The Story of Eva Delectorskaya

Washington DC , 1941

EVA DELECTORSKAYA CALLED ROMER in New York.

'I've struck gold,' she said and hung up.

Arranging an appointment with Mason Harding had been very straightforward. Eva took the train from New York to Washington and booked into the London Hall Apartment Hotel on 11th and M streets. She realised she was subconsciously drawn to hotels that carried some echo of England. Then she thought that if it was becoming a habit then it was one she should change – another Romer rule – but she liked her one-room apartment with its tiny galley kitchen and ice-box and the gleaming clean shower. She reserved it for two weeks and, once she had unpacked, she called the number Romer had given her.

'Mason Harding.'

She introduced herself, saying that she worked for Transoceanic Press in New York and she would like to request an interview with Mr Hopkins.

'I'm afraid Mr Hopkins is unwell,' Harding said, then added, 'Are you English?'

'Sort of. Half Russian.'

'Sounds a dangerous mixture.' 'Can I call by your office? There may be other stories we can run –Transoceanic has a huge readership in South and Latin America.'

Harding was very amenable – he suggested the end of the afternoon the following day.

Mason Harding was a young man in his early thirties, Eva guessed, whose thick brown hair was cut and severely parted like a schoolboy's. He was putting on weight and his even, handsome features were softened by a layer of fat on his cheeks and his jaw-bone. He wore a pale fawn seersucker suit and on his desk a sign said 'Mason Harding III'.

'So,' he said, offering her a seat and looking her up and down. 'Transoceanic Press – can't say I've heard of you.'

She gave him a rough outline of Transoceanic's reach and readership; he nodded, seemingly taking it in. She said she'd been sent down to Washington to interview key officials in the new administration.

'Sure. Where are you staying?'

She told him. He asked her a few questions about London, the war and had she been there in the Blitz? Then he looked at his watch.

'You want to get a drink? I think we close at five or thereabouts, these days.'

They left the Department of Commerce, a vast classical monster of a building – with a façade more like a museum than a department of state – and they walked a few blocks north on 15th Street to a dark bar that Mason – 'Please call me Mason' – knew and where, once settled inside, they both ordered Whisky Macs, Mason's suggestion. It was a chilly day: they could do with some warming up.

Eva asked some dutiful questions about Hopkins and Mason told her a few bland facts, except for the information that Hopkins had had 'half his stomach removed' in an operation some years ago for stomach cancer. Mason was careful to mention his department's and the Roosevelt administration's admiration of British resolve and pluck.

'You got to understand, Eve,' he said, savouring his second Whisky Mac, 'it's incredibly hard for Hopkins and FDR to do anything more. If it was up to us we'd be in there beside you, shoulder to shoulder, fighting those damn Nazis. Want another? Waiter! Sir?' He signalled for another drink. 'But the vote in Congress has to be won before we go to war. Roosevelt knows he'll never win it. Not now. Something has to happen to change people's attitudes. You ever been to an America First rally?'

Eva said she had. She remembered it well: an Irish-American priest hectoring the crowd about British iniquity and duplicity. Eighty per cent of Americans were against entering the war. America had intervened in the last war and had gained nothing except the Depression. The United States was safe from attack – there was no need to help England again. England was broke, finished: don't waste American money and American lives trying to save her skin. And so on – to massive cheers and applause.

Well, you see the problem writ large,' Mason said, with a resigned apologetic tone, like a doctor diagnosing an incurable illness. 'I don't want a Nazi Europe, God no – we'll be next on the list, for sure. Trouble is hardly anybody else reads it that way.'

They talked on and in the course of their conversation it emerged that Mason was married and had two children – boys: Mason junior and Farley – and that he lived in Alexandria. After his third Whisky Mac he asked her what she was doing, Saturday. She said she had no plans and so he volunteered to show her around the city – he had to come into the office, anyway, to tidy up a few things.

So, on Saturday, Mason picked her up in the morning outside the London Hall Hotel in his smart green sedan and toured her around the city's key sights. She saw the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol and finally the National Gallery. They lunched at a restaurant called Du Barry on Connecticut Avenue.

'Look, I mustn't keep you any longer,' Eva said as Mason paid the bill. 'Don't you have to get to your office?'

'Oh, heck, it can wait till Monday. Anyway, I want to take you out to Arlington.'

He dropped her back at her hotel before six. He told her to come by the office on Monday afternoon when he would have some news on Hopkins's state of health and if and when he were likely to be available for interview. They shook hands, Eva thanking him warmly for her 'great day', then she went to her hotel room and made the call to Romer.

Mason Harding tried to kiss her on Monday evening. After their meeting – 'Still no Harry, I'm afraid' – they had gone back to his bar and he had drunk too much. Coming out, it had been raining and they waited under a shop awning until the brisk shower passed over. As the rain abated, they dashed for his car. She thought it was a little strange that he combed his hair before starting the engine and driving her back to the London Hall. It was while they were making their farewells that he lunged at her and, averting her face just in time, she felt his lips on her cheek, her jaw, her neck.

'Mason! For God's sake.' She pushed him away.

He recoiled and sat glowering, staring at the steering wheel. 'I'm very attracted to you, Eve,' he said, in a strangely sulky voice, not looking at her, as if this were all the explanation she required.

'I'm sure your wife is very attracted to you, also.' He sighed and his body sagged in mock fatigue as if this was a tired and over-familiar rebuke.

'We both know what this is about,' he said, turning finally. 'Let's not act like a couple of innocents. You're a beautiful woman. My personal situation has nothing to do with it.'

'I'll call you on Monday,' Eva said and opened the car door.

He grabbed her hand before she could step out and kissed it. She tugged but he wouldn't let it go.

'I've got to go out of town tomorrow,' he said. 'I've got to go to Baltimore for two days. Meet me there – at the Allegany Hotel, 6.00 p.m.'

She said nothing, shook her hand free and slipped out of the car.

'The Allegany Hotel,' he repeated. 'I can get you that Hopkins interview.'

'The gold is very bright and shiny,' Eva said. 'It almost seems to have heat coming off it.'

'Good,' Romer said. She could hear through the receiver the sound of people talking around him.

'Is everything all right?' she asked.

'I'm in the office.'

'They want me to make a sale at the Allegany Hotel, Baltimore, tomorrow, Tuesday, at 6.00 p.m.'

'Don't do or say anything. I'll come down and see you in the morning.'

Romer was in Washington by ten. She went down to the lobby when the front desk called up to her room to tell her he was there and she felt such a leaping and thudding in her heart as she looked around for him that she paused, surprised at herself, surprised that she was reacting this way.

He was sitting in a corner vestibule but, annoyingly, there was another man with him, whom he introduced simply as Bradley. Bradley was a small slim fellow, dark, with a grin that flickered on and off like a faulty light bulb.

When Romer saw her he stood and came to greet her. They shook hands and he led her over to another part of the lobby. When they sat down she reached surreptitiously for his hand.

'Lucas, darling-'

'Don't touch me.'

'Sorry. Who's Bradley?'

'Bradley's a photographer that works for us. Are you ready? I think we should go.'

They caught a train from Union Station. It was a terse almost wordless journey what with Bradley sitting opposite them. Every time Eva looked at him he flashed his short-lived grin at her, like a nervous tic. She preferred to look out of the window at the autumn leaves. She was grateful that the journey was a short one.

At Baltimore Station she told Romer pointedly that she felt like a coffee and a sandwich, so Romer asked Bradley to go ahead to the Allegany and wait for them. Finally, they were alone.

'What's happening?' she said when they sat down in a corner of the station cafeteria, half knowing what the answer would be. There was condensation on the window and with the heel of her hand she wiped a porthole of clarity to see a near-empty street, a few passers-by, a black man selling brilliant posies.

'We need a photograph of you and Harding entering the hotel and leaving the hotel the next morning.'

'I see… She felt sick, suddenly nauseous, but decided to press on. 'Why?'

Romer sighed and looked round before taking hold of her hand under the table.

'People only betray their country for three reasons,' he said, quietly, seriously, cueing her next question.

'And what are they?'

'Money, blackmail and revenge.'

She thought about this, wondering if it were another Romer rule.

'Money, revenge – and blackmail.'

'You know what's going on, Eva. You know what it'll take to make Mr Harding suddenly become very helpful to us.'

She did, thinking of Mrs Harding with all the money and little Mason jun. and Farley.

'Did you plan all this?'

'No.'

She looked at him: liar, her eyes said.

'It's part of the job, Eva. You have no idea how this would change everything. We'd have someone in Hopkins's office, someone close to him.' He paused. 'Close to Hopkins means close to Roosevelt.'

She put a cigarette in her mouth – to confuse any passing lip-readers – and said, 'So I have to sleep with Mason Harding so that SIS can know what Roosevelt and Hopkins are up to.'

'You don't have to sleep with him. As long as we have the photographs – that's all the evidence we require. You can finesse it any way you like.'

She managed a dry little laugh, but it didn't convince her. '"Finesse" – nice word,' she said.

'You're being stupid, now. You're letting yourself down. This actually isn't about your feelings – this is why you joined us.' He sat back. 'But if you want to abort – just tell me.' She said nothing. She was thinking about what lay ahead of her. She wondered if she were capable of doing what Romer required of her. She wondered also what he was feeling – he seemed so cold and matter-of-fact.

'How would you feel?' she asked him. 'If I did it.'

He said, immediately, flatly: 'We've got a job to do.'

She tried not to show the hurt that was growing in her. There were so many other things you could have said, she thought, that would have made it a little easier.

'You have to think of it as a job, Eva,' he continued, in a softer voice, as if he could read her mind. 'Keep your feelings out of it. You may have even more unpleasant things to do before this war is over.' He covered his mouth with his hand. 'I shouldn't be telling you this, but the pressures from London are huge, immense.' He went on. BSC had one solitary vital task: to persuade America it was in her interest to join the war in Europe. That was all, pure and simple – get America in. He reminded her that it was over three months since the first meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt. 'We've got our wonderful, much-heralded Atlantic Charter,' he said, 'and what's happened? Nothing. You've seen the press back at home. "Where are the Yanks?", "What's keeping the Yanks?" We have to get closer. We have to get inside the White House. You can help – simple as that.'

'But how do you feel about it?' It was the wrong question to ask again, she knew, and she saw his face change, but she wanted to be brutal, wanted him to confront the reality of what she was being asked to do. 'How do you feel about me and Mason Harding in bed together.'

'I just want us to win this war,' he said. 'My feelings are irrelevant.'

'All right,' she said, feeling ashamed and then feeling angry for feeling ashamed. 'I'll do what I can.'

She was waiting in the lobby at six when Mason arrived. He kissed her on the cheek and they registered at reception as Mr and Mrs Avery. She could sense his tension as they stood at the front desk – she felt that adultery was not run-of-the-mill in Mason Harding's life. As he signed the register she looked around; somewhere she knew Bradley was taking pictures; later someone would pay the clerk for a copy of the booking. They went up to their room and, once the bellhop had left, Mason kissed her with more passion, thanked her, told her she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met. They dined in the hotel restaurant, early, and Mason spent most of the meal quietly but forcefully denigrating his wife and her family and their financial hold over him. This mood of petulance helped her, she found; it was boring, small-minded and selfish and it allowed her to step back from any vision of what was about to ensue. It made her colder. People betray their country for only three reasons, Romer had said. Mason Harding was about to take the first step along that narrow, winding road.

They both drank too much, from different motives, she supposed, but as they went up to their room she felt her head whirl with the alcohol. Mason kissed her in the elevator. In the room, he called room service and ordered up a pint of whisky, and once it was delivered, began almost immediately to undress her. Eva switched on a smile, drank some more and thought, at least he isn't ugly or nasty – he was just a kind foolish man who wanted to betray his wife. To her surprise she found she was able to switch her feelings off. It's a job, she said to herself, one only I can do.

Eva felt a little sorry for him and wondered what he would think in a day or so when someone – not Romer – approached him and said, Hello, Mr Harding, we have some photographs that I think your wife and father-in-law would be most interested in viewing.

He fell asleep quickly and she eased herself across the bed from him. She managed to sleep, herself, but woke early and ran a deep bath, soaked in it, and then ordered up a room-service breakfast before Mason awoke to pre-empt any early-morning amorousness, but he was crapulous and out of sorts – guilty, perhaps – and had turned moody and monosyllabic. She let him kiss her again in the room before they went down to the lobby.

He paid the bill and she stood close to him, picking some lint off his jacket as he paid the clerk in cash. Click. She could practically hear Bradley's camera. Outside at the taxi rank he seemed self-conscious and stiff all of a sudden.

'I've got meetings,' he said. 'What about you?'

'I'll get back to town,' she said. 'I'll call you.'

This promise seemed to revive him and he smiled warmly.

'Thanks, Eve,' he said. 'You were great. You're beautiful. Call me next week. I got to take the kids… he stopped. 'Call me next week. Wednesday.'

He kissed her on the cheek and in her head she heard another Bradley 'click' go off.

When she returned to London Hall there was a message – a note shoved under her door.

'ELDORADO is over,' it read.

'Oh, you're back,' Sylvia said when she came home from work and found Eva in the apartment, sitting in the kitchen. 'How was Washington?'

'Boring.'

'I thought you'd be gone for a couple of weeks.'

'There was nothing doing. Endless round of insignificant press conferences.'

'Meet any nice men?' Sylvia said, putting on a grotesque leer.

'I wish. Just a fat under-secretary of state at Agriculture, or something, who tried to feel me up.'

'I might just settle for that,' Sylvia said, heading for her bedroom, taking off her coat. Sometimes it amazed Eva how fluently and spontaneously she could lie. Think that everybody is lying to you all the time, Romer said, it's probably the safest way to proceed.

Sylvia came back in and opened the ice-box and took out a small pitcher of Martini.

'We're celebrating,' she said, then made an apologetic face. 'Sorry. Wrong word. The Germans have sunk another Yank destroyer – the Reuben Jones. One hundred and fifteen dead. Hardly a cause for rejoicing, I know. But…

'My God… One hundred and fifteen-'

'Exactly. This has got to change everything. They can't stand on the sidelines now.'

As she poured their Martinis, Sylvia told her that Roosevelt had made a fine, stirringly belligerent speech – his most belligerent since 1939, talking of how the 'shooting war' had begun.

'Oh yes,' she said, sipping her drink. 'And he has this wonderful map – some map of South America. How the Germans plan to divide it up into five huge new countries.'

Eva was half listening but Sylvia's enthusiasm provoked in her a small surge of confidence – a strange feeling of temporary elation. Similar spasms had come and gone in the two years since she'd joined Romer's team. Although she tried to tell herself to treat such instinctive reactions with suspicion she couldn't prevent them from blossoming in herself – as if wishful thinking were an innate attribute of being human: the thought that things were bound to improve being stitched into our human consciousness. She sipped her cold drink – maybe that's just the definition of an optimist, she thought. Maybe that's all I am: an optimist.

'So maybe we're getting there,' she said, drinking her chilled Martini, yielding to her optimism, thinking that if the Americans join us we must win. America, Britain and the Empire, and Russia – then it could only be a matter of time.

'Let's eat out tomorrow,' she said to Sylvia as they went to their bedrooms. 'We owe ourselves a little party.'

'Don't forget we're saying goodbye to Alfie.'

Eva remembered that Blytheswood was leaving the radio station and was going back to London, to Electra House, the GC amp;CS's radio interception station in the basement of Cable amp; Wireless's Embankment office.

'Then we can go dancing afterwards,' she said. She felt like dancing, she thought as she undressed and tried to empty her mind of Mason Harding and his hands on her body.

The next day in the office Morris Devereux showed her a transcript of the Roosevelt speech. She took it from him and flicked through the pages until she came to the relevant passage:

'I have in my possession a secret map,' she read, 'made in Germany by Hitler's government. It is a map of South America as Hitler proposes to reorganise it. The geographical experts of Berlin have divided South America into five vassal states… They have also arranged that one of these new puppet states includes the Republic of Panama and our great lifeline, the Panama Canal…This map makes clear the Nazi design not only against South America but against the United States as well.'

'Well,' she said to Devereux, 'pretty strong stuff, don't you think? If I were an American I'd be beginning to feel just a little uneasy. A tiny bit worried, no?'

'Let's hope they share your sentiments – and what with the Rueben Jones's sinking… I don't know: you'd think they wouldn't sleep quite so securely.' He smiled at her. 'How was Washington?'

'Fine. I think I've made a good contact in Hopkins's office,' she said offhandedly. 'A press attaché. I think we can feed him our stuff.'

'Interesting. Did he drop any hints?'

'No, not really,' she said carefully. 'He was actually very discouraging, if anything. Congress ranged against war. FDR's hands tied, and so forth. But I'm going to give him translations of all our Spanish stories.'

'Good idea,' he said vaguely and drifted away.

Eva started thinking: Morris seemed more and more interested in her movements and her work. But why hadn't he asked her the name of the press attaché she had lassoed? That was odd… Did he know who it was already?

She went to her office and checked her in-tray. A newspaper in Buenos Aires, Critica, had picked up her story about German naval manoeuvres off the South American Atlantic coast. She had her opening, now: she re-transcribed the story but gave it a Buenos Aires date-line and put it out to all of Transoceanic's subscribers. She called Blytheswood at WRUL and, using their verbal priority code – 'Mr Blytheswood, this is Miss Dalton here' – said she had an intriguing story out of Argentina. Blytheswood said they might indeed be interested but it would have to have an American date-line before it could be broadcast around the world. So she sent a cablegram to Johnson in Meadowville, and Witoldski in Franklin Forks, signed simply Transoceanic, plus a transcript of the key lines from Roosevelt's speech. She suspected they would guess it was from her. If either Johnson or Witoldski broadcast the Critica report she could reconfigure it once more as a story from an independent US radio station. And so the fiction would move on steadily through the news media, accumulating weight and significance – more date-lines, more sources somehow confirming its emerging status as a fact and nowhere revealing it origins in the mind of Eva Delectorskaya. Eventually one of the big American newspapers would pick it up (perhaps with a little help from Angus Woolf) and the German Embassy would cable it back home to Berlin. Then denials would be issued, ambassadors would be called in to deliver explanations and rebuttals and this would provide yet another story, or a series of stories, for Transoceanic to distribute over its wire services. Eva felt a small sense of power and pride as she contemplated the future life of her falsehood – thinking of herself as a tiny spider at the centre of her spreading, complex web of innuendo, half-truth and invention. But then she felt a hot flush of embarrassed remembrance, recalling suddenly her night with Mason Harding, and its fumbling inadequacies. It was always going to be a dirty war, Romer repeatedly said, nothing should be discounted in the waging of it.

She was walking homewards along Central Park South, looking out at the trees in the park, already yellow and orange with the advancing fall, when she became aware of a set of footsteps maintaining the exact same cadence as hers. This was one of the tricks she had learned at Lyne – it was almost as effective as someone tapping you on the shoulder. She stopped to adjust the strap on her shoe and, looking casually round, saw Romer three or four paces behind her, staring intently into the window of a jeweller's shop. He turned on his heel and, after a brief pause, she followed him back along Sixth Avenue, where she saw him go into a large delicatessen. She joined the queue at the counter further down from him and watched him order a sandwich and a beer and go to sit in a busy corner. She bought a coffee and walked over to him. 'Hello,' she said. 'May I join you?'

She sat down.

'All very clandestine,' she said.

'We all have to take more precautions,' he said. 'Double-check, triple-check. To tell the truth, we're a little worried that some of our American friends have become too intrigued by what we're up to. I think we've grown too large – impossible to ignore the scale of the thing, anymore. So: extra effort, more snares, watch for shadows, friendly crows, strange noises on the telephone. Just a hunch – but we've all been getting a bit complacent.'

'Right,' she said, watching him bite into his vast sandwich. Nothing that size had ever been seen in the British Isles, she thought. He chewed and swallowed for a while before speaking.

'I wanted to tell you that everyone's very pleased about Washington. I've been taking all the compliments but I wanted to say that you did well, Eva. Very well. Don't think that I take it for granted. Don't think that we take it for granted.'

'Thank you.' She didn't exactly feel a warm glow of self-satisfaction.

'"Gold" is going to be our golden boy.'

'Good,' she said, then thought. 'Is he already-'

'He was activated yesterday.'

'Oh.' Eva thought about Mason: she had an image of somebody spreading photos on a table before his appalled face. She could see him weeping, even. I wonder what he thinks about me now? She thought, uncomfortably. 'What if he calls me?' she asked.

'He won't call you.' Romer paused. 'We've never been so close to the chief before. Thanks to you.'

'Maybe we won't need him for long,' she suggested vaguely, as if to assuage her mounting guilt, to keep the tarnish to a minimum for a while.

'Why do you say that?'

'The Rueben Jones going down.'

'It doesn't seem to have made any material difference to public opinion,' Romer said, with some sarcasm. 'People seem more interested in the result of the Army – Notre Dame match.'

She couldn't understand this. 'Why? There's a hundred dead young sailors, for God's sake.'

'U-boats sinking US ships got them into the last war,' he said, putting two-thirds of his sandwich down, admitting defeat. 'They've got long memories.' He smiled at her unpleasantly. His mood was odd that evening, she thought, almost angry in some way. 'They don't want to be in this war, Eva, whatever their president or Harry Hopkins or Gale Winant thinks.' He gestured at the crowded deli: the men and women, the working day over, the children, laughing, chatting, buying their enormous sandwiches and their fizzy drinks. 'Life's good here. They're happy. Why mess it up going to war 3,000 miles away? Would you?'

She had no ready, convincing answer.

'Yes, but what about this map?' she said, sensing herself losing the argument. 'Doesn't that change things?' She thought further, as if she were trying to persuade herself. 'And Roosevelt's speech. They can't deny it's getting closer. Panama – it's their back yard.'

Romer, she saw, allowed himself a slight smile at her earnest ardour.

'Yes, well, I have to admit we're quite pleased with that,' he said. 'We never expected it to work so efficiently or so quickly.'

She waited a second before asking her question, trying to seem as unconcerned as possible.

'It's ours, you mean? The map is ours – is that what you're saying?'

Romer looked at her with mild rebuke in his eyes, as if she were being too slow, lagging behind the class. 'Of course. Here's the story: German courier crashed his car in Rio de Janiero. Careless fellow. He was taken to hospital. In his briefcase was this fascinating map. Rather too convenient, don't you think? I was very reluctant to go down that road but our friends seem to have bought it wholesale.' He paused. 'By the way, I want you to get all this out on Transoceanic tomorrow. Everywhere – date-line US government, Washington DC. Have you pen and paper?'

Eva rummaged in her handbag for notebook and pencil and took down in shorthand everything that Romer listed: five new countries in the South American continent as displayed on Roosevelt's secret map. 'Argentina' now included Uruguay and Paraguay and half of Bolivia; 'Chile' took in the other half of Bolivia and the whole of Peru. 'New Spain' was composed of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador and, crucially, the Panama Canal. Only 'Brazil' remained substantially as it was.

'I must say it was a rather beautiful document: "Argentinien, Brasilien, Neu Spanien" – all criss-crossed by proposed Lufthansa routes.' He chuckled to himself.

Eva put her notebook away and used the excuse to sit quiet for a while, taking this in and realising that her gullibility, her susceptibility was still an issue – was she too easy to deceive, perhaps? Never believe anything, Romer said, never, never. Always look for the other explanations, the other options, the other side.

When she raised her eyes she found he was looking at her differently. Fondly, she would have said, with an undercurrent of carnal interest.

'I miss you, Eva.'

'I miss you, too, Lucas. But what can we do about it?'

'I'm going to send you on a course to Canada. You know, care of documents, filing, that sort of thing.' She knew this meant Station M – a BSC forging laboratory run under cover of the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Station M produced all their fake documentation – she assumed the map had come from them, also.

'For how long?'

'A few days – but you can have a bit of leave before you go, as reward for all your good work. I suggest Long Island.'

'Long Island? Oh, yes?'

'Yes. I can recommend the Narragansett Inn in St James. A Mr and Mrs Washington have a room booked there this weekend.'

'Sounds nice,' she said, her eyes steady on his. 'Lucky Mr and Mrs Washington.' She stood up. 'I'd better go. Sylvia and I are going out on the town.'

'Well, be careful, be watchful,' he said, seriously, suddenly like an anxious parent. 'Triple-check.'

At that moment Eva wondered if she was in love with Lucas Romer. She wanted to kiss him, more than anything, wanted to touch his face.

'Right,' she said. 'Will do.'

He stood up, and left some coins on the table as a tip. 'Have you got your safe place?'

'Yes,' she said. Her safe house in New York was a one-room cold-water apartment in Brooklyn. 'I've got somewhere out of town.' It was almost true.

'Good.' He smiled. 'Enjoy your leave.'

On Friday evening Eva caught a train to Long Island. At Farmingdale she stepped off and caught another immediately back to Brooklyn. She left the station and wandered around for ten minutes before catching another train on the branch line that ended at Port Jefferson. There, she took a taxi to the bus station at St James. As they motored away from Port Jefferson she watched the cars that were behind them. There was one that seemed to be keeping its distance but when she asked the taxi driver to slow down it swiftly overtook. From the bus station she walked to the Narragansett Inn – she had no shadow as far as she could tell – she was rigorously obeying Romer's instructions. She was pleased to see that the inn was a large, comfortable, cream clapboard house set in a well-kept garden on the outskirts of town, with a distant view of the dunes. She felt a cold wind blowing off the Sound and was glad of her coat. Romer was waiting for her in the residents' sitting-room, where there was a snapping driftwood fire burning in the grate. Mr and Mrs Washington went straight upstairs to their room and didn't emerge until the next morning.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 796