the Bureau. Once filled in, and sent through proper channels, the paperwork would pass through one or another of the Bureau's clerical divisions and yield the current or last known place of residence for whoever was named on the form.
Carefully, Cochrane filled in a name. Otto Mauer, late of the Abwehr, the man Cochrane had helped defect from Germany with his family.
Minutes later, Cochrane left his own office, locked the door behind him, and dropped the inquiry at Central Alien Registry, where they would trace it in the morning. Cochrane had not seen Otto Mauer since Germany. He knew only from Frank Lerrick that Mauer had arrived in New York late in 1938.
As Cochrane left the Bureau's sixth floor, the day in Washington was dying. He saw through one of the slatted blinds the redness of the evening sky. Almost simultaneously, he noticed that several of the Bluebirds, like owls, were reporting to work. All other offices on the floor were quiet, with the exception of one poor soul slumped over a table in Cryptology. And like Dick Wheeler, the Virgin Mary had not been seen all day.
*
Back in England, Laura Worthington, had cause to smile.
At Barrett's, the antiquarian bookseller in Salisbury, she had invested one shilling in a thirty-year-old biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. She spent the afternoon reading it on a bench on the cathedral square.
Eleanor had been the Queen consort first of Louis VII of France, then of Henry II of England. The peasants of each country contended that Eleanor had the devil's tail beneath her skirts and that, as the jargon happily put it, was how she hopped around from throne to throne. The devil's tail, for heaven's sake! Laura nearly laughed out loud, wondering how many women in the world had slept with and married two kings.
Such thoughts amused her, as it was a poor August for finding amusement elsewhere. Earlier in the month Chamberlain had spoken over the BBC about the recurrent Polish question. Anglo-French guarantees over Polish sovereignty would be fulfilled by force, if necessary, should Germany seize the Polish corridor and annex Danzig.
Hitler, as usual, was not to be outmaneuvered. On the previous day Germany had concluded a ten-year nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. With one stroke of the pen, Hitler had rid himself of the specter of a two-front war with France and Britain in the West and the Soviet Union in the East. War in Europe appeared more certain than ever. And if war began, sea travel would be precarious. It might be years before Laura could return to America. A decision pressed upon her.
She returned to Salisbury Plain on a rare, partly sunny day late in the month. Out there, in God's open green fields, she felt at ease enough to think. She walked the plain by herself for the better part of an hour. The sun was confused as to seasons: it seemed more April than August. She wore a tweed skirt and cardigan, which sufficed for the day. Laura examined her own life. She considered what a return to America offered her; she weighed her future in England.
Toward three in the afternoon, she saw a single figure strolling purposefully toward her from across the plain. Watching him as he approached, she saw that he was lean and tall, clad in a black raincoat and a hat. He had smooth easy movements and carried a walking stick, which he did not use.
She recognized his gait when he was a hundred yards from her. Peter Whiteside. Laura waited. Then a few minutes later, he was close enough so that she could see his face. Then his smile. Then his eyes. He wore the regimental tie that she recognized from her father.
'Laura… my dear Laura,' he said. He embraced her as they met.
'I knew you would find me, Peter,' she said.
'Find you? Find you? Of bloody course I'd find you. My top female dispatched to America. Gets married without my blessing. Mad at me still, I'd wager.' His eyes shone.
'Peter, I-'
'Don't deny it. I can tell,' he said, making light of it. 'When a girl doesn't write back to me, I can take a hint as well as the next man.'
'The flowers were lovely,' she said. He looked blank for a moment and she added, 'At the wedding. The roses.'
'Oh, yes. Yes. The wedding. I'm so glad.' He held out an arm, shifting a folded Telegraph to his other side. 'Walk with me,' he offered.
She took his arm and they proceeded. Laura noticed that Peter, like her father, had aged since she had last seen him. And she noticed too that the grass was still damp, despite the day's sun. A typical Londoner out for a hike: Peter had worn the wrong shoes.
They covered several hundred meters, moving in no particular direction at all, when Laura took the initiative. 'I want you to tell me about my husband,' she said.
A shrewd smile crept across Peter Whiteside's face. It merged with the lines near his mouth, nose, and eyes and for a split second gave him the appearance of an aging harlequin.
'You have it backward, Laura, dear,' he said indulgently. 'It is I who should be asking you about your husband.'
'You had something against him,' she said. 'I could tell by your reaction. You kept asking for details. Every letter you wrote you wanted to know about him. I asked my father, too. When he returned to England after the wedding, you were all over him with questions.'
'My, my,' Peter continued. 'I have raised a clever little girl as my spy.'
Laura stopped walking, stopping Peter Whiteside with her.
'Peter, don't withhold information from me.'
'Laura, it's you who have the information. I've never met your husband.'
'I want to know why his family was on your list,' she said.
Whiteside held her gaze with his.
'The Fowlers are a prominent family,' Whiteside said. 'That's all. Influential. That's what all the names on your list are. Influential American families. That's all you were reporting to me. Very simple, very white intelligence.'
'Peter, you're lying to me.' She felt his uneasiness.
'There's really nothing I can tell you, Laura.'
'You didn't deny that you're lying to me,' she said. 'Is that because you don't wish to lie a second time?'
'Laura, there's nothing for me to say. Listen to me carefully. There's nothing I can say. I'm certain that you're a much better judge of Stephen Fowler than I. He's your husband.'
'I want to know why his family was on your list,' she said again.
'I'm sorry, Laura. I have nothing to tell you.'
'You're such a bore, Peter,' she snapped. 'All right, then. I'm going back to America in a week. When I arrive I intend to tell my husband that British Secret Service was investigating his family.'
She turned and felt his hand on her arm. It was very firm and very insistent, much stronger than she had imagined it could be.
'Laura, you'll do no such thing!' he said.
'And why not, Peter? You tell me! Why not?'
'You insist you don't know?' His anger rose to equal hers.
'I know nothing!'
'Very well, then,' he snapped back, accepting her challenge. 'The man you married happens to be an agent of the Soviet Union. Hence, the so-called humanist Christian ruminations which we've all been treated to in print. And hence, if you'll forgive my liberties, his secretive nature and his day-to-day ramblings from one American city to another.'
For a moment entire new panoramas of deceit opened to Laura: her husband was a wealthy rebel who did nurture a suspiciously Marxist heart; he had traveled the world a bit in the years before she knew him and sometime must have turned his eyes eastward to the 'Russian experiment.' Her mind rambled: he had women, or worse, one woman, somewhere else, and them, or her, he truly loved; and there was no wonder that he did not sleep with her anymore-the passion had never really been there in the first place. His marriage, like everything else, was a deceit.
Then she rejected all of it. 'That's the most monstrous lie I've ever heard in my life,' she said.
