“The way she’s playing today, I think she could teach Budgie a thing or two.”
“Surely she can’t keep it up.”
To Jacobs’s chagrin, Liesel continued to play spectacularly well. Both in doubles and in singles. Liesel and Meike won the doubles match 6-3, 6-2 and, after a short rest period to allow the players to catch their breaths, Liesel raced out to a 5-0 in the first set of the number two singles match. Jacobs managed to hold serve to keep from getting whitewashed, but Liesel closed out the set 6-1. The Germans were one set away from winning the Confederation Cup. In the stands, Hitler was practically doing a victory dance. So was Helen. If Liesel played the second set as well as she did the first, the tie would be over in a matter of minutes. And Meike would be safe.
But Jacobs fought back. Instead of getting down on herself for losing the first set so handily, she got angry. “I’m going to wipe the smile off his face if it’s the last thing I do,” Helen heard her grumble as the players changed ends at the start of the second set.
When play resumed, Jacobs didn’t resemble the player who hadn’t won a Grand Slam singles title in two years. She looked like the one who had once won the US Championships four years running. And Liesel slowly began to revert to form, waiting for her opponent to make an error instead of forcing the action. The tactic might have worked in the first set when Jacobs couldn’t find the court. But in the second set, Jacobs couldn’t miss.
“Liesel’s done. This match is ours.” Jeanne knelt in front of Helen after Jacobs took the second set 6-2 and surged to a 4-0 lead in the third. “The tie is in your hands now. Are you ready to play the most important match of your life?”
“Yes, I am,” Helen said, and when it was over, she hoped her teammates would be able to live with the result.
*
Meike’s hands were shaking. She was always nervous before an important match, but not like this. Never like this.
She closed her eyes and tried to let everything fall away. The crowd murmuring in anticipation of the final match, Liesel berating herself for letting her nerves get the best of her against Helen Hull Jacobs, Inge delivering last-minute instructions. But she couldn’t block out the sounds. She heard everyone and everything. Including the doubts running through her mind. She had been perfect for so long—unbeatable for match after match—but could she do it again? Could she come through when it really counted?
Helen could have beaten her in Australia, but Helen’s serve had abandoned her at the start of the second set and her composure had followed. Helen wasn’t serving as powerfully as she had in Australia, but her placement was better and her ground game seemed much more thoughtful. She was a different player than she had been in January. And a better one. But knowing what was at stake, would she be able to relax and play the kind of tennis that had put her team on the brink of winning the Confederation Cup? She hadn’t played well in today’s doubles match and she hadn’t played a singles match on clay in over a year. The odds were on Meike’s side. But why did she feel like she was holding a losing hand?
“Play your game,” she told herself as the sounds finally began to fade, “and everything will be fine.”
*
Swifty cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice. “If you win this match, kid, I’ll make you a mint.”
“What about me, Mr. Anderson?” Meike asked with a Mona Lisa smile. “What will you do for me if I win?”
Helen welcomed the much-needed moment of levity. “He can’t make you famous, champ. You already are.”
Swifty’s belly bobbed as he laughed from deep within. The English-speaking spectators within earshot also laughed at the exchange, but Gladys Morton, the chair umpire who had been a thorn in Helen’s side for most of her career, was not amused.
“I will not stand for any of your usual shenanigans today, Miss Wheeler.” Gladys wagged a prudish finger. “If you do not behave with the utmost decorum, I will punish you accordingly.”
“So I shouldn’t count on any close calls going my way. Is that what you’re saying?”
The lines between Gladys’s beady little eyes deepened into a furrow. “My reputation for integrity is unassailable, Miss Wheeler, which is more than I can say for yours.”
Helen bit back a rejoinder that might have gotten her disqualified from the match before the first point was played. Pick your battles, she told herself. Today, the most important one was between the lines, not outside them.
“May I?” Gladys borrowed one of Meike’s racquets and held the head of it against the ground. “Up or down?” she asked, indicating the manufacturer’s logo on the butt of the racquet. Meike chose up, but when Gladys spun the racquet and let it fall, it landed with the logo pointing down. “You have won the toss, Miss Wheeler. Would you prefer to serve or return?”
The decision would have been easy to make under normal circumstances. She would choose to serve and try to stake herself to an early lead while her opponent was still trying to shake off early-match jitters. But these were definitely not normal circumstances.
“I’ll return.”
Gladys turned to Meike. “From which side of the court would you prefer to serve?”
Meike glanced at the sky. No one liked to serve with the sun’s glare in her eyes. But with so much cloud cover, the sun wouldn’t be a factor. “I’ll take that one.”
By opting to serve from the north end, Meike would begin the match with her back to Adolf Hitler. Gladys might not have noticed the snub, but Helen certainly did.
So much for total obedience.
“This match isn’t about the people watching it,” Meike said. “It’s about the people playing it.”
And only they could decide the outcome.
*
“Quiet, please,” Gladys Morton said after she took her seat in the umpire’s chair. “The players are ready.”
The buzzing crowd obediently grew silent. Meike had never seen an audience of thousands make so little noise. But by the looks on their expectant faces, they wouldn’t remain silent for long. They were waiting for a chance to come alive. To cheer for their chosen favorite. Since Helen was the underdog, Meike expected the crowd to be on her side. But when she won the first point after an extended baseline rally, the crowd roared its approval.
The second point was just as drawn out, but it went in Helen’s favor after she drew Meike out of position and hit a crackling forehand winner.
Before she served the next point, Meike looked across the net and caught Helen’s eye. Not to search for signs of weakness but to share the moment. She smiled when she saw her own feelings reflected on Helen’s face. If each point was like the first two, they were about to play a match for the ages.
Helen had run out to a quick lead in Australia as she practically served Meike off the court, but it was a different story in Paris. The first set was nip and tuck all the way. Each game was tightly contested, with neither player seeming to hold an advantage.
“I beat her at her own game in Adelaide,” Meike said to herself after Helen won yet another baseline rally to pull even at five-all. “Now she’s trying to beat me at mine.”
When Helen reached triple break point in the next game, she seemed close to succeeding. But Meike bore down and hit a string of winners to pull herself out of danger. Temporarily. Helen ran through her next service game to pull even again, then attacked the net at every opportunity. Was Helen trying to shorten the points to disrupt Meike’s rhythm or was she starting to tire? Meike didn’t have time to give the matter too much thought because Helen broke her to take the lead. Then, fueled by adrenaline and momentum, she hit three aces and a service winner to win the set 8-6.
A little over an hour ago, Liesel had put Germany one set away from the Confederation Cup. A short time later, the teams’ fortunes had been reversed and it was Helen and the Americans who were close to claiming the crown.
Meike had come from a set down to win the Australian Championships. Now she would have to do it again
. Except this time there was more than a title on the line.
*
Helen could see her teammates jumping out of their seats, but she didn’t join the celebration. Her loss in the final of the Australian Championships had taught her not to lose confidence even if things weren’t going her way. And winning the first set of the deciding match in the Confederation Cup final had taught her something else: she could beat Meike von Bismarck and maybe, just maybe, she could save her, too.
“Do I need to remind you that play is supposed to be continuous?” Gladys asked after Helen jogged over to the sidelines.
Helen heeded the warning note in Gladys’s voice and resolved to keep her conversation with Swifty as brief as possible so she wouldn’t end up getting penalized for it. “Where’s Lanier?”
Swifty raised his hands to the sky. “Who do I look like, his keeper?”
“Find him for me, will you? I need to run something by him.”
“Now? In the middle of the match?” Not wanting to say too much in front of the spectators listening in, Helen pleaded with him with her eyes. “Okay, okay.” Swifty began to edge his way past the fans between him and the aisle. “The things I do for you.”
Helen blew him a kiss. “I love you, Swifty.”
“Are you ready to resume play, Miss Wheeler,” Gladys asked, “or do you need time to declare your love to someone else?”
“I’m ready,” Helen said. And if her plan worked out, she and Meike would have all the time in the world.
*
Helen was doing almost as much running around between games as she was during them. Each time they changed ends, she ventured to the sidelines to talk to Swifty and a man in a dark gray suit. The man looked vaguely familiar, but Meike didn’t recognize him right away. After she held serve to take a 4-3 lead in the second set, she finally realized where she had seen him before. He was the man who had asked Helen for her autograph in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria the night Helen had taken her to the Cotton Club. He had pretended to be a star-struck fan that night, but he was obviously much more.
“He must be her handler.” Blessed with the clarity of hindsight, Meike could finally see him for who he really was.
Helen had said her days as a spy had come to an end. But if that were truly the case, what was her handler doing here and why was she seeking his counsel in the middle of play?
“Concentrate on the match,” she told herself after Helen held serve for four-all. “Don’t worry about questions you can’t answer.”
Like in the first set, she had the advantage of serving first. The longer she held the lead, the more chances she had to force Helen to stumble. All she needed to do was keep holding her serve, put some pressure on Helen’s, and make sure she didn’t falter late in the set like she had in the first. If she repeated her mistake, the match would be over. Helen would win and she would lose. In more ways than one. But if she could hold her nerve and wait for Helen to lose hers, the set—and the match—could be hers.
A few games later, Meike held serve to pull ahead 6-5. On the first point of the following game, Helen got her first serve in and came in behind it. The serve was placed well but didn’t have much on it and Meike returned it easily. She clenched her fists when the ball flew past Helen’s outstretched racquet and dropped in the corner for a winner. Love-fifteen.
“You can do it, Meike.”
Her brother’s shout of encouragement turned Meike’s attention to her family in the stands. She didn’t normally need anyone’s support to help her win, but today she’d never needed her family’s more. What was it Helen had said on their last night in Rheinsteifel? Everyone needs someone sometime. For her, that time was now. She had gone as far as she could on her own. She couldn’t go any further without help.
Talent and skill could take her close to her goal but wouldn’t allow her to reach it. If she wanted to win today, she would need heart. Pluck. Virtues normally attributed to her opponent. If she wanted to defeat Helen, she needed to become Helen. She smiled at the absurdity of the thought. The beauty of the compliment.
Helen served-and-volleyed on the second point, too. On clay, one serve-and-volley point during a game might be considered a surprise tactic; two could only be seen as a sign of desperation. The pace of Helen’s shots had started to wane in the past few games and her forays to the net were becoming more frequent and ill-advised. She, like Meike, was playing her fourth set of the day. Had she finally begun to tire or had her shoulder injury flared up again?
Meike searched Helen’s face for signs of weakness but saw only determination. In Australia, Helen’s only strategy had been to hit every ball as hard as she could. The strategy had worked when her shots were going in, but when she had started to miss, she hadn’t been able to adjust. In Paris, her game plan was more cerebral and gave her a much higher margin of error, which kept the match agonizingly close.
Instead of hitting the ball flat or coming over it to generate high-bouncing topspin, Helen used slice to keep the ball low. The crowd ooh-ed as her groundstrokes passed mere centimeters above the net. Meike’s heart leaped into her throat each time the ball skimmed the orange-dusted tape on its way over. She kept waiting for Helen to miss, but she kept waiting in vain. After a thirty-stroke rally, she finally got what she was waiting for. Helen’s slice backhand caught the tape, hung tantalizingly in the air for a moment as if held aloft by the crowd’s collective gasp, then dropped on Helen’s side of the net. Love-forty. Meike was a point away from leveling the match.
“Yes!”
Meike clenched her fists as the crowd roared. She couldn’t tell if the fans were cheering for her to win or hoping to see another set of wonderful tennis, but she had the opportunity to give both factions what they wanted and she meant to take it. But Helen served an ace to save one set point and hit a service winner to stave off another. Meike, holding up a hand to ask for more time to prepare, vowed not to let the third go begging.
“This is your chance,” she told herself as she crept closer to the baseline. “Take it.”
At 30-40, Helen opted for placement instead of pace. Meike stepped to her left, cut off the angle, and hit a crosscourt backhand that would have been a winner on any day except this one—and against any other player except Helen. Helen ran down the shot with ease, hit a looping backhand to give herself time to recover, and scrambled to the middle of the court to await Meike’s reply.
Meike waited for the high-arcing ball to land. Instead of going for an outright winner to try to end the point quickly, she settled in for yet another extended rally. She moved Helen from side to side, sapping her energy and exhausting her legs. If successful, the tactic could not only win her the second set but the third as well.
Helen’s grunts of effort grew louder on each stroke, giving voice to her fatigue, but she stubbornly hung in the point. Meike admired her grit. Helen was playing like a dream on a surface that had given her nothing but nightmares. When Meike hit a forehand that Helen’s weary legs couldn’t catch up to, Meike’s own dream came true. She arched her back and unleashed a roar that nearly rent the heavens. She had pushed the final match of the Confederation Cup to a deciding set.
“Game and second set, Germany,” Gladys said. “Play will resume in thirty minutes.”
The crowd rose as one to salute the players as Meike and Helen gathered their belongings and headed to the locker room for the rules-mandated break between the second and third sets. Meike didn’t want to stop playing now that she had finally gained some momentum, but the decision was out of her hands.
The Davis Cup was the only event that allowed a stoppage of play during matches. Players traditionally took a respite between the fourth and fifth sets to give themselves time to strategize with their coaches before the deciding set began. The organizers of the Confederation Cup had decided to implement something similar.
Meike waved to the cheering fans, then headed to the locker room to prepare herself to play a set that could define not only her lega
cy, but her life.
*
Helen’s right arm felt like a bowl of overcooked spaghetti noodles. Her lack of match play had started to catch up with her. Her shoulder was shot and her legs weren’t too far behind. Yet she had never felt so happy.
If she put her plan into action now instead of waiting until the Cup had been decided, no one would ever see it coming. Not Henkel. Not Himmler. Not Hitler. Not even her teammates.
“I have a proposition for you, ladies. And I’ll say right off the bat you aren’t going to like it.”
“I would tell you to keep it to yourself,” Jacobs said, “but I’ve known you long enough to know that’s not going to happen, so spill.”
Helen stood and addressed her team. “If Meike doesn’t win this match, the consequences for her will be dire.”
Indignant, Jeanne put her hands on her hips. “So what are you going to do, roll over and let her win? Please tell me you’re not planning to throw the final set.”
“No, skip, I’m not. In fact, I’m not going to play it at all. And if I can talk some sense into Meike, neither is she.”
Dodo scratched her head. “You’ve lost me.”
“The Nazis will be all over this place the minute the match ends, no matter who wins. At the moment, though, they’re too busy planning their celebration to keep tabs on Meike. If I’m going to help her escape, I need to get her out of here and I need to get her out of here now. But I can’t do it without your help. And I won’t do it unless it’s something each of you agrees to do.”
“Do you know what kind of sacrifice you’re asking us to make?” Jacobs asked.
“Yes, I do.” Helen looked each of them in the eye one by one. “I’m asking you to give up your dreams of being a member of the first team to win the Confederation Cup. I’m asking you to forego front-page headlines, a hero’s welcome, and a ticker tape parade down Madison Avenue. I’m asking you to help me save a friend.”
Break Point Page 19
