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Page 66.

It was larger, and he shared it with a roommate—another young U.S. Navy officer named Stan Kehoe. Stan was a well-intentioned guy who often managed to say the wrong thing, or speak at the wrong time. He worked in ONI with Tim and held a Secret clearance. He knew nothing of Tim’s work with O.S.S. Stan was a good-natured, freckled young man with short sandy hair, who tended to talk out of the side of his mouth, faster than his brain could follow. He was honest and easy-going, and Tim felt he couldn’t ask for a better fellow to room with, if room one must. Stan had a girlfriend, English girl he’d met in Tining Mallow, by the name of Connie Brace or Branch or something, whom he took the train to see each weekend and it appeared they were pretty serious. Good for them, Tim thought. Good, too, to have the place to himself on weekends.

Jaguar, a slim Englishman in the ubiquitous work uniform of the London middle manager—black suit, umbrella, briefcase, bowler—met Tim for the first time on a quiet side street near the bombed out church of St. Dunstan in the East on St Dunstan’s Hill, between Lower Thames Street and Great Tower Street in the City of London. This was within a stone’s throw of the ancient Roman wall across the river from the Tower of London. London life flowed on around these landmarks and their ruins, as it had for thousands of years, and would no doubt continue for thousands more.

A telegram arrived, slipped under Tim’s apartment door when he arrived tired from work and a few touts at the pub up the street. “Robert,” it read, “Jaguar has the stamps you ordered. The 1913 Philatelic was not available but...” and so on, the coded nonsense, which Crane had shown him how to decipher.

At their first meeting, they exchanged no materials. As Crane had explained, Tim was to pass along slightly wrong information, under the guise that Major Malone was a U.S. Army officer gone bad. Some of the information was to come from the Maps Service, some from Tim’s Navy section, and some from other sources, all carefully doctored to seem real. The Allied side knew Jaguar was passing bogus information, expecting good. The Allies wanted to track Jaguar’s network and take them down. Jaguar, in the flesh, seemed dramatic and ageless, tall, maybe 35 to Tim’s 27, with watery blue eyes, thin brown hair with the first speckles of gray, and a bland sort of pleasant Everyman face. He wore the dark suit, with bowler and umbrella, of a million London bureaucrats. He could have been ten years younger or ten years older. Anything would have worked. Tim felt relaxed and in control of himself, knowing he was only a blind in a larger hunt. He only needed to go through his motions. Jaguar, who saw Tim likewise as only a conduit, said: “This will be our meeting place when I summon you.” Jaguar sat on an age-blackened wall overlooking the rubble-strewn green area under the ruined walls of the church. The church tower, still intact, was a minor Wren masterpiece. The church dated back to Medieval times, and had received a Christopher Wren tower after the massive fire of 1666 that destroyed much of London. During the Blitz of 1941, London had been covered in smoke and flames every night. This ancient church was a victim. Luckily, the Luftwaffe failed to demolish the great Cathedral of St. Paul, whose original structure dated back almost to Roman times. Every morning, it was said, Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s first words were, to his aides: “Is St. Paul’s still standing?” And it would remain standing, though a single bomb had cut through its nave and splintered a section behind the main altar. That would be replaced by a stained glass window and the American Memorial Chapel, in thanks for the sacrifices of U.S. forces in defense of Great Britain.

Now only some of its window arches remained intact of St. Dunstan in the East, aside from the Wren tower. Jaguar sat looking away with his umbrella and briefcase stiffly on his lap. Tim stood between two ogive arches, amid ivy that had splashed out like green blood from the dying house of God. He finished the last slices of an orange from his lunch. His fingers were sticky, and he washed them in rainwater captured in tulip and crocus cups. “This will be our only mode and time of contact. I will have further instructions for you as time goes on.” With that, Jaguar rose and walked briskly away leaving Tim standing at the edge of the rubble. Jaguar strode off, whistling, and twirling his umbrella.