Blood Line: 1

by John J. Davis

  “Yes, I understand, and thank you very much,” I answered, and ran for the Jeep.

  “There is an APB out for us. We’re on the news. Best stick to the back roads. We need to ditch the Jeep and soon.”

  Valerie pressed the gas pedal down. The Jeep shot forward and veered right for the same dirt track that had brought us here. The four-wheel drive hugged the dirt road. Stubbs’s store fell away from the rear window of the Jeep and was soon completely out of sight. We were heading Northeast and deeper into the woods, far away from any paved roads. I didn’t worry about getting lost. Valerie grew up in this area and knew these roads as well as anyone from around here could. I did worry we would lose cell phone reception. I checked the reception bars on the prepaid mobile and saw only one bar visible. That bar faded out and back in with every passing mile.

  “We can drive this dirt road all the way to East Park and find another car there,” Valerie said. “From East Park, we can head to the Atlanta Airport. We can get lost in one of those cheap motels around the airport. Maybe you’ll get the call by then, and we’ll have some help.”

  “Great,” Leecy said, “so we have plenty of time to talk. And Mom, you promised to tell me everything. So start talking.”

  I saw Valerie looking at me in the rear view mirror. I knew this wasn’t the way she wanted to tell Leecy about her past, but we didn’t have the luxury of choice any longer. A rogue FBI agent, if Porter was in fact FBI, had an APB out on us. We were wanted for questioning.

  “Might as well tell her now, Val. This may be the only chance you get.”

  Valerie began by asking, “Do you remember your great grandmother Leona?”

  “Sure I do. I’m named after her, and the wife of Dad’s great Uncle John. I used to call Leona Granny Granny. She was Grandpa Reuben’s mother, right?” Leecy said.

  “That’s right. Do you remember her talking about being in the USO during WWII while she was attending Julliard in New York City?”

  “Yes, I do. She showed me the section of cloth wall map she used to chronicle all her travels on during the war. Didn’t her sister attend Juilliard, too?”

  “Her sister, Edith, had a beautiful singing voice and was eventually a singer at the Metropolitan Opera. Leona was the dancer and actress of the family. Okay, that’s good; we’re on the same page and that’s important.”

  “Really, what does you being in the Mossad have to do with Granny Granny Leona in the USO?”

  “Everything. It’s because of what she did during the war that I came to be a Mossad agent. You see, she was part of a group that was the precursor to the Mossad.”

  “Get out!” Leecy exclaimed. “You’re joking. I’ve never heard of the existence of any such group during WWII. They didn’t talk about it in my history classes. Dad, is she telling me the truth?”

  “It’s the truth. Just listen to what she has to say. I promise it’s all true.”

  Valerie continued. “I wouldn’t lie about this stuff. I’ve been waiting sixteen years to tell you this story. I wanted to tell you the same way that Leona told me, but that’s not going to happen now. Just sit back and listen, okay?”

  “Okay,” Leecy said.

  “The USO was formed in 1941 by President Franklin Roosevelt. When it became clear the United States was headed into the war, FDR combined the resources of several different organizations working to support the troops and called that newly created entity the USO. Your Great Aunt Edith and Great Grandmother Leona joined the USO, along with many other young women. Not long after the two sisters joined the USO, they were approached about joining another group. Leona told me that she and her sister were visited in the apartment they shared by two men. These two men explained how the sisters’ involvement with the USO provided the perfect cover for what they wanted them to be a part of. The two men, and the organization they represented, were recruiting Jewish men and women to be part of a secret group that would work to help German Jews escape from Europe.”

  “Wait,” Leecy interrupted, “so, Granny Granny and Great Aunt Edith were both part of this secret organization?”

  “Yes and no. The men represented a group of wealthy Jewish businessmen with connections in Europe and Israel who didn’t think enough was being done to help the German Jews escape the atrocities being reported from Europe. Both Leona and Edith agreed to join the group, but Edith was badly injured during the training and had to drop out. Leona went on alone and trained near their home somewhere in the city of New York. She went to a warehouse somewhere in the old meatpacking district everyday for the grueling training. Do you remember the steak place we ate at a few years ago? I think it was somewhere down there. Leona said the training was often brutal work, but admitted to having a preternatural ability for the job.”

  “Granny Granny was a badass?”

  I could see the smile on Valerie’s face.

  “Yes, Leona was a badass. When her USO tour left the port of New York in early 1942, she was a very qualified singer and dancer, and also a trained killer who could hit the bull’s-eye of a target from sixty to one hundred fifty yards away with a number of weapons of the day, choke a man twice her size unconscious, throw a knife with deadly accuracy, and break an arm or leg or hand. She knew how to disable a car, plane or boat, send Morse code, build small efficient incendiary devices, and also perform basic field emergency medicine.”

  “Really? Little Granny Granny the ballerina could do all of that? That’s so cool. Oh my god, why haven’t you told me about this before? Man, I could’ve had the best show-and-tells in school.”

  “Well, it all seems so silly now, but I didn’t want you to be afraid of me. Because like Leona, I can do all those things and more.”

  “Holy crap, Mom, are you kidding me? That’s nothing to be afraid of; that’s awesome,” Leecy said. “Tell me more about Granny Granny.”

  “Okay, the two men that represented this much larger organization followed along with Leona’s USO troop and arranged for her to be in certain places at certain times to help with the smuggling of Jews across borders, and when needed, spy on the enemy and collect intelligence. Neither was easily accomplished. When she was helping smuggle Jews to safety, she herself was in constant danger. The spying wasn’t easy, either. The sophisticated spy equipment that exists today wasn’t available back then. Leona was often sent on missions to collect intelligence about prisoner transports with nothing more than paper and pencil. This was long before cell phones or computer encryptions. She used hand passes to transfer the information through a chain of spies, which were mostly women.”

  “Leona always preferred a very public place like an alehouse or club for passing information. She’d conceal her messages in the lining of her handbag and switch bags with another female operative at a specific location and time. All of that was planned to the last detail prior to any mission.”

  “She was the female James Bond!” Leecy said.

  “Yes, in a way, I guess she was,” Val said thoughtfully. “She told me it was the greatest time of her life. She used all her skills as an actress to cross checkpoints with false papers. That reminds me of her map. I wish we had the map she made with us, because it shows all the USO stops and some of her mission locations. Leona didn’t talk about all her missions with me, but I do remember the details on two of them.”

  “Tell me,” Leecy said.

  I noticed Valerie was reducing speed and looking to her left like she was searching for something very specific. I only saw woods dense with foliage. Valerie turned left and drove between the branches of pine trees and found what looked like a long abandoned road now covered with weeds and small saplings.

  “This road used to be the main road to Atlanta. My great grandmother on my mother’s side of the family told me how she once traveled it on horse and buggy. It looks like local hunters have maintained it over the years. Maybe we’ll be able to navigate it for a few more miles,” Valerie said, as she slowly accelerated over the firs
t of what appeared to be hundreds of small trees growing in the middle of the old wagon trail.

  “Tell me about the missions,” Leecy said again.

  “Okay, okay,” Valerie said, smiling at Leecy’s enthusiasm. “It was 1943, and Leona was in a group of two women and four men sent into Frankfurt posing as a medical team to extract twenty Jewish men and women being held for transport to Auschwitz.”

  “Their plane took off from a small airfield in Sicily, which was already in Allied hands, and they received their briefing about the mission during the flight. The flight was terrifying because the pilots flew very low over the war-torn fields and landed in a field with lanterns marking the area. Other members of the organization met the plane. She and the other women on the plane dressed as nurses. Two of the men dressed as doctors and the other two as German soldiers. They were loaded onto trucks marked as medical transport and driven into Frankfurt.”

  “This is crazy. They could’ve been shot down or captured, and all for twenty prisoners!” Leecy interrupted.

  “Well maybe, but sometimes one’s life is worth the risk. Anyway, at that time the city of Frankfurt had been bombed, but not to the point of complete destruction. The heavy bombing of Frankfurt didn’t occur until 1944. Leona told me she was most afraid at the first checkpoint, but the medically marked vehicle was waved through with minimal inspection.This was two years before Patton and his Third Army arrived in Frankfurt, so the German army held the city, okay?”

  “I’m with you.”

  “Leona said she and her group were targeting a prisoner holding facility in the heart of the city. Once the truck they were traveling in cleared the first checkpoint, the truck stopped, and the second phase of the plan went into action. The drivers removed the medical Red Cross insignias from the doors of the truck, revealing the swastikas that had been painted underneath. The truck was now displaying the proper markings for military transport. The men inside the rear of the truck tore off their medical insignias and armbands and became officers of the SS. The women remained disguised as nurses. It was common practice for the Nazis to bring in medical teams to calm and reassure prisoners. Leona’s group used that to their advantage. They drove into Frankfurt and back out with twenty rescued Jews. They made it back to the plane and flew home to Sicily. Not only that, Leona’s first husband was among the men she helped escape that night.”

  “What? Great Grandpa Ernst was among that group of people? I mean, that’s pretty amazing. Did she marry him right away? She must’ve been scared the entire time.”

  “Yeah, I think she was scared, but Leona was tough. She wanted to help. She didn’t marry Ernst till after the war. She said they exchanged names on the trip out of Frankfurt. But he, along with the other rescued Jews, was put on a ship bound for the US. When he arrived in the States, he promptly enlisted in the army. He was sent back to fight in the war a year later. Ernst found her after the war by tracing her through the USO.”

  “What’s the other mission she told you about?” Leecy asked.

  “There were dozens of missions, I knew, but the only other one she told me about in any detail was in the winter of 1944. By then, the Free French and Allied troops had invaded France and taken back Paris. Leona’s USO group was stationed somewhere outside of Paris. The mission she volunteered for was the rescue of two OSS officers who were trapped in Frankfurt. Two men had been forward scouts for the pending military action by Allied forces that would eventually lead to Patton’s Third Army rolling into Frankfurt, and these two OSS officers had been pinned down in the city, unable to effect escape. The city had been ravaged by bombings, and what was once a beautiful medieval city was left in ruins.

  “For this mission, Leona posed as a German citizen. She carried false papers hidden in her purse saying that one of the men was her husband and the other her brother. She had to walk into the city this time, but with the proper papers, she said she could go anywhere. Leona told me how people, families, just seemed to wander in and out of what was left of the city seeking shelter, food, clothing, anything. She’d never seen such destruction and hopelessness before, but she had a mission to complete and that helped her maintain focus. To find the OSS men, she used the description they’d given of the area where they were hiding that had come from the last radio transmission the two men made. She searched the entire first day for the two men, finding them just before the curfew siren. This mission was one of the times she used her combat training.”

  “Wait. What does the OSS stand for, and what do you mean she used her combat training?” Leecy asked.

  “The OSS was the Office of Strategic Service, an American secret intelligence agency that was the predecessor of the CIA. By combat skills, I mean she had to kill a man.”

  “What? Just stop, okay? I’m having a hard time believing my Granny Granny killed anyone. And I thought her group was there to help the German Jews, not American intelligence officers.” Leecy said.

  “Well, first of all, she did kill a man in Frankfurt, and several others in other missions. Secondly, the OSS officers were part of the effort to end the war and stop Hitler. Her group had heard about the situation and wanted to rescue the two OSS men. Whatever the reasons for taking action, the point is she took action. In a war, not everything is cut and dry or black and white. Lines are blurred and hard choices are made, because they have to be made.”

  “I get it. I think. It’s just not the Granny Granny I knew,” Leecy said.

  “This is why I worried about telling you my secrets for so many years.”

  “No, Mom; it’s not like I’m upset or anything. It’s just hard reconciling my memory of her with these stories. Back to the story.”

  “Okay. When Leona found the two Americans, they were both injured. She used her medic training to bandage the wounds and gave them food and water to build their strength. Leona told me that on the evening of the third day, they’d planned to make their way south out of Frankfurt to the airfield she’d used in the other mission. But a German civilian found her out.”

  “What? How?”

  “The German Military knew they were somewhere in this neighborhood and made daily announcements of a reward if they were turned in. So when this local man stumbled into the ruins of the building where they were hiding, she knew they were in trouble. She saw the look of recognition come over his face. She spoke German fluently and tried to convince the man that her cover story was true, but she could sense he didn’t believe her and was just waiting to get away and turn them in. So she offered herself to the man. She seduced him,” Valerie said.

  “Oh my god!” Leecy exclaimed. “How terrible!”

  ​At that moment the Jeep came to a full stop in front of a downed tree. Valerie turned off the Jeep.

  “Leona told me she let the man embrace her and take her down on the floor, and as he removed his pants she stabbed him between his ribs, puncturing his heart with a dagger she kept hidden in her clothes. The two Americans used some of the dead man’s clothing to complete their disguises, and the three of them left the building. With their false papers in hand, the three of them walked through the remains of the city for miles before they were picked up by some locals and given a lift on the back of a horse-drawn wagon. And speaking of walking, it looks like that’s what we’re going to be doing,” Valerie said as she pushed open the driver side door and got out of the Jeep.

  I was still in my semi-reclined position against the back door of the Jeep when Leecy turned to face me, asking, “Is she serious?”

  “About what?” I answered.

  “About Granny Granny killing a guy like that?”

  “Oh, yeah; she’s quite serious. Wait till she tells you about her years with the Mossad.”

  “Who are you people and what have you done with my parents?”

  I was pushing open the rear door when I answered her, saying, “I love you too, sweetheart.”

  Chapter 4

  Leecy and I joined her mother at
the front of the Jeep to stare at the fallen tree blocking the road.

  “Well, it’s too big to move out of our way, so we’ll have to walk. I figure we have about five miles before the woods give way to East Park. We’ll need a car and somewhere to stay the night,” Valerie said as she glanced at her watch. “It’s 3:15 p.m. The sun won’t set till after eight o’clock. Let’s grab our Go bags and stuff them with the extra supplies we bought and move out.”

  I checked the reception on my mobile phone and saw there were no bars. There was nothing I could do about that. I could only hope if there still was an Agent Wakefield she would leave a message.

  “Here, come get your backpacks.” I said. “I’ve packed them as full as they’re going to get. What do we do about the Jeep?”

  “The Jeep will be fine,” Val said. “No one is coming out here till the fall when deer-hunting season begins. We can come back for it later.”

  “Quick question. You did say each bag has $25,000 in it? I get to keep that money, right?” Leecy asked.

  “Not a chance,” I said.

  “Okay, worth a shot. So tell me about after the war, and what does all that have to do with you, Mom?”

  Val shouldered her pack and climbed over the downed tree before she answered. “Right, so after the war, your Granny Granny continued to tour with the USO for a while. According to that cloth map she made as a keepsake, they went to places like Nuremburg, Munich and Stuttgart, and a bunch of smaller towns throughout Germany.”

  Valerie wasn’t waiting for us to climb over the tree. She had one speed and that was full speed. Leecy and I jogged to catch up to her. I took up my usual spot when we were hiking as a family: at the rear of the line of Grangers.

  “When the USO disbanded in 1947, Leona had been back in the States living and working in New York since 1946. She wouldn’t marry Ernst for another two years. She was busy pursuing her career as an actress when the same two men that had recruited her years before paid her another visit in September of 1947.”