Restless - Boyd William - Страница 38

'Well,' she said to Devereux, 'pretty strong stuff, don't you think? If I were an American I'd be beginning to feel just a little uneasy. A tiny bit worried, no?'

'Let's hope they share your sentiments – and what with the Rueben Jones's sinking… I don't know: you'd think they wouldn't sleep quite so securely.' He smiled at her. 'How was Washington?'

'Fine. I think I've made a good contact in Hopkins's office,' she said offhandedly. 'A press attache. I think we can feed him our stuff.'

'Interesting. Did he drop any hints?'

'No, not really,' she said carefully. 'He was actually very discouraging, if anything. Congress ranged against war. FDR's hands tied, and so forth. But I'm going to give him translations of all our Spanish stories.'

'Good idea,' he said vaguely and drifted away.

Eva started thinking: Morris seemed more and more interested in her movements and her work. But why hadn't he asked her the name of the press attache she had lassoed? That was odd… Did he know who it was already?

She went to her office and checked her in-tray. A newspaper in Buenos Aires, Critica, had picked up her story about German naval manoeuvres off the South American Atlantic coast. She had her opening, now: she re-transcribed the story but gave it a Buenos Aires date-line and put it out to all of Transoceanic's subscribers. She called Blytheswood at WRUL and, using their verbal priority code – 'Mr Blytheswood, this is Miss Dalton here' – said she had an intriguing story out of Argentina. Blytheswood said they might indeed be interested but it would have to have an American date-line before it could be broadcast around the world. So she sent a cablegram to Johnson in Meadowville, and Witoldski in Franklin Forks, signed simply Transoceanic, plus a transcript of the key lines from Roosevelt's speech. She suspected they would guess it was from her. If either Johnson or Witoldski broadcast the Critica report she could reconfigure it once more as a story from an independent US radio station. And so the fiction would move on steadily through the news media, accumulating weight and significance – more date-lines, more sources somehow confirming its emerging status as a fact and nowhere revealing it origins in the mind of Eva Delectorskaya. Eventually one of the big American newspapers would pick it up (perhaps with a little help from Angus Woolf) and the German Embassy would cable it back home to Berlin. Then denials would be issued, ambassadors would be called in to deliver explanations and rebuttals and this would provide yet another story, or a series of stories, for Transoceanic to distribute over its wire services. Eva felt a small sense of power and pride as she contemplated the future life of her falsehood – thinking of herself as a tiny spider at the centre of her spreading, complex web of innuendo, half-truth and invention. But then she felt a hot flush of embarrassed remembrance, recalling suddenly her night with Mason Harding, and its fumbling inadequacies. It was always going to be a dirty war, Romer repeatedly said, nothing should be discounted in the waging of it.

She was walking homewards along Central Park South, looking out at the trees in the park, already yellow and orange with the advancing fall, when she became aware of a set of footsteps maintaining the exact same cadence as hers. This was one of the tricks she had learned at Lyne – it was almost as effective as someone tapping you on the shoulder. She stopped to adjust the strap on her shoe and, looking casually round, saw Romer three or four paces behind her, staring intently into the window of a jeweller's shop. He turned on his heel and, after a brief pause, she followed him back along Sixth Avenue, where she saw him go into a large delicatessen. She joined the queue at the counter further down from him and watched him order a sandwich and a beer and go to sit in a busy corner. She bought a coffee and walked over to him.

'Hello,' she said. 'May I join you?'

She sat down.

'All very clandestine,' she said.

'We all have to take more precautions,' he said. 'Double-check, triple-check. To tell the truth, we're a little worried that some of our American friends have become too intrigued by what we're up to. I think we've grown too large – impossible to ignore the scale of the thing, anymore. So: extra effort, more snares, watch for shadows, friendly crows, strange noises on the telephone. Just a hunch – but we've all been getting a bit complacent.'

'Right,' she said, watching him bite into his vast sandwich. Nothing that size had ever been seen in the British Isles, she thought. He chewed and swallowed for a while before speaking.

'I wanted to tell you that everyone's very pleased about Washington. I've been taking all the compliments but I wanted to say that you did well, Eva. Very well. Don't think that I take it for granted. Don't think that we take it for granted.'

'Thank you.' She didn't exactly feel a warm glow of self-satisfaction.

'"Gold" is going to be our golden boy.'

'Good,' she said, then thought. 'Is he already-'

'He was activated yesterday.'

'Oh.' Eva thought about Mason: she had an image of somebody spreading photos on a table before his appalled face. She could see him weeping, even. I wonder what he thinks about me now? She thought, uncomfortably. 'What if he calls me?' she asked.

'He won't call you.' Romer paused. 'We've never been so close to the chief before. Thanks to you.'

'Maybe we won't need him for long,' she suggested vaguely, as if to assuage her mounting guilt, to keep the tarnish to a minimum for a while.

'Why do you say that?'

'The Rueben Jones going down.'

'It doesn't seem to have made any material difference to public opinion,' Romer said, with some sarcasm. 'People seem more interested in the result of the Army – Notre Dame match.'

She couldn't understand this. 'Why? There's a hundred dead young sailors, for God's sake.'

'U-boats sinking US ships got them into the last war,' he said, putting two-thirds of his sandwich down, admitting defeat. 'They've got long memories.' He smiled at her unpleasantly. His mood was odd that evening, she thought, almost angry in some way. 'They don't want to be in this war, Eva, whatever their president or Harry Hopkins or Gale Winant thinks.' He gestured at the crowded deli: the men and women, the working day over, the children, laughing, chatting, buying their enormous sandwiches and their fizzy drinks. 'Life's good here. They're happy. Why mess it up going to war 3,000 miles away? Would you?'

She had no ready, convincing answer.

'Yes, but what about this map?' she said, sensing herself losing the argument. 'Doesn't that change things?' She thought further, as if she were trying to persuade herself. 'And Roosevelt's speech. They can't deny it's getting closer. Panama – it's their back yard.'

Romer, she saw, allowed himself a slight smile at her earnest ardour.

'Yes, well, I have to admit we're quite pleased with that,' he said. 'We never expected it to work so efficiently or so quickly.'

She waited a second before asking her question, trying to seem as unconcerned as possible.

'It's ours, you mean? The map is ours – is that what you're saying?'

Romer looked at her with mild rebuke in his eyes, as if she were being too slow, lagging behind the class. 'Of course. Here's the story: German courier crashed his car in Rio de Janiero. Careless fellow. He was taken to hospital. In his briefcase was this fascinating map. Rather too convenient, don't you think? I was very reluctant to go down that road but our friends seem to have bought it wholesale.' He paused. 'By the way, I want you to get all this out on Transoceanic tomorrow. Everywhere – date-line US government, Washington DC. Have you pen and paper?'