So she told him: she talked him through every hour of the entire trip from New York to Las Cruces and Romer listened, still, without saying a word, only asking her when she had finished to repeat the period of time from her saying farewell to Raul to the encounter with de Baca.
‘What’s happened in the days you’ve been out is this,’ he told her when she had finished. ‘The sheriff of Dona Ana County was called to the crash after you reported it. They found the corner of the map and the money and called in the local FBI agent from Santa Fe. The map went to Hoover in Washington and Hoover himself put it on the President’s desk.’ He paused. ‘Nobody can quite figure it out – so they called us in, naturally enough, as it seemed to have a connection with the Brazilian map. How do you explain it? The death of a Mexican detective in a road crash near the border. There’s a sizeable amount of cash and what appears to be a portion of a map, in German, detailing potential air routes within Mexico and the United States. Foul play? Or an unlucky accident? Did he buy the map? Was he selling it and the sale went wrong? Did someone try to steal it from him and was spooked and ran?’ He spread his hands. ‘Who knows? The investigation continues. The key thing from our point of view – BSC’s – is that it confirms the validity of the Brazilian map. Unequivocally.’ He chuckled. ‘You could never have foreseen this, Eva, but the sheer exceptional beauty of this episode is that the map reached Roosevelt and Hopkins without a trace, without a hint of a smell, of BSC on it. From county sheriff to FBI operative to Hoover to the White House. What’s going on south of the border? What are these Nazis planning with their airlines and their Gaus? Couldn’t have worked out better.’
Eva thought. ‘But the material was inferior.’
‘They thought it was good enough. Raul was simply going to plant it, send it to a local newspaper. That was the plan. Until your plan superseded.’
‘But I didn’t have a plan.’
‘All right. Your …improvisation. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.’ He paused, looked at her, almost checking her out, she felt, to see if she had changed, somehow. ‘The key thing,’ he continued, ‘the amazing thing, is that it’s all worked out about a hundred times better than anyone could have hoped. They can’t point a finger at the British and BSC and say: look, another of your dirty tricks to hoodwink us into your European war. They turned this up themselves in a forgotten corner of their own backyard. What can the Bund say? Or America First? It’s as clear as day: the Nazis are planning flights from Mexico City to San Antonio and Miami. They’re already on your doorstep, USA, it’s not something happening across the Atlantic Ocean – wake up.’ He didn’t need to say anything more: Eva could see how it fitted only one interpretation.
‘London’s very happy,’ he said. ‘I can tell you that – very. It might have made the crucial difference.’
She felt the tiredness gather on her again as if she were carrying a heavy rucksack. Maybe it was relief, she thought: she didn’t have to fly, didn’t have to run, everything had turned out all right – somehow, mystifyingly.
‘All right. I’ll come in,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back in the office on Monday.’
‘Good. There’s lots to do. Transoceanic has to follow this up in various ways.’
She climbed down from her stool as Romer paid for her milkshake.
‘It was a very close-run thing, you know,’ she said, a little residual silt of bitterness in her voice. ‘Very.’
‘I know. Life’s a close-run thing.’
‘See you on Monday,’ she said. ‘Bye.’ She turned away, craving her bed.
‘Eva,’ Romer said and caught her elbow. ‘Mr and Mrs Sage. Room 340. The Algonquin Hotel.’
‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ Morris Devereux said, ‘from the minute you left New York.’
They were sitting in his office at Transoceanic on Monday morning. Outside it was a cold late-November day, snow-flurries were threatened. Eva had spent Saturday and Sunday at the Algonquin with Romer. She had slept all day Saturday, Romer being sweet and considerate. On Sunday they went for a walk in Central Park and had a brunch at the Plaza, then they went back to the hotel and made love. She had gone home to her apartment in the evening. Sylvia had been waiting, forewarned – don’t tell me anything, she said, take your time, I’m here if you want me. She had felt restored again and, for a while, all the nagging questions in her head had receded until Morris Devereux’s request brought them charging back. She told him everything that she had told Romer, leaving nothing out. Devereux listened intently and made brief notes on a pad in front of him – dates, times.
When she finished he shook his head in some amazement. ‘And it’s all turned out so well. Fantastically well. Bigger than the Belmonte Letter, bigger than the Brazil Map.’
‘You make it sound like some Machiavellian superscheme,’ she said. ‘But there was no plan. Everything was spontaneous, on the spur of the moment. I was only trying to cover tracks – to muddy water, to give me some time. Confuse people. I had no plan,’ she reiterated.
‘Maybe all great schemes are like that,’ he said. ‘Happenstance intersecting with received wisdom produces something entirely new and significant.’
‘Perhaps. But I was sold, Morris,’ she said, with some harshness, some provocativeness. ‘Wouldn’t you say so?’
He made an uncomfortable face. ‘I would have to say it looks like it.’
‘I keep thinking of their plan,’ she said. ‘And that’s what bothers me, not the fact that I somehow, by luck and accident, foiled it and turned it into our so-called triumph. I’m not interested in that. I was meant to be found dead in the desert with a dodgy map of Mexico on me and 5,000 dollars. That was the real plan. Why? What’s it all about?’
He looked baffled, as he thought through the logic of what she had said. ‘Let’s go over it again,’ he said. ‘When did you first spot the two crows at Denver?’
They ran through the sequence of events again. She could see that now there was something further troubling Morris, something that he wasn’t prepared to tell her – yet.
‘Who was running me, Morris?’
‘I was. I was running you.’
‘And Angus and Sylvia.’
‘But under my instructions. It was my party.’
She looked shrewdly at him. ‘So, I should probably be very suspicious of you.’
‘Yes,’ he said, thoughtfully, ‘so it would seem.’ He sat back and locked his fingers behind his head. ‘I would be suspicious of me, too. You lost the crows in Denver. Hundred per cent sure?’
‘Hundred per cent.’
‘But they were waiting for you in Las Cruces.’
‘I didn’t even know I was going to Las Cruces until the man in Albuquerque told me. I could have been going anywhere.’
‘So he must have set you up.’
‘He was an envoy. A fetch-and-carry man.’
‘The crows in Denver were local.’
‘I’m pretty sure. Standard FBI.’
‘Which suggests to me,’ Morris said, sitting up, ‘that the crows in Las Cruces weren’t.’
‘What do you mean?’ Now she was interested.
‘They were bloody good. Too bloody good for you.’
This was something she hadn’t thought of. Neither had Romer. Denver and Las Cruces had always seemed like two ends of the same operation. Devereux’s suggestion implied that there were two parties running – simultaneously, unconnected.
‘Two sets of crows? Makes no sense – one inept, one good.’
Devereux held up his hand. ‘Let’s proceed with the assumption and ignore the solution. Didn’t they teach you that at Lyne?’
‘They needn’t have been waiting for me,’ she said, thinking fast. ‘They could have been with me all the way from New York if they were that good.’
‘Possibly. Exactly.’
‘So who were the second lot if they weren’t FBI?’ Eva said: her mind was beginning that old mad clamour again – questions, questi
ons, questions and no answers. ‘The Bund? America First? Private hire?’
‘You’re looking for a solution. Let’s play it through first. They wanted you dead with the map on you. You would be identified as a British crow because the FBI were following you out of New York even though you lost them.’
‘But what’s the point? One dead British agent.’
She noticed Morris now had a worried expression on his face. ‘You’re right: it doesn’t add up. There’s something we’re missing …’ he looked like a man faced with half a dozen urgent options, all of them unsavoury.
‘Who knew I was in Las Cruces?’ Eva prompted, trying to get the momentum going again.
‘Me, Angus, Sylvia.’
‘Romer?’
‘No. He was in England. He only knew about Albuquerque.’
‘Raul knew,’ Eva said. ‘And the fellow in Albuquerque. So other people knew apart from you three …’ Something struck her. ‘How come de Baca knew I was in the Motor Lodge? Nobody knew I was going to the Motor Lodge except me – you didn’t know, Angus and Sylvia didn’t know. I jinked, I weaved, I backtracked. I had no shadows, I swear.’
‘You must have,’ he said, insistently. ‘Think about it: that’s why the Las Cruces lot had nothing to do with the Denver crows. They had a big team on you, or waiting for you. A brigade – four, six. And they were good.’
‘There was a woman in the red coupe,’ Eva said, remembering. ‘Maybe I wasn’t looking for a woman. Or women.’
‘What about the desk clerk at the Alamogordo Inn. He knew you were checking out.’
She thought: that little twerp on the desk? And remembered the Lyne mnemonic – the best often seem the worst. Maybe Raul, also. Albino Raul, the desk clerk, the couple in the coupé – a brigade, Morris said – two others she hadn’t spotted. And who were the men de Baca had made the sign to as they left the Motor Lodge? It suddenly seemed more possible. She looked at Morris as he sat in thought, tugging at his bottom lip with finger and thumb. Isn’t he rather leading me, she wondered? Is this Morris’s smart intuition or is he steering me? She decided to stop: circles were rotating within rotating circles.
‘I’ll keep thinking,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you if I have a brainwave.’
As she walked back to her office she remembered what the desk clerk had said to her when she’d checked into the Alamogordo Inn. You sure you want to stay here? There are nicer places out of town. Had he deliberately seeded an idea in her head? No, she thought, this is becoming absurd – it was driving her insane.
That night Sylvia fried her a steak and they opened a bottle of wine.
‘Everything’s buzzing at the office,’ she said, hinting heavily. ‘They say you’re the star of the show.’
‘I will tell you, I promise,’ Eva said. ‘Only I still haven’t worked half of it out yet.’
Just before she went to bed, Morris Devereux telephoned. His voice sounded tense, on edge – he had abandoned his usual languid drawl.
‘Can you speak?’ he asked. Eva looked round and saw that Sylvia was clearing the dishes from the table.
‘Yes, absolutely fine.’
‘Sorry to call you so late, but something’s bothering me and only you can provide the answer.’
‘What is it?’
‘Why didn’t you just give the map to Raul?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I mean: those were your instructions, weren’t they? You were simply meant to give a “package” to Raul along with the money.’
‘Yes.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
She looked round, she could hear the clatter of dishes from the kitchen.
‘Because I checked it and I thought it was botched. Inferior material – something rotten.’
‘Did anyone tell you to check the merchandise?’
‘No.’
‘So why did you?’
‘Because … Because I thought I should …’ She asked herself why: it had been a matter of complete instinct. ‘I just thought it was good procedure.’
He went quiet. Eva listened for a second and then said: ‘Hello? Are you there?’
‘Yes,’ Morris said. ‘The thing is, Eve, that if you’d just given the merchandise to Raul as instructed, then none of this would have happened. Don’t you see? It all happened precisely because you didn’t do what you were supposed to.’
Eva thought about this for a moment: she couldn’t see what he was driving at.
‘I don’t follow,’ she said. ‘Are you saying that this is somehow all my fault?’
‘Jesus Christ!’ he said softly, abruptly.
‘Morris? Are you all right?’
‘I see it now …’ he said, almost to himself. ‘My God, yes …’ ‘See what?’
‘I have to do some checks tomorrow. Let’s meet tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon.’ He gave her instructions to go to a cartoon-news theatre on Broadway, just north of Times Square – a small cinema that showed cartoons and newsreels on a 24-hour loop.
‘It’s always empty around four,’ Morris said. ‘Sit in the back row. I’ll find you.’
‘What’s going on, Morris,’ she said. ‘You can’t leave me dangling like this.’
‘I have to make some very discreet enquiries. Don’t mention this to anyone. I’m worried that it may be very serious.’
‘I thought everyone was thrilled to bits.’
‘I think the crows in Las Cruces may have been our friends in grey.’
Our friends in grey were the German-American Bund.
‘Locals?’
‘Further a field.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Don’t speak. See you tomorrow. Good-night.’
She hung up. Morris was talking about the Abwehr or the SD – the Sicherheitsdienst. No wonder he was worried – if he was right then the Germans must have someone in BSC – a ghost at the heart of the operation.
‘Who was that?’ Sylvia asked coming out of the kitchen. ‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, please. It was Morris. Some accounting problem at Transoceanic.’
‘Oh, yes?’ They all knew when they were lying to each other but nobody took offence. Sylvia would just log this fact away: it was too unusual – it showed how worried Morris must be to have drawn attention to himself in this way. They drank their coffee, listened to some music on the radio and went to bed. As she drifted off to sleep Eva thought she heard Sylvia making a short phone call. She wondered if she should have told Sylvia of Morris’s suspicions but decided, on balance, that it was better to have them confirmed or denied before she shared them. As she lay in her bed she reran their conversation: Morris had seen something in the events at Las Cruces that she hadn’t or couldn’t. She wondered further if she should tell someone about this meeting with him tomorrow – as insurance. But she decided not to – she should just let Morris explain how he saw things. For some reason she trusted him and to trust someone, she knew all too well, was the first and biggest mistake you could make.
But there was no sign of Morris at the office the next morning – even by lunchtime he still hadn’t put in an appearance. Eva was working on a follow-up story to the Mexican map, all about a new generation of four-engined German passenger planes – based on the Condor Fw 200 submarine hunter – that had a non-stop range of 2,000 miles, more than enough to cross the Atlantic to South America from West Africa. She thought that if she could place the story with a Spanish newspaper – El Diario or Independiente – that an Argentine airline had ordered six, then it might have some legs.
She drafted it out and took it through to Angus, who seemed to be more and more a presence at Transoceanic, these days, and less and less at OBA.
He read it quickly.
‘What do you think?’ she said.
Angus seemed distracted – not particularly friendly – and she noticed the ashtray in front of him was dense with buckled cigarette butts.
‘Why Spain?’
‘Better to start it there so Argentina can deny it.
We get more mileage if it starts in Spain and then is picked up in South America. Then maybe we can try it here in the US.’
‘Do these planes exist?’
‘Condors exist.’
‘Right. Seems fine. Good luck.’ He reached for his cigarette case again – he clearly couldn’t care less.
‘Have you seen Morris, by any chance?’ she asked.
‘He said he had to spend the day at Rockefeller – following something up.’
‘Is something wrong, Angus? Is something going on?’
‘No, no,’ he said, just about managing a convincing a smile. ‘Rather too many Martinis last night.’
She left him, feeling slightly disturbed: so Morris was at BSC – interesting that Angus knew that. Had Morris told Angus anything? Could this explain Angus’s untypical brusqueness? She pondered these issues as she typed up her Condor story and took it to one of the Spanish translators.
She had a late lunch at an automat on Seventh Avenue, where she bought a tuna sandwich, a slice of cheesecake and a glass of milk. She wondered what Morris could possibly glean at Rockefeller. The Las Cruces job had originated at BSC, of course … She ate her sandwich and for about the hundredth time ran through the events that had led to her encounter with de Baca, looking for something she might have missed. What had Morris seen that she hadn’t? So: de Baca shoots her and makes sure that her body is quickly found. The map is discovered and some $5,000. What does this say to anybody? A young female British agent is discovered murdered in New Mexico with a suspect map. All eyes – all FBI eyes – would turn to BSC and wonder what they had been planning here. It would be highly, damagingly embarrassing – a nice Abwehr counter-plot, she could see. A British agent exposed distributing anti-Nazi propaganda. But we did nothing else, she said to herself, given the chance, and everybody at the FBI must be aware of this state of affairs – what would be so sensational about that?
But various rogue details tugged at her sleeve. Nobody had ever suggested that the Abwehr could run such an operation in the United States. A whole shadowing brigade from New York to Las Cruces – moreover, one with such resources and such refinements that she couldn’t spot it and its members somewhere along the way. She had been highly suspicious – which is how she had snared the local crows. How big would the team have had to be? Six, eight? Changing over all the time, maybe with one or two women? She would have spotted them, she kept saying to herself, or would she: the whole time in Las Cruces she had been suspicious. It’s very hard to follow a suspicious target, but she had to say she had never thought about women. But then again, she thought: why was I suspicious? Was I semi-consciously aware of the rings being run around me. She stopped thinking and decided to go early to the cartoon theatre. A laugh or two might be just what she needed.