So. He watched the new arrivals. The chekists were easy to spot, in their leather coats and boots and their smug, well-fed faces. They'd been interrogated, all right, but they'd put that nightmare behind them in the transit camps, on the cattle cars, and they came into the camp expecting to be treated, well, at least decently. They were, after all, party members.
Then it was the gravel. Or pulling a sledge piled with rocks by means of ropes around their shoulders, like beasts. And that's when Sascha would come around. Could they, perhaps, use a bit of help? A friendly hand? They could? Well, he'd see what he could do. They should hang on, meanwhile, drive that shovel into the wet gravel, take the weight on their forearms, grunt with the effort of it a thousand times a day. He was working on it. The old man responsible for counting the shoes was fading fast, on his last legs—how would they feel about doing such a job? Not too demeaning, counting shoes? He watched their eyes warm with anticipation, their tongues hang out like dogs'. Soon, soon, he would tell them. Just get up at four tomorrow morning in the icy blackness and slurp up a few ounces of soup and have at it one more day.
And by the way, stop at my room sometime for a little chat.
He didn't really have to ask them. So grateful were they for even the chance to hope that they spewed it all out—if for no other reason than to make themselves of sufficient importance in his eyes to be allowed to count the shoes. Oh yes, I was the one who got hold of Bakir, in Istanbul, the minister of armaments. Greedy bastard. Had his hand out all the time until I told him how things were. He's still ours, of that I'm sure. I'm the one who nailed him down.
One more new memory word. Entered, in case his mind should fail him, in an account book nobody ever looked at. As the months went by, the facts piled up. Well, Hitler really listens to his astrologer, you know, and I'm the one who went and found Borov, our own astrologer, who tells us every day what Hitler is being told.
The collection grew and grew. It would make quite a thick book when he finally got around to writing it all out. Perhaps he would make it into a poem, he thought, a patriotic poem or, even better, a patriotic poem dedicated to the NKVD itself. There it was. With each word keyed to the names and places that should have remained forever secret.
But it wasn't time for that yet. He would content himself with research until a certain opportunity presented itself. Then, when the moment came, he was going out. His NKVD encyclopedia would buy him out. And then, whoever got the lists—the names, the places, the money, the deeds—whichever intelligence service that turned out to be, they would be the sword. His sword.
And he would sit back and watch them cut.
On the twenty-third of July, at 3:25 in the morning, Khristo Stoianev was arrested by personnel of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire—the DST The apprehension was smoothly accomplished. As he headed toward the Marais on foot, going home from work, he was stopped at the foot of the Pont de Sully. Two well-dressed men came from nowhere, flowed to either side of him and took him gently by the upper arms. He did not resist. At the other end of the bridge he could see two men leaning against either side of the parapet wall. Some distance away, up and down the Quai de la Tournelle, were two idling Citroëns. As he was led to a third automobile, one of the detectives informed him that he was under detention for violation of Subsections 104, 316, 317, and 318 of Article 9 B of the Criminal Code of 1894, revised, Part XII. He had no idea what all that meant. Later on, a ferret-eyed man who claimed to be his avocat, defense counsel, explained the charges as having to do with procurement of a weapon in aid and abetment of a homicide. There were other accusations, which the avocat referred to as “nieces and nephews.” Going to procure the weapon, paying for it, and failing to report the transaction to the provincial office of taxes and registrations.
The DST Citroën did not turn across the Seine toward the Palais de Justice but stayed on the Rive Gauche, headed, he speculated, for the École Militaire district. The detectives ignored him; they spoke quietly among themselves about the new rules regarding compensation received for working on holidays and Sundays. They were preceded and followed by other cars, and they drove cautiously along the empty boulevards.
Khristo used his last twenty minutes of freedom to watch the nighttime city slide past the car window. The air was warmish and still, and the summer heat made the aroma of the streets sharp-edged and uncomfortably sweet. It was the hour—appropriate for arrest, he thought—when the city cleaned itself. Large trucks hauled away the garbage, the market squares were hosed down, and old women scraped at the cobblestones with brooms made of twigs.
He said good-bye, in his mind, to Aleksandra. Since the night of the brasserie shooting he had telephoned the contact number for Ilya many times, but the call was never answered. It was not disconnected, it simply rang, in some empty place somewhere—he imagined an anonymous trading company—and there was no one present to pick up the receiver. But he was wrong about this, for he had tried the number (just once more) in early July and reached a busy signal. He knew, intuitively, what that meant. There was somebody by the phone, somebody under orders not to answer it. He imagined the Russian clerk, love-struck in Paris, chancing one little telephone call to a special friend. He had also gone back to the Matrimonials in the newspaper, phrasing the BF 825 signal in a number of ingenious ways, but the only response had been letters from lonely women who wanted to be married. He had also watched the newspapers for discoveries of the unidentifiable bodies of young women. There turned out to be a lot of those, poor souls dragged from the river. Times were hard, people got tired of their lives.
He was tired of his own. His stomach twisted in knots over what lay ahead of him in a French prison, but somehow he could not bring himself to feel “trapped” or “captured.” He was already in prison—a prison of borders, passports, false names, and de facto nonexistence—a citizen of nowhere. He remembered the train ride back to Moscow from Belov, the dark realization of a homeless, wandering future. So it had been written, so it had turned out to be. Cruel of the fates, he thought, to let me taste this place, to know it, and then to take it away.
They moved slowly past the grand buildings of the École Militaire and drew up to a gate with a bored gardien slouching against a sentry box. As they rolled to a stop, Khristo saw a green Morgan parked across the street, the driver's face obscured by shadow.
A chain was removed, the detective maneuvered the car past concrete bollards and parked in a courtyard with shrubs and flowers around three sides. In the building above him, almost all the windows were dark. He got out of the car and asked if he could smoke a cigarette before going inside and they allowed him to do that, lighting up with him and smoking in silence.
When he could see the first edge of dawn, a fading darkness in the eastern sky, he put the cigarette out and took a last breath of free air before they led him across the gravel courtyard into the building.
In the fall of 1937, in Cell 28 of the 16 th Division, at the Santé prison, Prisoner 16-28 received two letters.
The first was signed by his “Aunt Iliane”—Ilya, clearly enough—who informed him that she was healthy, in general, though suffering the usual complaints of age. The farm was running well enough. Rain had split the tomatoes, but what could you do about the weather? They had been shorthanded throughout the grape harvest, since his cousin Alexandre had left. She had personally taken Alexandre to the station, Iliane reported, her health seemed fairly good—considering all she'd been through—and she was now traveling abroad. Of course, nothing had been mentioned to cousin Alexandre about his present circumstances—Aunt Iliane knew she would find that painful. As for him, she hoped he had seen the error of his ways, and she prayed daily that he would be spiritually reborn. Her arthritis made writing painful—he should not expect another letter anytime soon. She closed by imploring him to have courage. At first, she said, the family had been very angry with him. Now, when they saw what had become of him, while they did not exactly forgive him, they felt that justice had been served.
The second letter was from Faye Berns, in response to a letter he had sent her. She was heartsick that he was in prison—could anything be done? Could he receive money, or clothing, or books? He must write and tell her.
As for her, in some ways it was wonderful to be back in America. In others, not so wonderful. She felt dislocated, a little at sea. Her house looking out over Prospect Park seemed to have shrunk, her parents had gotten old. They had three Jewish refugees from Germany staying with them. A chemist from Berlin and his wife, who suffered from a nervous condition brought on by experiences with Nazi police officials. She paced the living room all night long, but what could anybody say to her? And an architect from Dresden who had been awarded the Iron Cross in the Great War. Even so, the Nazis had closed up his office. All the German Jews were in a very difficult situation—only the lucky and clever ones could leave the country now. A most curious thing had occurred when the three refugees docked at Ellis Island for immigration processing. A well-dressed man had appeared and offered to buy their clothing. All of it—even the underwear and socks. Not only had he paid them, he had given them excellent American clothing in exchange. After that experience, who could convince them that they were not in the promised land?
Her own news was that she was engaged to be married. His name was Leon, he was from Brooklyn, and he was finishing up law school at New York University. He was a very good and decent fellow who would take excellent care of her—really, he gave in to her a little too much. Her father more than approved of the match, since Leon shared his political views and, well, a lawyer. Even the owner of Bernstein's, the second largest department store in Flat-bush, thought the seas would part for him. On consideration, they probably would, Leon was just that kind of person. She had not yet told him of her “other life.” Perhaps she wouldn't, she wasn't sure he would understand it. He was very anxious to have children, once his practice was established. Children? Well, that would be another adventure, certainly. She had seen a few of her friends from Pembroke, and most of them already had their first child.
She closed the letter by saying she hoped he would write again. Their day together had been very important to her. She thought of him often.
He read the letter many times and spent a long time considering his reply. Finally, he chose not to write back. What would be the point? In July, after three days in a detention cell, he had been taken to a small room and “tried.” The judge had apparently come in from a country house and was wearing white shoes, as for a garden party, beneath his robes. Over a fifteen-minute period, several documents had been read aloud in rapid, legal French. Then the judge sentenced him to spend the rest of his natural life in Santé prison.
Prisoner 16-28 was, in the French custom, isolated in his cell. This was believed to encourage penitence, which was, after all, the intent of a penitentiary. Cell 28 was six feet long and four feet wide. A bed folded up against the wall in the daytime and there was a chair, chained to a ring in the wall. There was a toilet, and a water spigot for washing. The cell was painted brown halfway up the wall, then yellow to the ceiling. In the door was a Judas port that served two purposes: surveillance once an hour and food three times a day, almost always mashed lentils and black bread. Drinking water was poured into his “quarter,” a tin cup that held a quarter of a liter, at mealtimes. Twice a week, for one hour, he was taken into a courtyard and allowed to walk the perimeter and converse with other prisoners. For the rest of his time he remained alone in his cell, allowed one book a week. These were usually boys' adventure stories with morally improving points of view or, sometimes, religious tracts. Behind a fine mesh grille was a window made of thick, opaque green glass that bathed the cell in a milky light yellowed by the colors on the walls.
In one corner of the window, however, was a hole about the size of a one-franc piece, with a fine web of fracture lines about it—something had been poked through the wire mesh by a former occupant. Khristo was thankful to the man, whoever he had been, because it meant he could see a tiny piece of the sky over Paris. At dawn, when the bell woke him up, it was the first thing his eyes sought and, again and again, in the course of the endless days, he spent hours staring at it. Sometimes it was a pale and washed-out blue, after a rainfall, perhaps. Other times it was a vivid blue, which meant cool, sunny weather. Sometimes it was gray. Sometimes, the best of all times, a part of a white cloud could be seen.
Brush your teeth with Deems
Your smile needs those gleams!
Robert Eidenbaugh leaned back in his swivel chair and promised himself for the hundredth time to oil the squeak. Bister, the poisonous little snake in the next cubicle—the corner cubicle, from which he could see both Lexington Avenue and East Forty-second Street—could hear him every time he sat back in the chair. He'd said so, one day at the water cooler: “Heard you squeaking away this morning, Eidenbaugh. Leaning back again?” Clearly, he meant leaning back in both the physical and metaphorical senses of the expression.
Bister had done well at Princeton and wore a bow tie—just a little frivolous for the J. Walter Thompson advertising company—and definitely saw himself as a man on the way up. Following his remark, he'd shot a furry eyebrow and smiled coldly, confirming his own wit. Confirming his own progress in the world. Bister didn't lean back. Bister stayed hard at it all day long, pounded his typewriter, talked on the phone, went to meetings—he quite loved meetings—or thought up ways to apple-polish Mr. Drowne, the copy chief. Bister was on the way up.
He was not. After the snotty remark at the water cooler, he'd let the conical paper cup fill to the brim and, just about the time the great bubble broke the surface with its characteristic blurp, squeezed the sides violently so that a miniature waterspout leapt into the air, narrowly missing Bister's dazzling brogans on the way down. “Sorry, Bister,” he'd said as the little man jumped backward, “do you melt?”
But Bister was correct. He did sit back in the chair—squeak—and gaze out onto Lexington Avenue, eleven floors below. It was December, and it was snowing. Soon it would be Christmas, which meant that 1941 was almost over. Good! Next there'd be 1942. Hooray! During which time he would undoubtedly do exactly what he'd done in 1941, which was very damn little.
For the last year, the only thing that had truly engaged his attention was the war in Europe. The high point of his day had become the morning delivery—just after the milk—of the New York Times. Over coffee he would read of Polish lancers attacking German tank units. Of the rules of the German occupation: Poles forbidden to ride in taxis, carry briefcases, have their teeth filled with gold, use railroad waiting rooms, walk in parks, call from phone booths, enter athletic events, or wear felt hats. But it wasn't only the Germans, the newspaper told him. Forty Russian divisions had invaded Poland from the east, along a thousand-mile frontier. The Russian armor flew white flags, and the tank commanders yelled down from their turrets that they'd come to help the Poles fight the Germans. Thus they were unopposed.
When it came the turn of France to be subdued, he was enraged. He had spent his childhood in France and the thought of the jack-booted Nazis striding arrogantly down the streets of Toulon, where he'd played as a child, was nauseating to him.
Guilt pricked him and made him lean forward over the hateful Remington as the chair complained. Brush your teeth with Deems / Says the girl of your dreams! Not so bad. But then they'd need a girl of your dreams in the layout, and he knew that old Dr. Deems—a dentist from Rye, New York, before he became a tooth powder millionaire—wasn't having anything quite so daring in his advertising campaign. There would be a sparkling illustration of the tooth powder can—an example of which sat on his desk—in its brand-new blue and white colors. The art director had tried for a dream girl in one of his mock-ups, but Dr. Deems had labeled the notion “prurient.”
Prurient!
Brush your teeth with Deems / It's prurient, it seems.
Pretty good, he'd have to share that with his friend Van Duyne when they met for breakfast on Sunday.
Squeak. He watched the snow wander aimlessly past the window. Tonight would be dinner with his fiancée, whom he didn't especially like, and her visiting parents, whom he absolutely detested. Her broad-bottomed “Daddy,” whom she “utterly adored,” was a shoe manufacturer from Dayton, Ohio, and a rabid isolationist. “War in Europe?” he'd said at their last dinner, a two-hour nightmare at Longchamps. “Don't bet on it, kiddo. Not for us.” He'd paused to attack his roast beef, then added, “You know who wants that,” while tapping his nose and winking. Jews, he meant. The International Zionist Conspiracy to embroil the USA in a foreigners' war.
Maybe, he thought, if I move very slowly. He tried to get back to the typewriter without communicating his ennui to Bister, but no, it would have to be oiled. Brush your teeth—oh why in God's name had he slept with the girl? A hot August night at the Walker vacation house on a Michigan lake, the Walkers gone off to their bridge evening at the public library, alone in the house, a little necking, a little petting, a little more, the way her breathing changed, then the sudden, caution-to-the-winds disencumberment of her Helen Wills tennis costume, blousy and Grecian … and then the rest of it.
Followed by a year of assumptions on her part which he found, in his general malaise, difficult to resist. Of course they were engaged—thus the way was cleared for an encore of the summer lovemaking—of course the wedding would be in June. Suddenly, it seemed to have gone long past the point where he could say that they weren't quite right for each other. Long past. She would scream, she would weep, she would be so terribly hurt. That he'd used her. No, he couldn't face it. He would marry and have it over with. What was he waiting for? The Walker clan had money, he'd be rid of Bister. The sobering responsibilities of family life would brace him up, steady him down—one couldn't stay single forever. And his own family would surely approve.
He glanced at the calendar on the wall. December 5. Friday. Friday? Friday! Suddenly, his joy was crushed by an ominous shadow that filled the opaque green glass panel beside the open door to his cubicle. That could only be Mr. Drowne, who liked to loom up above his victims before he pounced.
“Say Bob?” He leaned his upper half around the door frame.
“Yes, Mr. Drowne?”
“Got that Deems copy all tied up?”
“Working on it, sir.”
“Read me what you have there.”
“Uh, I'm only, ah, formulating here.”
“Bob …”
“Brush your teeth with Deems, Your smile needs those gleams!” The affected perkiness in his voice sounded shrill and desperate.
Mr. Drowne shook his head mournfully. “You're not selling smiles, Bob. You're supposed to be selling taste. Mint. Remember mint?” He reached over and picked up the open tooth powder can and rapped it twice on the desk. A little cloud of minted smoke puffed up through the holes.
“I'll keep after it, Mr. Drowne.”
“Plans for the weekend, Bob?”
“I'm going to the football game on Sunday. Giants versus Dodgers, at the Polo Grounds.”
“Yes, well, enjoy yourself, but do make certain that finished copy is on my desk when I come in Monday. Okay? If that means a little elbow grease on the weekend, well …”
“I'll get it done, sir.”
Mr. Drowne produced his usual departure sound—the sigh of the oft-betrayed man—then trudged off to his next victim.
Out the window, the snow drifted down onto the Christmas shoppers hurrying along Lexington, carrying green and red parcels. The shop windows had wreaths and little silver bells on granular snow. Above the glass panel in front of his desk, the face of Bister rose slowly, like a sea monster. “Formulating, Bob?” His eyes glowed with spite.
Eidenbaugh grabbed for a weapon, and Bister disappeared instantly with what could only be described as a chortle. He looked down at his hand and saw that he'd picked up the desktop name-plate that had been a gift from his parents on the occasion of his graduation from Columbia University, seven years earlier. ROBERT F. EIDENBAUGH, it said. Fitting, he thought, very fitting. An intended symbol of his success in times to come, it now mocked him and his too-long tenure as a copywriter. Bister was right. He wasn't going up. He wasn't going anywhere.
His father had been a captain in the American Expeditionary Forces, arriving in France in 1917 and fighting in the battle of Château-Thierry. It had been a hellish experience, one he did not speak of easily. Yet he had fallen in love with France, and in 1921, when his oldest son was eight and the youngest three, he had taken the family off to live first in Paris, then in Lyons, finally settling, six months later, in a small rented villa on the outskirts of Toulon, the Mediterranean port just east of Marseilles. Arthur Eidenbaugh was a naval architect and was able to find a position—a minor one, initially, little more than a drafting clerk—with an engineering firm associated with the Toulon shipyards. Elva Eidenbaugh was formerly a schoolteacher from Wiscasset, Maine, and no stranger to hardship. She made the money stretch and set the tone of family life—which was to be a permanent adventure, with all setbacks perceived as challenges to character and sense of humor.
They were a tight, sunny family, denying each other consolation as a matter of course. A bad cold or a bad mood simply made life difficult for everybody, so best take your lumps and move ahead, sympathy was not on the schedule. As for France, they attacked it, led in the charge by Mrs. Eidenbaugh. They made forays into boulangeries and pâtisseries, picnicked at the slightest provocation, and descended en masse on museums, carrying away every crumb of available culture. Mr. Eidenbaugh worked long hours, deflected credit to his French colleagues, and was soon enough raised to a position commensurate with his ability and education.
As a family, they liked being different, enjoyed the notion of living abroad, and their cheerful optimism seemed to draw pleasant experiences their way. Robert could not remember a time when somebody or other—postman, merchant, parents' acquaintance—wasn't ruffling his hair. With his new position, Mr. Eidenbaugh was able to engage a maid to care for the children, and in this way they picked up the language naturally and effortlessly. At home, they spoke a curious mixture of French and English. “Where can I have put l'adresse?” his mother would say. “I've looked and looked, but it seems toute à fait perdue. ”
Robert went to French schools, learned the rudiments of soccer, dressed in a uniform of blue shorts and white shirt, and allowed the requisite Catholic instruction to roll effortlessly off his Presbyterian soul. Family roots went back into Scotland, Wales, and Germany, on both sides, with the first Eidenbaughs reaching America in the mid-nineteenth century and settling on the coastlines of southern New England, where they engaged themselves in the building of ships.
In 1930, with the United States struggling in the Depression and Europe's economy falling apart, Mr. Eidenbaugh's firm won a large contract that called for the refitting of an entire naval battle group, a contract that was to support the firm throughout the early thirties. Thus, that same year, Robert was able to return to the United States to attend Columbia University, majoring in English literature with indifferent success. He was bright enough, but most of what he read seemed distant and remote and he had none of the scholar's passions. On graduation, in June of 1934, he returned to France for two years, working at a succession of small jobs, first around Toulon, later in Paris. He translated business correspondence, taught at small private schools, fell in love with wearying frequency, skated on the edge of Parisian bohemian life, and took to smoking a large, curved pipe.
In 1936, bored with aimlessness, he returned to New York and found a job with the J. Walter Thompson Company in the copy department. With war clearly on the way in Europe, the rest of the family returned in 1938, Arthur Eidenbaugh finding employment at a Boston firm of naval architects with long connection to French shipbuilding interests in Canada.
On Sunday morning, Eidenbaugh met Andy Van Duyne for breakfast at a Schrafft's on the Upper West Side. Surrounded by West End Avenue garment manufacturers taking their families out for brunch, they set to work demolishing a basket of soft yellow rolls. The basket was periodically replenished by stern Irish waitresses in black uniforms, who also kept their coffee cups full as they awaited their scrambled eggs.
Andy Van Duyne was his single surviving friend from Columbia. His family owned a petrochemical brokerage associated with Standard Oil and had a season box for the Giants' football games. Clients never seemed to use them, so Van Duyne and his friends had gotten into the habit of making a day of it on fall Sundays, starting with a late breakfast.
Van Duyne looked like an owl, a tall, spindly one, squinting out at the world through round spectacles with thick lenses. At college, he'd been a reliable source for decent bootleg and the occasional real thing, smuggled in from Canada. His family's vacation house on Long Island had a particularly private and convenient beach, it seemed, and, in return for looking the other way, they would at times discover the odd case left behind on the sand—clearly an appreciative offering. Van Duyne had gained some considerable prominence as a college prankster, using a rhinoceros-foot waste-paper basket he'd got hold of somewhere to make tracks in the snow leading up to the Central Park reservoir. This resulted only in a rather tentative news story, never really setting off the rhinoceros-in-the-drinking-water! panic he'd imagined, though there were some who swore they could taste it for weeks thereafter. Van Duyne had barely scraped through college and was now ensconced in an oakpaneled office at Morgan Guaranty, where he'd taken to reading Slade Rides to Laramie, holding the book on his lap, just below the edge of a polished antique desk.
Robert Eidenbaugh and his friend shared a brotherhood of vocational anguish. Van Duyne had trust funds sufficient to fall into a sultan's leisure, but, as he put it, “things aren't done that way in my family.” Nonetheless, his restlessness led him to leaving peculiar telephone messages (call Mr. Lyon at Schuyler 8-3938—which of course turned out to be the Central Park Zoo) for his associates and, once, after a particularly arid day, distributing dry ice in the Morgan Guaranty urinals. He was becoming, he'd said, “rather too trying at the bank.” But, until Robert met him on Sunday morning, he had evidently seen no way through the briar patch of the Family Obligations.
At Schrafft's, however, his ears were bright red and he could barely sit still, buttering rolls and slurping coffee like a Chaplin machine gone mad. Robert honored his mood as long as he could, but at last curiosity forced him to pry. The answer surprised him. Van Duyne was evasive, and offered only a partial explanation.
He was leaving Morgan, had been for weeks on the trail of something that—he could hardly believe it—had actually come from the family. They had taken pity on him at last and, when the proposition had been put, he'd leapt at the chance. “I'm too young to dry up and blow away,” he said when the eggs arrived, “and that's an old Van Duyne tradition, unfortunately. We have a tendency to molder.”
Breakfast over, they walked through the stiff wind off the Hudson to Riverside Drive and there took a bus north toward the Polo Grounds. It was a bright, frigid day, December 7, and by the time they boarded the bus their eyes were teary from the cold. They got off at 145 th Street and walked east toward Coogan's Bluff.
From the point of view of the Giant fans, it wasn't a very satisfying game. The packed crowds, wrapped up in overcoats and mufflers, their breaths visible in the winter air, groaned more than they cheered. Tuffy Leemans, the Giants' fullback on offense and halfback on defense, their most productive running back, was having a difficult day with the Dodger defensive line, and the fleet Ward Cuff seemed unable to hold the forward passes thrown him. Meanwhile, Ace Parker, the Dodger tailback and safety, was on target all through the first quarter, while Pug Manders was ripping through large holes in the Giant defensive scheme. Late in the first quarter, with the score tied 7-7, a little after 2:00 P.M., Manders took Parker's handoff on a spinner play and galloped twenty-nine yards to a Brooklyn first down at the Giant four-yard line. As the legion of Brooklyn fans made themselves heard, a static-punctuated announcement came from the loudspeaker system: “Attention, please. Attention. Here is an urgent message. Will Colonel William J. Donovan call Operator Nineteen in Washington, D.C.”
The effect of the message on Van Duyne was extraordinary. He sat dead still in his seat, and for a moment Robert thought something was wrong with him. Then he scrabbled at the pocket of his fur-collared overcoat, produced a silver flask, and took an extended swig, passing the comfort on to Robert, who discovered himself with a mouthful of excellent Scotch whisky.
“Well, what is it?” Robert said. “Have you bet the family bonds on the Giants?”
Van Duyne shook his head.
“Then what is it, Andy?”
“I'm not sure. Something important, I'll tell you that.”
“The announcement?”
“Yes.”
Pug Manders crashed over the Giant middle guard for a touchdown. The Dodger fans roared their approval.
“Now look here, Van Duyne, either tell me what's going on or sit back and watch the game. I feel like a character in a Phillips Oppenheim novel.”
Van Duyne swiveled toward him, oblivious to the crowd rising for the Dodger kickoff. “Robert, I may be able to do something for you, especially if it's all gone mad in Europe—something to do with our being in the war, at last.”
“Ah-ha!” Robert said. “You're going to Canada to get into the fighting.”
“No, it isn't that. But how would you feel about leaving Thompson, doing something completely different?”
Robert stared into his friend's eyes through the thick spectacles and saw that he was serious. “No pranks?” he asked, always a little leery of Van Duyne's elaborate ruses.
“No pranks. On my honor.”
“You're serious.”
“Yes.”
“Then I'm your man.”
“It could be dangerous.”
“No more so than Mr. Drowne.”
“Not kidding, Bob.”
“Nor am I,” he said. “Believe me, Andy, I'm ready for something—how did you put it?—‘completely different.' ”
“I can,” Van Duyne said, “pretty well promise you that.”
MEMORANDUM
April 19, 1942
TO: Lt. Col. H. V Rossell
Office of the Coordinator of Information Room 29
National Institute of Health Washington, D.C.
FROM: Agatha Hamilton
Office of Recruiting—COI 270 Madison Ave. New York, New York
SUBJECT: Robert F. Eidenbaugh
In an interview arranged by my friend, Mr. Carter Delius, Vice President for Personnel, the J. Walter Thompson Company, on March 30, I spent over two hours with Mr. L. L. Drowne, copy chief, in my capacity as Member of the Board, the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital. I told Mr. Drowne that the hospital fund-raising committee was seeking a professional copywriter to aid in its fall campaign to build a new wing for the hospital. He mentioned several other candidates before the name of Mr. Eidenbaugh (hereafter RFE) was brought up. Mr. Drowne seems to like him well enough, though he does not believe that RFE will make much of a mark in advertising. Subject was described as “completely honest” and “extremely bright,” but “very much a self-starter.” My overall impression was that RFE's heart isn't much in the Thompson company—they like him, but are not really sure what to do with him.
On April 3, as the parent of a prospective student, I visited the Brearley School and contrived to interview Mary Ellen Walker, RFE's fiancée, who teaches Fourth Form (10 th grade) English and History and assists in the coaching of the field hockey team. I came on as quite the “Bolshy heiress,” though her sympathies clearly do not lie in this direction. She was very polite about it all, representing the school as “more than fair to all sorts of girls, from all sorts of families.” Appearing to be charmed by her (I was not, in fact), I asked a few personal questions. Miss Walker perceives RFE as brilliant and dashing, though not yet situated in a position appropriate to his abilities. I would guess that, following marriage, she has plans to situate him in the family business.
An April 7 digest of reports (Attachment “A”) is enclosed, including credit reports from the following: Consolidated Edison, Chemical Bank and Trust, Sheffield Dairies, Joseph Silverman, D.D.S., and the 414 West 74 th Street Management Company. Also appended (Attachment “B”), RFE's Columbia University transcript and letters of recommendation. (See esp. Professor Horace Newell, Department of English, who praises RFE's intelligence and ability and mentions a tendency “to stay somewhat in the background.”)
On April 14 RFE attended a party, given at my behest by Mrs. Cleveland Van Duyne, at her apartment at 1085 Park Avenue. I was accompanied by my friend, Mme. Maria de Vlaq, who reports that RFE's French is “excellent,” “fluent” and “almost native.” My personal impression of RFE was of a man with a certain charm that comes naturally to him. I flirted with him a little and found him courteous and responsive, though without any interest in pressing his “advantage.” He is no snake in the grass. He does fade into the background, being slightly built and neither especially handsome nor unattractive. He is the sort of man who will be liked by all classes of people and who will not engender in others feelings of spite or envy. He drank moderately at the party, circulated well, and made no attempt to press himself forward. I represented myself as the wife of a man who was about to start a new advertising company and encouraged him strongly to become interested in the possibilities for his own career. He did, at last, agree to meet my “husband” for luncheon later in the week.
The New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has, once again, been dragging its feet and is as unresponsive in this project as it has been in all others. No report from that office to date on RFE, but same will be forwarded once it arrives—if it ever does. Can't Col. Donovan do something about this?
On April 17 I telephoned RFE at his office in the guise of Mr. Hamilton's secretary and arranged a lunch for the following Monday, April 20, at Luchow's. According to the headwaiter, he asked for “Mr. Hamilton's table” and waited twenty minutes before asking the headwaiter “if Mr. Hamilton had called.” (He had been given no “Hamilton” telephone number.) He was told that Mr. Hamilton had telephoned the restaurant, apologizing for the inconvenience and requesting that RFE meet him for lunch at the Coleman Hotel on East 23 rd Street and Fifth Avenue. On arriving at that location and discovering no such hotel, he consulted a telephone directory and proceeded to Coleman's, a restaurant on East 25 th Street, where he asked for “Mr. Hamilton.” Informed that no such person was there, he made a telephone call (in all probability to his office, since “Hamilton's secretary” had reached him there earlier), then ate lunch at the counter and left the restaurant, returning to work.
My recommendation is to accept this candidate for further COI screening.
Signed: Agatha Hamilton
COI—New York
April 24, 1942
P.S. Hub, my friend Maria de Vlaq is someone you might consider taking to lunch when you are next in New York. She is formerly the Countess Marensohn—Swedish nobility—divorced two years ago, and moves easily in society. She rides and shoots excellently, is lethally charming and of a rather daring disposition. She is of Belgian citizenship and descent, and I believe would be amenable to recruitment. Her connection to Belgian, German, and Swedish circles remains strong, and her relationship with her former husband, and his family, is cordial.
P.S.S. Not to end on a sour note, but here it is April and there is only silence from Washington on my February vouchers. While it is the case that fortune has smiled on me in this world, I cannot by myself assume the cost of the war effort.