Gregory set my drink down on a white napkin with the Mayflower’s gold insignia, and I took a sip. “You make a damn fine martini,” I said. I hated martinis.
I’d been told there wouldn’t be any sign of it—that the man sitting next to me would slip the envelope into my purse without detection, that if I didn’t notice it, he’d done his job. The man closed his newspaper, swallowed the last of his Scotch, threw down a dollar, and left.
I waited fifteen minutes then finished my drink and told Gregory I was ready to settle-up.
Reaching for the Chanel, I half expected it to feel different. But it didn’t, and I wondered if I’d done something wrong—that maybe the man reading the sports section was just a man reading the sports section. I resisted the urge to check and left the Town & Country, passing the potted palms, a man waiting for the elevator with the glamorous brunette, a retired couple checking in, the tassel-hatted bellboys.
Walking up Connecticut, I did my best to keep my cool, to not let the adrenaline cause me to break into a sprint. Stopping at P Street, I looked at my watch, a Lady Elgin given to me along with the Chanel. Within seconds, the number fifteen bus pulled up to the curb. I took the second-to-last seat in the back, in front of a man holding a green umbrella in his lap. As the bus passed the two stone lions guarding the entrance to the Taft Bridge, the man behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked the time. I told him it was a quarter after nine. It wasn’t. He thanked me and I set the Chanel down and pushed it back with my heel.
I got off at Woodley Park and walked toward the zoo. At a red light, I held out my hands to let the newly falling snowflakes hit my gloves, then dissolve into minuscule puddles. I wondered: Is this what it’s like to have an affair, to have a secret? I felt a rush and could see why Teddy Helms had told me that one could get addicted to this line of work. I already was.
* * *
I’d applied to be a typist, but they gave me another job. Had they seen something in me that I hadn’t seen in myself? Or maybe they just looked to my past, to my father’s death, and knew I’d do whatever was asked of me. Later, I was told that such deep anger ensures a type of loyalty to the Agency that patriotism never can.
Whatever they’d seen in me, for my first few months at the Agency, I couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d chosen the wrong person for the job.
The Mayflower test changed that. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I had a greater purpose, not just a job. That night, something unlocked in me—a hidden power I never knew I had. I discovered I was well suited to the work of a Carrier.
During the day, I took dictation, transcribed notes, stayed quiet during meetings, and typed and typed and typed—all the while making certain I didn’t retain any of the information I was typing. “Just picture the information passing through your fingertips to the keys to the paper and then disappearing from your mind forever,” Norma had instructed me on my first and only day of training. “In one ear and out the other, you know?” And all the typists said the same thing: Don’t retain what you type; you’ll type faster if you’re not thinking about what you’re typing; it’s classified information, so even if you remember it, you’d better pretend you don’t.
“Fast fingers keep secrets” was the Pool’s unofficial motto. And yet I wasn’t sure any of them followed their own credo. Even in my first few weeks, as I was just getting to know the girls, it was clear they knew everything about everyone.
Did they know everything about me, too? Did they know about my other position? The extra fifty dollars per paycheck? Did my typewriter dinging a beat slower than theirs make them wonder? Did they notice I drank two more cups of coffee than they did and had bags under my eyes?
Mama sure noticed. She brewed a pot of chamomile tea and froze it into ice cubes to place on my eyelids. She thought I was dating a new man, and implored me to bring him home to meet her before I disgraced her name in the neighborhood.
But what did the women in the typing pool think?
Was it the reason they hadn’t exactly accepted me into their ranks? Of course, they were always polite and friendly, saying Hello in the morning and a Have a good weekend on Fridays. But I can’t say they were overly welcoming. I wanted to be part of the group, but didn’t want it to seem like I wanted to be part of the group. One might think this scenario plays out only in high school or college, but the politics of friendship are tricky at every age.
The Pool invited me to lunch with them a few times, but that was before my first paycheck, when I had only enough money for my bus commute. By the time I did have money to spare, the lunch invites had dried up.
I wanted to believe their standoffishness was a product of my having taken their friend Tabitha’s place, though couldn’t help but think it was something else, something that had plagued me my entire life: the feeling of being a constant outsider, of being most comfortable alone. Even as a child, I preferred to play alone. I’d pretend our small kitchen pantry was a fort. I’d create elaborate plays with puppets cut from brown paper bags and glued to Popsicle sticks. I was happiest playing by myself. When my little cousins would try to play with me, I’d end up scolding them for messing up one of the puppets or not playing the character exactly how I’d wanted them to. They’d get mad and leave, and I’d tell myself that that was fine. It was easier to convince myself that it was I who didn’t want to play with them.
Regardless of feeling out of place, I took to the day job fast. And although I typed slower than the other women, I was steady and accurate.
There was more of a learning curve with my after-hours work.
On my first day, when I asked just how I’d be trained, I was given a slip of paper with the address of an unmarked tempo office that overlooked the Reflecting Pool—the office where I was to meet the officer Teddy Helms each day after I clocked out.
The first time I met Teddy, I was struck by how much he resembled a movie star playing a spy. He was a few years older than I—tall, with brown hair, long delicate fingers, and handsome in the way men like that are expected to be. Several members of the typing pool were absolutely gone for Teddy, but I never really saw him like that. He did look like the type of man I’d fantasized about as a young girl, though—not as a lover or boyfriend, but as the older brother I’d always wanted. Someone who’d teach me how to fit in, how to be less painfully awkward, someone to protect me from the high school boys who’d flip up my skirt in the hallway. Someone to help support Mama and ease our financial burdens that came and went with each spent paycheck.
Teddy was quiet at first, saying I was the first woman he’d ever trained. In the OSS days, women had been entrusted with blowing up bridges, but just a few years later, the Agency was still testing the waters to see what we were capable of.
Teddy was different. “If you ask me, women are well suited to be Carriers,” he said. “No one suspects that the pretty girl on the bus is delivering secrets.”