Sam Bourne - Pantheon

Harrison resumed the offensive, more talk, more laughter, more drink. But none of it was working. James, who had mainly kept quiet, murmuring his assent, adding the odd chuckle but no more, now took the floor.

‘You know,’ he began. ‘I was in Spain during the war.’

‘ Covering it, for the Picture Post,’ Harrison added quickly.

‘Of course. Which is how I met this reprobate.’ James pointed affectionately in Ed’s direction. ‘And I got talking to some of the men, the volunteers. You know, you were deemed unfit for service if you couldn’t stand up straight, touch your toes, stand up straight, touch your toes — five times in ten seconds. They all had to do it. Hemingway, all of them. Not as easy it sounds.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Moran. ‘Anyone can do that.’

‘Harder than you think,’ said James.

Moran drained his glass and rose, with surprising grace, to his feet. There were others in the bar now, the early lunch crowd, a few of whom turned around to watch. In a gesture that was almost balletic he sent his arms soaring towards the sky, then flung them down in the direction of his toes, then pulled himself back upright. There was a small smattering of applause from the other end of the room.

‘You didn’t touch,’ said Harrison.

‘What?’ Moran slurred.

‘Your toes. You didn’t touch your toes.’

‘Come on.’

Moran had another go, his nostrils flaring wide as he went down as if to draw in more oxygen. This time he lingered as his fingertips drew level with his calves, seeking to find the extra flexibility that might carry them to his feet. Keeping his eyes on the Tribune reporter, James picked up Moran’s envelope and replaced it on the table with the one he and Harrison had just compiled.

Moran was back up again now, his face red from the exertion.

‘Three more,’ James said, pretending to time the Tribune man’s efforts on his watch.

Down he went, giving James a second to slip the original envelope — the one that had passed from Stoiber to McAndrew to Moran — into Harrison’s briefcase. Then he sat back, heart beating. At last it was done.

‘See, I did it,’ said Moran, exultant as he returned to his regular altitude.

‘As good a man as Hemingway,’ said Ed, admiringly.

‘And now I’ll be on my way.’ Moran picked up his envelope and walked towards the exit, where the sun was streaming in to drown these noontime drinkers in reproving light. He took a peek inside the envelope and then turned back towards the table, a furious look on his face.

James’s heart skipped a beat.

‘You didn’t let me pay for my shout,’ he said to Harrison, in mock admonition.

‘My treat,’ said Ed, raising his hand. ‘Like I said, I felt like celebrating.’

Ed insisted they wait a good five minutes before repairing to the private snug known only to the bartender’s favourite guests, just in case Moran came back for more.

James could not help but stare at the briefcase, inside which lay McAndrew’s secret. ‘Patience, Jimbo,’ Ed said, more than once. ‘We gotta play this one real cool.’

To make the minutes pass, James asked the American what papers Moran would now be looking at in the office of the Chicago Tribune. What sprat had he served up in place of the mackerel they were waiting to examine?

‘Not a bad story, as it happens, though it will confuse poor Karl Moran and confuse his bureau chief even more. It’s evidence there’s a German agent working on the staff of a United States congressman.’

‘No.’

‘Yes. And very active he is too. Writing full-page advertisements for the national newspapers, timed to appear during the Republican convention — all bought and paid for by the government of Germany, no less.’

‘And you gave that to Moran?’

‘Yes. I’ve been working on it for days. Mind you, I don’t think he’ll use a word of it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the Tribune is the Defend America First paper: they’re not going to crap on their own doorstep, if you’ll pardon my French.’

‘So he’ll know it’s fake straight away?’

‘It’s not fake. The papers are real. But he won’t understand why McAndrew will have leaked them. If I were him, I’d guess there was some kind of tension among the America Firsters, and that I was being used by one faction to damage another. He may think McAndrew has a beef with my senior congressman. And if he knows the Dean’s little parcel comes from the Embassy-’

‘He’ll think the Germans are trying to discredit the politician.’

‘Maybe my congressman has outlived his usefulness. The point is, it will take time for Moran to decode. Which is what we need. So long as McAndrew didn’t give any hint to Moran about what he was getting; if he did, Karl will be disappointed as well as confused. Nothing we can do about that. Come, that’s our five minutes.’

They walked through the wood-panelled booths, past a small staircase and then into a room no bigger than a first-class rail compartment. There was a fireplace, mercifully unlit in this moist summer weather. Doubtless, this town was full of rooms like this, where the business of power was played out.

Harrison placed his briefcase on the table, pulled out the white envelope and passed it to James. ‘Reporters’ code of honour. You reeled this fish in, Jimbo; you get to slit it open.’

James was surprised to see that his hands were trembling. He was nervous, he was excited; but above all he was exhausted. He had had next to nothing to drink, slipping most of his martinis into Moran’s glass, but he was light-headed. Taking a deep breath, he pulled out the wad of papers.

There were six separate documents, each consisting of two or three sheets paperclipped together. He read the first lines on the first page: London May 15th 1940, 6pm Most Secret and Personal. President Roosevelt from Former Naval Person Although I have changed my office, I am sure you would not wish me to discontinue our intimate, private correspondence. As you are no doubt aware, the scene has darkened swiftly…

It took him another paragraph or two to realize what he held in his hands. If necessary, we shall continue the war alone and we are not afraid of that. But I trust you realize, Mr President, that the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long…

‘Good God up above,’ James said, covering his mouth. ‘Good God.’

Harrison read each sheet after James had finished, alternately gasping and swearing, swearing and gasping. When they had both read Franklin D Roosevelt’s secret message of June 13th, with its language of redoubled efforts to help because of ‘our faith in and our support of the ideals for which the Allies are fighting’, Harrison shook his head silently.

James looked over at the grizzled, world-weary American and saw that his eyes were welling with tears. Harrison extended his hand and said simply, ‘Dr Zennor, I think you may have just saved your country.’

The train was too bright and too full to sleep, but even if it had been dark and empty, like the one he had ridden in the opposite direction a matter of hours earlier, James would not have slept. His body might have been drained and yearning for rest, his mind utterly spent, but his heart would not be quieted. And it was aching for Florence and Harry.

It did not matter that Ed Harrison had continued to lavish him with praise. The journalist kept insisting that had the Chicago Tribune got hold of the Roosevelt-Churchill letters — cutting and editing them to support their own, fevered anti-war stance — then FDR’s hopes for re-election would have been doomed. The paper would have used those letters to cast the President as a liar and a deceiver, a man prepared to vow to the American people that he had made no promises to fight for Britain when in fact he had done just that. Roosevelt’s enemies would surely have seized on the correspondence to demand his impeachment, on the grounds of violating the United States’s multiple Neutrality Acts. One way or another, the single American most committed to the defence of Great Britain — Franklin Delano Roosevelt — would have been destroyed. The chances of the United States coming to Britain’s aid would have been reduced to close to zero: Britain would be abandoned, its defeat guaranteed.