“All I have are a few ideas on what the letters might mean.”
“The operative word being might. Trust me, whatever you tell him will need to be corroborated and verified. It’s possible Uncle Richard would make a phone call or two, but no one’s going to be arrested tonight. Probably not tomorrow either.”
Phillip’s mood shifted as he let go of her arms and stared toward the horizon. “December seventh. That’s the only time I knew him to go to work on a Sunday.”
Eloise’s mind went back to that tragic morning. A gentle snowfall had blanketed the tree-lined streets, presenting a picture that could have graced a Currier and Ives Christmas card. After church, she and her mom joined friends at a local diner. They were enjoying warm slices of apple pie served with generous helpings of vanilla ice cream when the attack was announced on the radio. The clatter of dinnerware and buzz of conversation quieted, the eerie silence somehow louder than the earlier commotion. Someone turned up the volume on the radio. As the announcer repeated the news, Eloise stared at her mother, who stared at her uneaten dessert. A single tear rested on her cheek. Eloise blinked back her own tears and squeezed her mother’s hand. Her touch was the only comfort she could offer.
She didn’t trust her voice now any more than she had then.
“A day of infamy,” Phillip said.
Eloise swallowed the lump in her throat and prayed she could respond without sounding too emotional. Without thinking, she gripped Phillip’s arm. “Never to be forgotten.”
A tense quiet settled over them. Eloise struggled to stop the flood of memories that threatened to wash over her. Now wasn’t the time to relive the arrival of the dreaded telegram or the flag-draped casket.
“That settles it.” Phillip gently prodded her shoulder with his. “We’re definitely putting the war behind us for a few hours.”
Eloise wanted to agree. A break sounded heavenly, and she was grateful for his efforts to lighten the mood. But…“You can get away with ignoring your uncle. I can’t.”
“Are you accusing Uncle Richard of nepotism?” Phillip teased, his boyish grin a charming alternative to his previous gloom. “He’d be devastated.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Eloise couldn’t help but return his smile. “And you know it.”
“Let’s find a phone.”
“There’s one in the lobby.”
“Perfect.” He grabbed her hand, and they hurried back to the dormitory.
Eloise wandered to a plant stand near the window so Phillip could make the call in private. She didn’t want to stare at him, but this seemed a good opportunity to practice reading body language, one of the skills she’d been introduced to in her accelerated course.
He appeared relaxed as he chatted, his expression open and warm. Very different than when they first met. Then a wall had surrounded him—one with a sign that said No girls! Keep out! Just like on her brother’s tree house. Not that Eloise had ever paid attention to the message. As long as she climbed the tree with a bag of sandwiches or a box of cookies, she was welcomed.
That wall had dissipated, though now Phillip seemed driven by a nervous energy she hadn’t noticed before. What had he been up to while she was taking classes and learning to fire a gun? Would he tell her if she asked?
She plucked brown leaves from a purple African violet. When he chuckled, she glanced his way, and he gave her a thumbs-up. Nepotism or not, he and his uncle obviously had a close relationship. For the first time, she was struck by the handsome line of his jaw and the playful gleam in his eyes. Her pulse quickened, and she feigned interest in a vining philodendron so he wouldn’t see the flush in her cheeks.
The call ended soon after. “Permission granted,” he said as he came toward her. “As long as he gets to select the movie. Care to take a guess?”
Eloise reflected on the movies she’d heard her colleagues talk about in recent weeks. “Is he a baseball fan? I think there’s a movie playing about Lou Gehrig.”
“What true blue American isn’t a baseball fan? And you’re right. It’s called Pride of the Yankees. But you’re also wrong. That isn’t the one.”
“The new Superman movie? The Three Stooges?”
Phillip shook his head, and his grin widened. Eloise was at a loss. “I give up.”
“Have you seen The Postman Didn’t Ring?”
Of course, that would be the one Richard chose for them. The distinguished gentleman apparently had a good-natured ornery streak. “I’ve seen previews for it,” she said. “Missing letters found in an attic.”
“Two people traveling across the country to deliver them.” Phillip chuckled. “He thought we might learn a thing or two.”
“Do those two people pretend to be siblings too?”
“I guess we’ll find out.” He checked his watch. “But we need to hurry, or we’ll miss the cartoons.”
His boyish excitement caused Eloise’s heart to turn cartwheels, which was not something she wanted to happen, especially not with someone as temperamental as Phillip was proving to be. Stony-cold serious one day, fun and games another. Except that wasn’t quite fair. He’d seemed troubled when they met in the lobby. The boyish persona hid something deeper—something he wanted to avoid thinking about for a few hours.
Her heart, also in need of a reprieve from grief, merely responded to his liveliness with a buoyancy of its own.
Instead of spending her evening nervously briefing a higher-up in the FBI, she’d be enjoying a movie with a strangely mercurial FBI agent. That getting-to-know-you awkwardness between them still existed, but at least this wasn’t an official date, though it was certainly a step up from a blind date. With neither of them harboring any romantic notions, however, she could relax. Laugh at the cartoons. Enjoy the popcorn. And escape into another world where young men weren’t killed by bombs and mothers didn’t cry themselves to sleep every night.
CHAPTER NINE
The movie, an entertaining mix of over-the-top comedy, small-town shenanigans, and a hero-gets-the-girl love story, was a welcome break from glum thoughts about traitors and saboteurs. Phillip also appreciated having an attractive young woman to share his bucket of popcorn. He had no romantic designs on Eloise, but what red-blooded American male didn’t enjoy the company of a good-looking gal who turned the heads of other guys?
An interesting observation about Eloise, though. She didn’t seem to notice the masculine attention.
The invitation to the movie had been on the spur of the moment. Just like the episode with the crayons a few weeks ago, he couldn’t say what prompted him to suggest such a thing. But he’d needed this evening. He guessed she did too.
Spots of light from streetlamps and automobiles softened the darkness that had descended around them. Blackout rules weren’t as strict here in the States as they were in England. Phillip hoped they never had to be. Especially when a flashing neon sign on the corner caught his attention, giving him an excuse to postpone saying good night for a while longer. He wasn’t ready to return to the tiny two-room apartment he called home. Once he stepped across that threshold, the details of the military trial would descend upon him as he replayed his testimony, second-guessed what he’d said, heard again the solemn pronouncement of the tribunal’s death sentence.
He shoved away the gloomy thoughts. Not yet. Not here.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, forcing a grin, “but I’m starving. Why don’t we stop by that diner before calling it a night?”
Eloise looked toward the vertical sign with its flashing green letters spelling out the words ROSIE‘S CAFÉ. He’d been prepared for her hesitation. After all, she’d expected to spend this evening talking over letters and plans with Richard, not on a…well, it wasn’t really a date…but she hadn’t been expecting to spend the evening with him. He hoped she didn’t regret it. He certainly didn’t.
Even though he preferred to go on this cross-country mission without a civilian as his partner—no matter how skilled she was at breaking code
s and talking to other women about dolls—their time together outside of work seemed to have eased a lingering tension between them, a tension that was mostly his fault.
Perhaps that was why Richard so quickly agreed to Phillip’s request to postpone the planned debriefing. A suspicious notion popped into Phillip’s head. Had this been his uncle’s plan all along? He certainly did have the movie times conveniently at hand. That old geezer.
“I wouldn’t mind a bite to eat,” Eloise said, breaking into his thoughts. “I have time before the academy’s curfew, and it’s such a lovely evening. I’m not ready for it to end.”
From someone else, Phillip would have interpreted that last sentence as flirtatious. But he didn’t have to read Eloise’s mind to understand she was as reluctant as he to return to an empty room.
“Me either.” He offered his arm, and she tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow.
Once inside the diner, Phillip led the way to a corner table and pulled out the chair for Eloise. He took the seat with a view toward the entrance.
“I know what you’re doing,” Eloise said, a sly tone in her voice.
“What am I doing?”
Instead of answering, she tilted her head and gave him a long, knowing look. He suppressed a chuckle. “What can I say? It’s a habit.”
“Always watching. Always assessing. Do you ever tire of being on guard?”
A waitress wearing a blue apron over a white uniform brought water glasses and menus to the table. She spouted off the evening special of pork chops with corn on the cob and promised to be back soon to take their order.
“I’ve eaten here before,” Phillip said, grateful that the waitress’s appearance had interrupted the conversation. He didn’t like admitting it, but yes, sometimes he tired of “being on guard.” However, what choice did he have?
He was too young to have participated in the public enemy era of the early 1930s. The shoot-outs, captures, and deaths of such notables as John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd had clinched the reputation of the FBI as a highly trained force of skilled and tireless agents whose only purpose in life was to rid the world of criminal scum.
But in the early years of this new decade, the public faced a new and more frightening danger that only a few knew about—enemy saboteurs who hid in the shadows while hatching their destructive plans.
“What do you recommend?” Eloise asked. Her voice once again pulled him from his thoughts. Somehow, he sensed she knew that. At least she hadn’t returned to her original question.
“I like the meat loaf.” He put extra oomph in his response as if to prove he could relax. “The roasted chicken is good too.”
After a bit of back-and-forth debating, they both settled on the chicken. Phillip gave their orders to the waitress when she returned.
“I suppose we’ll be eating together all the time once we start traveling.” A flush crept up Eloise’s neck. “I mean, of course we will. It’s strange to think about, that’s all.”
“Maybe sooner than that.” Phillip folded his hands on the table. “We have to pay a price for tonight’s freedom from the grind of work.”
“What price?” Her tone revealed she was intrigued.
“Richard requests our presence at dinner tomorrow. After church, of course. Apparently, he’s breaking his ‘no work on Sunday’ rule to hear what you have to say.”
Eloise’s cheeks reddened, and her eyes grew large with panic. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”
“Because I needed a diversion. And I think you did too.”
“You’re right.” The color in her cheeks slowly subsided, but the panic didn’t quite leave her eyes. “The last few days have been…intense.” Her lips, a flattering shade of pink, turned down at the corners, and her shoulders drooped.
“That bad?” he asked gently, suddenly eager for her to confide in him, though he couldn’t explain why. Perhaps because he needed to know her, to understand her. Partners worked best when they could anticipate the other’s moods and knew how to respond to them. That kind of relationship took time, but time was a luxury they didn’t have.
“I did well on the written and observational tests.” She perked up as she shared that news. Then she leaned forward and whispered, “Am I allowed to tell you that?”
He grinned, touched by her eagerness not to make even the simplest faux pas. “It’s fine,” he whispered back. “What about the obstacle course?”
“I barely passed. We both better pray I don’t have to scale a wall in a hurry.”
Phillip leaned back and laughed. She stared at him, hurt in her eyes, but he couldn’t help himself. The image he had conjured of her stuck on a wall like a hapless fly was too funny. “I’m sorry,” he managed to say before bursting into another round of laughter.
“It was humiliating,” she said, crossing her arms and glaring at him. “I’ve spent the past months sitting behind a desk staring at message printouts of jumbled letters and numbers, and now I’m expected to be a…a…Tarzan.”
Phillip laughed again, and after a moment, Eloise did too. The laughter subsided when the waitress appeared with their meals and an amused look in her eyes.
“I’m sure you did fine,” he said to Eloise after the waitress left them. “No one expected you to pass everything with flying colors.”
“I did,” she admitted as she placed her napkin in her lap.
With the bout of uncontrollable laughter out of his system, he gave her a reassuring smile. “Do you mind if I say grace?”
Surprise flickered in her eyes. It was there then quickly gone. He guessed she hadn’t considered him to be a praying man. “Please do,” she said quietly then bowed her head.
He said a simple prayer, asking God’s blessing on their meal and on their work. She echoed his amen then accepted the butter dish he held out to her.
“How did you do with marksmanship?” he asked, keeping his tone conversational and, fingers crossed, hoping she’d done well. She might not forgive him if he laughed at her again.
“Not much better than the obstacle course.” She frowned as she buttered her yeast roll then set the knife on the edge of her plate. “What if I’m not the right person for this mission?”
Her crestfallen expression did something to Phillip’s insides that he couldn’t explain. The urge to console her, to hold her, swept over him and tied his stomach into knots. He hadn’t wanted her as a partner, but her admission somehow changed that. Or maybe it was the emotional merry-go-round he’d been riding the past few days that had his sympathy on overdrive. His disappointment over the failed appeal. The skepticism of being paired with a civilian. His unsettled despondency over the Operation Pastorius trial.
It could be all those things or none of those things. He didn’t have time to sort out his thoughts. All he knew was that she needed to be the one to go with him. Richard, as always, was right. She couldn’t back out. Not now.
“Who was your instructor?” he asked, doing his best to keep his tone conversational.
“The first week, it was Lieutenant Boyd.” She heaved a deep sigh as if preparing herself for his disappointment. “I did everything wrong. It was awful.”
Phillip snorted. Boyd was a skilled marksman, but he didn’t have the best temperament for teaching novices how to shoot. His expectations were high, too high for beginners. “He’s used to working with experts. Making the best even better, I guess you could say.”
“He definitely wasn’t happy teaching me. I don’t think he likes women.” She stared at him, as if challenging him in some way he didn’t understand.
The truth was Boyd liked women very much. Too much. But Boyd believed men and women had distinct roles. He didn’t like females encroaching on his territory. Phillip didn’t plan to share any of that with Eloise. She might believe he thought the same. With four sisters at home, two older and two younger, Phillip valued the talents and expertise women could offer their country. They were needed now more than ever to fill
the gaps left by the men who’d gone away from home to fight.
“You said you had Boyd the first week. Did he give up on you?”
“The second week this other instructor showed up. Sergeant Prescott. I liked him much better.”
“I’ve worked with Prescott. He’s a good man. He can be stern, but he has a heart.”
“He is definitely patient. At least now I can hit the outer rim of the bull’s-eye.”
“All you need is more practice.”
“Why?”
Startled by her determined tone, he lowered his fork. “What do you mean, why?”
“I don’t want to carry a gun, Phillip. I don’t want to shoot anyone. I can’t.”
“You probably won’t have to. But this is a skill you need. Just in case.”
“In case what?” She leaned toward him and lowered her voice. “Someone who collects dolls decides to shoot us?”
“We don’t know what’s going to happen on this trip. The most unlikely person could be a threat.” Phillip paused to figure out what to say to make her understand. “I know it’s hard, and I hope it never comes down to a shooting match between you and someone else, but if it does, in case it does, you need to know how to protect yourself.” His voice became too adamant, too pleading. He took a deep breath. “You owe it to your family. And to…to the Bureau.”
He’d bit his tongue from saying she owed it to him. She owed him nothing except to do her job and to do it well. If there was any shooting to be done, he could take care of it. But that didn’t change anything. She needed to be comfortable with a gun in her hand.
“After we meet with Richard tomorrow, I’ll take you to the range myself.”
“That isn’t…you don’t need to do that.”
“I promise you. I have even more patience than Prescott. And I’m nothing like Boyd.”
He gave her his lopsided grin, one specially designed to get his way with his sisters. “It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”
“Or it’ll be a colossal waste of time.”
“How about I tell you what happened to me on my first day of obstacle training? It might make you feel better, but you have to promise not to laugh.” The story he spun was about one-fourth fact and three-fourths fiction, but it did the trick. Maybe having Eloise along for the mission wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all, though he wasn’t yet ready to admit that to Richard.
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