He raised his glass, took the swallow of vodka and let her fill the glass again.
“You know you bombed Odessa to rubble.”
“I’ve never been to Odessa,” Jurgen said.
“You know what I mean. Our home escaped the Stukas because we lived three kilometers east of the harbor. You marched in pushing the fucking Romanian Fourth Army ahead of you to do the dirty work, and what did you find? Nothing. The fucking Russians had gone, taking everything they could carry. It’s what they do, they’re looters. They used to check out of hotels with towels in their bags, pictures if they can pry them off the walls. The Romanians are another story. They come to Odessa and begin murdering Jews. They shot them, they hanged them from light poles on the main streets. They put them in empty storage buildings, as many as twenty thousand, locked the doors and machine-gunned them through holes they made in the walls. Then they set the buildings afire and tossed in hand grenades. Do you believe it? In case any of the Jews were still alive.”
Bo said, “Tell about the Death Squads.”
“The SS,” Vera said. “The war came to Odessa and my life changed, from one of relative leisure to the appearance of leisure.” She gestured. “This home. My husband was in the shipping business, coastal freighters that traded among ports on the Black Sea. Fadey got along with the Soviets, gritting his teeth, offering bribes when his bullshit wasn’t enough. He had only complimentary things to say about Josef Stalin, that pockmarked midget. Do you know how tall he is? The Russians say five foot six. Oh, really? He wears lifts in his shoes or he’d be no taller than a five-foot pile of horseshit. It’s the reason he’s killed ten million of his own people. His mother sent him to a seminary to become a priest, but God rejected him.”
She kept talking, Jurgen listening.
“I told you the siege began in June 1941? My husband Fadey became a blockade runner like Rhett Butler. Slip out of Odessa and cross to Turkey, neutral at that time, and return with guns and food supplies. Turkish wine also, I couldn’t drink. Fadey was with elements of the Soviet fleet. Stukas dove on them and sank two destroyers, Bezuprechnyy and Besposhachadnyy, also a tugboat and Fadey’s ship. He put out to sea and I never saw him again, my husband, taken from my life.”
Jurgen waited a few moments.
“The Germans killed your husband?”
“Or was it a Soviet gunboat sunk his ship?”
“I was told your husband was a Polish cavalry officer, killed in action.”
“That’s the story they gave me. I arrive in Detroit the widow of a Polish count no less, who met his end heroically, fighting tanks with horses. I come with social position, one that’s more acceptable than the widow of a Black Sea gunrunner. I asked at the spy school if the count knew what he was doing. They wouldn’t say. I asked if there was such a person. They still wouldn’t tell me. On my passport I’m Vera Mezwa Radzykewycz, Countess. Do I look royal?”
“Indeed,” Jurgen said. “But the widow of a gunrunner isn’t a bad story. It could have attracted support.”
“I told you I was contacted in Budapest by Sally D’Handt, a turncoat Belgian who became a spy for the Germans. Now she recruits for military intelligence, gathers lost souls into the Abwehr. You’ve heard of Sally? She’s famous.” Jurgen shook his head as Vera said, “Blond hair like Veronica Lake’s, very theatrical. She told me with great solemnity it was a Soviet gunboat that sank my husband’s ship. She said they were ordered to because the repulsive Josef Stalin didn’t trust anyone.”
“Did you believe that?”
“The Soviets were always at us. Sally asked if I had ever been to America. Yes, when I was a girl. Would I like to go back now, during the war? I said I would love to. Now the turncoat Belgian cunt actually made tears come to her eyes, she’s so moved. Close to crying as she tries to smile to show her joy that I agree to come here. It’s the look Joan Fontaine gives Cary Grant in Suspicion when she realizes he loves her. Or, the look that says the moment the camera stops rolling she and Cary will be in her dressing room fucking each other’s brains out. It’s that kind of look on Miss Gestapo’s face as she murmurs, ‘Vera, you are exactly the woman we need to gather intelligence from the very arsenal of our enemy, the city of Detroit.’ Or did she say, ‘the so-called Arsenal of Democracy’? Now I’m not sure.”
Vera shrugged in her loose sweater. Now she decided to have another cigarette.
“From Budapest I came to Detroit by way of Canada. I took the place of an agent who turned in her own spy ring once the FBI began picking on her, Grace Buchanan-Dineen. She called herself ‘Grahs’ and was the only agent I know of, besides Ernest Frederick Lehmitz, who used invisible ink in messages to her contacts. Lehmitz reported on ships leaving New York for Europe until he was caught and sent to prison.”
Jurgen said, “Was this Grahs’s house?”
Vera smiled. “That would be funny, wouldn’t it? The German spy house. No, Grahs lived downtown, on the river. I was given the house on a lease that runs until June of this year-”
“You have only two months?”
“Wait. I was given a five-thousand-dollar bank account and a thousand a month to cover expenses.”
“That sounds rather generous.”
“Last year it was reduced to five hundred a month. This year the checks have stopped coming, the last one was in February.”
Jurgen took a cigarette from the dish. Vera reached toward him snapping her lighter.
“You’re out of funds?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“What will you do?”
She looked at Bohdan. “We talk about it.”
“Constantly,” Bo said, pouring a vodka. “I tell Vera to become a rich man’s concubine and I’ll be the eunuch.”
“You’re not German,” Jurgen said to her. “Why are you working for German Intelligence?”
“She hates Russians,” Bo said.
“I dislike them. The only part of this war I don’t mind,” Vera said to Jurgen, “you and the fucking Russians killing each other. I’ll tell you something. In 1940, ’41, all the young grenadiers in newsreels looked sexy to me. You were attractive, proud of yourselves, you had ideals you believed in. You sang, you marched, you sang while you marched. I remember thinking this was very bad light opera. But the upbeat mood of it was catching. I liked the purity of it, a new Germany full of healthy young men and women with Nordic features and platinum hair. In that crowd I knew I’d stand out like a film star. But, did I want to trade one police state, Stalin’s, for another? Have to be so careful of what I say? How can I look at the super-Nazis goose-stepping down the street and not think them ludicrous? I thought, Well, the Germans are a strong, self-willed people, they won’t stand for Adolf and his gang too long, having the Gestapo in their lives. After the war it will change back to the way it was.”
“What about the killing of Jews,” Jurgen said, “do the people accept it?”
“They turn their heads.”
“But they know about the death camps.”
“They can only wait until Germany is beaten and Adolf is tried before a world court. Everyone knows the end is coming. I hear: we can’t win. We should settle for peace now and try it again in ten years. I hear: America will demand unconditional surrender. Germany will have to give up the land it stole, the countries. Give up everything, or the Russians will be turned loose on them.”
Jurgen was shaking his head. “We won’t have a choice.”
“I try to rationalize,” Vera said, “how can I work for this war-loving, Jew-baiting Führer? I see a story about Henry Ford and learn he’s critical of Jews. He warns of the international Jewish conspiracy, which I take to mean communism, what else. We know he’s opinionated. Henry Ford believes sugar on grapefruit causes arthritis. But in his factory he’s a genius. Why is he so against Jews, as a race? I think he resents Jews because they tend to be smart. He knows that some of them, like Albert Einstein, are even smarter than he is. He won’t admit it so he condemns al
l of them as a race.”
“I read about Ford,” Jurgen said, “before the war and was quite surprised.”
“My point is, there are a variety of prejudices against Jews. Henry Ford was a pacifist while America was neutral,” Vera said. “He refused to build aircraft engines for England. Two years later he’s producing an entire four-engine bomber, a Liberator, every hour of the working day. It’s what they’re doing at Willow Run, putting together more than one hundred thousand different parts to make a bomber. To make a Ford sedan took only fifteen thousand parts. That’s the kind of information I store in my poor brain. The Willow Run plant is more than a half mile long. It’s put together with twenty-five thousand tons of structural steel. Ninety thousand people have jobs in that one plant. At Chrysler, on the other side of Detroit, they make tanks by the thousands. Packard and Studebaker make engines for planes, and Hudson makes antiaircraft guns to shoot down the other side’s planes. Nash does engines and propellers and General Motors makes some of everything America needs to make war. They can produce three million steel helmets”-Vera snapped her fingers-“like that, at a cost of seven cents each.”
“Now we have to admit,” Jurgen said, “we didn’t come close to judging them correctly, as an opponent.”
“Your Führer was too busy strutting before the world to notice,” Vera said. “Do you know what I’ve been doing, what my contacts used to ask for? They wanted the names and locations of companies that produced light metals. They believed if we could destroy all the aluminum plants in America they wouldn’t be able to produce bombers. They wanted me to stop the Allies from bombing Germany. They’re going crazy over it, bombs dropping on them twice a day. Abwehr Two are the saboteurs. They were told in directives, ‘For God’s sake, cut the fucking source of power to the plants. Turn them dark, quick.’”
“Were any of them successful?”
“You would have read about it.”
“No major feats, like stealing the Norden bombsight?”
“That was 1938, the year Fadey and I got together. I tell them about a fast new welding process at Fisher Body. At the Chrysler arsenal they’ve reduced the finishing time on antiaircraft guns from four hundred hours to fifteen minutes. I ask if they want details and get no reply. They’re down in their bomb shelter.”
“How do you send it?”
“I want to tell them to subscribe to Time magazine. Himmler was on the cover again in February, his third appearance since April twenty-fourth, 1939. Walter will frame it, hang it on the wall. Himmler will hate the piece but order a hundred copies . . . I give the information I send-say it’s about the location of a new Alcoa plant-I give it to a man who comes by when I call a number. He goes off somewhere and transmits the message in code to a German shipping company in Valparaíso, Chile, and from there it’s sent to Hamburg.”
“How do you remember April twenty-fourth, 1939?”
“Vera has a fantastic memory,” Bohdan said, “but has to see the words or figures written.”
“If you tell me something I should remember,” Vera said, “I write it down so I have something to look at when I wish to call it to mind.”
No one spoke for several moments. In the silence Jurgen could hear, very faintly, Glenn Miller’s “ String of Pearls” on the radio in the kitchen. He said, “There’s a federal agent, a marshal by the name of Carl Webster, who’s after me.”
“Yes, I read that in Neal Rubin’s column,” Vera said. “You’re the one he’s after?”
Jurgen said, “I thought Walter would have told you about him.”
“Walter lives in his own world.”
“If Carl knows about Walter, he knows about you.”
“You’re on a first-name basis with this policeman?”
“We know each other.”
“And you think he’ll come here looking for you. Would you care to give yourself up, the war nearing its end?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“I don’t blame you. But if your friend wants to search my house, what do we do with you?”
“I’ll leave,” Jurgen said.
Vera took her time. She said, “Let me think about it.”
It was quiet again, a silence beginning to lengthen, as Bohdan said, “Well, now we’re coming on to teatime.”
“We can let the vodka be our tea,” Vera said and looked at Jurgen. “Why don’t you go up and rest. I put magazines in your room I know Walter wouldn’t have, or even know they exist. Have a nap, come down at six for cocktails and a supper Bo will prepare for us.” She turned to him. “What do you have in mind, or would you rather surprise us?”
Jurgen was watching Bo. For a moment Bo’s expression said he was tired of this happy home life routine. But then he did come alive and seemed keen to answer Vera.
“I can’t surprise you, Countess, the way you come in the kitchen sniffing. But let’s see if I can stimulate Jurgen’s appetite.”
“I hope I didn’t sound like I was flirting,” Bo said, on the sofa now with Vera, her fingers feeling through his cap of Buster Brown hair, brushing his shoulder now with her hand.
“I think you have dandruff.”
“I set my mind to play a goluboy and everything I say sounds provocative.”
“You’re very believable,” Vera said, remembering the afternoon Fadey came home hours early and almost caught them in the bedroom naked. He called her name from downstairs, “Vera?” By the time he came in the bedroom Bo had become a drag queen in one of Vera’s frocks, hands on his hips, looking at himself in the mirror. Vera, now in a skirt and sweater, stepped out of the closet to see Fadey staring at Bo.
She said to Bo now, “Do you remember what I said?”
Bo grinned. You said, ‘He loves to wear women’s clothes, but he’s still the best fucking cook in Odessa.’ I wanted to kiss you. And Fadey accepted it.”
“He didn’t care one way or the other.”
“I don’t know how you thought of that so quickly. You hear him downstairs and I’m a sexual deviant in the same moment.”
“You know,” Vera said, “there are times when you do sound girlish. But then you began putting it on-”
“It was fun.”
“Yes, until people notice you, maybe your shipmates. It doesn’t take much. You hold your hand the wrong way looking at your nails.” She put her arm around him, drawing his slender body, his ribs she liked to feel, close to her. “The death squad comes by and someone on the dock points you out. ‘He’s one.’ You try to tell them you have a reason for acting the way you do, to prevent someone’s husband from shooting you. And they pissed on you.” Vera began caressing him, touching his face, moving her hand over his hair. “My poor baby. I’m so sorry.”
“I could stop acting like a queen.”
“Not yet. You’re my secret weapon.”
“I didn’t think Jurgen would be a problem, but he is.”
“I’m not going to worry about it, if I have to give him up, I will. Walter, I don’t know, he doesn’t say much. But now he has something he wants to tell us. What he’s planning to do for Hitler’s birthday, the twentieth.”
“What is it?”
“He won’t say. He’ll tell us tomorrow night, here. He’ll bring that loudmouth from Georgia if he flies up. I called Dr. Taylor, told him he’d better come. Keep up with what’s going on.”
“I hope Joe Aubrey can’t make it,” Bo said. “The weather has him socked in. No, he takes off. Fuck the weather, he’s a ferocious, two-fisted little fellow and no storm is going to stop him. But it does, he crashes and burns to death. Wouldn’t that be neat?”
“Except he’s taking the train this time,” Vera said. “The one I’ve been thinking about is Dr. Taylor.”
“He doesn’t say a word,” Bo said, “as his eyes silently move over us, missing nothing.”
“He doesn’t speak very much at a meeting. But he could be talking to the Federal Bureau. I think if he has to,” Vera said, “the doctor will tell on us rather t
han go to prison. Or have his sentence reduced.”
“What would you like me to do about it?”
“I’ll let you know tomorrow night, after I watch these people. See if I like any of them.”
“See who has money to give us,” Bo said. “We know the loudmouth could spare some. You could vamp him, give him one of your lines.”
“No, I couldn’t. His cologne makes my eyes water.”
“Mine too. I thought it was Joe’s breath. Get him to write you a check for German Relief, the starving people of Berlin, made out to cash.” Bo squirmed against Vera to lay his cheek on her breast. “Tell me when you’re out of money, I’ll go stand on the corner.”
“Don’t say that. Please.”
“Six Mile and Woodward Avenue, partway up the first block. Catch some trade going home to the suburbs, where the people with money live.”
Vera took Bo’s jaw in her hand and turned his face to look at her and see the judgment in her eyes.
“Never, ever, tell me what you could be doing when you’re not with me. I don’t want to hear it. You understand? Not even kidding, or I’ll cut you loose.” She kept looking at him, their faces close, and kissed his mouth, Vera gentle now, her voice soft saying, “You understand? You’re my love. I want to feel you belong to me, no one else. Be nice to me,” Vera said, “I’ll make you happy. I’ll let you wear my black sequined dress tomorrow night.”
Bo twisted around to sit up.
“You mean when your spy ring’s here?”
“It’s up to you,” Vera said.
“The black with sequins?”
Fifteen
Carl phoned Louly every week at Cherry Point, North Carolina, the marine air base, so he wouldn’t have to write letters. He’d listen to her get on a subject like marching, how marines loved to march and had their own snappy way of calling cadence, more like sounds than words, not making any sense. She said, “Why is marching so important? In boot you march everywhere you go. Even now, visitors come up from Washington, congressmen, we’re out on the parade passing in review, doing right and left obliques, to the rear march, showing the visitors, goddamn it, we’re marines.”
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