Osborne leaned forward and pointed a pencil at her. “I want you to reestablish friendly relations with these Jacksons. Talk about your husband. Talk about him all the time. Bore them to death with talk about your husband. Memorize the three items on this little slip of paper and give the slip back to me. I want those three items dropped into the conversation every chance you get.”
Francie reached out and took the slip. There were three short statements on the paper: “Willy wears a green hat.” “Bob broke the Goodman recording of Russian Lullaby accidentally.” “You met in Boston.”
It gave Francie a twisty, Alice-in-Wonderland feeling to read the nonsense phrases. She read them again and then stared wildly at Osborne, half expecting that it would be some monstrous joke. “Are you quite crazy?” she asked.
“Not exactly. All those words appear in the letters. We know you are clever, Mrs. Aintrell. We want you to tell the complete truth to the Jacksons, except for those three statements on that slip of paper. We assume they have a photostat of those letters, too. Nothing in the letters contradicts those three statements. You are not to repeat them so often that the Jacksons will become suspicious. Just often enough to implant them firmly in memory. Then we shall wait for one of those false statements to reappear, either directly or by inference, in the next letter you get from your husband.”
“And if they do — it will mean that—”
“That the Army’s report of your husband’s death was correct. And that the Jacksons have been working one of the nastiest little deals I have ever heard of. Very clever, very brutal, and, except for your courage, Mrs. Aintrell, very effective.”
With forced calmness Francie said, “You make it sound logical, and it might be easier for me if I could believe it. But I know Bob is alive.”
“I merely ask you to keep in mind the possibility that he may not be alive. Otherwise, should that second letter prove to be faked, you may break down in front of them.”
“She won’t break down,” Clint said.
Francie gave him a quick smile. “Thank you.”
“Just be patient,” Osborne said. “Keep turning data over to them. Skip a day now and then to make it look better. We’re trying to find their communication channel. When we find it we’ll want you to demand the next letter from your husband. Maybe we can have you risk threatening to cut off the flow of data unless you get a letter. But get friendly with them now, and work in that information.”
That night she walked down the shore path to the Jackson camp. She saw Stewart through the window in the living-room. He let her in. Betty sat at the other end of the room, knitting.
“A little eager to deliver, this time, aren’t you?” Stewart asked. He shut the door behind her and she gave him the folded packet. He glanced at it casually, “is something on your mind, Francie?”
“May I sit down?”
“Please do,” Betty said.
Francie sat down, sensing their wariness at this deviation from routine.
“This is something I have to talk to you about,” she said. “I... I know I’d never have the nerve to consciously try to report you. But I am afraid of giving Dr. Cudahy or Mr. Reese a clue involuntarily.”
“What do you mean?” Stewart demanded, leaning forward.
“It’s just this: I think about Bob all the time. I think about how he is going to come home to me. It is the sort of thing that a woman — has to talk about. And there is no one to talk to. Sooner or later I may slip, and mention Bob to either Dr. Cudahy or Mr. Reese. On my record it says that Bob is dead. They both know that. You see, I just don’t like this chance I have to take every day, of my tongue slipping.”
“You haven’t made a slip, have you?” Stewart asked.
“No. But today I... I almost—”
Betty came to her quickly, sat on the arm of the chair. “Stew, she’s right. I know how it would be. Hon, could you talk to us, get it off your chest?”
“It might help, but—”
“But you don’t particularly care for our company,” Stewart said.
“It isn’t that, exactly. I don’t like what you stand for. I hate it. But you are the only people I can talk to about Bob.”
“And perhaps get too much into the habit of talking about him? So that you’d be more likely to make a slip?” Stewart asked.
“Oh, no! Just to have someone to listen.”
Stewart stood up. “I want to impress on your mind just what a slip might mean, Francie. Not only would it mean you’d never see Bob again, but you wouldn’t be around long enough to—”
“Leave her alone!” Betty said hotly. “A woman can understand this better than you, Stew. We’ll be a substitute for friends for a while, Francie. You go ahead and talk your head off. Stew, it will be safer this way.”
Stewart shrugged. Francie said, uncertainly, “I may bore you.”
“You won’t bore me,” Betty said.
“I am bursting with talk. Saving it all up. I’ve been wondering what to do when he gets back. He’ll be weak and sick, I suppose. I won’t want to be here. I’ll try to get a transfer back to Washington. I could rent a little apartment and get our things out of storage. I keep thinking of how I’m going to surprise him. Little ways, you know. He used to love our recording of Russian Lullaby. The Benny Goodman one. And then he stepped on it. I could buy another one and have it all ready to play. And after I got the — the telegram, when I packed our things I was sort of shaky. I dropped Willy and chipped his green hat. I saved the piece though, and I can have it glued on. You know, I can’t even remember if I ever told him about saving the flowers. I pressed them, the ones I just happened to be wearing the day we first met, in Boston. White flowers on a dark-blue dress. I can get some flowers just like them. When he comes in the apartment I’ll have the record of Russian Lullaby playing and Willy with his green hat fixed on the mantel and a blue dress and those flowers. Do you think he’d like that, Betty?”
“I’m sure he will, Francie.”
“He isn’t the sort of man who notices little things. I mean, I could get something new for the apartment and I’d always have to point it out to him. He used to...”
She seemed to be two people. One girl was talking on and on, talking in a soft, monotonous, lonely voice, and the other girl, the objective one, stood behind her, listening carefully. But the ice had been broken. Now she could talk about Bob and they would understand just why she had to. The words came in a soft torrent, unbroken...
After that, the days went by, and the constant strain was something she lived with, slept with, woke up with. The Sherra file was exhausted, and after careful consideration of the three team leaders, Cudahy brought Tom Blajoviak into the picture. Tom was enormously shocked at learning what was transpiring, and he was able to go into his personal files to find the basis for a new report on work that would in no way prejudice the current operations. Stewart Jackson, though disappointed at the way the Sherra reports had reached negative conclusions, was pleased to begin to receive the Blajoviak reports.
Francie knew that she was becoming increasingly dependent on Clint Reese. No one else was able to make her smile, make her forget for precious moments. It was a quality of tenderness in him, of compassion, yet jaunty in its clown-face.
He would say, out of the corner of his mouth, “We’re air-dropping three Rumanians into Bolivia tomorrow to check on tinfoil production. Standard velvet cloaks and never-fail daggers. Get them from the stockroom. Two small and one medium.”
And since that one night he never again put any part of his heart into his voice when he spoke to her. She thought that she could not bear it if he did.