Cochrane wrote out a brief exchange for transmission. He and Whiteside buttoned into five digits per word for sending, then Laura double-checked their work.
Cochrane sat down at the telegraph key at precisely seven. He began launching numbers into the stratosphere. When they came down in Hamburg, the unscrambled text read: FDR OPERATION COMPROMISED BY DISLOYAL TOP AGENT OF REICH WITHIN F.B.I.. ABORTING MISSION. WILL ALSO IMMEDIATELY REVEAL TO F.B.I. IDENTITY OF SAID AGENT AND DEPTH OF DUPLICITY. CQDXVW-2
Unscrambled in Bureau headquarters by the officious Lanny Slotkin, the message unraveled the same way. Slotkin burst from his seat as if his pants were on fire. He waved his hand in the air triumphantly, screamed, 'I got it!' and hit his hip on Hope See Ming's desk as he dashed from the Bluebirds' chamber.
He scurried through the hall, passing Bobby Charles Martin, who instinctively always wanted to trip him, and was virtually airborne past Dora McNeil, who had herself all gussied up for someone's benefit that evening.
Slotkin burst unannounced into Frank Lerrick's office. Lerrick, whose desk was piled high with classified documents, bolted to his feet, his face turning red, and was set to explode with the ferocity of one of Siegfried's most potent creations.
But Slotkin silenced him.
'I got it. I cracked it. It makes perfect sense in English. Here,' he said, handing the white pad with the interpretation to Lerrick.
Lerrick took it and read.
Slotkin gushed excitedly. 'It works! It works!'
At which time, Dick Wheeler loomed like a Kodiak bear in the doorway, glared in, and puffed his pipe furiously.
'What in hell is all this racket about'?' he snarled. 'Lanny?'
Frank Lerrick looked up. 'Our little resident genius from Brooklyn has done usproud,' he said, not without an edge. 'Take a look for yourself, Dick. This just came in. Our Lanny has grabbed the brass ring. Cracked the naval code for us.'
Wheeler came forward and looked as Lerrick handed him Slotkin's notation pad.
'My, but we're in business,' said Lerrick. 'But what's this all mean-'compromised,' 'duplicity' within the Bureau?' His thin moustache twitched. 'Not our Bureau. Can't be. Can't be!'
*
Fussel and McPherson had never guarded such an amiable, complacent prisoner.
'What exactly did your commander say about me?' Stephen Fowler asked when locked into a British safe house off Clifton Park in Baltimore.
'He said you were a dangerous lad,' said McPherson in his rumbling Caledonian brogue. 'Said we were to shoot you, sir, if you tried anything naughty, sir.'
'You won't have to shoot me,' said Reverend Fowler in conciliatory tones. 'Certainly hope not, sir,' added Mick Fussel. 'Have to fill out a whole bloody report if I fire a weapon. Bugger up the whole day, it would.'
'Somewhere someone has made a terrible mistake,' Fowler said. 'I intend to be the perfect guest, sit here until the mistake has been realized, and then wait for your commander to issue me his apology.'
'That being the case, lad,' Andrew McPherson said, 'you'll be making life much easier for everyone.'
'Mr. Whiteside never apologizes to anyone for anything,' Fussel noted as if it were relevant. 'Doesn't make mistakes.'
'He made one this time,' Fowler said calmly.
McPherson was a huge, burly man with a wide thick face, powerful shoulders, and a neck to properly connect the two. The son of a miner, he had been born in Dunfermline, worked in the mines a bit himself, done a stint in the Army in Africa, then moved permanently south from Scotland to Liverpool, where he had become a constable. In the mid-thirties, the talent scouts from M.I. 5 were looking for some muscle with brains attached. They recruited him.
Mick Fussel came to his post as an M.I. 5 babysitter in much the same manner. A humorless Cockney who was a lanky but strong six feet two inches tall, Fussel had taken a job after the Depression in an automotive parts warehouse in north London. When the day-today drudgery of shipping bumpers and fenders to railway stations proved too much for him, he noticed a recruiting poster at a bus depot for the Metropolitan Police. The poster showed a beaming young man in a crisp, smart uniform and the text beneath the photograph promised a job with a future and an interesting life.
Fussel applied, became a police officer, and was destined for quick promotion when the same recruiting drive that tapped McPherson tapped Fussel also. A man of thirty-five, his arms were long and he often had five to six inches of shirt cuff showing. His hair was streaked with gray, as if from some tour of duty he never spoke of, and, unlike McPherson, who wore his handgun beneath his armpit, Fussel kept his on his left hip.
Through the first evening of his capture, Reverend Fowler exchanged a calm banter with both men. Fussel and McPherson were under specific instructions to keep Fowler handcuffed and ankle-shackled at all times.
This they did. The only exceptions were when the minister asked if he could shower. His hands were free, and Fussel, pistol drawn, stood ten feet from the shower stall watching the minister. Afterward, when Fowler toweled off and was dry and dressed, he held out his hands obediently for the cuffs to be put back in place.
'That was very kind of you,' said Fowler. 'My wrists were killing me.'
'I'm not here to be kind to you,' answered the tall Cockney.
'No. Of course you're not. You're simply following your orders.'
'Too bloody right,' Fussel said. 'Now let's get on with you.'
He motioned to a doorway that led to a flight of steps that led downstairs. When the minister reached the first floor, he saw that McPherson was waiting, also with gun drawn. 'Your Mr. Whiteside must have given me some kind of advance billing.' The American grinned.
'He just said you were extremely dangerous,' McPherson growled. 'Keep moving and shut up.'
'Have you heard from him?' Fowler asked, hopefully, ushered toward a downstairs room.
'What would it be to you if we did?' Fussel asked. The minister sounded apologetic.
'I'm waiting for him to realize his error.'
'From what Mr. Whiteside says, lad, you've got one bloody long wait,' Fussel said. 'Now get in there and sit.' The Englishman indicated a sofa in a small bare room.
'Yes. Of course,' Stephen Fowler said, sadness in his voice.
He obeyed his captors with a docility that surprised even them. They exchanged a look or two of confusion, themselves, but remained vigilant. About an hour later, Fowler asked for a Bible and they found one for him. He spent his evening reading and his captors played cards. There was not a peep or complaint from the prisoner.
'What do you make of all this?' McPherson asked Fussel toward midnight.
'Our guest is trying to lure us into a sense of complacency,' Fussel said. 'Don't trust him for a minute.'
'He's a parson, you know,' McPherson said in a low whisper. 'Imagine that!'
'Mr. Whiteside says he's more than a country church mouse,' Fussel snapped back. 'Keep your wits about you, you Caledonian fish merchant, or you'll end up going home in a box.'
*
At half-past eight in the evening, a figure walked from the back steps of Bureau headquarters. He hit the sidewalk with a purposeful cadence to his walk, continued two blocks, and turned into Connecticut Avenue. It was a man, a coat pulled unevenly to him against a freezing Washington wind, striding with short but intent paces. He found his car and looked in each direction as he unlocked it, behaving for all the world as if he expected some sort of trap.
But it wouldn't be sprung there, anyway, the man reasoned. It would be sprung in New Jersey. Very clever Lanny Slotkin and his numbers, the man thought. Curse Hoover, curse Roosevelt, curse Stephen Fowler, and for that matter curse Bill Cochrane, too. One way or another the game was over, his cover blown.
The man unlocked his car, entered it, and gunned his engine. He checked his supply of gas. He had already checked the revolver on his hip.
He pulled out onto Connecticut Avenue, allowed a bus to pass him, then proceeded due north. It would be a long drive.
