William Boyd - Restless

She felt a sudden impotence, almost a demoralisation, hearing all this and wondered to herself, if this was indeed the case, what was the point of all this stuff they did: all the radio stations, the newspapers, the press agencies – all that opinion and influence out there, the stories, the column inches, the pundits, the famous broadcasters, all designed to bring America into the war, to cajole and nudge, persuade and convince – if it were not going to make Roosevelt act.

'Got to do our best, Eve,' Angus said brightly, as if he were conscious of the effect of his cynicism on her and trying to counterbalance it. 'But, short of Adolf declaring war unilaterally I can't see the Yanks joining in.' He smiled, looking pleased, as if he'd just heard he'd been given a huge raise. 'We have to face it,' he lowered his voice, glancing left and right. 'We're not exactly the most popular people in town. So many of them hate us, detest us. They hate and detest FDR too – he has to be very careful, very.'

'He just got re-elected for the third time, for God's sake.'

'Yes. On an "I'll keep us out" ticket.'

She sighed: she didn't want to feel depressed today, it had started so well. 'Romer says there are interesting developments in South America.'

'Does he, now?' Angus affected indifference but Eva could sense his interest quicken. 'Did he give you any more details?'

'No. Nothing.' Eva wondered if she had blundered again. What was happening to her today? She seemed to have lost her poise, her balance. They were all crows after all, all interested in carrion.

'Let's have another cocktail,' Angus said. 'Eat, drink and be merry – and all that.'

But Eva did feel strangely depressed after her lunch with Angus and she also continued to worry that she had given away information, subtext, hints about her and Romer – nuances that someone with Angus's agile brain would be able to turn into a plausible picture. As she walked back to the Transoceanic office, across town, crossing the great avenues – Park, Madison, Fifth – looking down the wide, unique vistas, seeing everywhere around her the hurry, chatter, noise and confidence of the city, the people, the country, she thought that maybe she too, if she had been a young American woman, a Manhattanite, happy in her work, cherishing her security, her opportunities, with all her life ahead of her – perhaps she too, however much she might sympathise and empathise with Britain and her struggle for survival, would think: why should I sacrifice all this, risk the lives of our young men, to become involved in some sordid and deadly war taking place 3,000 miles away?

Back at Transoceanic she found Morris busy with the Czech and Spanish translators. He waved at her and she went to her office, thinking that there seemed to be every kind of community in the United States – Irish, Hispanic, German, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, and so on – but no British community. Where were the British-Americans? Who was going to put their case to counter the arguments of the Irish-Americans, the German-Americans, the Swedish-Americans and all the others?

To cheer herself up and to deflect her mind from these defeatist thoughts, she spent the afternoon compiling a small dossier on one of her stories. Three weeks previously, in a feigned-tipsy conversation with the Tass New York correspondent (her Russian suddenly very useful), she had let slip that the Royal Navy was completing trials on a new form of depth charge – the deeper it went the more powerful it became: there would be no hiding place for submarines. The Tass correspondent was very sceptical. Two days later, Angus – through the offices of ONA – covertly placed the story with the New York Post. The Tass correspondent phoned to apologise and said he was cabling the story back to Moscow. When it appeared in Russian newspapers, British newspapers and news agencies picked it up and the news agencies cabled the story back to the USA. Full circle: she ranged the clippings on her desk – the Daily News, the Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe. 'New deadlier depth charge to obliterate U-boat menace'. The Germans would read it now, now that it was an American story. Maybe U-boats would be instructed to be more cautious as they approached convoys. Maybe German submariners would be demoralised. Maybe the Americans would root for the plucky Britons a little bit more. Maybe, maybe… According to Angus it was all a waste of time.

A few days later Morris Devereux came into her office at Transoceanic and handed her a cutting from the Washington Post. It was headlined: 'Russian professor commits suicide in DC hotel'. She skimmed through it quickly: the Russian's name was Aleksandr Nekich. He had emigrated to the USA in 1938 with his wife and two daughters and had been an associate professor of international politics at Johns Hopkins University. Police were mystified as to why he should have killed himself in a clearly low-rent hotel.

'Means nothing to me,' Eva said.

'Ever heard of him?'

'No.'

'Did your friends at Tass ever talk about him?'

'No. But I could ask them.' There was something about the tone of Morris's questioning that was untypical. Something hard had replaced the debonair manner.

'Why's it important?' she asked.

Morris sat down and seemed to relax a little. Nekich, he explained, was a senior NKVD officer who had defected to the States after Stalin's purges in 1937.

'They made him a professor for form's sake – he never taught at all. Apparently he's a mine of information – was a mine of information – about Soviet penetration here in the US…' he paused. 'And in Britain. Which is why we were rather interested in him.'

'I thought we were all on the same side now,' Eva said, knowing how naive she sounded.

'Well, we are. But look at us; what're we doing here?'

'Once a crow always a crow.'

'Exactly. You're always interested in what your friends are up to.'

A thought struck her. 'Why are you concerned about this dead Russian? Not your beat, is it?'

Morris took back the clipping. 'I was meant to meet him next week. He was going to tell us about what had happened in England. The Americans had got everything they wanted out of him – apparently he had some very interesting news for us.'

'Too late?'

'Yes… very inconvenient.'

'What do you mean.'

'I would say it looked like somebody didn't want him to talk to us.'

'So he committed suicide.'

He gave a little chuckle. 'They're bloody good, these Russians,' he said. 'Nekich shot himself in the head in a locked hotel room, gun in his hand, the key still in the lock, the windows bolted. But when it looks like a hard-and-fast, grade-A, genuine suicide it usually ain't.'

Eva was thinking: why is he telling me all this?

'They'd been after him since 1938,' Morris went on. 'And they got him. Shame they hadn't waited an extra week…' He gave a mock-rueful smile. 'I was quite looking forward to my encounter with Mr Nekich.'

Eva said nothing. This was all new to her: she wondered if Romer was involved with these meetings. As far as she was concerned Morris and she were only meant to be preoccupied with Transoceanic. But then, she thought – what do I know?

'The Tass people haven't mentioned any new faces in town?'

'Not to me.'

'Do me a favour, Eve – make a few calls to your Russian friends – see what the word is on Nekich's death.'

'All right. But they're just journalists.'

'Nobody's "just" anything.'

'Romer's rule.'

He snapped his fingers and stood up. 'Your "German naval manoeuvres off Buenos Aires" story is doing well. All of South America very angry, protests all over.'

'Good,' she said flatly. 'Every little helps, I suppose.'