“You heard about this fellow Thornton Cole and what happened to him, I suppose?” he asked.
“That he’d been murdered? Yes, sir.” I frowned as I failed to see what Roosevelt was driving at.
“I see you don’t know the whole story.”
“I guess not.”
“Know what a Florence test is?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s something the forensic boys do, to test for seminal fluid. It seems that Thornton Cole’s trousers were covered in semen.”
I suddenly realized what the Metro police had been driving at with their questions about me introducing Sumner Welles to Cole at the Metropolitan Club. They must have suspected me of being involved in some kind of ring of Washington sissies. I had known several homosexual men in my time, mostly in Berlin and Vienna, and even one or two in New York. I held nothing against them just as long as they didn’t try to hold anything against me. What a man did in the privacy of his own circle of hell was no business of mine. At the same time, I could hardly believe what I was hearing. It was true what I had told the Metro police. I hadn’t known Thornton Cole all that well. But I wouldn’t ever have guessed that he was a homosexual any more than I was one myself.
“I made sure I was the first one to tell Hull all about it,” said Roosevelt, gleefully. “In the car, on the way back from the airport. You should have seen his face. It was priceless, just priceless. That’s what I meant when I said he should stay home and clean up his own backyard.” Roosevelt laughed cruelly. “The son of a bitch.”
I tried not to look shocked, but I could not help but feel a little taken aback at this display of presidential vindictiveness.
Roosevelt lit a cigarette and finally came to the point of my presence. “I read your report,” he said. “It was refreshingly pragmatic. For a philosopher, you’re quite the Realpolitiker.”
“Isn’t that the proper job of the intelligence officer? To separate the politics of reality from a policy founded upon the principles of justice and morality? And philosophically speaking, Mr. President, I can’t see much at all that’s wrong with that.”
“You’ll make a logical positivist out of me yet, Professor.” Roosevelt grinned. “But only in private. Realpolitik is like homosexuality. Best when it’s practiced behind closed doors.” Roosevelt sipped his cocktail. “Tell me something. Have you got a girlfriend?”
I tried to contain my irritation.
“Are you asking me if I’m homosexual, Mr. President?” I said through gritted teeth. “Because if you are, the answer is no. I’m not. And as a matter of fact I don’t have a girlfriend. But I did, until quite recently.”
“I don’t care what a man does in private. But when it becomes public it’s a different matter. You see how sex becomes the purest kind of Realpolitik there is?”
I lit a cigarette. I had a strong sense that the president was leading me somewhere a long way from Katyn Forest.
“Professor Mayer? I want you to come to the Big Three with me. As I told you, I’m taking Harry Hopkins instead of Hull. I guess you know that Harry’s been living here at the White House since 1940. There isn’t a man in Washington I trust more. He’s been with me through thick and thin, since ’32. But Harry has a problem. He gets sick. Much of his stomach was cut away because of cancer, and that makes it difficult for him to absorb protein.
“So I want you to understudy Harry and be ready to step into his shoes if he should become ill. Only I don’t want Harry to know about it. You understand? It will be our dirty little secret. People will ask why you’re along for the ride, and you’ll have to tell them to mind their own damned business. That will only make them more curious, of course, so we’ll have to devise some sort of official position for you. Executive officer to General Donovan, or something. But what do you say? Will you come?”
A trip to somewhere warm sounded nice, especially now that I was sleeping alone. And leaving Washington, going somewhere far away, might just help to bring Diana to her senses.
“Of course, sir. It would be an honor and a privilege. When do we leave?”
“Friday. It’s short notice, I know. You’ll need to get some shots. Yellow fever, typhoid, things like that. And we’ll be away for quite a while. At least another month. In Cairo we’ll hook up with Donovan. Meet the British and the Chinese. Then go on somewhere else for the conference with Stalin. I can’t tell you where that is yet. Only that it’s not Basra, more’s the pity.”
“I like a little mystery in my life.”
“I know you won’t be insulted if I say I hope I don’t have need of your counsel while we’re away. However, there’s something I’d like your opinion on right now.”
“Anything, Mr. President.”
Roosevelt stubbed out his cigarette, screwed another Camel into his holder, and lit it quickly, before fetching some papers from underneath a bronze ship’s steering clock on the untidy-looking desk.
“Your boss is inclined to be an enthusiast of all kinds of intelligence,” said Roosevelt. “Of whatever character and provenance. And quite regardless of appearances and the diplomatic niceties. Now, as you know, I strongly hold the view that the Russians are the key to the defeat of Germany. As soon as we came into this war, I decreed that there was to be no spying on the Russians, and on the whole we’ve stuck to that. More or less. However, this past February the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division, G-2, started examining Soviet diplomatic cablegrams in order to prove, or disprove, a persistent rumor we had been hearing that the Russians have been negotiating a separate peace with the Nazis.”
Roosevelt refilled our glasses. After two, the anesthetic effect of the gin kicked in and the president’s martinis didn’t taste half bad.
“In an effort to scotch the rumor, we managed to establish our own source in the Soviet embassy. And what has since become clear is that the Russians have a network of spies working right here in Washington. For example, here are a number of memos Donovan’s sent me that relate to tidbits of information we’ve had.”
Roosevelt adjusted the pince-nez on the bridge of his long nose, glanced over the memos he was holding, and then handed one to me.
“This first memo from Donovan speaks about a British intercept regarding an NKVD agent working here called ‘Nick’; and another one called ‘Needle.’ Apparently they had a meeting here in Washington just last week.” Roosevelt handed me another of Donovan’s memoranda. “This one talks about someone called ‘Sohnchen’ meeting an American called ‘Croesus.’ And in this one we have someone called ‘Fogel’ handing over some information to ‘Bibi.’ ”
Another log shifted noisily on the fire. This time it sounded a lot like my own doom.
“Your boss and G-2 think that this puts a completely different complexion on my original executive order about spying on Russia,” continued Roosevelt. “After all, if they’re spying on us, it kind of makes us look like chumps if we don’t try to find out more-for example, from those cablegrams between Moscow and Amtorg, the Soviet Trade Mission in New York, they’ve been examining. Not that they’ve had much luck, because the Soviets are using a two-part ciphering system that G-2 has regarded as unbreakable. Until now, that is. A week or two ago, in Cairo, Bill Donovan got hold of some Soviet duplicate onetime pads. And now he wants my permission to go ahead and decode all the recent radio traffic that we’ve been able to intercept. The code name for these signals intercepts is Bride.”
“And you want my opinion regarding what, exactly, sir?”
“Do I let the original executive order stand, or should I let G-2 and your General Donovan run with this?”
“Can I speak frankly, Mr. President? And in confidence?”
“Of course.”
I chose my words carefully. “I just wonder if we would be having this conversation at all if the Bride material related to British signals traffic. The Soviets are also our allies, after all. They might be a little pissed at us if they found out.”