I would have recognized Candey’s blindfolded, just from the smell. Chunk glue, birdseed, hardware cloth, Mason jars full of paint, mineral spirits, and alcohol dispensed from fifty-five-gallon drums made Candey’s as distinctive as a beauty parlor selling just one brand of perfume. It was also the place where almost everyone in government went to get tools sharpened and keys cut.
I placed Donovan’s case on the long wooden counter in front of a white-haired clerk who looked as if he’d been there when the store opened in 1891.
“Was there something in particular?” he asked, his teeth hanging a couple of tendrils of saliva from top to bottom lip, like paper-hanger’s glue.
“I’ve just come back from London,” I explained. “Which is where I bought this case. Just as I was leaving town we were bombed and somehow I managed to mislay my keys. It’s a rather expensive case and I’m reluctant to break it open. Can you open it for me? I mean, without breaking the locks?”
The clerk gave me the once-over, and deciding that I hardly looked like a thief in my tailor-made gray flannel suit, he shouted back into the shop.
“Bill? We’ve got a gentleman here who needs you to open a suitcase.”
Another clerk came along the counter. This one was wearing a bow tie, an apron, armlets to protect the sleeves of his shirt, and enough hair oil to grease every pair of hedge shears on the wall behind him. He let me repeat my explanation and then regarded me with slow disbelief. Outside a streetcar roared past the narrow window, causing a temporary eclipse inside the shop. When the daylight returned I saw that he was inspecting the locks.
“Nice-looking piece of luggage. I can see why you don’t want to break the locks.” He nodded and began to experiment with various types of key.
Fifteen minutes later I was leaving the store with a new set of keys for Donovan’s case. I drove north to Kalorama Heights.
As soon as I was through the door I hoisted the case onto the dining table and, using the new keys, opened the lid. Inside the blue-moire-silk-lined suitcase were several rolls of film, some camera equipment, and a large parcel wrapped in brown paper. I fetched a magnifying glass from my study and examined the parcel carefully, checking to see if there was anything about the paper in the way it had been wrapped that might tip off Donovan that it had been opened. Only when I was thoroughly satisfied there was not, did I carefully peel away the Scotch tape and unwrap the parcel.
There were ten files, all of them from the Signals Intelligence Service at Arlington Hall, and containing dated, enciphered Soviet telegrams sent and received by Amtorg-the Soviet trading agency-and several diplomats in the Soviet Embassy. All of the files were labeled BRIDE: TOP SECRET. A letter from a Colonel Cooke explained in detail what I had already guessed.
FROM: LT COLONEL EARLE F. COOKE B BRANCH/CRYPTANALYTIC U.S. ARMY SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE SERVICE ARLINGTON HALL STATION 4000 LEE BOULEVARD ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA. TO: GENERAL W. J. DONOVAN, OSS, CAIRO November 11, 1943 Re: BRIDE
Dear General Donovan, I understand from General Strong and Colonel Clarke in G-2, that we have a short window of opportunity to make use of the Soviet onetime cipher you have in your possession before you are obliged to comply with the President’s wish that the same onetime pad be returned to General Fitin of the NKVD. In order to take full advantage of this window I am enclosing copies of all intercepts for you to loan to General Stawell of the British SOE in Cairo, together with the onetime pad, with a view to his people being able to decipher the BRIDE intercepts. As you know, Lieutenant Hallock has recently demonstrated that the Soviets are making extensive use of duplicate key pages assembled in onetime pad books and that even a single duplication of a onetime pad cipher might render Soviet traffic vulnerable to decryption. Until now we have regarded the cipher used by the Amtorg as most complicated, possessing the greatest secrecy of any within our knowledge; and it is hoped that even in the limited amount of time available to us the British crypto-analysts might make some headway with BRIDE. They should be apprised of the following information: 1) there appear to be several variants of the Soviet onetime pad cipher; and 2) the Soviets may be using a two-stage encoding procedure, encrypting a message from a separate codebook, and then again with the pad. It may be that the decryption of BRIDE, and of Soviet signals traffic in general, becomes a long-term project; at the very least, a wider dissemination of this material is to be welcomed if BRIDE is ever to be properly understood and used. But any decryption will provide investigative leads for the FBI as the identities of cover names in BRIDE traffic become more obvious. I am informed by the FBI here in Washington that they are already following up new information that the agent known as Sohnchen has a wife named Lizzie.
Yours sincerely,
Earle F. Cooke,
Lt. Colonel Commanding B Branch
I took a deep breath and read the letter again, slightly astonished that G -2, SIS, and the OSS were all prepared to disobey the spirit, if not perhaps the letter, of a presidential order regarding spying on the Russians. I asked myself what Roosevelt would have said if he had become aware of Cooke’s letter, and then decided that it was as likely as not that Roosevelt knew about it anyway. I had already formed the impression that saying one thing and then doing another seemed fairly typical of FDR. He might even have authorized this particular intelligence initiative against the Soviet Union.
That scared me. Spies of any shade were taking a big risk in America.
I read the letter a third time. They had already managed to determine that Sohnchen had a wife named Lizzie. Mrs. Philby was not called Lizzie, but Litzi, and since Philby wasn’t an American, the FBI effort would, very probably, not get very far. That was good. And Colonel Cooke had written that he was cautious about the chances of successfully decrypting Bride. That was good, too. But the letter worried me all the same.
I rewrapped the parcel carefully and considered my options. Losing the case was out of the question; besides, that would only draw attention to me. Indeed, if they already had suspicions about me, losing the case would only confirm them.
I returned the parcel to the leather suitcase and then relocked it before placing it beside the front door. Then I went upstairs to pack my own bag, telling myself that I might easily be robbed in Cairo. Failing that, I might perhaps rely on British red tape and bureaucracy to slow things down a little, perhaps even frustrate them completely. It wasn’t much to rely on. But for the moment it was all the hope I had. But I also had to admit there was a part of me that didn’t care.
Later that same evening I drank too much and got out the part of me that didn’t care and had a closer look at it. Underneath the bright lights of my living room it didn’t look nearly so blase. Which was how it came to me that I should write Diana a letter before I crossed the Atlantic again, just in case a German submarine decided to gather me to the Lord.
As love letters go, it wasn’t Cyrano de Bergerac, but it was not bad for someone as out of practice at writing that kind of thing as I was. The last time I had dipped a pen in a bottle of blind adoration before applying the nib to some finely laid notepaper I’d been about nineteen years old and in my first year at Harvard. I don’t remember the girl’s name, or what happened to her, except to say that she never replied.
I sat down at my desk and let my heart run around the room naked for a while so I could describe how this looked as accurately as possible. Then I picked up my best pen and started to write. Probably I played up the secrecy and danger of the mission ahead of me more than I should have, but the part about how stupid I thought I had been and how much I cared for Diana read accurately enough. I wondered that I hadn’t thought of writing to her before. I might even have used the word “love” once or twice. More if you counted the corny little poem I started, finished, and then tossed in the wastepaper basket.