«I wasn’t prepared for you.» The colonel’s reply had been stated simply. «Most people take this sort of thing as routine. Or they convince themselves it’s routine … with a little help.»
«Most people did not live as Jews in tsarist Kiev… What do you want from me?»
«To begin with, did you tell Spaulding you expected us? Or someone…»
«Of course not,» Mandel interrupted gently. «I told you, he is as a son to me. I wouldn’t care to give him such ideas.»
«I’m relieved. Nothing may come of it anyway.»
«However, you hope it will.»
«Frankly, yes. But there are questions we need answered. His background isn’t just unusual, it seems filled with contradictions. To begin with, you don’t expect the son of well-known musicians … I mean …»
«Concert artists.» Mandel had supplied the term Pace sought.
«Yes, concert artists. You don’t expect the children of such people to become engineers. Or accountants, if you know what I mean. And then—and I’m sure you’ll understand this—it seems highly illogical that once that fact is accepted, the son is an engineer, we find that the major portion of his income is currently earned as a … as a radio performer. The pattern indicates a degree of instability. Perhaps more than a degree.»
«You suffer from the American mania for consistency. I don’t say this unkindly. I would be less than adequate as a neurosurgeon; you may play the piano quite well, but I doubt that I’d represent you at Covent Garden… The questions you raise are easily answered. And, perhaps, the word stability can be found at the core… Have you any idea, any conception, of what the world of the concert stage is like? Madness… David lived in this world for nearly twenty years; I suspect … no, I don’t suspect, I know … he found it quite distasteful… And so often people overlook certain fundamental characteristics of musicianship. Characteristics easily inherited. A great musician is often, in his own way, an exceptional mathematician. Take Bach. A genius at mathematics…»
According to Aaron Mandel, David Spaulding found his future profession while in his second year in college. The solidity, the permanence of structural creation combined with the precision of engineering detail were at once his answer to and escape from the mercurial world of the «concert stage.» But there were other inherited characteristics equally at work inside him. Spaulding had an ego, a sense of independence. He needed approval, wanted recognition. And such rewards were not easily come by for a junior engineer, just out of graduate school, in a large New York firm during the late thirties. There simply wasn’t that much to do; or the capital to do it with.
«He left the New York firm,» Mandel continued, «to accept a number of individual construction projects where he believed the money would grow faster, the jobs be his own. He had no ties; he could travel. Several in the Midwest, one … no, two, in Central America; four in Canada, I think. He got the first few right out of the newspapers; they led to the others. He returned to New York about eighteen months ago. The money didn’t really grow, as I told him it wouldn’t. The projects were not his own; provincial … local interference.»
«And somehow this led to the radio work?»
Mandel had laughed and leaned back in his chair. «As you may know, Colonel Pace, I’ve diversified. The concert stage and a European war—soon to reach these shores, as we all realize—do not go well together. These last few years my clients have gone into other performing areas, including the highly paid radio field. David quickly saw opportunities for himself and I agreed. He’s done extremely well, you know.»
«But he’s not a trained professional.»
«No, he’s not. He has something else, however… Think. Most children of well-known performers, or leading politicians, or the immensely rich, for that matter, have it. It’s a public confidence, an assurance, if you will; no matter their private insecurities. After all, they’ve generally been on display since the time they could walk and talk. David certainly has it. And he has a good ear; as do both of his parents, obviously. An aural memory for musical or linguistic rhythms… He doesn’t act, he reads. Almost exclusively in the dialects or the foreign languages he knows fluently…»
David Spaulding’s excursion into the «highly paid radio field» was solely motivated by money; he was used to living well. At a time when owners of engineering companies found it difficult to guarantee themselves a hundred dollars a week, Spaulding was earning three or four hundred from his «radio work» alone.
«As you may have surmised,» said Mandel, «David’s immediate objective is to bank sufficient monies to start his own company. Immediate, that is, unless otherwise shaped by world or national conditions. He’s not blind; anyone who can read a newspaper sees that we are being drawn into the war.»
«Do you think we should be?»
«I’m a Jew. As far as I’m concerned, we’re late.»
«This Spaulding. You’ve described what seems to me a very resourceful man.»
«I’ve described only what you could have found out from any number of sources. And you have described the conclusion you have drawn from that surface information. It’s not the whole picture.» At this point, Pace recalled, Mandel had gotten out of his chair, avoiding any eye contact, and walked about his office. He was searching for negatives; he was trying to find the words that would disqualify «his son» from the government’s interests. And Pace had been aware of it. «What certainly must have struck you—from what I’ve told you—is David’s preoccupation with himself, with his comforts, if you wish. Now, in a business sense this might be applauded; therefore, I disabused you of your concerns for stability. However, I would not be candid if I didn’t tell you that David is abnormally headstrong. He operates—I think—quite poorly under authority. In a word, he’s a selfish man, not given to discipline. It pains me to say this; I love him dearly…»
And the more Mandel had talked, the more indelibly did Pace imprint the word affirmative on Spaulding’s file. Not that he believed for a minute the extremes of behavior Mandel suddenly ascribed to David Spaulding—no man could function as «stably» as Spaulding had if it were true. But if it were only half true, it was no detriment; it was an asset.
The last of the requirements.
For if there were any soldier in the United States Army—in or out of uniform—who would be called upon to operate solely on his own, without the comfort of the chain of command, without the knowledge that difficult decisions could be made by his superiors, it was the Intelligence officer in Portugal.
The man in Lisbon.
OCTOBER 8, 1939, FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA
There were no names.
Only numbers and letters.
Numbers followed by letters.
Two-Six-B. Three-Five-Y. Five-One-C.
There were no personal histories, no individual backgrounds … no references to wives, children, fathers, mothers … no countries, cities, hometowns, schools, universities; there were only bodies and minds and separate, specific, reacting intelligences.
The location was deep in the Virginia hunt country, 220 acres of fields and hills and mountain streams. There were sections of dense forest bordering stretches of flat grasslands. Swamps—dangerous with body-sucking earth and hostile inhabitants, reptile and insect—were but feet from sudden masses of Virginia boulders fronting abrupt inclines.
The area had been selected with care, with precision.