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Page 79.

Bleary as he felt, he let Donovan’s people talk him into assisting them yet a short while longer in their spy craft. “Follow-through!” they heartily called it, and Tim could see the sense in it. A few days later, as expected, Jaguar did not show up at their assignation. Tim walked slowly through the ruins of St. Dunstan-in-the-East and then down toward Tower Bridge.

A call from Haywarden the next day confirmed: Keep delivering the Thursday pouch, even if Jaguar doesn’t show up, but otherwise sit tight. It was important to signal Stalin’s boys the Allies were dumber than their actual capabilities.

Early the following week, late one morning, a yeoman dropped off a little note. Tim was to call the number circled in purple pencil. He went to a secure phone and returned the call. It was Haywarden. “Nordhall, can’t discuss details just now. Stop by on Thursday. Good work.”

Tim met Haywarden as ordered at a pub in East London, but it wasn’t Haywarden doing the talking today. They sat in a back room that was sealed off. Two radios played simultaneously at an otherwise dark and shuttered bar—one, the BBC symphony orchestra laying down cover in the form of Mozart’s Symphony No. 42, the other a football game between Leeds and Manchester with over 50,000 fans screaming themselves hoarse. This was during closed hours, and they couldn’t order beer, but they were served a decent meal of bangers and mash with hot tea.

With Haywarden were two other high officials. One introduced himself as Allen Dulles, working out of Bern in Switzerland. The other was a younger man who was his assistant. Tim and his three companions were all in unassuming civilian clothes, including hats and overcoats soaked with rain. It was what one called a working lunch. “I wanted to meet you,” Dulles said, beaming. “Heard about your exploits and wanted to shake your hand.”

“I’m quite honored,” Tim said softly and guardedly as he shook the men’s hands. “I feel like it didn’t go so well the other day.”

While water dribbled down the picture window at his side—shade half drawn, window embellished with painted pub name—Dulles ate fastidiously holding his knife and fork in the European manner. He spoke softly, in an aristocratic version of an upstate New York twang that seemed heavily tinged with a variety of subtle accentual shadings from his many years of service across Europe and the Middle East. “Good of you to meet with us on such short notice, Nordhall.”

“My pleasure,” Tim said.

“I understand your reasons for wanting to leave our service,” Dulles said. “The last thing we want is an unhappy trooper on board. However, I hope I can prevail upon you to think about something.”

“I’ll think about anything you prevail upon, Sir,” Tim said carefully. Dulles conveyed an air of such stratospheric importance, sophistication, and competence that it was hard not to think about whatever he said. Though nothing was said, Tim suspected Dulles probably held at least brigadier general rank. In any case, he handled himself like a very senior flag officer.

“Simply,” Dulles said, dabbing at his lips with the corner of a linen napkin, “we seem to have lost your handler. You knew him as Jaguar, I believe.” Dulles had matter-of-fact, lordly attitude.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Dulles quaffed at his beer and sighed, wiping foam from his mustache with the back of his hand. “If we take it on face value, always a dangerous thing to do, but we have no choice at the moment—that our Jaguar is a double agent, then most likely he is working for our Soviet allies. A less likely scenario is that he was working for our enemies over in Germany. We have been able to determine that he made alcohol prints of some maps, and those are what went out in the tube. We know that at least one of the maps was of a German physics research site near Joachimsthal, so it looks increasingly dubious that he is working for the Germans. The fact that he entered the Soviet embassy would seem to clinch it.”

“I’m not done then?” Tim asked.

“Commander, the Soviets are of course our rightful allies, and we understand how desperately they grab whatever they can. At the same time, there are some things we simply cannot afford to give away to anyone. We must guard our intimate secrets at all costs. I am here personally today to beg you—please keep a hand in the game a while longer.”

Tim finished eating and pushed his plate away. He sat back, and with his napkin stifled a belch. Reluctantly, he nodded. “Of course, Mr. Dulles, if you feel it is in the national interest.”

“I do feel that, or I would not presume to ask.”

“Very well then.”

“Thank you, young man.” Dulles looked visibly relieved.

“All I ask is that you keep me from being framed again.”

“I assure you,” Dulles said, “I will personally review your records and see that you are duly promoted, decorated, and whatever else is due to you.”

“That’s all I ask,” Tim said.

“Good. Here’s what I’d like you to do. We’re going to suspend the courier runs. We want to send a vague signal that you are in fact somehow no longer in our trust. You won’t take this personally, of course.”

“Oh no,” Tim said, “I’m getting used to it.”

The other men laughed.

Just then, Ivor Crane apologetically rushed in and apologized for being late.

Dulles nodded to Tim, grinning. “Good sense of humor. I like that. Nordhall, you are in our dearest favor, never mistake it. You are going to be a sleeper, after a fashion. You go right on doing what you are doing, but we are going to transfer you to the West Coast of the U.S.A. early next year. With the invasion of Germany under way, it looks as if it’s only a matter of time until they break. Meanwhile we’ll want to focus on the Pacific war, and we’ll be shifting people in that direction. Until then, I want you to remain aware of the Malone persona but stop going to that church to meet Jaguar. That’s all finished. He’s gone back to his people, whoever they are. If he’s a Kraut, he’ll turn up in Germany. If he’s a Soviet, we’ll never see him again—except maybe in the U.S., come to think of it.”

“Sounds like something I can handle.”

“We’ll check in with you about once a month or so,” Crane said as he ordered tea and tapped water from his bowler and umbrella. “Nothing to it, Nordhall. Oh, and I’m authorized to inform you that you’ll be receiving a number of decorations when you depart command, with false citations, but you’ll know it’s in regard to the H.M.S. Sturmer sinking, including the Navy Cross, the Purple Heart, a Navy Commendation Medal, and several British decorations. The citations can perhaps be updated in a few years to show your uncommon what not and so forth.”

“What he means,” Dulles said, “is that we won’t tip our hand too much. We want to leave that faint scent in the air, as if we’re not entirely certain what to do with you, when in fact we love you dearly and recognize Uncle Joe has kicked us in the nuts. We just don’t want the Commies to see our pain.”

“Understood, Sir,” Tim said with a grin.

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” one of the men joked.

“It’s a pleasant way to ease you out,” Haywarden said with a happy, toothy grin. “You’re good on the technical analysis side, and we’ll get you a plum job in San Francisco. I believe your friend Stan Kehoe is already on his way there.”

“Yes, he is.” Tim felt jazzed. He was ready for a major change in his life. He was contemplating the departure of Anna Stokowska, and it hurt. She was the best woman friend he’d ever had, and he’d had many women. If one had to get married, it should be to Anna or someone like her, if such a woman existed.

“I did ask to be transferred,” she admitted as they stood on the sand, looking out at the sea and holding hands.

He squeezed her hand. “I understand. Any word?”

“Erek is alive in a prison near Warsaw for interned Polish officers.”

“Hopefully he will be safe for you.”

“Thank you, Tim.”

He put his arm around her waist, and she laid her head on his shoulder. He had just let her go, and she had thanked him. It was over. They walked slowly to the car together.

“You come and visit us in Warsaw after the war, yes? My family live in Praga, which is an elegant area. I miss home very much.”

“Sure,” he told her as he gallantly helped her into the car, “and I will bring you home to New Haven.” Even as he said it, he knew that these were all just words now. None of it would ever happen. He thought of his hometown—the little city would ever be big enough for him anymore, with its old brick university buildings and quietly rainy green streets in spring, hot and muggy in the summer, snowy in winter, radiant as an umber lantern in fall. There had to be something more for him, but he had no idea yet what that might be.