by Jina Bacarr
I never saw Chuck Dawn again after that day in Berlin. I have been in contact with the American war department for weeks, hoping for news of him. From what I’ve been told, he made his way out of Germany and into occupied France following a route using trains and the established links with safe houses Josette gave him. An RAF squadron, taking off from a secret base in Tempsford, England, picked him up outside Paris.
As for my escape, my flight to Lisbon was uneventful until we ran into a storm a few miles from the Spanish coast. Fog and rain prevented us from landing, so we continued on to a military airport farther south. I feared I’d be arrested upon landing, but the SIS had done its job forging my papers and, after spending the night at the Avis Hotel, I left Lisbon the next day on a regularly scheduled BOAC flight for Whitchurch in Bristol. A representative from the Foreign Office met me and arranged for me to travel by motorcar to London.
I must digress, dear reader, remembering that night in the Portuguese hotel. No air raids, no bombs, no blackouts, nothing but the soothing sounds of rain beating against my window. I questioned that night whether or not we would ever again know a world as peaceful. I pray we have it at last.
My heart is heavy as I wait for news of Chuck, but I can tell you now (how I wish it were Chuck reading this as he did all those years ago) what information I secured from Maxi the day we had lunch in Berlin. With her background in photography, Maxi had come in contact with a secret German method of transferring photographs to the size of what we in England call a “full stop” or period that have the clarity of standard-size typewritten pages. A microdot.
The invitation to her photography exhibit that I carried back to London with me contained several microdots with pictures she took of the development center and early plans for V-2 rocket operations being secretly carried on by one of Hitler’s top officials, Albert Speer. Quite by accident, she had gotten drunk one night with a disgruntled engineer who was in the process of being dismissed from his work on the project before being sent to the front. After serious pillow talk and a romp in bed, he gave her access to the plant, where she photographed the plans on a clandestine trip under the cover of night. This was over a year before a Danish naval officer discovered the crash site of a test version of the rocket. Maxi’s photos aided the British government in their preparation for an attack on the installation at Peenemünde by the RAF later in the war, which delayed Hitler’s plans for long-range weapons and undoubtedly saved many British lives.
I have no regrets for what I have done. I believe I have honored Flavia and all those who died in this terrible war. I pray we shall never see the likes of it again, though knowing the covetous desire of human nature, man’s frailties, greed and need for power, I have my doubts. The tides of history have spilled the blood of men and women across this continent and all the world for centuries. Though we shall never understand war, it is for future generations to learn from it.
I am certain you’re wondering how I fared during those war years. Surprisingly, I found the world of espionage held an allure for me I didn’t know it had. I embarked on many exploits for the SIS during the rest of the war and later the American OSS. What I did was recorded in the war archives, but it must remain classified information (at least for the time being). I can say that I went to the United States as an agent for Sir_____ (who still wishes to remain anonymous) and moved about in society, keeping my ears open for any information that would lead me to German agents working in America. I also found myself in Hong Kong during the Japanese attack and I spent eight months in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp before being released. I’m certain you’re wondering what became of Cleopatra’s perfume. I used it sparingly throughout the war, preferring to rely on my wits to do my job instead of its mystical power. The pale golden alabaster box with the nude, bare-breasted figure of a queen holding a scepter and perched on a throne sits on the mantel above the fireplace in the playroom here in Coventry in front of the secret wall plate where I’ve hidden the crimson cord. Who knows? Perhaps I shall call upon the power of the perfume again in the future…
This past year found me back in London working for the Political Intelligence Department, as it was formally known, writing “erotic propaganda,” spicy stories broadcast in German on a shortwave station (a top-secret endeavor by British Secret Intelligence Services) and without laying any claim to its existence. All this was part of psychological warfare against the Nazis. It seems my exploits in Cairo and Berlin lent themselves well to writing risqué stories about Hitler’s elite to jar the populace into believing their leaders were betraying them. Who knows, perhaps someday I will receive permission to have my stories declassified and I shall find a publisher for my work.
But enough about my adventures in this war. I’m certain you’re curious to know how the others fared, and so I shall relate what I know about them. Maxi continued passing along information to the Allies under the nose of the German secret police. Now, like all Germans, she is having a difficult time adjusting to life after the war. I have spoken to both the British and the American services for displaced persons, asking them to help her carry on with her photography work in the new Germany. And Laila? She disappeared soon after the day she confronted Chuck at the Berlin airport. My sources tell me she ended up in a concentration camp, which I have no doubt occurred when the Nazis found out she was cheating them out of sizable amounts of money.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out if Josette survived the war. Using my influence with Sir_____, I gained access to my official file and read the statement of the prostitute who saw me sneaking upstairs in the brothel. She didn’t recognize me as being one of the regular girls, she said, but she didn’t report me because she thought I was a society woman recruited by the Gestapo to do my “patriotic duty.” When she was questioned by the man I now know was SS Intelligence Chief Heydrich during one of his sadistic personal inspections (humiliating the girls by forcing them to engage in whipping orgies), she blurted out she had seen me. (The irony, dear reader, is that the microphones were turned off when Heydrich visited the brothel.) No one had any record of my being there, but someone had seen me with the young kitchen maid. The girl was tortured with electric shocks until she revealed the location of the safe house. She was so ashamed of succumbing to Nazi torture, she hung herself in her cell. God rest her soul.
By this time, Laila had reported me to the secret police, insisting I was a spy and responsible for the suspicious disappearance of a missing SS officer last seen leaving the Hotel Adlon with another man and me. The Gestapo raided the safe house and arrested everyone there, including two downed RAF fliers. Nowhere in my file did it indicate whether or not Josette was among those captured. Did the perfume save her? I don’t know. Since I never knew her real name, it will be difficult to find out. I think about her often. Her pretty hands flying over the piano keys, her lilting, husky voice seducing the audience with a song. So many brave souls in the French Resistance died for the cause of freedom. I will not rest until I know whether or not she is alive.
Which brings me back to Chuck Dawn. Neither of us ever spoke of Cleopatra’s perfume in our letters, only of our love for each other. The war has kept us apart, our situation more desperate because we know the power of the perfume, yet even its mystical powers cannot bring us together. From what he wrote in the letter I received from him soon after he returned to England (I was on assignment in New York City for the Foreign Office), he disappeared that day in Berlin, only to resurface somewhere outside the city before beginning his long trek to France then back to his squadron in England. Convinced of the power of the perfume, he subsequently flew many missions over Germany, including cloak-and-dagger sorties picking up other downed fliers.
When America entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Chuck’s unit of American RAF fliers was incorporated into the U.S. Army Air Force. In 1944, he was shot down when enemy flak knocked out one of his engines, ruptured the gas tanks and destroyed the radio, but his luck held out and
he landed the plane and saved his crew. They were captured and sent to a POW camp. Chuck tried to escape so many times, they moved him to a German prison camp known as Colditz Castle. Again, he tried to escape, but he was recaptured. Before the war ended with the American forces advancing toward the east, he was moved to southern Germany, but this time he did escape. Eyewitness reports said he was killed, but I want to believe he had enough of Cleopatra’s perfume left to save him. Each day I pray for word of his whereabouts.
I have news, dear reader, wonderful news. Chuck is alive. He spent the past few months trapped behind the Russian lines, trying to get back to the American forces. He’s on his way to Coventry…I can’t contain my excitement. The rebuilding is nearly finished. With Mrs. Wills’s invaluable assistance, I have been renovating the hideaway, especially since it received more damage in the Easter-week raid of April 1941 before I left for Berlin. She’s in London this week, ordering the new wall coverings for the playroom (she keeps her eyes downcast every time she goes in there. I merely smile.), but she’s returning in a few days. I can’t wait for her to meet Chuck. That reminds me. She said something very interesting to me before she left, expressing her personal opinion. Most unusual for her, if you remember. Tugging on her sensible suit jacket, pushing back a stray wisp of soft gray hair that dared to invade her wrinkle-free forehead, she said that from his letters and what I’ve told her about Chuck, she’s certain his lordship would approve of him. Then she cleared her throat and left the room.
Dear God, he’s here. Pressing my nose against the window, I see him coming up the stepping-stones, yellow daisies swaying between the round granite pieces, lingering from a late summer to greet him. I can’t continue writing, I must put down my pen and run downstairs to meet him, hold him, kiss him, melt into his arms. Spiciness wafts around me, my senses alive with my tale of wonder now ended.
Inhale the scent of Cleopatra’s perfume with me, dear reader, as I begin a new life, a new diary.
CLEOPATRA’S PERFUME
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3096-9
Copyright © 2009 by Jina Bacarr.
All rights reserved. The reproduction, transmission or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission. For permission please contact Spice Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Spice and Colophon are trademarks used under license and registered in Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.
www.Spice-Books.com [http://www.Spice-Books.com]
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
EPILOGUE
