by Warren Court
“Thought I missed you,” she told him.
“You almost did. Corporal McWilliams here was going to drive me to the train station. I’m on the Red Ball to Detroit. Sorry, but we have to get going.”
“That job offer—I want it, if it’s not filled.”
Arthur chuckled again. “It’s not filled. You only turned me down last night. Why the change of heart?”
“I’m free. My circumstances have been altered. I’m all yours.”
“And the next flying promotional tour that comes your way? You’re not going to abandon me halfway through this thing, are you?”
“No, sir. Those swine, the Lux Corporation. They don’t want my flying skills, just my girlish good looks.” She struck a pose and went sweet. Arthur didn’t bite,
“I’m serious, Aubrey. Are you committed to this? I dare say it’s a good deal more important than any soap-selling promotion.”
“I promise. They cabled me this morning. I’m not even going to bother to reply. They can get some cutie anywhere. So, what do you say?”
Arthur reached into his pocket and retrieved a paper folder, the kind they tucked train tickets into. He handed it to her and pulled her away from Corporal McWilliams.
“You’re on the Red Ball to Detroit—same one I’m on, only two days from now. Gives you time to get sorted and say goodbye to your father.”
At the mention of her father, a frown creased her face. She’d almost forgotten the horrific episode last night. By all rights, if he’d had better aim when he was half asleep, she should be dead. The gun was still in her nightstand.
Arthur looked at her. “What’s the matter? Is he alright?”
“He’s fine. I’ll talk to him about this. Detroit and then where? You weren’t finished.”
“And then a connecting train to New York. I need you there no later than the twenty-ninth.”
“For what?”
“For your briefing. After you sign your life away to me and Uncle Sam, that is.” He handed over the ticket. “Pack for a three-week trip. Plenty of warm clothes and then some nice evening wear, I’d suggest.”
“Really?” She gave him a dubious look. “I don’t have anything like that. I wear pants mostly. Comfortable for flying.”
“There’s a bank draft in there for expenses. Use some of it to get fixed up.”
“In Sacred? Hardly.”
“New York, then. They have stores there, you know.”
“Don’t I know it.” She grinned. “Okay, fantastic. I’ll meet you where?”
“The details are in there. First thing you learn, Aubrey: when working for me, when we’re out in public, you keep your mouth shut.”
The seriousness of his tone shocked her. She nodded. “Uh-huh. Got it.”
“Fine. Now, take this horse home and say goodbye to him. Tell your dad another goodbye from me. Tell him I’ll take care of you. You won’t be able to write or make any phone calls for a while, but I’ll keep in touch.”
“Okay, Uncle Arthur.”
“And it’s Walton, John Walton, from here on out. It’s called a work name. You’ll understand after the twenty-ninth.”
“Right, Mr. Walton.” She watched him drive away from the hotel and then remounted Ferguson.
“Come along, Fergie. We’ll take it nice and slow on the way home. Good boy.”
Aubrey did indeed take her time getting home. She went by way of the Western Union office, where she paid seventy-nine cents to send a three-word reply to the Lux Corporation: Offer politely declined. She rode slowly the rest of the way home, though her mind and heart were racing ahead of her by a mile.
“You catch him?” her father asked when she came into his study. He was sipping a coffee and watching one of the Millerson boys plow the back forty. He had a brass telescope set up for that purpose.
“I did indeed.”
“When do you leave?”
“In two days. Mr. Wal—” She had been about to use his workname but caught herself in time. Her father gave her a sharp look.
“It’s a shifty business he’s in. My advice to you is to get in, make some money, polish your typing skills and then get out. The whole world is opening up for you, Aubrey, and you’ll make some good contacts. Just don’t get sucked too deeply into Arthur’s world.”
“What did Uncle Arthur do for you in the army? You never told me. I mean, I know he was in G2, whatever that was.”
“He was in Army Intelligence, assigned to the Air Service. He ran spies in France and Belgium that provided intelligence on the targets we hit. And since we’re sharing here, what did he have you do over there?”
Aubrey breathed in deeply. She was about to break her promise to Arthur Colins.
“I had to fly over Germany and land in a field. Pick someone up.”
“I see. Dangerous?”
She remembered the stuttering sound of the machine gun fire from the fighters. The evil glow of the green tracers, fingers of death reaching out for her. And she remembered vividly the man whose hand she’d held in that field in Belgium.
“No. Piece of cake. Arthur said it was going to be routine, and he was true to his word.” She had at least kept part of the promise.
“Germany? Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”
“It was a one-off thing. Like you said, this time I’m probably going to be polishing my typing skills.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Aubrey daydreamed while she set out clothes to take on her trip to New York. She went to the nightstand to retrieve her diary and saw the Colt .45 sitting on top of it. The magazine with its copper-tipped bullets lay next to it. She picked the weapon up. Its weight gave it a certain confidence and character all its own. She knew she could put a round into a target a hundred feet away with a fair degree of accuracy, and with a rifle she was even better. She hefted the weapon in her hand, thought about it here in the house alone with her father. He might find it and reload it: ‘Not much good if it isn’t loaded,’ he always said. And then one night when he was in the dark place, back there on the airfield in France or flying behind enemy lines, and the ghosts of the dead he’d left behind came out to haunt him, what would he do with it? Would he merely put another bullet into the bedroom wall, or do something worse?
She shuddered. The weapon should be disposed of, given away, perhaps handed over to the Millersons for safekeeping. But that would not be much better; what if one of their grandkids picked it up and played with it? Okay, well, maybe she could bury it in a field. Again, she hesitated; for some reason the gleaming black weapon didn’t deserve a fate as ignominious as that. It had served her father well during the war. In the end, she carried it and the magazine down to the kitchen and put them in a large counter jar her mother had used for flour.
For a brief moment, she dreamt of riding in train carriages and love affairs with dark-haired, exotic agents. Were such things possible? Childish, schoolgirl fantasies, she finally concluded and chided herself. She had no idea what her uncle Arthur, now Mr. John Walton, had in store for her. But she was eager to find out.
5
John Walton was there on the platform in Penn Station when Aubrey arrived. He took her single suitcase and led her to a waiting taxi.
“No car, no driver this time?”
Walton smiled. “Too conspicuous here in New York. Too impractical. I find the subway a lot easier to get around.”
The taxi took them over to the Piedmont Hotel, where Aubrey had a room booked for her. She was checked in and left on her own for an hour. Walton had to attend to something, he said, but would be back to collect her.
He was punctual; there was rap on her door at the sixty-minute mark. She let her uncle in. He had someone with him, a smaller man, glasses, rather bookish. He looked like an accountant.
“Aubrey, this is Carson. He’s with me.”
The man did not offer to shake hands, just nodded perfunctorily and went to the small table in the room. He had a briefcase with him and he s
et it on the table and opened it. A pile of papers was spread out on the bed.
Arthur said, “We want you to read these, Aubrey. These are terms of employment. They’re mandatory, I’m afraid.”
She picked up the papers and glanced through them. They were legal contracts of some kind.
“They’re an acknowledgement that you have read the Espionage Act of 1917. That you swear an oath of allegiance to this country, promise not to betray her to a foreign power.”
“But Unc—Mr. Walton. Haven’t I already proven my loyalty?”
“It’s necessary, Aubrey, before we brief you on your first mission.”
“Doesn’t sound like I’m being sent off to the steno pool,” she quipped.
“Gosh, no,” Walton said, raising his eyebrows. “Go ahead—read them thoroughly and sign if you want to continue. If you don’t, I have return tickets to Michigan. No hard feelings.”
“Pen,” Aubrey said. Carson produced one and Aubrey rifled through the papers to the final one and signed it. She handed them back to Carson along with the pen.
“I’m in.”
“Excellent. Carson, over to you.”
John Walton went over to the window and looked down on Manhattan while Carson talked to her for the next hour.
“You want me to go back?” Aubrey said when he was finished.
“Yes,” Carson said.
“To Germany? I barely made it out alive the first time.”
Carson looked embarrassed. Maybe he wasn’t privy to the details of the operation to lift that spy out of the Nazi Reich. She didn’t give a damn.
Walton spoke up. “This will be different. Nothing dangerous, I promise. All we want you to do is attend this aviation exhibition. The Germans are anxious to show off their tremendous leaps forward in aeronautics. You’d be representing the United States.”
“Me? Little old me?”
“You’re a celebrity in Germany.”
“Oh, come on.”
“It’s true.”
John Walton produced a glossy magazine with German writing on it. It had a picture of Hitler on the cover, naturally. He flipped to the middle of the magazine.
“There’s an article here about you; nice picture. Women flyers are celebrities in Europe. You must have experienced some of that when you were in Poland.”
“True.” She wouldn’t admit it, but she had loved the attention the Poles had lavished on her. “But surely someone bigger than me could go. Maybe Earhart? She did solo the Atlantic.”
“We tried. Her husband, Putnam, that hustler, has his eyes set on bigger things for her. Hollywood, perhaps. Personally, I think you’d make a bigger splash on the west coast than Amelia Earhart.”
“Why, thank you.” She mock-preened. “So, what am I supposed to do at this exhibition?”
“Look at the new aircraft Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf are producing. In particular, the new Bf 109. We know hardly anything about it. It’s still in prototype phase, and but it’s going to be the main fighter of Hitler’s Luftwaffe. We hear it’s fast.”
“Why do I think there’s more to it than that?”
“This operation will be run by the Brits.”
Aubrey put her cup down; she remembered the last British intelligence man she’d met.
“Look, they’re the best at this sort of thing.”
“Thought I was just supposed to look around.”
“Maybe take a photo or two. They’ll teach you how to do that. Ask the right questions, probe. We want to know about stall rates, rates of climb, fuel consumption, speeds at takeoff, range, armament. This information could be vital in the years to come. You can’t deny that you’re perfectly suited for this assignment.”
“And how am I supposed to get this information out of Germany?”
“The Brits will show you how. We can’t expect you to memorize everything.”
“When do I leave?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“You’ll catch a steamer to Cherbourg, France. The exhibition just started; you’ll be a little late.”
“Good planning.” She rolled her eyes.
Walton shrugged. “It is what it is.”
“Boy, that’s clever.”
“So…”
“I guess when my country calls, I answer it.”
“Fantastic. I have the tickets here. You’ll meet a man named Purnsley in Paris. Here are the contact details. Follow them to the letter. You have the rest of the night to memorize them. They’ll have to be destroyed afterwards.”
“I was supposed to do a little shopping.”
“I had one of my girls do it for you. The clothes are in the closet.”
“Do I get a code name?”
“No, you’re going as Aubrey Endeavours, the famous aviatrix.”
“Right, forgot. Aviatrix and spy. What if I get arrested?”
“What for?”
“That earlier trip to Germany,” she said.
“They haven’t the foggiest that it was you that night. The crash in Belgium—they bought the whole thing. There was an outpouring of relief that you were unhurt. All of Europe expressed it.”
“Guess I missed that.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just concentrate on the job at hand.”
“It will be a little difficult. I mean, they did try to kill me; they came awfully close.”
“It’s the nature of our profession.”
Our profession. She liked the sound of that.
She was left alone for an hour. Carson left the Paris contact details for her on the promise that she would burn them in the tub after reading them. They were simple enough; she suspected they were keeping it as uncomplicated as they could for her.
6
John Walton returned alone and got her loaded into the car for the short drive to the New York docks on the East River. The steamer was of the P&O Line, she was booked in tourist class.
“What about salary?” Aubrey said before boarding.
“It’s about time you asked me,” Walton said.
“You know what? I totally forgot.” She’d received a hundred dollars for the snatch job out of Germany.
“You’re a freelance journalist. Just starting out in your new career. You’ve got contracts with several magazines here in the States to publish your articles and your photographs under your own name. Here are the details.” He handed her a sheaf of papers. “You can familiarize yourself with them on board.”
She flipped through the paperwork, noticed the dates were two weeks old. Were those legitimate or clever forgeries? If they were legitimate, and this thing had been planned weeks in advance, maybe her uncle had had a hand in fending off the Lux Corporation? Nonsense, she told herself. She’d only just told him about that the same day he proposed that she come work for him. He couldn’t possibly have that kind of power.
“You will actually have to write a couple of articles and hand over some photographs of German planes and perhaps Berlin to make it legitimate. They’ll pay you for them. Journalism is just a cover. In reality, you’re working for the State Department. I can’t tell you which branch. Officially, we don’t exist. You’ll be paid by us into a secret bank account. The money will be here waiting for you when you return.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred a year.”
Aubrey’s eyes widened. That was more money than most men made.
“Just don’t go flashing it around. Keep it as a nest egg, for when this is all over.”
She didn’t know what he meant by that, but figured she’d extracted enough info out of him for the time being. They said goodbye at the gangplank that crossed over to the ship. To make it look legitimate they even embraced, just a father seeing his daughter off. Once on deck she made her way to the railing, but John Walton had already left.
The trip was uneventful. They ran into a storm midway across, which sent the passengers to their cabins. She could hear retching from the one next door. A d
ecade of flying had hardened her stomach and she wasn’t bothered by rough seas.
They landed at Cherbourg after a seven-day journey and she caught the boat train into Paris. Carson had arranged modest accommodation for her for two nights. Enough time to make contact with her British handler.
She thought of the money the government was paying her. But she also remembered that her father had remarked how the government went back on its word like it was a hobby. But would her uncle go back on his? She didn’t think so.