A Gathering of Spies (9 page)

I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Undersecretary of State, von Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut in Berlin, where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated
.

Yours very truly
,

A. Einstein

(
Albert Einstein
)

Catherine had also memorized the response, which was short, to the point, and utterly chilling. It read:

October 19, 1939

My dear Professor:

I want to thank you for your recent letter and and the most interesting and important enclosure
.

I found this data of such import that I have convened a board consisting of the head of the Bureau of Standards and a chosen representative of the Army and Navy to thoroughly investigate the possibilities of your suggestion regarding the element of uranium
.

I am glad to say that Dr. Sachs will cooperate and work with this committee and I feel this is the most practical and effective method of dealing with the subject
.

Please accept my sincere thanks
.

Very sincerely yours
,

(signed) Franklin D. Roosevelt

It was the tone of the letter that she found most chilling.
Please accept my sincere thanks
. Polite, businesslike, and efficient—as they discussed building a bomb that could ravage Germany beyond her worst nightmares. If one of these bombs, exploded in a port, could destroy the entire port (and some surrounding territory), then what about a dozen? Or a hundred? Or a thousand? The Americans were working on something that could erase her people from the face of the earth. And she harbored no illusions that they would hesitate to use it.

Please accept my sincere thanks
.

It could not be allowed to happen.

“Look at the stars,” she said dreamily. Her hand, in the purse, was still touching the cool metal of the scissors. “I bet you know some things about constellations, right, Tom?”

He smiled without looking over at her. “I know a few,” he admitted.

“Pull over, will you? Just for a second?”

He dutifully pulled the Studebaker over to the side of the road. Catherine quickly opened her door and stepped out, holding her purse. She walked a few paces off into the desert, scowling up at the sky.

“Catherine,” he called. “You don't want to—”

“Come on, silly! Show me the constellations.”

She didn't look back to see if he was following. After a moment, she heard his door open and close. He had left the engine running. She could feel him come up beside her. Around them, the desert stretched cold and bleak in every direction.

“Show me,” she said, moving closer to him.

Tom seemed paralyzed by her proximity. He mumbled something, but his voice didn't catch. He cleared his throat and tried again. “There's Orion,” he croaked, pointing.

She moved even closer so she could look down the line of his arm. She could feel a feverish heat coming off him. For a moment she felt pity—this poor, love-struck boy didn't know what he had gotten himself into. But she pushed the pity down. She slipped her fingers through the loops of the scissors and prepared to use them.

“It's beautiful,” she said.

“And there's the Little Dipper. See?”

“Where?”

“There,” he said. “Follow the—”

She slid the scissors between his fourth and fifth ribs, into his heart.

Tom stiffened beside her. He let out a small sound, more confused than hurt. She let go of the scissors and put her arm around his waist. She lowered him gently to the ground as he made a series of low noises.

He was still alive. His eyes, locked on her face, were baffled.

He doesn't know what happened
, she thought. For some reason, the thought gratified her.

“Shh,” she said.

It took nearly five minutes for Tom Bradley to die. Finally he sighed—a sigh of relief, she thought—and then he was gone, although his eyes remained open, his lips parted.

Catherine pulled the scissors from his torso and wiped them clean on his pants. As she was doing it a wave of nausea took her by surprise. She tried to ignore it. But it came again, and she was forced to spin around, away from the corpse, to vomit a stream of bile into the sand.

Afterward, she spat, disgusted with herself. The ten years spent as Catherine Danielson had left her soft. Fritz would never love her, not if she had really become so weak.

When she had finished spitting, she returned her attention to the body. She checked it professionally and found forty dollars in a wallet in the hip pocket, which she took for herself. Then she put her hands under the armpits and dragged Tom Bradley a few dozen yards into the desert. She deposited him in a shallow gully. They wouldn't find him until daylight, at least.

She returned to the car, breathing hard. The scissors went back in the purse, along with the money. She still had the taste of vomit in her mouth. She spat again, and then again, but couldn't get rid of it.

She slipped behind the wheel and lit a cigarette with shaky hands.

They wouldn't begin looking for her until midnight at the earliest. With luck, they wouldn't begin until the next morning. Richard would try to get immediate help, of course, but it was possible that he wouldn't be able to convince anybody of the seriousness of the situation right away. They would know that she and Tom Bradley had left the camp shortly before twilight, heading to Albuquerque. Perhaps they would assume that an illicit affair was involved. They both were young, she and Tom, while Richard was old. It seemed a natural assumption. But she couldn't count on it. Considering what was going on at Los Alamos, she had to be prepared for the worst.

She had a military staff car, with a gas tank almost three-quarters full. If she drove through the night, she could make good distance. The cover of night was appealing; driving for pleasure had been banned by the Office of Price Administration months before, and while the staff car might put off some questions, the fact that she was a lone woman would invite scrutiny. She could drive through the night, hide and sleep during the day, siphon some gasoline—it was strictly rationed, so buying more was not an option—and then drive again. At some point she would get rid of the car and change her appearance. She would prefer to avoid the trains, but she couldn't afford to dismiss the alternative completely. Before reaching New York and boarding a ship, she would need to change her identity and raise some money … but first things first. First she needed to get out of New Mexico, to put as much distance as possible between herself and Tom Bradley.

By the time she finished the cigarette, her hands were steady. She pitched the butt, then rolled the car back onto the road. As she did, she caught a glimpse of her eyes in the rearview mirror. They were wide and horror-stricken.

She stopped the car. She breathed, shallowly, in and out until she felt more in control. Then she checked her eyes in the mirror again.

They were sanguine.

She drove north. At Lamy she turned east. Ahead of her was the Texas Panhandle and, beyond that, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois … and, eventually, New York City. Then England, and Fritz.

4

THE WAR OFFICE, WHITEHALL

MAY 1943

Taylor was on the phone when Winterbotham was shown into his office. He waved a hand, indicating that Winterbotham should sit and wait. Winterbotham did so. He forsook the deep red couch against one wall, settling instead into an armchair facing the desk. His stomach was a nest of writhing snakes; his eyes ached. He had slept even less than usual the night before, which meant not at all.

As soon as Taylor was off the phone, Winterbotham would find out whether his wife was still alive.

He had not been able to make himself go to Ham Common the previous night, when Schroeder and Taylor had gotten their answers over the wireless from Hamburg. He could not sit in that dank little room with those men—one an enemy, the other a strange kind of friend—while he heard this particular piece of news. What if he burst into tears? There would go the last tattered remnants of his credibility. Instead he had paced his flat, trying to read but ending up drinking. He had drunk every drop of whiskey he could find, to little effect. Then he had smoked his pipe until his throat burned and the sun came up.

All morning he had been moving about in a strange, surreal sort of fog. He had taken a bus to Trafalgar Square and then walked to Whitehall, relishing the fresh air. En route he had noticed that the flowers were in bloom, even in the midst of the wreckage from the bombs. This had transfixed him. There were more flowers in London than there had been for the past hundred years, he knew, and the bombs—irony of ironies!—the bombs were responsible. Nitrates from the burning shells had enriched the soil. There were purple crocuses everywhere he looked, and even
Sisymbrium irio
, the London rocket—more irony—which had not been seen in England since the great fire of 1666. In the aftermath of destruction, Mother Nature had once again proved her resourcefulness.

He had arrived at the War Office a few minutes early for his eleven o'clock appointment, and had been forced to wait with a dour secretary who refused to meet his eyes. But now the moment was imminent. As soon as Taylor hung up the phone, he would find out one way or the other. He felt on the verge of a nervous fit. Christ, but he was tired.… How long would Taylor remain on the phone? He was talking about sabotage of some kind, and it sounded as if it might go on for a while. Part of him hoped it did. As long as Taylor was on the phone, Winterbotham would still have a shred of hope. As long as Taylor was on the phone, he wouldn't know for certain that Ruth, his beloved Ruth, was dead.…

Still more irony. That he should be sitting here, today, with his entire being focused on the question of whether Ruth was alive—Ruth, who, in the beginning, had not been to his taste whatsoever.

Her family, for one thing, had a long history on the music-hall circuit. Winterbotham had seen the vaudevillian strain in Ruth's blood on their very first meeting. He had stopped by her brother's flat—her brother, something of a rogue, had been a mate of Winterbotham's from the first war. Ruth had greeted him at the door with an unladylike hail of off-color quips at the expense of his impeccable posture, his tightly clutched umbrella, and his stiff upper lip.

She could be a maddening woman. But somehow it was her most maddening qualities that had, over the years, come to captivate him so completely. The way she played the piano, for instance—speeding up and slowing down as it suited her, improvising entire passages in the midst of a piece. Reckless. The way she read the most shameless rags—
The People
was her favorite—and made no effort whatsoever to conceal it.

Taylor hung up the phone.

“She's at Dachau,” he said.

Winterbotham felt his eyes prickling with tears. He reached up to wipe them away. Taylor pretended not to notice.

“The
Abwehr
is not exactly eager to trade her for your services, Harry, but they sounded open to the possibility. They instructed Schroeder to let you know that she's alive, and to demand some information immediately in exchange. If the information checks out, they'll move on to the next step—arranging a
treff
and giving you their own onceover.”

Winterbotham nodded. He was digging through his pockets, looking for a handkerchief.

“Here,” Taylor said.

He looked up. Taylor was offering him a sky-blue hanky. He took it and dabbed at his eyes.

“You all right, old chap?”

Winterbotham nodded again, handed the handkerchief back, and sat up straight in the chair. “Very well, thank you,” he said.

“It's good news, Harry. But you know that it doesn't necessarily mean anything. The chances that they'll really exchange her—”

“I understand.”

“Nevertheless, I'm glad for you, Harry.”

“Yes,” Winterbotham said. Then, very suddenly, he began to weep. Taylor fidgeted in his chair, embarrassed. He held the handkerchief ready, but Winterbotham was beyond that; his face was glistening with tears. There was nothing for Taylor to do but wait, eventually trying to seem busy with a stack of memos sitting on the desk.

Finally Winterbotham dried up a bit. He sniffled, wiped his hand across his nose like a schoolboy, and smiled. “I'm sorry,” he said.

“No need to apologize.”

“Not very curmudgeonly of me.”

Taylor laughed, a genuine laugh. “That's the good news,” he said after a moment. “There's also bad.”

“Go ahead.”

“It doesn't involve your case directly. But indirectly, it may have some bearing.”

“I'm listening.”

“Something of an emergency has come up,” Taylor said. “We've been told to assign it top priority. Chances are it will shake out before Schroeder sends his next message, two weeks hence, and so it won't interfere with the rendezvous. But if by chance it's not taken care of by then, we'll have to continue to give it top priority. In that case, your assignment may be put on the back burner.”

“Can I help?”

“I hope so,” Taylor said. “For this one, old chap, we can use all the help we can get.”

“Thirteen days ago,” Taylor said—he was standing, now, looking out the tall window behind his desk and smoking a cigarette—“our American friends seem to have lost something of some value. They want us to get it back for them.”

Winterbotham, still seated in front of the desk, was filling his pipe. It was taking him longer than usual, as his vision was still somewhat blurred.