The Snowfly (57 page)

“As M. J. Key.”

Raina smiled. “Do you know who Donovan was?”

“Wild Bill, leader of the OSS, father of the CIA.”

“Gus loved puzzles and codes and he had some revolutionary ideas.”

“He and Vijver.”

She whistled in mock appreciation. “You've done some homework.”

“I read their article.”

“And what did you think?”

“It suggested there was a code buried in it and dared anyone to break it.”

“There was,” she said. “Gus knew about some of the German cryptography and he and Vijver wrote the article to spike Washington's interest. Nobody there could break it.”

“And Donovan got the message.”

“Somebody he knew recognized that Gus was on to something.”

It was strange how she called her father by his given name. She flicked the cigarette butt aside and lit another. “It was 1938. Donovan had already decided in his gut that there was going to be a war and he recognized that Gus could be a tremendous help to the country. He arranged for my father and mother to leave East Lansing in such a way that people would not much want to follow them.”

“As publicly accused Nazi sympathizers.”

“Gus spoke English with a German accent, so it was easy enough to believe. At that point Donovan was without portfolio, but he was gathering assets for the country. You won't remember this, but when Roosevelt got elected to his third term, he promised that Americans were not going to fight other peoples' wars.”

“Which didn't rule out
our
wars, if we got pulled in.”

“You've got it. Donovan was convinced that the U.S. needed a new, centralized intelligence agency run by civilians, not soldier boys. Roosevelt picked him to run the show. My mother and father were then living under assumed names in New York.”

“Rhinecliff,” I said, guessing.

“Close enough. Remember, Roosevelt was from Hyde Park, which is just down the Hudson. My father was one of Donovan's first recruits. Gus wanted to play the cryptoanalysis game, but Donovan had other plans for him and when Donovan wanted something, he usually got it. He asked Gus to return to Germany.”

I had lived beside these people and never known anything about them.

“My mother remained in New York and also worked for Donovan. Gus went back to Germany and took a position at a technical institute in Berlin. By then he and Vijver had refined their plain language codes. Gus wrote letters to people all over the world, all of them Donovan's agents.”

“About trout,” I said. “And all of it was code.”

I could see Raina's teeth flash. “You were always smart, Bowie. Smarter than you knew or gave yourself credit for. The Nazis never broke the codes and Gus was never suspected. With his academic contacts he kept the Allies tuned in to a lot of things the Nazis were up to. Donovan said that my father was the most important spy in the war. Gus came home in 1945 and they gave him medals and he said he had had enough. He felt he had earned his place in America and we went to Detroit to live.”

Now I had something to ask. Raina was born the same year I was. “If your father was in Germany, where did you come from?”

“Dirty mind, Rhodes. My father was a scientist. Scientists traveled, even during the war, mostly to neutral countries. Donovan arranged for my father and mother to meet. He was sensitive to such things. I'm the result of a reunion.”

“M. J. Key,” I said.

“Hold your horses, I'll get to that. In 1947 the government came calling again. This time the war was against the Russians. It was cold, but just as serious. They sent my father to Leningrad. His job was to gather information, but more important to stop certain things from happening.”

“Such as?”

“I don't know. Spies don't talk in details.”

“How did they get him into Russia?”

“Easy. He went in as the Nazi scientist he was. Remember, at the end of the war the Russians, Americans, French, and Brits were all grabbing Nazi scientists. Many of them went to ground. It was arranged in 1947 for my father to be found and sent over to the Russians.”

Part of me wanted to believe her and part did not.

“My father got out in 1951 and told the feds he was finished. His nerves were shot and he wanted his own life.”

“From Russia to Pinkville.”

She laughed the old Punky laugh. “I never caught the irony before.”

“Your name isn't Chickerman,” I said.

“Well deduced, Einstein. That was Gus's invention.”

“There were other transplants in upper Michigan and Eubanks was their guardian.”

She nodded. “My mother and father were the last.”

“Which is why Eubanks pulled up stakes.”

“He what?” I detected a stitch in her voice.

“He left Traverse City.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course, that's logical.”

Didn't she know? This upset her. I decided she didn't and I sensed it hit her hard. Now she was alone, without her protector. “You went to a lot of trouble to get the Key manuscript and make sure I didn't.”

“Don't be an imbecile. I had no idea you were after it.”

“But you wanted it bad,” I said.

“Not for the reason you did.”

“Not for the snowfly?”

“God,” she said.

“But Key was real, a Brit,” I said.

“No, some people think that, but he was American born, with an English mother, and he was raised over there. Gus took his name to write the 1943 work. It was published as part of the British scheme to make the Axis think he was alive.”

“But it was Gus who wrote the snowfly manuscript,” I interrupted.

“Yes, Key no longer needed his identity. He was in the ground. And had been since before the war.”

Which confirmed what Lady Hoe had told me. “Your father was using his name before that.”

“Yes, Gus admired him. They were very close friends for a long time.”

“So he took his identity.”

“At times,” she said defiantly. “Key traveled throughout Europe for conferences all through the nineteen-twenties and into the early thirties. Gus was in Germany then and he and Key became close friends, took vacations, fished together, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, everywhere. When Dad settled in East Lansing, he used Key's name to conceal his identity and to honor a great man.”

“Key was at Bletchley Park.”

Raina laughed heartily. “You get an A for effort.” I didn't let on that I was guessing. “Key was in England in name only. Alan Turing was the driving force at Bletchley and Key had been his mentor. Key's death before the war was kept secret so that he could be kept alive. The Germans knew Key and feared his ruthless intellect. Bletchley sent out communications for the Germans to intercept so that they would think Key was alive and playing a crucial role in Allied intelligence. Nazi agents chased his name all over England and the Brits used this to trap them. Key was just bait,” she said. “Gus said that Key would have appreciated this. When Gus wrote his code article he used Key's name as a way to assure government attention.”

Most of it fit together, even the government's paranoia. There had been two Keys and Gus was one of them. “I never knew your father fished.”

She chuckled quietly. “Gus was pathologically private. The Germans used him, the Russians used him, and the Brits and the Americans used him. When he had enough, we disappeared. He wanted to dedicate his life to something that could never be corrupted. Even though he worked against the Nazis and Soviets, he also had to work
for
them in order to preserve his cover, and this always weighed on him. He could never forgive himself, but he tried all his life to make amends.”

“With fish?”

“Why
not
fish? Gus and Key loved fish and it was a symbol powerful enough for Christ. Fish are about hope.”

“If you say so.”

“You, of all people, should understand.”

I wasn't sure what I knew anymore. “What about the snowfly?”

“Good night,” she said wearily.

 

•••

 

The next day I watched Ernest Hemingway make clumsy roll casts into a slow pool in an oxbow of the river near camp. Two men were with him. Most of his casts fell short and others got hung in the tag alders, low brush, and dead timber along the bank and had to be freed. He stood silently and motionless while others came to his assistance. When the line was free, he began casting again, deliberately, mechanically.

During one of his frequent hangs, I approached him and waved.

“Hiya, kid.”

“Doing any good?”

“I never philosophize when I fish,” he said. “Doing is enough.”

“Might do better here with worms,” I said.

He laughed silently. “Using worms isn't trout fishing, but I'm no snob about it. Nah, that's not it at all. I had plenty of catching in my day. We all did back then, I guess. Now we're paying for it. You can't keep taking just because it's easy. I used to count every word I wrote. Precisely. Last thing I did every day. Wrong headed, I think. Too much emphasis on progress, too much on the future. Life is about now. We forget that sometimes. No fish today, but I still have good days. You count your fish?”

I shook my head.

“Good for you, pal. Anything you've got to count usually isn't worth it.”

The fly was freed and when he resumed casting, I left him alone. But before I had taken too many steps I heard him shout, “Get away from me!”

He had a fish on.

One of his helpers had a long-handled net and was down on one knee on the embankment, but Papa kicked awkwardly at the man as he scuttled back. Still the rugged individualist after all. He was old and not well, but he wanted to do it on his own. I felt growing affection for the man.

I couldn't believe the transformation. The old man with the barrel body and stick limbs, the old man who, minutes before, had stood like a statue, was now rippling with life. Maybe Raina was right, that fish were about hope. The fly rod was bowed. The line ripped nervously across the surface of the river. Hemingway's arms held strong, his elbows in, braced against his ribs. He glanced over his shoulder at me, squinting and grinning, and returned his attention to the fish.

It was an extended struggle. I squatted to watch. Hemingway said nothing, but grunted steadily under the strain, keeping the line taut. Others drifted down to the river and stood quietly.

His arms were flabby and jiggling like Jell-O, his spindly legs bent for balance and set wide.

The fish vigorously surged upstream, then reversed course.

I looked around. The whole company seemed to have assembled. The sun was large and hot. Some of the men stripped off their shirts. Their ribs showed like winter-starved deer. The only sounds were Hemingway's labored breathing and the line cutting the water.

At some point Raina and Val joined me.

The old man stood his ground grunting, awkwardly shuffling his feet, raising dust. His arms were wet, angled, silhouetted. I could see that his elbows were beginning to fan out. The fish was sapping him, getting the upper hand.

“Hold him, Papa!” a man shouted. “You can do it!”

A towering man with a red beard went to the man and hushed him.

Hemingway fell, landing on his behind, but kept the rod high and tried to get up.

A high-pitched crack told us it was over. The line had broken.

He held the rod overhead, stared at the reel and threw the rig away in disgust.

Nobody moved.

He lay back, spread out his arms, and said with a pained smile, “That should do it.”

Then his chest was still.

 

•••

 

We gathered in the communal building. One of the men bathed the body. Hemingway looked asleep.

Valoretev stood stiffly near the body as it was wrapped in cloth. He was weeping. I smelled kerosene. Harkie-who-was-Yorkie was there, filthy and giving off a loathsome stench, his back bent and tears running freely down his cheeks.

There was no sign of the wolf.

Raina was beside me.

We took the body into the forest and put it on a platform of sticks. Wood was piled neatly under the platform. A pyre.

Valoretev said, “A great man rarely owns his own life. To die doing what you love most is to have a glorious death.”

Then the fire was lit.

I watched Raina Chickerman stare rapturously at the dancing flames.

 

•••

 

We were back in her shack. There was no light inside, no moon outside. We could hear the wind chattering in the trees as a storm built. Raina had a cigarette. The ember glowed brighter when she drew on it, a tiny beacon of life on the other side of the room.

“It was a good death,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “You were there when my parents died.”

“Afterward.”

“They were together,” she said. “I was glad for that. They both had cancers, terminal.”

This was news. “I expected to see you. I tried to get in touch with you, but Eubanks blocked my way.”

“It couldn't be helped,” she said.

What couldn't be helped—her absence, their deaths, both? I asked her, “Do you know how the fire started?”

“It was what they wanted. It was time for them to go,” was all she said, and the words gave me a chill.

Was she suggesting they set the fire themselves? Or worse? I couldn't get the possibilities out of my mind. I fell asleep listening to a battering wind and awoke with a start at morning twilight to hear the steady gush of rain on the roof. It was leaking through in many places. My first thoughts upon waking were of Hemingway's pyre and of Raina's face illuminated by the flame. Had Raina set the fire that took her parents? It was too horrible to contemplate.

“It won't be here,” Raina said from the doorway. “Not this year.”