The Irregulars (13 page)

Despite these turf battles with American authorities, the BSC continued its special operations. Over the spring and summer of 1941, Fleming was afforded a rare glimpse into the hidden workings of the organization, with Stephenson acting as his personal tour guide in its subterranean labyrinths. Before returning to London, Fleming was permitted to observe an active operation and was a spectator at a BSC-staged break-in at the Japanese consul general’s office, conveniently located on the thirty-fourth floor in Rockefeller Center. In the course of a single night, Stephenson’s men gained entry with the help of the janitor and managed to crack the safe and make microfilm copies of the codebooks, which contained ciphers the Japanese had been using to transmit messages to Tokyo by short-wave radio. Before morning, everything in the safe was returned to its exact place, and there was no sign they had ever been there. Fleming would never forget the episode, filing it away as one of the more thrilling adventures of his wartime service, though he knew full well that Stephenson considered it strictly routine.
*

Stephenson allowed Fleming privileges far above his rank. He invited him to his penthouse, which for all practical purposes was a safe house, where he held court in an elegant two-storied drawing room with an enormous fireplace and regularly gathered the grand and near-grand of the British High Command. Among those who could be found there, at various times, were General Lord Ismay, the prime minister’s defense chief of staff; Major General Sir Colin Gubbins, chief of the Special Operations Executive; Lord Beaverbrook; and many others. It was there that he introduced Fleming to the handful of figures in his inner circle, including Ernest Cuneo, Donovan’s personal liaison between British intelligence, the White House, and the FBI. It was at a party at Stephenson’s that Cuneo observed the young naval attaché’s “all but blind adoration” for the quiet Canadian, noting that it was evident even then that “William was one of the very few firm and brilliant stars in the heavens of Ian Fleming.”

Fleming immediately engaged Cuneo in a typical Anglo-American exchange, characterized by a spirited verbal sparring that gave the British an opportunity to test the ground and take the measure of their opposite numbers. According to Cuneo, most of their wartime conversations, even on the gravest matters, were carried on in this manner, with a combination of sporty bravado and slightly patronizing maliciousness, “all against an atmosphere of merriest and warmest friendship.” There, in the soft gloom wreathed with the smoke of their cigarettes, they traded secrets vital to the security of their agents, operations, and troops on land and sea. It was a game, but there was a war on, and as played by these calculating men, it was for keeps. To Cuneo, who negotiated Stephenson’s Dorset drawing room as gingerly as a debutante at a spring ball, it all went to prove the old Shaw adage that America and England were two countries “separated by a common language.”

A latecomer to the club, Dahl, like Fleming and Bryce, was destined to become another of Stephenson’s trusted subordinates—one of his “special boys”—held in reserve and carefully groomed until needed. They were the BSC’s blue-eyed social butterflies, meant to use their charm and guile to feel out what the other side was thinking, convey messages between principals without creating any unnecessary awkwardness, and in general help smooth the way. In the ancient art of diplomacy, the go-between always played an important role. “Bill knew this very well,” said Dahl. “That’s why he planted fellows like me.”

D
AHL WAS MAKING A
name for himself as a writer, enjoying an eventful and productive war, and having by his own account “a roaring time.” Washington’s bustling, affluent society seemed largely unaffected by wartime restrictions, and he happily drank, dined, and hobnobbed away his evenings. All the luxuries that had long since disappeared from shelves back home were easily procurable. There was fresh fruit and steaks, and champagne was plentiful. He was untroubled by the inconveniences that irked local residents, whether it was the overcrowding caused by the influx of government workers, the shortage of accommodations, or the long lines at the lunchrooms and cafeterias. The complainants did not have his memories of RAF canteens, horrendous chow, and hard bunks. They could not share his simple pleasure, after finally gaining a counter stool, of digging into a plate of bacon and eggs. Even when beer was rationed, he was perfectly content to roam from bar to bar in the quaint cobblestoned district, wandering home late at night under the dimmed streetlights—one of the few visible signs of belt-tightening in the capital—that gave off the faint amber glow of a flashlight with a dying battery.

He was comfortably ensconced in a small Georgetown house at 1610 34th Street, which was sandwiched in a row of faded-brick Federal-style buildings on a narrow tree-lined street. The two-story building, which had three separate though otherwise identical entrances, had seen better days, and he shared his sliver with a Lieutenant Richard Miles, an assistant naval attaché at the embassy. Miles had been sent to Washington by the British Information Service and was a delegate to the International Student Service Assembly. He had been badly wounded in action and had required surgery to have one ear reattached. The operation had left him with a long scar, though it did not make him any less attractive—or appealing to the ladies. In a town woefully short of men since the war began, the two eligible young officers were in great demand and never lacked for invitations. “They were having a ball,” recalled Antoinette. “They were big British war heroes, you know, the toast of town. And Roald was a very good flirt. Girls were crazy about him. He had all the hostesses eating out of his hand. The ambassador sent him to the parties to see how things were going, and sound people out.”

With the playgrounds of Europe closed to tourists, moneyed society was forced to stay home, and Washington was brimming with wealthy dowagers and their bored, unmarried daughters. They took houses in Georgetown or large estates in Bethesda, hired social secretaries and huge staffs, and devoted themselves to throwing what the
Washington Post
’s gossip columnist Hope Ridings Miller dubbed “parties for a purpose”—for they also serve who only stand and pass the punch. Socialites, busy planning their wardrobes and weekly soirées, frantically sent messengers around town with their calling cards and complained of the agonizing pressures of aiding the war effort. Capital society was the American court, complete with its own courtiers, pretenders to the throne, and inevitable hangers-on. In a city where position mattered more than personality, even the most soporific government official counted as “somebody,” and the humblest embassy attaché—such as Dahl himself, who at home might be considered only marginally acceptable—rated a mention in the Social Register. Guest lists centered on the White House, Congress, the State Department, and foreign embassies, and a surprising amount of business, along with more intimate transactions, was negotiated across the dinner table.

Washington was still a small, provincial southern town in many respects, and the men who ran the government moved with ease and confidence from the capital’s conference rooms to the drawing rooms of prominent figures who lived nearby. From the start of the war, the city’s leading social powers had been uncorking champagne and spooning caviar in an effort to lure the eminent men from finance, industry, science, and academe who had descended on Washington to take up government posts. These “dollar-a-year men” ran virtually every wartime agency and were highly desirable game in a town populated with determined climbers of one kind of another. Potomac matrons, old and new money alike, competed to see who could corner more of these important targets, and there were all sorts of stories about the lobbying and scheming that went on to secure the most coveted RSVPs. Marsh considered some of these high-profile ladies to be little more than low-grade “racketeers.” After a weekend in New York, where he kept an apartment in the Hotel St. Moritz, he came back ranting about Elsa Maxwell, the original “hostess with the mostest,” and told Dahl she was in fact “paid to throw parties” and took a 10 percent commission. La Maxwell was a successful former actress, composer, and syndicated columnist who hosted a weekly radio show called, of all things,
Party Line
, in which she dispensed quantities of mindless fluff along with the occasional political insight. Based on her dubious claim to fame, she had become a preeminent Republican party-giver and had staged two well-attended events in honor of Wendell Willkie, with the bills reportedly footed by wealthy New York backers. Marsh was fit to be tied.

To these patriotic ladies, Dahl, with his conspicuous charm and reputation as a rising literary star, was a much sought-after guest. They commented on his lanky good looks, comparing him flatteringly to Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper. Dahl basked in their fawning attentions. He played the innocent abroad, allowing himself to be courted by rich older women, and did his best to keep them entertained with tales of his escapades in Hollywood. A gifted conversationalist, he related to everyone he talked to in a direct, personal way, remembering names and special interests. As Susan Mary (Mrs. William) Patten drily observed in a letter to her friend
*
Joseph Alsop, the
New York Herald Tribune
columnist who had enlisted in the navy and was stationed in China, “Dahl, an R.A.F. man whom you may have met here—is a dark broody creature who invented the gremlims [sic] and has done some other writing and is much loved by the ladies….”

In his brief time at the British Embassy, Dahl had managed to become a favorite with the hard-partying Washington press corps, a development that seemed to please both sets of bosses—official and unofficial. From the embassy’s point of view, the newspaper publishers, along with the editors and journalists in their employ, had unparalleled power to mobilize public opinion, and it was useful to gauge their sympathies and, whenever possible, influence them toward support of Britain and the war.

Dahl’s BSC contact shared this view but indicated that any insight that could be gleaned from prominent members of the press about internal American politics—especially the privately expressed views of the president, say, or any of his cabinet members or close advisers—would be of great value in certain high offices in London.

Newspapermen generally know much more than they print, and the BSC regarded them as a prolific source of intelligence: “The truth is that the majority of American politicians, not excluding Cabinet ministers, are willing to supply influential members of the press with ‘inside’ information in return for favorable publicity,” the official history states. “Such information is, of course, usually handed out under pledge of secrecy—to be used as ‘background material’ and not for publication. But it is given out nonetheless,” and, as the BSC had discovered, it contained “much material of political interest” as well as “secrets of vital importance.”

All Dahl had to do was keep up a cheerful front and eavesdrop his way though the yawning Sunday breakfasts, hunt breakfasts, luncheons, teas, tea dances, innumerable drinks parties, banquets, and not infrequent balls. Incredibly, Washingtonians could squeeze three or more of these events into a single day. He was to listen to what was being said, chat up the politicians and policy makers he met along the way, and obtain as much firsthand information as possible on their attitude toward Britain and U.S. participation in the war. He was to be as engaging as possible, a bright and breezy presence at table, and encourage confidences from those in the know. An attentive dinner partner could always pluck, from among all the war talk and congressional scuttlebutt, the occasional pearl.

As far as doing any actual work along the lines of counterespionage, all that it actually entailed was keeping a watchful eye on Britain’s enemies in the capital, principally the leading isolationists, who agitated against the crumbling empire, funded influential pro-German organizations such as the America First Committee and the German American Bund, and in some cases continued to do business with Germany on the basis that the Third Reich would soon dominate all of Europe. Dahl was to keep track of various conservative politicians and journalists who sympathized with these front groups and the lunatic isolationist fringe, monitor where they went and who their friends were, and ponder ways they might be publicly embarrassed and discredited. There were a variety of ways of attacking isolationists and Nazi sympathizers. If, for example, their unsavory past were to come to light or salacious rumors of an affair wound up in the gossip columns, that might serve to undermine an individual’s prestige and influence. He was also expected to help spread disinformation, a nifty wartime euphemism for deliberately supplying false statements in aid of a higher truth. These might be pure invention or based an half-truths culled from intercepted letters and secretly opened diplomatic mail. The British had found that their efforts at disinformation were often most effective when promulgated on the cocktail circuit. A lie repeated often enough by important public people soon took on the ring of truth.

Of course, Dahl’s efforts were merely a drop in the bucket. For large-scale whispering campaigns, the BSC maintained an organization known as the Rumor Factory, which dated back to 1941 and was directed from the New York headquarters. Its purpose was to make sure misleading stories were spread through many different channels—from established newspaper and radio figures to special commercial and diplomatic contacts—and on many different social, professional, and economic levels. The BSC took this form of political warfare very seriously, and the official history lists the key rules its representatives were expected to observe:

1. A good rumour should never be traceable to its source.
   
2. A rumour should be of the kind which is likely to gain in the telling.
   
3. Particular rumours should be designed to appeal to particular groups (i.e., Catholics, or ethnic groups such as Czechs, Poles, etc.)
   
4. A particular rumour should have a specific purpose.
   
5. Rumours are most effective if they can be originated in several different places simultaneously and in such a way that they shuttle back and forth, which each new report apparently confirming previous ones.
   

At times it was difficult to distinguish between work and play. Dahl took distinct pleasure in wooing some of Washington’s most influential women, including Mrs. Eleanor Patterson, the wealthy, widowed publisher of the
Washington Times-Herald,
a conservative paper that had the largest circulation in the city. A member of the Chicago Medill Patterson family, she had a stake in the New York
Daily News
, owned and published by her brother, Joseph Patterson, and the
Chicago Tribune
, owned by her cousin Robert McCormick. In the year leading up to America’s entry into the war, the press had been sharply divided over whether the country should intervene; the East Coast establishment remained faithful to Britain—including
New York Times
publisher A. H. Sulzberger,
New York Post
publisher George Backer, and Ogden Reid’s
Herald Tribune
—while Patterson and the owners of the Roosevelt-hating Hearst papers vigorously opposed any involvement in the war. They hammered home the isolationist view—“Let ’em get on with it. It’s none of our business”—in the pages of their newspapers and seemed determined to regard America’s eventual entry into the war as proof that their great country was once again being forced to pull England’s chestnuts out of the fire.

Cissie, as Mrs. Patterson was known to everyone, occupied a marble palace on Dupont Circle, never missed an important party, and freely indulged in Washington’s favorite indoor sport—gossip. She was so devoted to the doings of the cave dwellers (the term for wealthy high-ranking natives) that she significantly expanded the society section in the
Times-Herald
and hired blue bloods at high salaries to cover capital dinner parties. The society pages quickly became a must-read with everyone from ambassadors to parlor maids, giving her paper the largest circulation and inspiring rival publishers to begin allocating more column inches to dinners and teas. As the British Embassy’s formal affairs invariably outdid all the others in pomp and circumstance—from the gold-crested invitations to the scarlet-liveried footmen in breeches and white gloves—they were a staple of her gossip pages. Despite being a grandmother, Cissie was tall and very slender and enjoyed flaunting her girlish figure. Dahl, who loathed her on sight, rather enjoyed collecting dirt on her. “She absolutely hated Roosevelt,” recalled Antoinette, “and it was his job to spy on people like her.”

Then there was Evalyn Walsh McLean, the flamboyant hostess whose popular Sunday-night dinners, complete with dance orchestras, previews of first-run movies, and a hundred or more well-heeled guests, were legendary in wartime Washington. She always appeared dressed to the teeth, topped off by her trademark oversize round glasses, which gave her an owlish appearance. She never received her guests without the enormous 92 1/2-carat Hope diamond dangling from a gleaming chain around her neck, jokingly warning onlookers, “Don’t touch it, bad luck you know,” referring to the jewel’s well-documented history of bringing misfortune to those who came into its possession. Like her close friend Cissie Patterson, she was conservative, rabidly anti-Roosevelt, and had loudly protested America’s entry into the war. She thought Roosevelt was an irresponsible reformer with a mania for power and that he had a poorly dressed wife who had no idea how to behave in politics or private life.