be running the Bureau. But she's not. So J.E.H. has the job, for the time being, anyway.' Wheeler lowered his voice. 'I hear Roosevelt wants to replace him.'
'That rumor's been around for seven years,' Cochrane said. 'Hoover always lands on his feet. Other people come and go, including Presidents.'
'True enough,' Wheeler mused. 'What do you think?' He opened the door. 'This is your office.'
Cochrane stepped in and found a plain desk and chair in a carpeted room. There was ample filing space, sufficient lighting, and two telephones. There were extra chairs and a sofa. No glamour, just creeping Bureau utilitarianism.
'It's fine,' Cochrane said. The window behind the desk overlooked the inner quadrangle, which was currently a parking lot.
'It's nothing fancy, of course,' Wheeler said with a tinge of apology, cupping the bowl of his pipe in his hand. 'But I figured you'd be better off near your backup people in Section Seven.'
