They were toward the end of the corridor and Wheeler held out his fist and knuckles just above a door as a prelude to knocking. He turned and dropped his voice to a whisper.
"I'm going to introduce you to the 'Virgin Mary,”he said. Then he rapped. An agreeable female voice from within a final chamber gave them entry.
The Virgin Mary was Mary Ryan, an eighty-one years old, a graduate of Vassar, 1882, and the only current employee of the Bureau who had spent half of her life in the previous century. Mary came and went as she pleased, Wheeler explained, and did astonishing things with numbers, sequential series, probability, factorials, logarithms, and the other numerical complexities of cryptology. She had earned an office of her own.
Mary was an elfin white-haired woman with a small impish face, dazzling deep-green Irish eyes, and ruddy red cheeks. She wore her hair pinned back into a loose bun, and despite Cochrane's protestations, she stood when they entered the room and remained standing as they spoke.
Mary's desk was an outrageous scramble of papers, clippings, pencils, erasers, and simple additions and subtractions. As they entered she turned facedown onto the table whatever it was she had been working on.
All the great mysterious things that the Virgin Mary did with numbers she did in her head-conceived them immaculately, someone from the Bluebirds had once said-and could beat Deciphering's primitive computing gadgets. Only Mary's simple arithmetic was on paper.
Mary offered Cochrane a delicate hand, lined with thin bluish veins, but surprised him with a secure, sound grip. As part of her introduction, Wheeler mentioned that Mary was an alumna of the State Department's "Black Chamber" from the Great War of 1914-18. The Black Chamber was that dubious wing of the State Department in which the government spied upon anything and anyone for whom they were in the mood. Secretary of State Henry Stimson had disbanded the chamber in 1929 stating, "Gentlemen do not read other people's mail."
"Maybe gentlemen don't," Mary Ryan had snarled back when furloughed, "but Mary Ryan sure enjoys it. Oh, well…"
And she went quietly out to pasture, only to be called back in 1937 when the F.B.I. started picking up strange blips and dots bouncing through the stars.
"Bill Cochrane's going to be working on special assignment for us," Wheeler informed her. "I've assured him that he'll have the support of everyone in Section Seven."
"Oh, how wonderful," Mary Ryan answered. "It's not so often that we get some handsome young men up here. What sort of assignment?"
"I'm trying to catch a spy."
"On our floor? Figures!"
"No, no. Out in the United States somewhere."
"I wish you luck, dear," she said. She winked at him. "Section Seven isn't always too good about keeping its own secrets," she said. "What a bunch of detectives! If the power failed in this building half the male population couldn't find its way to the street. Oh, well, a woman pays a price to be surrounded by younger men. What did you say your name was?"
"Cochrane. Bill Cochrane."
"If you have a numerical sequence or code type, let me have the first look at it. Mary will save you a lot of time. Despite what this Mr. Wheeler tells you, you can skip Deciphering altogether. Them with their machines. Claptrap! Haven't the foggiest idea what they're about. Bring it to Mary first and Mary will help you in every way she can."
"Thank you, Mary."
"You are a handsome young man," she said to Cochrane as they left. "I do so hope that wasn't why you were hired, but I think I do see something behind the eyes."
"Thank you, Mary," Wheeler said this time, and he and Bill Cochrane continued to the end of the corridor.
Then Wheeler spoke again, relighting his pipe, sucking furiously to pick up the flame and then exuding a long cloud of smoke. "Mary's got the sharpest intellect in this whole section, including yours and mine combined," he said. He stopped, produced a key from his pocket and unlocked a final door. "If Mary Ryan were a man she would probably be running the Bureau. But she's not. So J.E.H. has the job, for the time being, anyway." Wheeler lowered his voice. "I hear Roosevelt wants to replace him."
"That rumor's been around for seven years," Cochrane said. "Hoover always lands on his feet. Other people come and go, including Presidents."
"True enough," Wheeler mused. "What do you think?" He opened the door. "This is your office."
Cochrane stepped in and found a plain desk and chair in a carpeted room. There was ample filing space, sufficient lighting, and two telephones. There were extra chairs and a sofa. No glamour, just creeping Bureau utilitarianism.
"It's fine," Cochrane said. The window behind the desk overlooked the inner quadrangle, which was currently a parking lot.
"It's nothing fancy, of course," Wheeler said with a tinge of apology, cupping the bowl of his pipe in his hand. "But I figured you'd be better off near your backup people in Section Seven."
"Of course. No complaints," Cochrane said again.
"Oh! I knew there was something else," Wheeler said suddenly. "This is just a sample of what's floating around our atmosphere at night."
Wheeler handed Cochrane a memo.
"The Bluebirds picked up a transmission in German coming from somewhere between New York and Philadelphia, or so they think. Whoever was sending it was pretty cool. Beat the listeners by hustling his message along. Bluebirds got the end of it," Wheeler explained, motioning to the sheet of paper. "Make of it what you will."
Cochrane scanned the words scrawled before him:
… Blumen von Berlin. Siegfried
"And that's it?" Cochrane asked. "That's all of the message they picked up? 'Flowers from Berlin'? 'Siegfried'?"
"The hand on the key was quick as a cat," Wheeler answered. "Like I said, clever emission. Shrewd to the point of arrogance. Quick and even-toned, yet nervy enough to spout off in German. Didn't even bother to code it, the arrogant little punk"
Cochrane stared at the words before him, not knowing what significance to draw, if any. A rank amateur? A practical joker? A seasoned professional?
Wheeler spoke again. "You might file it somewhere, Bill. We're going to have to take anything on the East Coast seriously from here on."
Cochrane nodded. "Did the Bluebirds get the transmission pattern?" he asked.
Wheeler grinned, appreciating Cochrane's insight. "They've got the frequency pegged twenty-four hours a day now. If our Kraut pal goes back on the air, the Bluebirds will be perched on his shoulder. We'll try some triangulation right away, too. Can't run any risks."
"Let's hope he doesn't change frequencies," Cochrane said absently. "Of course, it might be nothing at all, also."
"What are you doing? Reading my mind?"
Cochrane folded away the paper. Then Wheeler slung his arm around Cochrane's shoulders, leading Cochrane back down the corridor in the direction in which they had come. Somewhere in the distance, Lanny Slotkin and Hope See Ming were having a noisy argument and someone had passed through Section Seven again with another cigarette.
"Hey," Wheeler said. "There's a new chili parlor in Georgetown that'll set fire to your esophagus. My treat, my friend. You got to be hungry after all this, Bill. By the way, there's been one slight change from the other evening. You'll be reporting directly to John Edgar Hoover yourself. Doesn't change anything, does it?"
"Not much, it doesn't," Cochrane answered. “Why would it?”
He then changed the subject, leaving Wheeler to wonder exactly what he had meant.
EIGHTEEN
On Monday morning at 8 A.M., Bill Cochrane sat in his office and reviewed the material placed at his disposal. His sense of mission heightened, as did his bewilderment. Cochrane drew a long breath and exhaled slowly. For a moment he tried to recall how he had been maneuvered into this assignment. Then he remembered Banking Fraud in Baltimore. He looked back to the files before him, trying to conjure up an image of the man he might be looking for. No image appeared.