The Wind Chill Factor

by Thomas Gifford

  “Which brings us to you three, doesn’t it?” He beamed his Father Christmas smile, which faded as he came closer. “And I’m afraid that you are all in for some difficult moments which are simply unavoidable. Inevitable. And it falls to me to clear up the questions which we all must have.”

  I watched Lise and smiled, but she looked past me, beyond my shoulder as my mother had done in my father’s painting. She was thinking about herself. It was the way she was and nothing was ever going to change that.

  “Who is Lise?” Roeschler said it slowly. His eyes moved to Lise; one of her hands traced a design on the faded denim thigh.

  Peterson’s eyes flicked up from one of Roeschler’s cigars and he batted them for effect.

  “Lise Brendel is Lee Cooper,” he said.

  “Ah, Mr. Peterson,” Roeschler said, rocking.

  Peterson lit the cigar and turned back to the window.

  Roeschler drummed his nails on the arms of the chair for a moment.

  “Your father, Edward Cooper,” he said to me, “was an exceedingly brave man, far braver than you can possibly imagine. Through the intervention of a friend, a Mr. Arthur Brenner, who had known him even as a boy and was involved in certain United States government agencies, your father was accepted in the Royal Air Force. He was a trained pilot, of course, and had very strong reasons for wanting to get into the war.”

  “My father wanted to—atone, is perhaps the best word—for his own father’s advocacy of the Nazi war aims. He was deeply ashamed, psychologically wounded by the experience of being Austin Cooper’s son.” I was speaking too quickly, feeling my face flush. “He believed that by flying for the RAF he would prove that being a Cooper was not synonymous with being a traitor.”

  “And also with the aid of special influence,” Roeschler went on, nodding, “he was joined by his wife, who was at the time pregnant. Foolhardy, perhaps, but the young couple wanted to be together when the new baby was born. You, Mr. Cooper, were left in Coopers Fall’s with your nanny, the servants, and your grandfather. As a result, you never saw your father, your mother, or your new little sister again. The tides of time and war, John.” He sighed, swallowed more schnapps, and held it out empty. Peterson filled it while the clock ticked.

  “Edward Cooper was commissioned and took his place as an officer in the RAF. He distinguished himself in the Battle of Britain, was decorated by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in a ceremony which was publicized all over the world—not only was he one of America’s first heroes of World War II, he was a symbol, a crucial piece of propaganda in the campaign to bring his country into the war. He was the perfect patriot.”

  I was very tired. He’d been dead such a long time.

  “When the time came for him, he died. His Spitfire trailing smoke, he was last seen pursuing a wounded Messerschmitt trying to escape into a fog bank. His plane was never found, he was never heard from again.

  “But what of the wife and daughter?”

  “They chose to stay in England for the duration of the war,” I said. “It wasn’t safe to try to come back. So they stayed.”

  “They were rich,” Roeschler said, “and well connected. Beyond the sorrow of her husband’s death, life for mother and daughter was pleasant enough. I know nothing of the details of their life—only that one day a stray stick of bombs clattered down in Belgravia and their home was destroyed.” He sighed and coughed. “Enough of the mother was found to identify without question. The daughter was something else, I’m afraid. Her body—like her father’s—was never found. Some clothing was found, scorched and ragged, a favorite doll blown to pieces, bits of rather circumstantial evidence that the little girl, your little sister Lee, had perished with her mother. There were many casualties that day, no great amount of time was expended on the search for proof of two deaths. They were quite logically assumed and recorded.

  “But,” he said, eyes flickering from one of us to the other, “they were mistaken. The little girl did not die.”

  Lise looked up, asked calmly: “You know this to be true?”

  Roeschler nodded.

  “And I was never told?”

  Roeschler raised a hand.

  “The air raid warden who was the first on the scene following the bomb blast in that quiet street never reported what he saw, perhaps because he did not realize its significance at the time. But two men were seen taking a small child away from the wreckage. They were associates of Edward Cooper. They were Englishmen … who were German agents working within the English bureaucracy.” He looked at me, waiting. “Nazi agents,” he said.

  “I don’t understand—” I was sweating and I could feel it trickling down from my armpits. Peterson and Lise were watching me. “What do you mean, Nazi agents associating with, with … my father. …” My voice was shaking. “Talk sense, for Christ’s sake,” I shouted, slamming my palm down on the arm of the chair. “Tell me the truth.” By then there was nothing left but a whisper.

  “I said that your father was an exceedingly brave man, John. He was. He risked his life in a Spitfire. He fought in an enemy country. And he posed as something he wasn’t. He spoke out against his father—and all that took a great deal of courage. John, your father, Edward Cooper, was a German agent, by birth, by training, by inclination—he was truly his father’s son. And he believed in what he was doing. He believed in it enough to reject his father before the world, to pose as what he felt to be a traitor—an American patriot. …”

  Roeschler stared at me from beneath those eerie white brows, from heavy-lidded eyes, firelight on the narrow ribbons of pupil. I felt myself sinking back, faint, sick.

  “Is he all right?” someone said. My father had been a Nazi. I had come from a rattling, hissing nest of them. My father, my grandfather. My little sister Lee.

  “He’s tired, defenseless. It’s a terrible shock, coming this way.”

  I heard the voices and I opened my eyes. It was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Everyone seemed small, out of focus, far away.

  “When’s it going to be over?”

  “Soon,” he said. “It’s almost over, John. Sip this.”

  It was brandy, harsh and burning. I snapped my head, shook like a dog.

  “I’m sorry,” Roeschler said, rumbling. “I’m truly sorry, John. Can you hear me? Well, this had to come out—you got so far into it. No one ever thought you would. But you did and this is where it led. Can you hear me? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  I nodded. “I hear you … understand you? Not so sure.”

  “Go on, Doctor.” That was Peterson, pushing on. “Cooper’s all right now. He’s my boy. He’s okay.”

  “Edward Cooper was a key German agent,” Roeschler resumed. “He prevailed on Mr. Arthur Brenner to place him in a useful spot; he used Mr. Brenner, who acted out of friendship. Once he was inside the Royal Air Force he became a conduit of information for Air Ministry secrets. He had reported to the two men who were calling at his home on the day it was bombed.” Roeschler coughed and relit the cigar.

  “Your father, you see, did not die over the English Channel. He flew the Spitfire to the coast of France, landed it at a prearranged site, and was met by some useful German agents—one of whom was, of course, young Gunter Brendel. And he took your father to Germany. The details of what happened during the remainder of the war are not known to me. Your father was for a time in Norway working with Quisling; later he was sent to the Balkans, then to Madrid. He was a phantom, now here, now there, the son of Austin Cooper, the American who had been the perfect inside agent-in-place. To a very few he was known as a kind of legend. Why didn’t the Nazis make a huge propaganda success of him? Why wasn’t he paraded about as the American hero who was in fact a Nazi spy—a Nazi hero?” He smiled at me, at the slowly grinding wheel of history, fate.

  “There was a very good reason. His work was not done, not by any means. They were saving him for the postwar years. They were saving him for the time when the mov
ement would be reborn years later. That was when he would be of greatest use.” Roeschler peered at me. “Are you hearing me, John?”

  I nodded. The clock was ticking like a sledgehammer. My perceptions were distorted, but I was hearing it.

  “There was a long-term plan,” he went on. “And your father was part of it. It all depended on when the final victory came. If the war had been won—then it would have been your grandfather, Austin Cooper. He would have become the party deputy in the United States. But the war was lost and it became necessary to wait, to build again. And your grandfather’s role was passed to your father. He was still young. He was absolutely safe—the world knew that he was dead. The Nazis had given him a new identity for as long as he needed it. And when the time came, he would be revealed and returned to his own country. Don’t shake your head, Mr. Peterson. Of course it’s farfetched. Many things are farfetched … until they actually happen. People adapt to the farfetched with amazing alacrity. History is always being rewritten. Truth is relative, at best. And when Edward Cooper got his hero’s return to America there would have been an entirely new truth, history would have been entirely reconstructed, and he most certainly would have been called something other than a Nazi.

  “These things are infinitely subtle, don’t you see? He might have been called a Republican or a Democrat, or a Socialist even, or he might have begun a new movement, the All-American Party—names mean nothing. He might have the support of the Jews … or the blacks … or labor … or business. What matters is the underlying continuity. Believe me, the South American plan about to begin is not being thrust upon the world as the second coming of the Nazis. Nor the African movement already under way. The control of Middle Eastern oil reserves—do we hear of Nazis? Certainly not. Everyone knows that the Nazis are all but gone from the face of the earth.”

  Roeschler’s eyes were closed. He was smiling faintly, stroking the purring cats.

  “Where is my father?”

  “Your father spent some time in Cairo, working there with survivors of the war, and in Paris and in Algeria.” Roeschler sniffed, sneezed in the cat hair, rubbed his nose vigorously with a rumpled handkerchief. “Edward Cooper died of cancer in Sweden three years ago. Someone else took his place. Who?” He shook his head. “What does it matter? There will always be someone else. …”

  I stared into Lise’s pale-gray eyes. There were infinite distances in them, places I was sure I’d never been and would never go. In her eyes there was a kind of animal shock, the kind that is dealt with, absorbed into the subconscious, and forgotten. She protected herself that way, perhaps that was the key to survival. I dwelled on the anguish. My chemistry acted up and it didn’t surprise me. But the pain in Lise’s eyes was incalculable because she was, I thought, impervious to such agonies. Now it struck me that the shock to her was more harrowing even than my own and it snapped me back; I shook off Peterson’s comforting hand and went to her.

  “Lee,” I said and held her against me. “Don’t cry,” I whispered, feeling her tears on my cheek, feeling the flutter of her eyelashes. “Don’t cry.” She held me, her body jerking against me. Somehow her pain was my responsibility, I was down deep at the root of it.

  “You’ve left us hanging, Doctor,” I said. “You’ve cleared up the story of my father—but that wasn’t really the point, was it? Not to begin with, anyway. What happened to the little girl? The last time we saw her she was being spirited away into the fog by two mysterious strangers—”

  “Not strangers—fellow agents, associates—they took her away. And this was an accident of fate. They happened to be there when the bombs fell; otherwise the little girl Lee would have perished with her mother. Instead, she was taken away, to Ireland, where there were many sympathizers, many homes open to a tiny guest. And there she remained for two years, rusticating, too small to remember it later in her life. Then she was taken to Bergen, Norway, with an Irish identity. Then to Austria and to the von Schaumbergs, where she was given a final identity—Lise von Schaumberg.”

  She was sobbing and sank from my arms into the chair.

  “Where was my father?” She tore the question from her throat, brutally.

  “It was terribly difficult for him, my dear,” Roeschler said soothingly. “He had his own new life and continuing responsibilities to the movement. As I have told you, Edward Cooper believed. He was making his final commitment, acting out his own destiny. Once his wife was dead he decided that his children must be given the opportunity to live without the shadow of his own life hanging over them. He would never see any of you again and you would never be faced with either accepting or rejecting him.” He paused, looking from me to Lee. “He was a very strong man and a very good man. He loved you all. As it turned out, his plan for you, John, and for Cyril worked out as he intended. Your lives were lived as he’d hoped, insulated by an ocean and the myth of his patriotism and the passage of years. He knew that you and Cyril had grown to manhood, lived your own lives.” He sighed heavily, an old man in the middle of a long night. “For his little daughter Lee, it was not quite so simple. …”

  The clock reached two and chimed sedately. Peterson went to the kitchen and came back with coffee in mugs. The cats’ eyes blinked as he passed, the rain drove against the windows. My life was unfolding, at least the life behind my life, the underpinnings.

  “Lise,” Roeschler said, “knowing what I have known about you all these years has troubled me. Sitting in the church the day you and Gunter were married, I exhausted myself wondering if you knew what you were becoming involved in. Later Gunter told me you knew nothing at all.”

  “Why wasn’t she simply returned to Cooper’s Falls after the war, to her grandfather?” Peterson looked up from the fireplace, holding the poker in his large fist.

  “Let me tell you the story,” Roeschler said. “We have the time now before you must leave. Your father had no idea what he would be called on to do once he reached England—he certainly could not have known that he would be required to escape to Germany and devote his life to the movement—”

  “You make him sound like a priest,” Lee said.

  “Yes, I do. He was—it’s not an unfitting comparison. Had he served out the war under cover, if he had never been revealed, the family would have remained intact. Perhaps husband, wife, and daughter would have returned to the United States—everyone might have lived more or less happily ever after. But then he was called to Germany to serve the Reich … and the bombs fell on the little family in London. The German agents didn’t know what to do with the little girl. They improvised, got her to Ireland, not an easy task for a couple of spies. …

  “So again fate, destiny, call it what you will, takes a hand in the story. It took time for the Nazi command running Edward Cooper’s mission to learn what had happened and they were unable to contact Cooper for advice regarding what should be done with the little girl who was, after all, legally dead in London. Consequently they went ahead, sequestered her. Finally, when Cooper surfaced again upon completion of one of his sorties, he was told of the death of his wife and the curious survival of his little daughter. What happened when he learned the fate of one and the good fortune of the child? I don’t know—I know only that he decided there was no way to care for her himself, that she should instead lead as normal a life as the times would permit and in the country that he himself had chosen. Thus, my dear, you became Lise von Schaumberg and your father made certain that although he would never know his daughter personally he would be kept informed as to your life. He retained the interest of a father but denied himself the joys.”

  “Gunter knew my father,” Lise said.

  “Of course. He met him when he flew the Channel. He worked with him.”

  “Have I ever seen him?”

  “No, I think not.”

  “Did my father approve of my marriage?”

  “He was pleased with your life. He had respect for your husband.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said, her fingers
clawing at her face, covering her eyes. She threw her head back and forth, sounds issuing but not words, a convulsion of terror and sorrow and disappointment, lost hopes, a forlorn life. Peterson looked at her disinterestedly. As her cries subsided her shoulders heaved, frail and adolescent; she seemed tiny and sad and without hope.

  “Until last fall,” Roeschler went on, turning to look at the clock, “everything was going as planned. You and Cyril were utterly uninvolved with any of this. Lise was reasonably content, a confused modern woman perhaps, but no more confused than most. She had no interest in her husband’s political activities, there was no threat at all to the movement. Gunter knew that his marriage was far from perfect but he saw his relationship with you, Lise, as important in two ways—he loved you and he looked upon you as very important in the sense of continuity within the movement. It didn’t matter that you were unaware of your true identity—he was. You meant even more to him than a wife. South America was working perfectly; Africa and the Middle East were, if anything, slightly ahead of schedule.”

  Peterson said: “Doctor, let me take a crack at this.”

  “Don’t dawdle, Mr. Peterson. Time is running out.”

  “Fate again, the little grindings of fate—bone on bone. Gunter Brendel goes to the Glasgow Trade Fair to make a deal to market some new scotch in Germany. Christ,” he said, slamming his fist into his palm, “it’s so goddamn beautiful! Fucking, pure, sheer chance—he doesn’t know that Cyril Cooper could have anything to do with some sillyass booze he’s trying to get on the cheap! How could he know? Cyril’s name never appears on anything. So Brendel goes to Glasgow and does he just take a nice, normal business trip? Hell no, he takes his poor confused young wife—she’s depressed, she needs a holiday, what the hell—let’s go to Glasgow, get out of the old rut!” Peterson was dripping with sweat, the grin fierce as the jungle night. “Well, by God, they got out of the rut. Now the next fateful step. Jack Dumfries makes a deal with Alistair Campbell, a nosy, drunken little newspaperman, to have a picture taken of his hotshot German guest, a very nice public relations move by Mr. Dumfries—a shot in the arm for Old Tennis Sock Scotch, a feather in his own cap he can show Cyril, a little ego massage for the kraut. Perfect. And Frau Brendel—she’s a goddamn movie star, gorgeous, let’s get her in the picture, too.