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Page 76.

From the replies he occasionally received, he learned that the letters were posted for him from Tining Mallow or a neighboring town. His superiors were not letting him let his family know that he was openly working in London for the Office of Naval Intelligence (O.N.I.), covertly for O.S.S.. The strategy was to sow seeds of doubt that perhaps he was really Robert Malone working under cover of the late Tim Nordhall, deceased in the sinking of H.M.S. Sturmer.

Jaguar called him to their rendez-vouz point on a drizzly day. As water dribbled down from the broken ogives, and wet ivy splattered in windy gusts, Jaguar huddled under his umbrella. Tim stood nearby, hunched in his poncho, with his hands in his pockets. Jaguar said: “There is a weekly courier pouch that goes from a technical section of your headquarters to a courier division across town at Home Army Division One. Starting next week, Robert Malone will start carrying that pouch.”

Props to support the Malone deception arrived via a package left at his apartment door. The packet contained I.D. card, ration cards, dog tags, and other items ostensibly part of Major Robert Malone’s life. Tim sat on his bed in a gray half-light, while rain dribbled outside the window, and read a brief about Malone. The guy had been quite a gambler and a ladies’ man, but with some heart. Apparently he had demonstrated some tenderness toward the Belgian woman who had died with him. The gambling must have been a burden in itself, Tim thought. It felt ghostly, eerie, to carry forward a dead man’s life.

Tim changed into civilian clothing at three p.m. on Thursday, and walked a quarter mile across town to a factory facility on Womble Road. There, as instructed, he signed in at a front desk as Major Robert Malone. He showed the Malone I.D. card and was ushered through a series of heavy, locked gates and down echoing semi-lit hallways to a U.S. Army secure technical facility. There, a technical sergeant had him sign a log book and handed him a canvas bag with a heavy lock built into the zipper. The sergeant seemed to feel his work was done, and he respectfully wished Major Malone a good day.

Feeling downright creepy, Tim marched with his bag, out through the gates, wished the pretty young female English petty officer a good day, and took a taxi across town. He walked through St. Dunstan’s in the East, where Jaguar came the opposite way and traded him for an identical looking pouch. Jaguar walked away toward the Thames, lost in fog with his umbrella and dark suit. Tim took the bag to Home Army Divisional HQ, where a British NCO signed for it with a snappy, respectful “Thank you Sir!” and the exchange was done.

It was after 5 p.m. now, and he stopped at a pub for dinner, taking the rest of the day off. This would be his routine for the next few months. Every Thursday at 3 p.m. he would become Major Malone and deliver his courier pouch to Jaguar in the ruins of St. Dunstan’s in the East. When meeting Ivor Crane’s courier, Tim always privately had a feeling of suspicion, but he never had anyone to whom to voice it directly. He carried out his duties as Major Robert Malone, just as much a semi-conscious ghost of the dead man moving in a gloomy, blurry landscape, as he was an alter-ego of his own living self. The signal came, the pouch appeared, he met Jaguar, and the elusive traitor would walk briskly away in his Bowler, holding the pouch under one arm, and twirling his umbrella as if he owned London with its fog and drizzle.