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Page 77.

Tim was still very fond of Anna, and he now feared she might be more smitten with him than was good for her. They went to movies and concerts, and spent their steamy Sunday afternoons together at his apartment. Anna was warm and loving, and Tim was in that awkward limbo. The Thing in her life was out of his control, and out of her reach. He had carved new spaces for himself with other women, friends like Ginny Bell, none with the fire he’d felt for Anna. He still found Anna irresistible but could not fire the extra piston or two to fire up love with her and force the issue of Erek. She never spoke of Erek, and Tim did not ask. He felt like a caretaker lover. He was a placeholder. He knew, therefore, that she would not be the woman in his life, and the affair was slowly unraveling. Its impossibility added a frantic passion and spice that made them still hot together, but when he drove her home every Sunday evening, it was with a damaged, empty feeling. Not against her. He loved her. It was the crazy war, grinding away at the normalcy of natural things. Anna’s English was exceptional, since she was of aristocratic background and educated at a finishing school. She’d returned to England after escaping from the Germans in Danzig. She’d studied nursing—she said to help the English or anyone else who needed help, so she could be of practical use in case someone, somewhere, decided to come to her nation’s aid...which nobody did, Germany being the big bully across the continent, France gone, England on her knees, but Anna soldiered on. Tim couldn’t tell her about his Malone side, but she quietly sensed there was more to his story than he could tell. Theirs became one of those friendships with the spark of sex but not quite the flame of love. They were deeply affectionate, and it might have flowered into love, given a chance. They enjoyed their passion as much as it served them in the loneliness of being far from home. He thought about these things over and over, always coming to the same conclusion. It was a dead end affair. Enjoy it while it lasted. He would never forget her.

“My brother had a new camera,” she explained. “This roll of film contains the only pictures I have of us together.”

“How precious they must be, these pictures.”

“Yes,” she breathed, leaning her chin on her clasped hands on her knees, and staring lovingly into the past. Tim put his arm around her, and she leaned her forehead against him with a martyred look in her eyes.

It was now six p.m. and the main iron gate was closed as the taxi let Tim out. Still wearing his naval uniform, he dashed through the small side gate. He returned a snappy salute rendered by a fatigue-clad Royal Marine standing stiffly at ease against a granite wall covered with gilded inscriptions, boots apart, toting a Bren machine pistol. He made his way through a complicated set of diversions, including sandbagged corridors full of whispers, under high ceilings, between blacked out windows, under the watchful eyes of several U.S. Marine Corps NCOs. He came to the night desk. There, a Royal Marines corporal checked his I.D. and questioned his reason for coming in.

“I normally come and go by the main entrance, Corporal. Today, I left my wallet in the office and had to double back. Anxious to get to a dinner date.”

He showed his I.D. badge and the man nodded. “I understand fully, Sir. Please sign in and we’ll have you right on your way.”

Tim picked up a pen and started to fill in his information: name, rank, service, nationality, I.D. number, the works...as he scribbled furiously, his eye roved up a few lines, and his hand froze in mid-signature. A Major Robert Malone, U.S. Army, had signed in just twenty minutes earlier. The service I.D. was the same one as on the Malone card in Tim’s pocket.

Shivers ran up and down Tim’s back as he glanced at the signer’s destination: the top secret map room on the third floor.

Tim stopped and stared at the corporal, a bony man with a large Adam’s apple, who stared back with blue eyes that radiated a desire to be helpful.

Tim looked around. The corridors were busy, even at this hour, with night shift and round the clock signals people, mostly in Marine Corps and Army uniforms.

“Is everything all right, Sir?”

“I’m just thinking.” Absently, he began to doodle over his name and signature to make them illegible without making them stand out too much. Hopefully, the impostor would not notice while signing out. Nor, hopefully, would the guard as Tim scribbled.

“Hot date, remember, Sir?” The Corporal winked.

“Yes.” Tim laid the pen down. “Thanks.” He calculated. It would take him about 15 minutes to get his wallet and make it back here. Dinner with Anna was out, that was for sure. He’d call her later at the restaurant. She’d have to be understanding. Maybe they could still link up later. At the moment, however, he had a mystery to solve.

As he strode down the zigzag corridors with their caged-in overhead lights casting a ghastly gleam on men and women carrying gas masks at their sides, and the occasional grunt clomping along in hobnails, Tim thought furiously. Was there a chance of some mistake? He kept coming up with no. Somehow, the impostor had to have shown an I.D. badge similar or identical to the one Tim was carrying.

Tim entered the locked office where he’d labored all day. He flicked on the lights and marched past empty desks to his own. With trembling fingers he unlocked the desk and took out his wallet, pocketing it. He locked the desk, turned out the lights, and let himself out. Trying to seem nonchalant—what if the impostor spotted him? What if he didn’t recognize the impostor?—he strode back to the night entrance. As he signed out in the book, he noticed that “Malone” was still in the building. How to handle this?

“Corporal, I’ll wait over there by the statue if you don’t mind.” He pointed with his chin to a beautifully carved honey and white marble of some 18th Century aristocrat in pigtail and breeches, waving a book in one hand and holding a thin, elegant sword erect with the other hand. The niche was in a dark corner with a window overlooking the path outside.

“Not at all, Sir. Do you need me to call you a taxi?”

“Not quite yet. I’m hoping a friend of mine will come by.”

“If you need—”

“No, really, thanks!”

The man brightened. “Quite, Sir. I understand.”

Tim stepped into the shadows and pretended to be looking outside, but kept the corners of his eyes on the desk. He tried to position himself so he could tell at a distance who had signed which line as individuals left.

The corporal’s desk was located under a broad arch. A dim lantern glowed in the central ceiling, amber glass trapped in iron cage. Footsteps echoed as men and women came and went, each quickly and casually signing in and out.

Tim sweated. Would he miss the impostor? He craned his neck to see who was signing where. Finally, unable to stand the suspense any longer, he walked up to the desk and said: “Is there a drinking fountain?”

“Right over there, Sir,” the corporal said without fuss. He had The Times furtively at his side.

“Right. Thanks.” Tim glanced down. The impostor had not yet signed out. Tim went for a sip of lukewarm water that tasted of gravel and chlorine. He just realized how dry his mouth was. As he turned, he almost came face to face with Jaguar, who tromped along in a U.S. Army major’s uniform, carrying a stiff cardboard tube. The tube was olive drab, with a cover and a strap at one end. Jaguar walked right past Tim, but apparently didn’t notice him. Tim froze. He could have reached out and touched the other man’s lapel without extending his arm fully.

Tim turned quickly and had another drink, watching through the corner of his eye. Jaguar signed out, exchanged a cool formal pleasantry with the corporal and a private who had arrived, and left.

Tim sauntered after him, nodding to the sentries in the sandbagged entrance.

Jaguar strode confidently along, cool as a pickle, and emerged on the broad sidewalk outside. Tim tailed him, staying just far enough back so he did not have to seem furtive.

Jaguar hailed a taxi in the front circle.

Tim hailed the next cab and had the Cockney tail the other taxi. Tim slipped him a five-dollar bill. “No questions,” he said.

“No questions, Sir. Right.” The driver never missed a beat, looking thoroughly bored and in control. He was a slight man, in a light blue sweater, balding early in life, and combing the dun-colored remnants of his long-ago mane over a bony skull that shone like refrigerated cheese. They cruised easily along the north bank of the river, until they came to Cheyne Walk, then Chelsea Embankment, and turned onto Albert Bridge Road. Still following the other cab, they rode down past Battersea Park and the Boating Lake. Then they crossed over toward Kennington Oval, back up Clapham Road, and finally stopped at Cleaver Street.

Jaguar got out of the cab.

Tim was a half a block back, tucked in at the curb behind a blue delivery truck. When he stood half out of the rear door, he could see past the delivery truck that a man walked up and accepted the tube. Jaguar’s taxi roared off, and Tim made a quick decision. He threw a five-pound note in, thanked the cabbie, and hurried up the sidewalk.

The man carrying the tube was a slender little man in a broad-brimmed brown hat. He wore a long dark woolen overcoat and solid walking shoes. He carried an umbrella tucked under one arm and the tube under the other.

Tim followed at a discreet distance, as the man walked toward Kennington Lane in the general direction of Lambeth.

Suddenly, the man stepped into the street and hailed a black taxi, which stopped briefly. The man climbed in and slammed the door. The taxi took off in a screech of rubber. Tim had only time enough to see the white license plate with its black lettering as the taxi drove off into a gathering fog.

What now? Tim stood helplessly on a curb in the middle of a side area of London. There were shops around, several of them open. He walked into a well-lit, warm little newspaper shop and asked directions to a phone.