Louise's Chance

by Sarah R. Shaber

  ‘It’s shocking that Marek escaped so easily,’ Merle said. We’d set our trays down on a table near a window that faced the camp. The watchtower that guarded the front gate loomed overhead.

  ‘This is just a barbed wire stockade.’ Rawlins said. ‘Not a state penitentiary.’

  ‘But where could prisoners escape to? Most of them don’t speak English,’ Miss Osborne said, passing me cream for my coffee. ‘Germany is an ocean away.’

  ‘That’s the FBI’s problem now,’ Rawlins said. ‘I expect Agent Williams is more worried about what damage an escapee might do right here in this country.’

  ‘Somehow I can’t see Hans Marek as a saboteur,’ Miss Osborne said.

  ‘Me neither,’ Rawlins said.

  That wouldn’t stop Williams from staging a full on manhunt if Hans Marek wasn’t located soon.

  Miss Osborne glanced at her watch. ‘Mrs Pearlie, Mr Ellison, we need to be out front of the camp administration building, with our luggage, by eight. That’s where the car will pick us up to take us back to Washington.’

  ‘The car?’ I asked.

  ‘This morning’s flights to Washington are full,’ she said.

  Thank God! If I was going to keep this job it looked like I would have to get accustomed to air travel, but I was still relieved to be avoiding it for now.

  Instead Miss Osborne, Merle and I were crammed into the back seat of a Ford army sedan. A two-star general rode in the front next to the driver. He hadn’t been pleased about giving us a lift, but made the best of it, tipping his cap to Miss Osborne and me and stowing his briefcase at his feet in the front seat. He didn’t say a word to us on the short drive, leaving the three of us in the back to peer out the vehicle’s narrow side windows at the scenery and whisper to each other. We were cramped and bored, but still I preferred that to watching the Maryland countryside slide by hundreds of feet below me!

  The general dropped us off where Maryland Avenue crossed Constitution and we caught a crosstown bus, disembarking at the southern gate of the OSS compound.

  ‘Stow your luggage in your offices, get some coffee and let’s get to work,’ Miss Osborne said to us.

  If possible, the artists’ workroom was even more chaotic than when we’d left it. There seemed to be a celebration of some kind going on.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Merle asked.

  A man with ink-stained fingers raised his coffee mug.

  ‘The British have replaced their signposts and street signs!’ he said. A cheer went up and we joined in happily. I knew from my previous work that Operation Sea Lion, the German plan for the invasion of Britain, had been postponed indefinitely, mostly because of the unexpectedly intense resistance of the British to the Blitz, and the German invasion of Russia. But it looked like Winston Churchill and his cabinet were confident there never would be a German invasion now. That meant that Great Britain would become the landing stage for an Allied invasion of Europe. We could pack the country with Yanks and military equipment until the time came to move on to the European mainland. I hoped the Brits were prepared for our invasion of their little island.

  We dropped Merle off at his office to complete his forged letter and went on to Miss Osborne’s office, where we unpacked the prisoner-of-war intake papers Lt Rawlins had given us.

  ‘We have fifty-eight documents,’ Miss Osborne said, ‘including those of the two men who disappeared over the side of the ship.’ The prisoners had been processed at either Oran or Casablanca before they’d been loaded on a ship bound for the States.

  ‘OK,’ Miss Osborne said, ‘let’s alphabetize these first, then begin reading and summarizing. A page per prisoner, please. Handwritten is fine, as long as it’s readable.’

  After a few hours we’d waded through a third of the prisoners’ documents. It was slow going. The forms had been completed by dozens of American soldiers, some with terrible handwriting, who didn’t speak German. Translators must have been scarce. One prisoner’s form I came upon was filled only with question marks!

  I ran into Merle on my way out of the Que tempo to pick up a sandwich at a café across the street. I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with the crowd and commotion at the OSS cafeteria.

  ‘Want to join me for lunch?’ I said to him.

  ‘Yes, please,’ he answered. ‘I finished that letter and got it sent off to London. But I have a shocking headache. I need someplace quiet.’

  We found a table for two in the back of a tiny lunch counter, where we ordered grilled pimento cheese sandwiches and French fries. I had milk, but Merle asked for coffee. It was late for lunch so we had the place to ourselves.

  ‘This is the best cure for a headache,’ he said, ‘coffee and aspirin.’ He tossed back two tablets with his first gulp. ‘How are your summaries coming along?’

  ‘Slowly,’ I said. ‘But we should be done by the end of the day tomorrow.’

  ‘I should be finished reading the prisoners’ paybooks too,’ Merle answered. ‘I hope so, anyway. I want the weekend off before we go back to Fort Meade.’

  Once our plates were cleared and we’d both ordered coffee, Merle leaned toward me and whispered.

  ‘Look at this. I bought it off Hans Marek.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a German cigarette lighter and handed it to me. The lighter’s case was embossed with a skull and crossbones, the Nazi SS death’s head.

  I dropped the lighter on the table. ‘That is revolting,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe you’d want to own such a nasty thing.’

  ‘Come on, Louise, this lighter is history! I can pass this down to my grandkids someday.’

  ‘How much did you pay for it?’ I asked.

  ‘Ten bucks,’ he said. ‘A real deal! One of the fellows at the office has already offered me fifteen for it!’

  ‘So part of the money Marek will spend during his escape came from you,’ I said. ‘How do you know he’s not planning to derail a train or something?’

  ‘You know that if I hadn’t bought it someone else would have. And Marek had pockets full of other stuff to sell. The guards and MPs were all buying things from him.’

  I drained my milk, left a dollar bill and a quarter on the table for the tab and tip and collected my sweater and hat. ‘I’ll see you later,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t go off angry.’

  ‘I’m not, I’ve got work to do.’

  Once out of the lunchroom I waited at the crosswalk for a break in the traffic so I could get across 23rd Street. Fuming, I’d left the lunch counter quickly so as not to lose my temper with Merle. I had to work with the man. And I knew hundreds of American soldiers and others were stripping German prisoners of whatever they could – side arms, SS daggers and Iron Crosses were the most prized – as mementos of their participation in a historic conflict. It was against all rules of warfare and the Geneva Convention, and I thought it was cheap and petty. Like robbing corpses, only worse, because the victims were alive to experience their degradation.

  I found myself wondering if the SS lighter Marek had sold Merle had belonged to Major Kapp, but somehow I doubted that haughty officer would stoop to selling his personal possessions, even through an intermediary, to buy a couple of candy bars at the camp PX. By the time I’d gotten to Miss Osborne’s office I’d calmed down. My anger wasn’t going to stop anyone from stealing from German prisoners, or corpses, and I knew that my energy could be better used doing my job.

  By quitting time Miss Osborne and I had plowed through another twenty sets of German prisoner intake forms. We’d learned that the two German Czechs who’d disappeared overboard while crossing the Atlantic had not only lived at the same address and vanished aboard ship on the same day, but had been conscripted on the same day too.

  ‘That’s three coincidences,’ I said to Miss Osborne.

  ‘But not impossible,’ Miss Osborne answered. ‘The Germans are very organized. I can see German conscription officials proceeding block by block.’

  ‘But dying on the same day too?
And if they did commit suicide, that’s even odder.’

  ‘Maybe they were sitting on the deck rail together and got washed overboard,’ she said.

  Miss Osborne saw my disbelieving expression.

  ‘I don’t think so either,’ she said. ‘It’s too outlandish to believe. We have enough to do without Pinkertoning these men’s deaths, but I can’t help but wonder if they were murdered by one of the POWs we’re interviewing. I wish we knew the answer to that question. I’d like to know if we recruit a killer to our mission.’

  I dropped my valise on the floor and my hat on the hall table, too tired to tackle the stairs to my bedroom yet. I’d gotten little sleep last night because of the prisoner escape, then spent a claustrophobic hour squished in the back of an army staff car between Miss Osborne and Merle, followed by a full workday deciphering prisoner intake forms, every one written in a different handwriting and most incomplete. But I was thrilled, because my day was much more interesting than any day I had spent in the Registry, and I hoped I’d have many more away from a typewriter and a file cabinet!

  I riffled through the mail on the hall table. Nothing for me. That was both good and bad. I loved my parents and my brother, but their letters just reminded me of how badly I did not want to return to Wilmington, North Carolina to live in my parents’ house and work at the family fish camp. And be pushed by my mother into a second marriage to anyone who could support me.

  I was nervous about my future. Like all war workers my contract was for the duration of the war and no more. But I wanted to continue to earn my living in either Washington or another city, to have my own apartment and maybe even a car someday. Now that I was more than a file clerk I intended to acquire the skills and connections that would help me stay employed after the war was over.

  The government was already preparing working women to lose their war jobs and return to their traditional domestic role. All the women’s magazines were full of advertisements for how to use the cash we’d get from selling our bonds after the war was over, and it wasn’t for education. Most suggested down payments on houses, sets of fine china or silver, whatever might be needed to set up a home. All that was required was a husband, and I didn’t have one.

  My savings – and I planned to add my raise to them – would go toward college if I couldn’t find a decent job after the war. A woman I admired greatly in the Research and Analysis branch where I’d first worked had offered to sponsor me for Smith College if I wanted to go.

  I continued flipping through the mail, looking for a Malta postmark without success. I wished I heard more often from Rachel, my Jewish friend who escaped with her two children from France at the last possible moment before being sent to a labor camp. I hoped some of my unauthorized work on her behalf had helped her get to Malta. She was safe there, but I still loved hearing from her.

  There was nothing from Joe, either. Damn the man! He’d popped up here Monday night without any notice, been spoiled and feted by all of us, hinted around at the chance he and I might be able to spend some time together alone, then took off without leaving me his address or phone number! Yes, we didn’t want anyone to know about our romance. But how hard would it have been for him to mail me a note telling me how to get in touch with him?

  I picked up my valise and my hat and stomped upstairs to my room to unpack and clean up. I’d had a wonderfully long hot shower at our billet last night, so I just sponged off and changed into trousers and a checked shirt and cardigan. I drew open my underwear drawer and pulled out a half-pint, close to empty, of Gordon’s gin, filled a tumbler with what I judged to be about a jigger, waved a bit of vermouth over it, took two aspirin and chased it with a swallow of the martini. Sitting on my bed, supported by two pillows at my back, I sipped my martini with closed eyes, feeling the ache in the back of my neck fade away.

  ‘Welcome home,’ Milt said, as he pulled the dining room chair out for me, then deftly helped me push myself up to the dining room table, all with just one arm.

  ‘How did I do?’ he asked.

  ‘Very well,’ I said.

  Milt seated his mother, then he and Henry took their seats. Ada was missing from the dinner table again tonight. I wished she was here so I couldn’t postpone telling her that I had no way of finding out if her German husband was a prisoner of war. At least, I knew he wasn’t at Fort Meade. Why had I said I would try to find out if Rein was a prisoner of war? Just to get her to calm down and go to bed the night she woke me up so I could go back to sleep? For that selfish act I was sentenced to another emotional meeting with her, and I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

  I was back on rations. Phoebe, Milt, Ada, Henry and I had agreed that we’d rather have meatless meals than eat beef tongue or brains, so tonight we had macaroni and cheese, green beans, carrots, fresh rolls and sliced peaches for dessert. There was margarine instead of butter for the rolls, since Dellaphine had used up our week’s ration of butter to make Joe’s cake. Which made me remember how angry I was with him!

  ‘So,’ Phoebe said to me, ‘how was your time away?’

  I felt Henry’s eyes on me. He had to be curious why a government girl, just a file clerk, needed to leave town for her job.

  ‘It was fine,’ I said.

  ‘Do you have a new job?’ Henry said.

  ‘Not really,’ I answered. ‘There’s a shortage of experienced clerical workers, you know.’

  ‘Lending you out, are they?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Cut it out,’ Milt said to him. ‘You know she can’t say anything.’

  Henry shrugged.

  Since the topic had been broached I decided to go all in. ‘I may be traveling quite a bit,’ I said. ‘It looks like I’ll be out of town all next week. Maybe the following week too.’

  Phoebe put her fork down on her plate, wiped her mouth and glared at me. ‘In my day a girl didn’t travel for work. It would ruin her reputation.’

  ‘We’re at war, Mother,’ Milt said. ‘Louise can take care of herself.’

  ‘If you’re about to tell me that times are changing, I’m well aware of it,’ Phoebe said to her son. ‘That doesn’t mean I approve.’ She turned back to me. ‘Does your mother know about this?’

  I was thirty years old and a widow, for God’s sake! And shacked up with a foreign refugee, which I planned to continue to be if I ever got Joe’s address and phone number. But of course I kept my annoyance to myself.

  ‘Phoebe,’ I said. ‘I appreciate your concern. I assure you that I am perfectly safe when I travel.’ Then I glared at Henry. ‘Yes, my job has changed somewhat, but you know darn well I can’t talk about it. You’re only quizzing me because I’m a woman. If I were a man you wouldn’t think twice about me going out of town for work.’

  ‘She’s got you there,’ Milt said, chuckling, as he carefully used the side of his fork to cut a slippery canned peach into bite-sized chunks.

  We finished our so-called dessert in silence.

  Phoebe and I carried the dishes into the kitchen, where Dellaphine was already up to her elbows in suds and Madeleine was finishing her own dinner at the kitchen table. Phoebe loaded the coffee things on to a tray to take into the lounge and took it out into the hall.

  Madeline carefully folded her napkin so it could be used again, and grinned at me. Of course she and Dellaphine had overheard the entire dinner table conversation. ‘Mr Henry just wants to know why you have a job that takes you out of town and he doesn’t,’ Madeleine said. ‘He’s worried you’re more important than he is.’ I saw her glance at her mother’s back to make sure Dellaphine wasn’t watching, then take a small square of paper out of her pocket and hand it to me, her finger up to her mouth to shush me.

  It was from Joe. All the note said was ‘Meet me at Martin’s Tavern, Georgetown, Saturday, one o’clock’. He’d signed it with just a ‘J’.

  I heard the sound of Dellaphine turning from the sink and jammed my hand with the note into my dress pocket, my blood pounding through my heart s
o strongly I could feel it hammering on my ribs. Dellaphine went into the pantry, and Madeleine leaned toward me and whispered, ‘Mr Joe met me at the bus stop and gave the note to me to bring to you.’ Dellaphine came back into the kitchen with a clean dishtowel. I mouthed a ‘thank you’ to Madeleine before heading to the staircase.

  ‘Aren’t you going to join us, Louise?’ Phoebe called out from the lounge.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ I answered back. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to read in bed.’

  Which I did. I read Joe’s note over and over again. He was a smart man. Devious might be a better word; his spycraft was worthy of one of our agents. He’d written me a note that didn’t include his address or telephone number, arranging for us to meet at a restaurant we’d never been to before in an unfamiliar part of town, during an innocent time of day, all without actually identifying himself. And delivered said note to me by meeting our cook’s daughter at her bus stop. Madeleine was a perfect go-between for us, because I didn’t tell her mother about her late Saturday nights at ‘U’ Street jazz joints, so we could hold each other’s private life hostage.

  I jerked awake. I’d fallen asleep fully dressed, The Robe open on my lap, when I heard the sound of the front door closing. Ada wasn’t being very quiet. I was glad she’d woken me up, though; I was desperate to talk to her about her husband. I heard her coming up the stairs and called out to her as softly as I could while still getting her attention.

  ‘Ada?’

  She heard me and came straight into my room, closing the door behind her and sitting on the corner of my bed. She was dressed beautifully, as she always was when she went out with one of her many admirers. Cleavage had come back in style, and she’d been quick to buy dresses that highlighted her best feature. Her hair was dressed in the newest style too, pressed smoothly back into a knot at the base of her neck with a sequined half-hat perched on top of her head, tied under the knot with a ribbon. Ada was a party girl, and went out most nights with either her fellow band members or some man who’d picked her up after a set.