The traitor beside her, p.7
The Traitor Beside Her, page 7
“I wonder if it’ll occur to somebody that they could just send me my own clothes. I may be on a secret mission, but I stopped being undercover yesterday.”
“That would make a lot of sense, but they ain’t done it yet. Look at us. Our suits are cut the same. We’ve got on the same black shoes and we’ve got the same black purse. Somebody’s gonna notice, and we can’t let that happen. We especially can’t let ’em pay any extra attention to our purses, what with their secret compartments and all.”
Justine saw the problem.
“I’ve got an idea!” Georgette did an abrupt U-turn, heading back toward Kansas Hall. “I can fix the purses right now, but I’ll have to be quick about it. If we’re not down here when the bus comes, it’ll leave us, and then where will we be?”
Justine could hardly keep up with long-legged Georgette as they hustled back through the dormitory lobby and up the stairs to their room. As soon as the door shut, Georgette opened a drawer, pulling out a belt made of a length of gold-tone chain with a matching buckle. Retrieving a pair of scissors, a needle, and some thread from another drawer, she sat on her bed and spread her tools out beside her. First, she cut off her purse’s dull silver clasp and unfastened the fittings that attached its black leather shoulder strap. Then, working in her lap, she cut apart the belt’s chain and buckle and set to work switching them with the strap and clasp of her purse.
Tying off the thread that attached her purse to its new clasp, she said, “There. They look plenty different now, doncha think? You carry this one with the shiny chain for a strap, since I’m the one who’s supposed to be dowdy. Tonight, I’ll do something about our clothes, but right now we better hurry on down to the bus stop. In the meantime, you could look a little less dowdy if you unbuttoned the top button of that blouse.”
* * *
Georgette stood beside Justine, vibrating with excitement. They were at Arlington Hall, waiting in line to be admitted to Building B, but it wasn’t just any line. The person who would be checking their badges was Jerry, and Georgette was so excited to see him again that Justine wondered whether she should have packed smelling salts in her handbag’s secret compartment. Or maybe a flask of whiskey.
They reached the front of the line, which cued Georgette and Jerry to do the easiest spy task ever done. Their goal? Convince the people around them that they liked each other.
Jerry looked over Justine’s papers and said, “Dr. Becker left this for you.”
He handed over a security badge. Justine studied the color-coded design signaling that she was authorized to enter Buildings A and B, certain parts of the administration building, and all public parts of the Arlington Hall complex. This was her passport to a successful mission. She gripped it hard.
Jerry gestured for her to pass through the gate. Then he turned his attention to Georgette’s paperwork.
He handed her a sealed envelope. “Here are your instructions. You’ll be working in Room 117, but you won’t get the badge that’ll get you in there until you’ve gone through orientation. So you’ll want to join that group over there by that tree. Somebody will take you where you need to go.”
Georgette took the envelope, flicked her eyes up at him, then looked at her toes as Justine had coached her to do, but she didn’t move away. For Miss Samantha Ogletree, this was outrageously flirtatious behavior.
Her gaze might be lowered, but that didn’t deter Jerry. He leaned down and made eye contact. “You’re new here? Of course, you are.” He flashed her a wide, boyish smile. “I’d remember a face like that.”
Fully in character, Georgette giggled, but didn’t speak.
Jerry studied her identification papers. “I see you’re from Georgia. Do you like it here?”
The faux Miss Ogletree managed to utter a few words. “I do. It’s a little cold, but that’s not such a bad thing. I’ve never been many places outside of Georgia, so it’s nice that Virginia is different from home.”
“You’ll have to let me show you around town.” Then, as an afterthought, “And your friend, too, if she’s interested.”
Georgette blushed and mumbled something about not having been properly introduced. Then she stopped herself. In a voice that was newly firm, she said, “There may be nobody here to properly introduce us, but I can do that for myself.”
Georgette had told Justine that her embodiment of Miss Ogletree would use more of the formal grammar she’d learned in school, instead of her usual down-home way of speaking. It would have been a losing battle to try to cover her Southern accent, though, so she was just going to have to gamble that they were far enough from Georgia and Louisiana that the people around them wouldn’t be able to hear the difference.
As far as Justine was concerned, Georgette was doing a great job of acting her role. Justine took a few steps away, as if to give her friend Samantha a chance to speak privately with an attractive man.
Georgette stuck out a hand and Jerry took it. “I’m Samantha. It’s lovely to meet you.”
“I’m Alan. I’ll be right here at the beginning and end of your shift, every day. If you think you might want to go out with me sometime, just stand in my line and show me that pretty smile.”
“I will,” Georgette announced in a bold-for-Samantha voice. Then, as if she’d just remembered the things that mothers in Georgia told daughters about playing hard to get, she added, “I mean, I will if I decide that’s what I want to do.” Waving an embarrassed goodbye, she hurried to catch up with Justine.
And, just like that, they had a way to pass information back and forth with Paul. Jerry was going to come in very handy.
* * *
Justine left Georgette waiting for her orientation, then headed to her office. Karl had left her some filing to do, so she busied herself until she thought Georgette was fully oriented. Then she waited until Karl stepped out for a meeting and took the opportunity to use his coffeepot as a weapon for democracy. She fired up the percolator and happily sniffed the air while she waited for it to perk.
When the coffee was ready, she poured two cups, sugared them both well, and walked them down to Room 117. Her knock on the door was greeted by the bobby-soxer from Kansas Hall. Behind Sally Tompkins was a white-painted wooden screen that completely blocked the view of the room from anybody standing in the hall.
Justine’s smile was genuine, because she honestly was glad to see Sally. She was nervous, and it felt good to see a familiar face. “Hi, Sally. Since I’m new here, I wanted to come say hello to Samantha’s colleagues. Also, I brought her a cup of coffee.” She held up one brimming cup. “The other one can be yours, if you want it.”
“Hi, Justine. Thank you very much for the coffee, but we have a pot and I’ve already poured Samantha a cup.”
Justine’s surprise must have shown, because Sally said, “I’ve got to hand it to the Army. They find a way to get us coffee, which is a good thing, since they want us to work six days a week, every week that rolls. I say you should take those back to your office and drink them both yourself. Karl is notorious for working his assistants to death. He goes through two a year, at least. Karl has a good point, though. He manages to get sugar when nobody else can.”
Sally examined Justine’s badge. She must have been satisfied with the colors it displayed, because she stood aside and said, “Come on in and say hello to everybody.”
Sally ushered her around the privacy screen into a large room full of people bent over their work. At the sight of Justine, every last person there turned the papers in front of them facedown. The synchronized motion and the shushing of all those papers was unsettling, and so was the silence that fell as all of those faces turned expectantly toward hers.
Trying to figure out her next move, Justine looked around. A row of windows and several rows of pendant lights illuminated the space. A poster hung in a prominent position on the rear wall displayed a string of variations on a line from a poem Justine recognized from school, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 43.”
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Let me count the ways that I do love thee.
How many ways do I love thee?
Do I love thee? I shall count the ways.
If you will let me, I will count the ways that I love thee.
The poster’s caption drove home its message:
There’s always another way to say it.
Carelessness kills.
Justine knew enough about cryptanalysis to know that repetition gave an undue advantage to the adversary trying to crack your code. Something about the poster and its reminder to be, ever and always, meticulous made her think of Karl’s friends who were recuperating from emotional breakdowns. She wasn’t sure how long she’d hold up under the stress of knowing that repeating one word one too many times could result in a sunken ship and the loss of all the lives aboard. Even the loss of a single airplane and its one pilot was too much, and that loss could be caused by a misplaced “the.”
No wonder the people in this room had a reputation for being eccentric.
Room 117 was long and narrow, and it was crammed with large wooden desks. A larger desk that clearly belonged to the person in charge sat at the end of the center aisle, facing the door. Georgette waved at her from the smaller assistant’s desk beside it, which also faced the door. All of the other desks sat perpendicular to those, facing each other to form a center aisle. Some of the desks sported neatly squared piles of paperwork. Other desktops looked like somebody had backed up a garbage truck and dumped a heap of loose sheets on them.
None of the desktops showed much bare wood. These people were drowning in work. Room 117 was an endless sea of white, and all of that white was unblemished, because every last sheet of paper, whether stacked or lying in a heap, was facedown.
Sally’s desk was the first on the right, near the door and near the coffeepot. As the youngest woman in the room, she was apparently expected to act as the hostess, answering the door and keeping the coffee drinkers happy, while also dealing with the stacks of work that were always waiting for her. She had swapped her saddle shoes for a pair of black kid Mary Janes, low-heeled and unadorned. Although Sally was dressed in a plain suit that looked an awful lot like Justine’s, she still wore her unbusinesslike braids. They swung as she walked, detracting from her efforts to seem grown up. Sally looked like she should be sitting in a high school English class.
As Sally walked Justine toward Georgette’s desk on the far wall, she introduced her to the people they passed along the way. Pointing to the desk across from hers, she said, “Here’s Nora Moore. She lives with us in Kansas Hall. You’ll have to come down to the music room and hear her play the piano sometime.”
Nora, a dour woman of about forty with dark hair cut into a no-nonsense bob, nodded without making eye contact. Her skirted suit, gray and boxy, was equally no-nonsense, so plainly cut that it made Justine’s look stylish. Her flat-soled shoes were unadorned. She wore no makeup and no jewelry. Even the pencil in her hand was painted black, instead of the more common yellow. In the middle of the monochromatic seriousness that covered Nora and her desk was a single spot of color, a small bouquet of flowers. The blossoms, pink snapdragons and white carnations, spilled over the rim of a water-filled paper cup. A single stem of yellow daisies gave the arrangement a spot of sunshine. Justine couldn’t decide if the flowers made Nora look more human, because she enjoyed something so pretty, or less human, because she looked so starkly plain in comparison.
As Justine walked, she wordlessly offered the cups in her hand to one person after another. No takers. Her plan to infiltrate Room 117 with Karl’s coffee was going down in Hindenburg-like flames.
“You met my roommate, Thelma Dickens, at the dorm last night.”
Thelma’s dark hair was unfashionably straight, but it suited her by being somehow both severe and pretty. Her desk was next to Nora’s and across from Sally’s. She sat tapping the fingers of one hand on a facedown sheet of graph paper and smoking with the other. As Justine passed, Thelma waved the cigarette at her, but she said nothing.
“And here’s Dr. Kowalski. He’s from Poland.” Sally gestured to a man on her right, across from Thelma. She looked like she wanted to say more, but she didn’t.
“Please. Call me Patryk,” he said with a smile that lingered in his dark eyes. She thought that he looked like a painting she’d once seen of the composer Chopin, only with lighter hair. But maybe she was imagining the resemblance because Chopin was the only Polish man she could think of at the moment.
“This man right next to Dr. Kowalski is Ike Grantham,” Sally said, continuing to move away from the door. “Don’t listen to anything he says. Everything’s a joke with him.”
Ike was tall and thin, with a long, narrow nose and long, narrow hands. He wore a black-and-red knit cap and a navy-blue peacoat, which made Justine stop to think, Is it cold in here? She didn’t think so, and everybody else in the room was dressed normally. Maybe Ike was from someplace even hotter than her home in New Orleans. Or maybe he just lived up to Room 117’s reputation for eccentricity.
“You cut me to the quick,” he said, reaching out awkwardly to squeeze Sally’s elbow. His left sleeve slipped higher on an arm that was noticeably thinner than the right one, revealing several long scars. “Everything I say to you is deadly serious, Sally. I’m patiently waiting for you to grow up, so I can make you Mrs. Grantham.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Sally said, but Justine saw her smile.
Ike turned to Justine. “Everybody knows that Sally lied about her age to get this job, but nobody says anything, because she’s just so damn good. I’m quite serious. You should see her reading encrypted messages in real time, the way other people read English or music.”
“Do go on,” Sally said.
“Oh, hell. I just said a curse word in front of a little girl. There’s another one. Shit.”
Sally swatted him on the wrist that wasn’t scarred and wasted, then she moved on.
They were nearing the end of the row of desks, but Sally couldn’t make herself leave anybody out of the introductions.
“Beulah and Barbara have these last two desks across from Ike.”
Justine was confused, because the desks were empty, but Sally pointed to two women standing behind them. Sally’s gesture seemed to indicate that Beulah was the gray-haired one and Barbara was the brown-haired one. Beulah kept her eyes on her work as she murmured hello, but Barbara called out, “Nice to meet you,” as her eyes watched Justine’s every move.
“They’re always on their feet, keeping track of projects we’re all working on together, and their work keeps them side by side most of the time. They’re busy bees, and their names start with B, so we call them The Bees.”
The Bees were clipping slips of paper to long strings that were hung between two wooden posts, like they were hanging out stockings to dry. Similar clothesline-like apparatuses lined the room’s walls, except for the area around the door, where visitors might see the symbols typed on the papers.
“And here’s Samantha, but you know her. And our boss, Dr. Edison van Dorn, sits right here beside her. He runs everything in Room 117.”
Paul had told Justine a lot about Dr. van Dorn, since the original plan was for her to be sitting at the desk next to him where Georgette was now installed. He was an Ivy League Latin professor and a champion bridge player. He spoke five modern languages and three dead ones, and he was particularly proud of his German.
He stood to shake her hand, his sandy head looming over hers. “You’ll be working with Dr. Becker. That should be…interesting.”
She knew enough about academics to know that this man probably bitterly resented Karl and his native fluency in German. Everything about Edison van Dorn reeked of pride and, perhaps, arrogance. Somehow, she thought that Georgette would find working for a man like this one to be…interesting.
Justine set down a cup of cooling coffee and accepted Dr. van Dorn’s handshake, which was firm to the point of being painful. Her father had taught her that a man who gripped her hand with all his strength was trying to make her flinch, so she honored her father’s memory by refusing to do so.
Edison van Dorn had the pallid complexion that one would expect from a man of European descent who worked as an academic and spent his spare time at the bridge table. He was of average weight, but there was a softness to his body that did not extend to his watchful face. His hazel eyes were sharp, his lips were firm, and his hair was cut with precision. His suit fit as if it were made for him, and perhaps it had been. Its soft wool had an elegant drape. Either Dartmouth professors were paid a great deal, or Edison van Dorn came from money.
From Dr. van Dorn’s end of the room, the volume of paper spread over every desk in Room 117 looked even more dramatic. The walls, too, were paper-white, and so were all the tense faces. This made her angry, but Paul had warned her to expect it.
“Everybody Arlington Hall employs isn’t white, but the workers are segregated. The dormitories, too, are segregated. I know that this is not the way it was when we worked together at Higgins Industries, and I know that it will upset you, but I also know that you’ve seen segregation in action before. Black workers at Arlington Hall cover coded communications between businesses, and their work has proven so useful that they can’t be ignored. Some of the higher-ups are…unhappy…about that.”
The people in Room 117 were uniformly pale. The blinds were beige, and they were raised to let in the glaring winter sunlight. The floor was light tan. Staring into all that brightness made Justine feel snow-blind. The bright flowers on Nora’s desk, Sally’s strawberry-blond braids, and the red trim on Ike’s knit cap were the only spots of color in the room. The two Bees were the only motion in sight.
