CHAPTER 15
As Cohen stirred his coffee he said, “And still no news of Manya, but they still take it for granted that I’ll cooperate.”
“There is a war on, Professor. I’ve raised the matter twice.”
“Say I tell you that I’ve got some important news but I don’t pass it on until I get a response from them about Manya?”
Aarons shook his head slowly. “I wouldn’t pass on a threat, Lev. It would make things worse.”
“How?”
“They wouldn’t trust you after that.”
Cohen smiled, coldly, “They don’t trust me anyway. They don’t trust anybody. Not you, not even themselves.”
“What’s the news?”
“The Americans are up to something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But something’s going on. Two physicists and a mathematician have been spirited away in the last ten days. They just went overnight. Nobody will say where they’ve gone but one of them sent a post-card to his girl-friend who’s a lab assistant in my department. The post-mark was Santa Fe in New Mexico. And he gave no address where she could contact him. She asked the faculty head where he was and he’d said he couldn’t tell her for security reasons. He implied that all three of them had gone to the same place.”
“What do you think they’re doing?”
“One of them had worked for Fermi in Washington in 1939, and both of them had been working on experiments on the products arising from bombarding barium with neutrons. And the mathematician had been working on the theory of chain reaction in certain rare metals.”
“I don’t understand.”
Cohen smiled. “Your people in Moscow will understand all right.”
“They instructed me to pay you a thousand dollars.”
Aarons saw the anger in Cohen’s eyes as he said, “I don’t need their money. All I care about is the girl.”
“I’ll keep trying, Lev.”
Cohen shook his head. “Why did I ever trust them? I must have been mad.”
“Calm down, Lev. I’ll do my best. I promise you. But like I just said there is a war on. Even if they say yes there’s the problem of getting her here. I can’t think how we could do it, can you?”
“If they’d kept their promise she’d have been here before the war started.”
“I’ll meet you here Saturday, same time.” Aarons stood up. “Don’t leave with me, hang on for ten minutes or so.”
Aarons spent the night encoding the basic details of the document photographs that Cohen had given him and then had posted the film to the address in Toronto for sending to Moscow by diplomatic bag. He also recommended that some positive gesture was made regarding the girl.
Cowley transmitted Aarons’ coded messages on the 4 a.m. schedule and then Aarons went home.
At 11 a.m. there was a telephone call from Cowley, carefully worded, telling him that he should pick up the electric iron as soon as possible.
In his office at the Flatiron Building he decoded the message from Moscow. He was to ask Cohen if he knew about something to do with “the poplars.” If Cohen cooperated maybe something could be done about the girl.
Aarons had no means of contacting Cohen without going through the procedure. The chalked cross on the door of the derelict building near the Brooklyn library. He had Cohen’s home phone number but it was never to be used. But it was an emergency and a Sunday and Cohen would probably be at home. He’d have to take the risk.
Cohen himself answered the phone and Aarons just said that he wanted to talk about Manya. He didn’t give his name but arranged a meeting in an hour’s time.
Cohen was waiting for him outside the coffee shop where they usually met and Aarons suggested that they went to a local bar for a drink.
They sat at a table at the back of the bar and when the waiter had brought their beers Aarons said, “I’ve got a question to ask you. I don’t know what it means. But they indicate that if you can assist them they will do something positive about Manya.”
“What’s the question?”
“Like I said, it makes no sense to me so I’ll ask it exactly as I received it.”
“Was it in English or Russian?”
“Russian, I’ve translated it into English myself. Word for word.”
“OK. Go ahead.”
Aarons spoke slowly, in almost a whisper. “Do you know about the poplars and can you give them a useful contact?”
Cohen frowned. “I don’t get it. It’s just …” he shrugged, “… it’s just meaningless. What poplars? What contact?”
“Think hard, Lev. They obviously think you’ll understand.”
“I don’t, my friend. I really don’t.” He looked at Aarons, “Have you got any idea what they mean?”
“It must be to do with your work, Lev. There’s nothing else.”
“What have they been most interested in out of what I’ve told you? What have they followed up?”
Aarons thought for a moment, his eyes closed, then shrugged as he looked at Cohen. “Two things I guess. The thing you photographed—a paper on something like—calculations on slow neutrons by a guy at Columbia University.”
“And the other thing?”
“You told me about some physicists who’d kind of disappeared but one sent a card to his girl-friend post-marked somewhere in New Mexico.”
“It was Santa Fe.”
“Does any of that help?”
“I can guess what they’re after but this stuff about the poplars doesn’t make any sense. You’re sure it was the poplars?”
“Quite sure.”
Cohen leaned back in his chair looking at the ceiling, “The poplars—the poplars.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t know a poplar if I saw one.”
“Maybe we’re taking it too literally. Maybe it’s some sort of code.”
“What’s ‘poplar’ in Russian?”
“Topolb.”
“Could almost be an anagram.” He shook his head. “Beats me. I don’t get it.”
“This project these physicists are working on, does it have a code-name?”
“Yeah but it’s nothing to do with poplars or any other tree.”
“Is it top secret?”
“Yeah. If the military found out about
