by Levy, Marc
“Indeed, I did. Although ‘man’ may be too lofty a title for such a creature. Actually, Hitler came to greet me on the doorstep of the house where I was staying, and like a fool, I went to hand him my coat, mistaking him for the butler! Imagine that. It was very nearly a massive diplomatic incident, caused by yours truly!” he snickered.
The Earl of Halifax certainly was an elusive and complex figure. He viewed racism and nationalism as two natural forces that weren’t necessarily immoral in nature. When in service to His Majesty as the Viceroy of India, Wood had had all members of the Indian Congress arrested, and even threw Gandhi behind bars. While Wood was a bigot, an arch-conservative, and a staunch supporter of Chamberlain, he refused any level of compromise with the Third Reich, and even turned down the post of prime minister, contending that Churchill was a better choice to lead Britain through its darkest hour.
“Perhaps we should continue this conversation in private, if you’re interested,” Wood told the young man at the end of the meal. “Come to my office, and I’ll see what I can do for you.”
A few days later, the ambassador greeted Robert in Washington and connected him with a friend working in the secret service.
By Christmas Eve, Robert was aboard a cargo ship set for distant lands, watching Baltimore’s twinkling lights fade into the distance.
The Lysander had been torn apart by a storm over Limousin, and now the pilot was barely able to maintain trajectory. With the propeller seriously damaged, it was a dangerous gamble to try and maintain altitude above the canopy of clouds. Yet dropping any lower would expose them to a whole host of other dangers. Agent Stanfield wasn’t faring much better than the plane. He clutched his harness so tightly his knuckles were white, and his stomach dropped every time they hit an air pocket. The leading edges of the wings were so battered, they seemed ready to tear at any moment. The pilot had no choice but to seek refuge at lower altitude, the outcome inevitable. The Lysander plummeted a thousand feet through the thick curtain of rain, the needle on the fuel gauge quivering frantically. Suddenly, the motor sputtered and died altogether just another thousand feet above the ground, leaving seconds to maneuver a crash-landing.
The pilot jerked the plane toward a flat strip of land near a patch of woods. The wheels first grazed the surface of the wet marsh, then took a nosedive straight into it. The propeller, still spinning, shattered as it hit the ground, and the plane’s tail was thrust up into the air. Robert felt himself being thrown forward, slamming hard in his seat as the plane flipped. He was the lucky one. The canopy over the cockpit was crushed flat on impact, killing the pilot instantly. Robert was miraculously unharmed, aside from a deep gash on his face and intense bruises from the harness. But he wasn’t safe yet. Upside down, Robert felt gas dripping onto him from the fuel tank below the seat.
He finally managed to fight his way out of the wreckage and crawled through the torrential downpour, barely making it to the small patch of woods before losing consciousness.
The next day, local villagers stumbled upon what was left of the Lysander. They buried the pilot, set the fuselage ablaze, and dispatched a search party to look for any survivors. They found Robert Stanfield unconscious at the foot of a tree. The young man was taken to a farm, where he could rest and receive medical care. A country doctor revived him and dressed his wounds. The following night, Robert was driven to a hunting lodge deep in the woods, a safe house that the Resistance used as a weapons cache. There, in a tunnel below the hunting lodge, of all places, was where Robert first met Sam Goldstein. He and his sixteen-year-old daughter had been hiding there for the past six months. Hanna Goldstein had red hair, fair skin, and piercing blue eyes with the hardened glint of a prizefighter’s—a young woman so stunning, she made time stand still.
17
GEORGE-HARRISON
October 2016, Eastern Townships, Quebec
I wrapped the chest of drawers in blankets and loaded it into my pickup, strapping it down so it would be safe for the trip. Magog is a picturesque little town just north of Lake Memphremagog, where everyone knows each other and life flows in rhythm with the seasons. The boon of summer tourism keeps the whole town afloat for the rest of the year. The lake tapers down to a narrow point, and the southern half extends across the border into the United States. In the heyday of Prohibition, ships carrying forbidden cargo would glide across those waters, protected by the night. Imagine that!
Pierre Tremblay was my most loyal customer, the owner of an antique store specializing in rustic furniture. If you know what you’re doing, there are plenty of ways to make furniture appear older than it is. A few strategically placed chisel marks here, some light blowtorch work there, a dash of the right acid and varnish in the right spots. You could add a hundred years in a day.
If a hesitant customer wanted to know how old something was, Pierre always muttered something like “turn of the century.” It wasn’t technically a lie, since he never said what century.
One look at my latest creation, and Pierre slapped my shoulder and delivered his favorite words of praise. “What can I say? GH, you’re a class act!” Sure. A class act at fraud. But he was careful to leave that last part out, and I was grateful for the omission. I did feel an occasional pang of guilt when I would have dinner at La Mère Denise and hear Denise herself bragging about the “authentic touch” her newly acquired antique bookcase added to the restaurant. Given that she had bought her bookcase from Pierre, I knew it was about as authentic as a three-dollar bill.
Pierre would swear up and down with good cheer and utter sincerity that his scam benefited all parties involved, customers included. Every time I objected to his methods, he’d use his favorite catchphrase: “I’m a dealer of dreams, and dreams are ageless.” I’ve known Pierre forever. I used to walk past his store every day as a snot-nosed kid on the way home from school. I always thought he might have had a thing for my mother. He always complimented her on her clothes or her new haircut, and his wife always gave him the stink-eye whenever Mom and I crossed paths with them in town. Old Pierre helped get my carpentry business off the ground—he was the very first person to entrust me with a commission for a piece. I couldn’t have been more grateful.
“What’s got you all grumpy today?” he asked, looking me over.
“It’s that damn chest. It took a couple of sleepless nights to get it done.”
“Right! The chest, of course. How about telling me what really happened? You get in a spat with that blonde of yours?”
“I wish. I’ve been having a bit of a dry spell since Melanie left.”
“Don’t worry about it. She wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed anyway, truth be told. So, it’s business and not romance that’s got you down . . . What, are you broke? I know we didn’t have the greatest season this year. If you’re hard up, I can commission a set of table and chairs. I’m sure I can manage to sell them before the end of winter. What am I talking about? I can do better. How about you make me a pair of antique sleds, like seriously old ones? I found mock-ups for these hundred-year-old models. We’ll make a killing at Christmas, no doubt about it!”
Pierre hurried off giddily to the back and returned with a book that he beckoned me to look over. His sleigh mock-ups dated back to the nineteenth century. I could tell at a glance it would be a lot more work than he thought. But I humored the man, taking the book with me and promising to take a closer look.
“GH, I’ve known you since you were just a wee little tyke. So, how about you quit messing around and tell me what’s got you down?”
I tried to avoid his eyes and moved toward the door, but he was right. Pierre knew me far too well, and I just couldn’t lie to him.
“I got a . . . funny little letter in the mail, Pierre.”
“Couldn’t be that funny, if it’s got you all twisted up in knots. Come on, let’s get out of here. You can tell me about it over a hot meal.”
Seated at La Mère Denise, I read the letter to Pierre.
“Who sen
t it? Sounds like one hell of a busybody,” he said.
“No clue. See for yourself, it’s unsigned.”
“Well, whoever it is, they sure put a lot of funny ideas in your head.”
“You know, I’m just so sick and tired of secrets, and things ‘better left unsaid’! I just want to know who my father is, once and for all.”
“If he wanted to meet you, GH, don’t you think he would have come? After all these years . . .”
“It’s not that simple. I went to see Mom.”
“Ah, yikes. As bad as ever, I take it?”
“She comes and goes, it never gets any easier. But she told me something—confessed something—that I can’t stop thinking about.”
I let Pierre in on what my mother had said back at the home.
“And she was in her right mind when she said that?”
“Certainly seemed to be.”
Pierre looked at me for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Well, I know your mom would rap my knuckles and then some for doing this, but there’s something I’ve got to tell you, kid. Something that’s been weighing on me for a long time now. Now, you’ve got to remember, your mother already had a bun in the oven when she first arrived in Magog. That bun, of course, was you. As you can imagine, it was tough for her to fit in. She wasn’t from around here, and back then when a woman had a baby without a father . . . Well, let’s just say it didn’t happen as often as it does nowadays. She was a knockout, and folks sometimes thought she was gallivanting around, you know, looking for trouble. Most of all, it was the women that didn’t exactly take a shine to her, out of jealousy. But she had some grit to her, and she was so friendly that people appreciated her more month by month.
“You helped a lot in that regard. People saw the way she was bringing you up, and you were always such a polite little fella, which sure as hell isn’t the case for every kid running around with skinned knees. You must have been, I don’t know, about one year old, when this tall man came rolling into town, just poking around, asking for your mother. He seemed nice enough, especially with the big old goofy ears he had on him. Eventually, someone pointed him in the right direction, and he headed for your place. When I found out what was happening, I rushed over to make sure he didn’t mean you two any harm. My wife warned me not to meddle where I wasn’t wanted, but of course I didn’t listen. When I got to your place, I got a little peek in through the window, enough to see that your mother was deep in conversation with him. Everything seemed cordial enough, but I hung around for a bit to make sure. As for him? He didn’t leave until the next morning. The guy hit the road, never came back. Hard to imagine someone coming that far for one night, then taking off quicker than you can say ‘goofy ears.’
“It didn’t make sense; he must have had a serious reason to come all that way. There was nothing of value at your place, just some random furniture I sold to your mother, some cheap dishes, and a crappy second-rate painting hanging on the wall. I may not be a genius, but you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what he came all that way for. It was your mother. And you. So, I’m telling you this now because, as you can imagine, I’d always wondered if he hadn’t come there . . . to find you.”
“How did you know he came from far away?”
“The license plate on his car. Of course, I can’t remember it now after all this time. I did jot it down in my cash book, which maybe I could dig up. But I remember this much: it was from the state of Maryland. I wish I had more to tell you, but that’s all I know.”
“What was he like, this guy?”
“A big fellow. Nice-looking face. That’s all I could really make out through the window. But he certainly was pining for your mother, that’s for sure. Even from that far, I could see his eyes were fixed on her. At one point, he seemed to want to go upstairs, and your mother actually blocked his path. But he had manners. He gave up on it and plopped down in a chair in your living room. From that point on, I could only make out his shoulders and shoes.”
“Do you really think you could dig it up? The license plate number?”
“I certainly can try, but finding one scrap of paper from more than thirty years ago is a long shot. Anyway, I’m not so sure it would make a whole lot of difference. But, hey, you never know.”
I paid for the meal, treating Pierre, and we left the restaurant. He apologized for not having told me everything sooner. My only regret was not learning about it back when Mom was still all there. I promised to return his book as soon as I had figured out those sleigh diagrams. It was as good a way as any of letting him know there were no hard feelings.
As it turned out, I didn’t have time to dwell on any of it. When I got back, I found a second letter there waiting for me in my mailbox. Same handwriting on the envelope, with nothing but a sheet of lined paper inside listing a time and place.
October 22, 7 p.m. Sailor’s Hideaway, Baltimore.
October 22? That was less than two days from now.
18
ROBERT STANFIELD
April 1944, outside Montauban
Robert had been waiting and waiting for the chance to be introduced to the local head of the Resistance. Every day, the villagers gave him a new excuse. Current mission preparation was limiting the brigade’s operational vicinity. Enemy activity made any unnecessary movement too risky. The local leader was busy with other liaison officers in need of his attention . . .
Robert had already witnessed firsthand the lack of coordination between French and English forces. At times, he would receive orders from one side that flatly contradicted the other. Decoding the complex and tangled chain of command from the other side of the Channel was no small feat, and Robert found it no less complicated now that he was on the ground. One night, he was driven up a bumpy trail through the woods to check out a case of Sten submachine guns. Another night, he met a trio of local farmers-turned-partisans with only two guns between the three of them. It was a far cry from the type of intel and tallies his superiors were seeking, and Robert was beginning to wonder what the hell he was doing there. In the two weeks since the crash, he had only managed to mark down three pitiful little Xs on his map, and only one of them actually constituted a real weapons cache—the very hunting lodge Robert had occupied since his first night. The remote outpost had arms and munitions stashed in a tunnel that had been dug into the bottom of the cellar.
Robert’s only break from the constant boredom was the Goldsteins. Sam was a highly cultured and passionate man, and their lengthy conversations were a fascinating diversion for Robert. Yet, his daughter stubbornly refused to exchange a single word with him. After a brief period of getting to know each other, Robert and Sam soon became inseparable, whiling away the long afternoons discussing the past and the future. Sam insisted on staying hopeful, more out of concern for his daughter’s morale than out of any deep-seated conviction. Every night, Radio London would broadcast coded messages, telling listeners that the arrival of the Allied Forces was imminent. Sam would assure his daughter the war would soon end. “Soon! Soon, peaceful days will come again, you’ll see.”
Robert was the first of the two to bare his soul. He opened up to Sam about his family and how he had acted against their wishes in joining the war effort. Things with his parents had been so tense that Robert had gone without even saying goodbye.
One day, Robert tried to strike up a conversation with Hanna and was met with only dead silence, as the girl simply carried on with her reading. Sam discreetly beckoned Robert to follow him outside. They sat down side by side on a tree stump and smoked a cigarette, in what had become a daily ritual for the two men. After a short while, Sam broke the silence.
“Don’t take it personally. Hanna . . . she protects herself by staying silent, and I should tell you why. Not because you deserve an explanation, but because I think I might lose my mind if I don’t tell somebody what happened. We had managed to acquire forged papers, which cost a fortune, and no one in the village knew we were Jews—just city dwel
lers from Lyon who had decided to move out to the countryside. We led a quiet life, my wife and Hanna and I, discreet, just like everybody else. I always told Hanna, the best way to avoid being discovered was to stay hidden in plain sight.
“On the same day that the Resistance took over the post office, another group was out there tearing up train tracks. Now, there was this enemy convoy passing through, you know, motorcycle sidecars and all, not far from the tracks. So, the Resistance attacked, hitting the convoy with grenades from the embankments along the road. Boom! No survivors. The two efforts weren’t coordinated, but because they happened simultaneously, German command planned a brutal retaliation. An SS squadron marched into the village the next day, accompanied by local militiamen. They arrested villagers at random, killing some on the spot, slaughtering others in the middle of the schoolyard.
“My wife . . . had gone out to the farm next door in search of eggs. Eggs. They hanged her, along with ten others, and left them dangling from a telegraph pole. Hanna and I stayed home, with the doors locked. When the Germans left, those militia bastards, in their eminent kindness, allowed us to recover the bodies. Some of the sons of bitches went as far as to actually lend us a hand cutting them down. We buried Hanna’s mother. Members of the Resistance feared the Germans might strike again. That night, they came to get us out of there. We’ve been hiding here ever since.”
Sam was trembling. “Tell me about Baltimore,” he managed to get out as he lit another cigarette. “I’ve never been. Back in the thirties, we often traveled to New York. Hanna was obsessed with the Empire State Building. She was there even for the opening, at the tender age of three.”
“Unbelievable!” Robert exclaimed. “I was there myself, at the opening. My parents dragged me along. I guess I was maybe fifteen, sixteen years old? To think we could have run into each other. What brought you to New York? Are you in real estate?”
“Oh, no. I’m an art dealer. Or at least, I was. My clientele included some of the top American art collectors, most of whom are located in New York,” Sam explained, with more than a hint of pride. “Of course, the Depression hit everyone pretty hard, but I still managed to do business with galleries like the Findlay, the Wildenstein, and the Perl. On my last trip, in the summer of ’37, I sold a Monet to Mr. Rothschild himself. Wildenstein had made the introduction, and then I noticed a stunning piece by Edward Hopper that I simply had to purchase myself. Let me tell you, my boy: it cost an arm and a leg, but it was love at first sight. The painting is of a young woman, a girl really, sitting in a chair looking out the window. I always thought she looked so much like my Hanna. Soon as I got my hands on it, I promised myself I would never sell it. When the time comes, it will be handed down to my daughter so she can one day pass it on to her own children. It’s meant to always stay in our family. My legacy. The Hopper is something I know will be around long after I’m gone. To think how happy and proud I was about bringing it back here to France. So very stupid. Had I known, even for a second, what was coming . . . I’d have stayed in New York.”
