Memorial Bridge (24 page)

"Get me the FBI," she pleaded.

The new War Department Building was already a year old, but Sean Dillon had never been there. It was impossible not to have seen it from a dozen angles across the river, though, and like everyone in Washington, he'd heard all about the place.

Not one building actually, it was five distinct pentagonal structures arranged concentrically around a five-acre open court. They were called rings and were joined by ten spoke-like corridors. Its five stories (seven, counting the two below ground) were connected by broad ramps. The building covered thirty acres, had three times the floor space of the Empire State Building, was a mile in circumference and was surrounded by vast parking lots with spaces for ten thousand cars. Yet the rings, bays, corridors and ramps of the Pentagon were so efficiently laid out—corridors numbered, rings lettered, the walls of each floor a different color—that no two offices were more than a brisk six-minute walk apart.

Sean Dillon was climbing the limestone steps of the mall entrance which, with its huge columns, rose up above the Potomac River like a Hellenic temple. The architects of the city behind him had reproduced pagan sanctuaries up and down several avenues, but not like this.

Dillon swung his leather satchel into the curl of his own leg to keep from bumping the other men, all uniformed, who were streaming up and
down the stairs with self-important urgency. Neither Dillon nor the FBI agent at his side knew the exact litany of numbers—eighteen dining rooms serving sixty thousand meals a day—that made the building a modern wonder of the world. But each man felt on entering it the charge of the spacious silence of the broad vestibule. The war energy of the entire nation was focused in this place. The two FBI agents were doing their parts in the great struggle and knew it, but they could not help but feel,
there,
a civilian's humility, and also, during that war, gratitude.

And Dillon felt something else. As they produced their "creds" folders, passing through the security funnel, then up the crowded blue ramp toward A-Ring-Three, he thought of the chutes and ramps of the Chicago stockyards. But what a difference! Here the order embodied in a mammoth grid was real; in Chicago it had been a lie, a veneer laid over every kind of slaughter. Like the yards, Washington itself had been laid out at first in a perfect square—ten miles on a side instead of one—and that order too, in Dillon's experience, had proved trustworthy. For four years he had seen American institutions—the presidency, the Congress, the courts, his own Justice Department, the army—functioning at their best, and it was the knowledge that he was protecting those institutions, the order
they
enshrined, that enabled him to do his unsavory, cryptic work. The effect of Washington, even of the shadowy side on which he worked, had been to reverse the alienation he'd felt in Chicago. Washington had restored the sense of his own worthiness. Here, in this period when the contrast between good and evil was never sharper—Hitler's gift—Sean Dillon had become what he would be for life, a modest, but also an earnest, American patriot.

The undersecretary of war, the immediate superior of the hapless David Lothrop, was a New York patrician named Randall Crocker. A fifty-four- year-old lawyer, he had left Wall Street after Pearl Harbor to take his position under Henry L. Stimson. Stimson was a Republican whom Roosevelt had appointed secretary of war in an effort to broaden support, and though Crocker was a Democrat and a staunch New Dealer, he had strong social ties to Roosevelt's Establishment enemies, and his appointment too was a bid for their cooperation.

Crocker was very much a
civilian
overseer of the mushrooming military, but his background gave him advantages that the politician Stimson and other war administrators lacked. Crocker had distinguished himself
as a young officer in World War I. He had no need to refer to his record ever, for he wore the ultimate emblem of valor, having suffered the amputation of his left leg above the knee in a field hospital at Château-Thierry. Roosevelt, even more than others, had to find Crocker's lifelong refusal to act the cripple an infallible sign of character. When Crocker walked, his wooden leg clicked rhythmically at the knee joint, making a sound like a metronome that taunted the able-bodied to keep up with him.

Now that leg was stretched out, paired with his good one inside the cavern of his huge mahogany desk. He had just resumed his seat as four men took their chairs in the semicircle in front of him. While waiting for them to get settled, his eye fell for an instant on the pair of leather-framed photographs on his desk, the two most familiar and precious objects in the room. One showed his wife Hillary posing happily with their Irish setter, and the other their son Geoffrey in the uniform of an army lieutenant. In the photo he was smiling broadly as he saluted, amused at himself and slightly embarrassed. Crocker could never register either photo without a pang. His Hillary was dead. The boy was their only child, and now he was in the infantry overseas.

On the wall to Crocker's left was a floor-to-ceiling map, in pale greens and browns, of Italy and the Balkans. Colored pins highlighted various positions; a sinister line of black tacks bisected Italy just below Rome. Behind Crocker was a large window showing the ubiquitous view, a parking lot which in this case stretched toward the hills of Arlington.

Crocker's office was one of the largest in the Pentagon. In addition to his desk, which once belonged to Edwin Stanton, it was furnished with eagle-tipped flagstaffs, a broad blue carpet, two leather couches, an oversized conference table and ten black Windsor chairs, half of which were arranged before him now. The uniformed men were seated in them.

"You know each other," Crocker said with metallic abruptness. He knew that the officers and he were on opposite sides of a classic American divide, and after three years of stalking it, he had no more interest in bridging it than they did. Despite his own record, including the loss of his leg, he was a civilian to the core, and they were soldiers who could not even arrive at his office for a meeting without an implicit resentment at his having the authority to summon them.

Crocker eyed them in turn. Brigadier General Peter Alfred, a white-haired, mustachioed officer, Marshall's exec, saw his job first and last as
protecting the chief of staff and the chief's turf. Crocker did not admire such hedged loyalty in a military man, but he often wished his own people had it.

Next to Alfred was Colonel George Cheever, the number two at OSS, a man Crocker had known since Groton. Cheever had stayed on in the army after the First War, and in this one had become famous as Patton's G-2, head of intelligence, in North Africa. Cheever's association with those first American triumphs in the war, and his white-shoe connections, had made him a logical choice the year before when Wild Bill Donovan assembled what wags derided as his "Oh So Social" OSS.

Beside Cheever was Colonel John Lawrence, deputy director of military intelligence. Lawrence's uniform had been made by his Savile Row tailor and looked it. His brown tie was a soft worsted, not the quartermaster's serge, and the twill of his trousers was a shade off regulation tan, just enough to be noticed. In Crocker's primitive view intelligence officers were supposed to collect impressions, and it put him off that Lawrence so obviously liked to make them. Colonel Lawrence wasn't the man Crocker had ordered here anyway, and he had to stifle his impatience. Lawrence's boss, Major General George Veazey Strong, had refused to come to this meeting when he learned that his archrival Donovan was sending his deputy.

Seated somewhat apart from the other three, with a vacant chair setting him off, was Brigadier General Victor E. Forbes, the chief of Joint Security Control, whose job was to make sure that plans for the coming Allied invasion of the Continent remained completely secret. As befitted his job, he was a reticent man famous for sitting through meetings like this one without saying a word.

Crocker smiled slyly and said, "Gentlemen, I know that you are not often around the same table." He put his hand quite deliberately down on his desk. "I appreciate your indulging me by coming to this one."

"What's our agenda, Randy?" General Alfred asked with unclothed impatience.

"I'd like you to meet a couple of"—how to refer to them?—"friends of mine." He leaned toward his intercom and pressed it. "Send those gentlemen in, Harry, would you?"

A moment later, Crocker's door opened and the pair of civilians walked into the room.

Crocker stood, balancing himself with a hand on the edge of the desk.

The others looked up at the newcomers, pointedly not rising.

"This is Walter Dunlop, the assistant director for domestic intelligence."

"Assistant director of what?" Cheever asked sharply.

"Of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Dunlop replied. He carried his hands at his side. His brown suit was sharply creased. His shoes were polished. Like all members of Hoover's inner circle, he had learned to stop buying his clothes at Robert Hall.

At Dunlop's announcement, a wave of disdain curled palpably through the military men. Crocker saw Forbes's eyebrow shoot up as he exchanged a glance with Alfred, and it occurred to Crocker that the outsiders' arrival, in a single stroke, had eliminated the officers' disregard for one another.

Crocker gestured toward Dillon. "And this is...?"

Dunlop introduced him. "Special Agent Dillon, who is supervisor in this case."

Crocker pointed to the empty chair between Forbes and Lawrence while resuming his own seat himself. "Please, Mr. Dunlop."

Dunlop approached the chair but remained standing.

Crocker said, "There is a Dictaphone player on the table. You have the recording?"

"Yes, sir." Dunlop paused, then added, "Although, because of security requirements, I must know who is present."

For a moment no one moved, even to look at him, their surprise was so complete. Then, recovering, the officers made a show of rolling their eyes at each other: Who is this asshole?

"Forgive me," Crocker said ingratiatingly, as if the awkwardness resulted from a lapse of his manners. Inwardly he groaned, More positioning! These spooks and counterspooks never let up. Crocker then introduced the officers to Dunlop, who nodded at each from his position behind the vacant chair. They just stared at him. No one offered to shake hands.

Dillon counted for even less than Dunlop in that room. He took up a position away from the others, at the conference table. When Dunlop nodded in his direction he took the belt of wire out of his satchel and set it up on Crocker's machine.

Crocker eyed General Alfred. "You asked about our agenda, Peter. It begins, uncharacteristically enough, with our listening to something." He waved his hand toward Dillon even while pushing back in his chair, using his good leg to lever his wooden one up onto the edge of his lowermost desk drawer. Suddenly, at that display of his infirmity, his discreetly tailored clothing—the French cuffs, the gray silk tie riding at a precise angle above the V of his waistcoat—seemed incongruous. Who was he to be presiding over this meeting of robust, trained men in their physical prime?

Dillon snapped the machine on and stood away from it, watching the reel turn as if it were the passionate arrival of the man and the woman.

"
You never told me where you went,
" Sylvia Yergin said, a hollow, ghostly version of her voice.

"
Who said I went anywhere?
"

"Can any of you," Crocker put in quickly, "tell me who these people are?"

"
I know you left Washington...
"

The men listened in silence to the conversation, each more impassive than the other. They were a group of past masters at masking their reactions, especially from one another.

When finally the wire ran through the spool and the sounds of the man and woman talking were replaced not by the sighs of foreplay, but by the loose end of stiff black cord going
flick, flick, flick,
General Forbes announced, "That's Lothrop."

Crocker nodded and readjusted his leg to come forward to his desk. "Right. David Lothrop, deputy undersecretary of war, materiel. He works for me, which is the genesis of my interest here."

General Alfred said, "But he's talking about landing ships. That's the navy's purview. The chief of K-2 should be here."

Crocker stared at Alfred, unable to believe he wanted to crowd this pitch further by bringing in navy intelligence too. But then Crocker realized Alfred was only anticipating Admiral King's raging complaint to Marshall when he learned of this meeting. By declaring the navy's interest, Alfred was covering Marshall's ass. The others simply ignored Alfred.

General Forbes said with steely precision, "Lothrop is off the tickler. Everybody knows that. What the hell is he doing traveling the Mediterranean?"

"He didn't."

"What do you mean?"

"Everything Lothrop told the woman is false. Unknown to anyone in his office or, for that matter, in his family, he spent the last twelve days in a house in horse country, preparing himself for this deception. He has nothing to do with the LCIs"—Crocker swung toward Alfred—"as the navy knows better than anyone."

Alfred rebutted, "Lothrop is a fool, which makes him a goddamned security risk."

"That he is," Crocker replied, "but he was hand-picked for this operation."

"By whom?"

"By the woman." Crocker paused to let his answer sink in. "She picked him up at a party. She didn't know that we don't let Lothrop within a mile of his own factories or of what's real here. Lothrop has been watching shadows on the wall the whole war long. He's perfect for this. The woman didn't know that his title as my deputy means nothing, any more than his own wife knows it. Once the woman had her hook in him, we had to decide what to do about it. As it happened, the timing was perfect for using Lothrop to launch Noah's Ark."

The military men knew that "Noah's Ark" was the name Churchill and Roosevelt, meeting in Teheran six weeks before, had dubbed their deception strategy. Fooling the Nazis into worrying about the Balkans, and therefore keeping a full third of German infantry divisions and half their panzers in southeastern Europe, was the flip side of their final decision to invade through Normandy.