Shining Through (32 page)

His eyes were warm. And I was willing to bet that the smile he gave her erased the memory of his displeasure in Felice’s mind.

If she’d thought he was mad at her, that outstretched hand and lit-up face made her think: Oh, no, he
adores
me.

Edward led Felice over to a former judge from Albany who’d joined the White House staff, an old political crony of FDR’s who Edward had suddenly become great pals with when one of his budget requests got stomped on. The judge had something to do with loosening up executive-branch money, and although he was supposed to be an old shrewdie, it was clear it didn’t occur to the judge that he was being used; Edward Leland was his true friend.

Both the judge and his wife were obviously thrilled to be at Edward’s house. It was more real than the White House. An invitation to Edward Leland’s wasn’t a political courtesy; it all but said, You’ve arrived. Every time the wife walked past another piece of furniture, she’d give a fast stroke to the upholstery.

When the waiter came over to ask what she’d like to drink, her elbow nudged her husband’s side, as if to say, Wally, we’re
here
.

I was just starting to get up, to walk over to John, who was stuck with witchy Mrs. Weekes, when Norman Weekes sat down beside me. Too close, naturally. “Linda,” he said. I waited, but that was all for a while. He said my name as if it was a code with a very deep meaning.

“How are you?”

“Now I’m fine,” he answered. His thigh wasn’t touching mine, but it was close.

I suddenly realized that it was his conversation with Norman Weekes that had made Edward cross the room with such a glowering expression. I understood, as I edged away from Norman’s thigh, closer to the arm of the couch, that it wasn’t girl talk that had caused Edward’s eyebrows to come together in anger. Felice wasn’t the problem. At most, Edward might be irritated by the notion of the lady who SHINING THROUGH / 237

showed up on his doorstep (but whom he’d shown upstairs) pumping his secretary for secrets. Okay, and a little annoyed with me, because even from across the room, he’d spotted that I was reassuring her, and maybe he didn’t want her to feel so comfortable, so free to just “show up.”

So it wasn’t the rich, eager and willing divorcée. It was Norman Weekes, a banker who had moved through Germany in the twenties and the thirties as smoothly as he moved through upper-class Boston, where he’d been born and raised. Norman, Edward’s esteemed colleague at COI, obviously made Edward
furious
; he didn’t make me exactly delighted, either.

“You look quite delicious tonight, my dear,” Norman said.

“Good enough to eat.” John had told me Norman was related to all sorts of Boston names: Cabots, Lowells. I wondered if he’d inherited his yellow teeth from them—to say nothing of his tendency to dribble spit out of the side of his mouth. Norman leaned in closer and asked, “Can I take a bite out of you?” His breath smelled like a stale onion roll. “Just a little bite.”

I laughed, pretending it was all a joke, that he wasn’t a repulsive old lecher but a delightful predinner companion. He didn’t join me, though, not even with a chuckle. But he did shift about a tenth of an inch away from me, so I sensed my laughter had succeeded in pulling his fuse. Good.

Norman Weekes was in his early sixties. He had thin white hair, except for wisps—like cotton cosmetic puffs—over his ears.

Still, he seemed to see himself as irresistible, and the three or four times we’d met, he always made a bee-line for me, on the theory, I guess, that if I was already married to a magnificent-looking man, I might have room in my life for another. Also, he was enough of a wise Washington operator to want to get as much as he could on a colleague, and a colleague’s secretary was a first-rate source. That he got absolutely zero in either department didn’t stop him.

“How are things over in your office?” I asked. He was staring at my legs. In my eagerness to pull away from him, the skirt of my dress had ridden up above my knees; I 238 / SUSAN ISAACS

wanted to tug it down, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“This must have been a hectic week.”

“Ghastly,” he said. “I wish I had a girl like you to help me out.

Edward’s a lucky man.” I smiled. Across the room, Edward was charming the judge; his arm was around Felice’s waist. But he turned and saw Norman Weekes drooling over my legs. “Of course, your husband’s a luckier man, if you know what I mean.

Tell me, is John happy, working for Ed?”

“Yes. Very happy.”

“Not a bit awkward, all this incestuous business. Oh, come, my angel. Don’t give me those big, innocent brown eyes of yours. Incest. Your John was married to Ed’s girl…what’s her name?”

“Nan.”

“And now you’re working day and night for your husband’s former father-in-law. Tell me, isn’t it a bit much? Don’t you wish you could have your husband all to yourself…cut those old family ties? Hmmm, Linda?”

I didn’t know why Edward detested Norman Weekes so much; I was just able to sense him seething whenever Norman called or his name was mentioned, or now, across the room, watching Norman breathe into my ear.

But I knew why I hated Norman Weekes. He was a snake.

Not some dumb, slithery thing that bites, but a smart one. His genius was finding people’s weaknesses and playing on them.

I’d heard he’d recruited agents through flattery, appeals to patriotism, bribery and, when all else failed, blackmail. But all else rarely failed, because Norman was such a skillful serpent. “Linda, lovely Linda,” he said, “you deserve a husband who’s a hundred percent.”

“I have one. Thank you.”

“Counterespionage is dreadfully tedious. Isn’t he bored with working for Ed?”

“You know John can’t discuss what he does with me…or anyone.”

“Of course not. But really, my love, you should encourage him to break his ties to Father Edward. He’d have much SHINING THROUGH / 239

more independence—to say nothing of personal satisfaction—working with me. I need someone like him, and believe me, dear Linda, with me…how best to put it? John could be the man he will never be with Edward Leland.”

“Mr. Weekes, I don’t see any point in—”

“And furthermore,” Norman went on, “it would be in
your
best interest to get your handsome husband away from the, um, House of Leland, shall we say. My dear, the word is seeping out that my dear old friend Quentin’s pretty little wife is somewhat discontent. Yes, isn’t that surprising? Young Nan is rumored to be on some quiet island in the Caribbean right now. ‘Thinking things over,’ as they say.” Norman took my hand in his; his skin was horribly dry, like something dead for a long time. He spoke so softly his voice was hardly louder than a hiss. “Rumor has it the sweet thing may just decide to visit wise old Père Edward, to get some fatherly advice. Who knows, she may stay in Washington for some time. It’s
so
exciting here.” He squeezed my hand tight. “I know you’re listening, my dear, even though you don’t like what I’m saying. But do your best to persuade John. I promise you, if we have any…sweet young visitors to our beloved capital, I’ll see to it that John has to make an urgent trip out of town. For as long as is necessary.” He turned my hand over and scraped the nail of his index finger across my palm. “And when the cat’s away,” he said in his high-class Boston accent, “the mice can have a most stimulating time. Do consider that possibility, dear Linda. You look like a girl who can appreciate…stimulation.”

So what was I supposed to do—say to John, Want to hear some terrific gossip about Nan Leland Berringer Dahlmaier?

That was the last thing in the world I wanted him to hear.

My husband had never stopped loving his first wife. On good nights, when John didn’t roll over and sleep right at the edge of the mattress, when he stayed in the middle of the bed with his arm slung over me in his sleep, his hand resting on my shoulder or, once, on my cheek, like a night-long caress, I’d think: Okay, so Nan will always be his ideal

240 / SUSAN ISAACS

woman. Big deal. It’s not her as a person John loves; it’s the idea of her. When he talks about her, he talks about her mind: her passion for music and art; her misery at having to go through the debutante ritual (as if Edward held a carving knife to her throat and said, Have a tea dance or die). And he thinks she’s beautiful, because she almost is, with her pale, flawless features and delicate, small-boned body.

On good nights I’d think that sure, maybe every day with me wasn’t New Year’s Eve, but he never really had fun with Nan.

He never mentioned long walks or picnics—or grabbing her the minute he got home and doing it standing up.

As for Nan, my guess was that John’s big attraction for her (besides whatever culture he had that made her intellect squeal with pleasure) was exactly what made me crazy about him: his beauty; his quiet seriousness, so you were always dying to know what he was thinking, because you were never sure of where you stood; his powerful appeal to all women, so by picking you he had somehow shown the world—and you—how special you were; and, finally, his real gift: his ability as a lover. But in that department, even though he would never go into it (Linda, this is
not
a subject for discussion), I knew Nan never set him on fire. He adored her, and it must have given him enormous reassurance to know he had such a hold over her, but…Okay, so maybe I was reading between the lines, but I was good at that, and I
knew
Nan wasn’t woman enough for him. And I knew I was.

But on bad nights, I knew Nan was everything John wanted and loved in the world. He loved her nanny; her father’s town house on Washington Square, where she grew up; her romantic-ally-dead-at-an-early-age rich Theodore Roosevelt cousin of a mother; her dancing lessons, her harp lessons, her boarding school; her summers in Europe, her winter vacations skiing in Vermont; and her horse, Daisy, who died in a stable in Central Park when both Nan and the horse were fifteen. John loved how Nan’s eyes would fill up whenever she spoke about Daisy. And he loved—worshiped—her father.

To have been taken up into that family was the acceptance SHINING THROUGH / 241

John had always dreamed of. He’d been allowed to be one of them; it was too bad wives take on husbands’ names, because he would have loved nothing more than to be John Leland. But then Nan got rid of him. It must have been like an angel being tossed out of heaven, doomed to live in the workaday world after knowing paradise.

So I wouldn’t talk to John about Nan. And I couldn’t tell any of my forty-seven Alabama neighbors, who I hardly ever saw anymore with my crazy work hours and who anyway didn’t know my husband had been married before and, besides, wouldn’t say anything more than “Ah do declare!” and then run out and give the other forty-six the big news bulletin. And I couldn’t tell my mother, because even though I wrote her every day, I doubt if she looked at or even listened to Cookie read my letters. I called her once a week, but her voice was so faded, so thin, that even if she had the strength to concentrate on what I was saying, I didn’t have the heart to tell her: Mom, maybe you were right about John.

And I couldn’t tell Edward. Listen, Ed, did you hear about my husband’s ex-wife? The sweet petunia may be on the loose again. You got any of that famous Edward Leland wisdom for me? Any ideas about whether this little intellectual flower is going to come for a comforting visit to her daddy and screw up my life? Huh, Ed?

“Linda,” Edward said to me. It was the Monday morning after his dinner, and Pete was driving up over a narrow, hilly, icy road somewhere in Virginia horse country at sixty miles an hour.

“I need a breath of fresh air.” I was about to crank down the window when he added, “Pete, pull over for a minute.” The Packard skidded to a stop. Edward opened the door and said,

“Come on.”

I followed him, and we walked for a few minutes in silence.

Then he turned right, onto a dirt road. After another few minutes, he stopped and leaned against a white fence. I buttoned the top of my coat and fished my gloves out of my pocket. I had no idea how long I’d be breathing fresh air.

God knows Edward needed some. Since Pearl Harbor, his 242 / SUSAN ISAACS

job had become a horror. Before December 7, he had been head of counterespionage for all of Europe, to make sure that the agents who were feeding us information were really ours—and to make sure their information was accurate, that someone, somewhere, in German intelligence hadn’t discovered that a diplomat or a prostitute or a chauffeur was a spy and was allowing him to pass us misleading information.

But now Donovan and the President wanted more. Edward would continue to oversee Europe, but he’d also have to take on the United States. That was the FBI’s job, of course, but the three men had agreed a little extra coverage couldn’t hurt.

Meanwhile, Norman Weekes and ten men just like him signed up agents—lawyers, writers, college professors—free-lance agents living in America and coming out of the woodwork to offer us wonderful secrets, agents for desk work, like John, and agents, spies, to be slipped into whatever dark cracks we could find in enemy territory. Edward would have to make sure they were what they claimed: good Americans, or dedicated anti-Fascists.

I blew on my hands and glanced up at him. He had deep circles under his eyes. He’d nicked himself shaving in three or four places on his bad side, where he had no feeling. I’d never seen him look tired before.

“Tell me about Friday night.” He spoke so suddenly I jumped.

“Oh. It was…” I tried to think of one of those appropriate words, like grand, or divine, and I did, but they sounded jerky, so I said, “…a terrific party. Your house is beautiful. Felice was very nice.” I couldn’t believe I was standing right near a horse field in December telling him what a great host he’d been, but if that’s what he wanted…“And the dinner—”

“Oh, stop it!” he snapped. “Do you think I’m fishing for compliments?”

“How am I supposed to know what you’re fishing for? I thought I’d give compliments a try.” I turned up my collar.

SHINING THROUGH / 243