Safe Haven

by Anna Schmidt

  © 2014 by Anna Schmidt

  Print ISBN 978-1-62029-142-9

  eBook Editions:

  Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-63058-554-9

  Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-63058-555-6

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

  All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Kirk DouPonce, DogEared Design

  Published by Shiloh Run Press, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, OH 44683, www.shilohrunpress.com

  Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Part 1

  “They Come to the Fence”

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part 2

  “Hope Fading and for One—Hope Gone”

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part 3

  “VE–Day—Hooray! But What Next for Ft. Ontario?”

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  With appreciation to all who make sure that history lives on, this novel is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Willard Schum (October 24, 1931–September 29, 2013), founder of the Safe Haven Museum, Oswego, New York, and to the surviving “guests” of the Fort Ontario Emergency Relief Shelter, who will gather in the summer of 2014 for the seventieth reunion.

  PROLOGUE

  Washington, DC

  Late July 1944

  It was still dark when the jangle of the phone next to the sofa startled Suzanne Randolph awake. This was the fifth night in a row that she had fallen asleep without bothering to undress or get into her bed. The fact that on this night she had taken the time to go get the pillow and quilt from her bedroom and bring them to the sofa probably indicated this was a long-term move.

  Instead of answering the phone balanced precariously on the edge of a makeshift table that was little more than an unsteady stack of coffee-table books with a tray set on top, she burrowed more deeply under the patchwork quilt. Three years earlier—the ink practically still wet on her college diploma—she had been hired by one of the nation’s top morning newspapers and moved to the nation’s capital, the nerve center for political news.

  Her mother had bought the quilt for her as a housewarming present when she moved to Washington, DC, to start her first job. “To keep you warm in the cold, cruel world of politics,” she’d said. Her mother had a wicked sense of humor. She also looked at the world through a prism that everything happened for a purpose that would become clear with time.

  For the first several months that she worked at the paper, Suzanne took whatever assignment she was given—local council meetings, obituaries, society news about political wives doing their bit for the war effort. Then like an understudy on Broadway, she got her chance to show what she could do. A major story broke in the middle of the night, and she was the first reporter on the scene. Of course the veteran reporters got the credit as well as the bylines. Still, she had filed a human interest piece related to the overall drama, and the paper’s managing editor—Edwin Bonner—had been impressed. So impressed that he had begun giving her assignments with a higher profile. In short order her dream of becoming a respected journalist seemed within reach.

  Now, of course, she’d managed to ruin all that.

  Finally the phone burped out half a ring that was abruptly cut off when apparently the caller gave up. Suzanne pulled the quilt more firmly around her shoulders as she turned over and faced the back of the sofa.

  The phone rang again.

  She covered her ears and counted the rings as she waited for silence. When it came, she eased back the quilt. Why was she all covered up like it was January instead of July with its steam bath of heat and humidity that was normal for summer in DC? Her apartment windows were wide open, and not a hint of a breeze stirred in spite of the asthmatic whirring of the ancient table fan she’d picked up at a tag sale. Why was she still lying here on a day when she should be up scanning the want ads as she looked for a job—any job?

  “You’re pathetic,” she muttered as she threw back the quilt and lay on her back, staring up at the water-stained ceiling that the super had promised for the last year to repaint. It could be her mother calling, but she and Suzanne’s stepfather were on a fishing vacation in Canada so that was unlikely. It could be a friend. That was even less likely, because since the scandal, her so-called friends had avoided her as if she carried some life-threatening disease.

  The phone rang again. One of these days Suzanne was sure someone would invent a phone that could be unplugged and silenced, but until then, her only options would be to answer it or rip the cord from the wall. And although the latter was more tempting than she cared to admit, she decided to answer since clearly the caller was not going to give up until she did. Still lying on the sofa, she reached up over her head and fumbled for the receiver. “What?” she barked irritably into the mouthpiece.

  “And a good morning to you as well, sunshine.” The clipped, precise voice of Edwin Bonner, her former boss, was the last thing she had expected to hear. “You slept on the sofa, didn’t you?”

  “What are you doing—having me followed? Look, I know I made a huge mistake—”

  “Mistakes as in the plural form of that word, and they were indeed major.”

  Suzanne groaned. “Don’t remind me.” Her first mistake had been trusting Congressman Gordon Langford III. They had been dating for several months when he’d given her the first hint of what he later called the biggest story in Washington. Over the next few weeks, he had played her. Oh, she saw it all after the fact—the notes he left lying around and then snatched away from her as if they were state secrets; the distracted sighs that practically begged her to ask what was going on with him; and the bits and pieces of the story that he surrendered with the plea that “I have to talk to someone or I’ll go crazy.”

  When the first layer of the story broke, Gordon had begged her to write the truth. He had provided her with documentation and details that seemed to contradict the official version of the matter. Because she had thought she was in love with Gordon and trusted him not to do anything that would hurt her—or her career—she had made the cardinal mistake of any rookie reporter. She had failed to check out her sources, instead accepted his version of things, and then turned in a story that she assured Edwin exposed a major politician’s corruption.

  When Edwin grilled her about whether or not she had “gone down every single back alley,” as he liked to put it, to be certain that her information was correct and irrefutable, she had lied and told him she had. Only once the story ran did it come to light that Gordon had manufactured the entire scandal. The story had run on page one of the
national news section—above the fold with her name as a byline. That morning she had been so excited that she had bought out the corner newsstand’s entire supply of the paper; then she had called both her mother and Gordon.

  Her mother had answered. Gordon had not.

  By noon of that day, the accused politician’s lawyer had contacted Edwin’s boss—the paper’s publisher—threatening a lawsuit unless the paper printed a full retraction also on page one above the fold and fired Suzanne. Competing newspapers across Washington had had a field day with this ultimatum, and suddenly Suzanne became the news. The accused politician—who Suzanne had little doubt was in fact corrupt although she had no real proof beyond Gordon’s assurances that he had proof—had become the benevolent hero. He had called a press conference and asked others to forgive Gordon, whom he labeled young and ambitious, and he’d thrown in a plea for forgiveness for the “little lady” because “we all make mistakes, especially when we’re in love.”

  Edwin’s voice continued to crackle over the receiver as he apparently laid out the story of her downfall before coming to the real reason for his call. “So now you’ve decided to hole up in that dump you call an apartment and lick your wounds.” It sounded like he was shuffling through papers on his desk. “When’s the last time you showered, had a decent meal, and got dressed in something other than your pj’s?”

  “When did you become my father?”

  “When I stopped being your editor,” he snapped. “Now, listen up, kiddo. I may have found a way for you to redeem yourself.”

  “Why do you care?” It was a sincere query. After all, the paper’s reputation had taken a blow because of her.

  “I’ve asked myself that very question. The answer is that you have a gift, Suzanne, and when you use it properly, you have the potential to be one of the best reporters I have ever worked with.”

  She felt her throat close around a lump of emotion that could only be broken up by tears.

  “Are you still there?” Edwin asked.

  Suzanne made a guttural sound to let him know she was and reached for one of three handkerchiefs wadded into balls on the floor next to the sofa.

  “This involves traveling, Suzie. I suspect you should plan on being on assignment for several weeks at a minimum so figure out how to sublet your apartment and how to pack for an extended stay.”

  She blotted the tears and cleared her throat. “If it involves my going to Siberia, count me out.”

  “Close. Ever hear of Oswego in upstate New York?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a small town north of Syracuse on Lake Ontario. There’s this fort there cleverly named Fort Ontario—dates back to the French and Indian War.”

  Suzanne did not like the sound of this. Ever since the Allies had landed on the shores of Normandy, the tide of war had turned, and the really big stories were in Europe—not some old fort in upstate New York. But Edwin had a thing for history, so she was beginning to understand where this might be going.

  “Look, Edwin, I appreciate this, but—”

  “Hear me out. You know that announcement that the president made last month about bringing some refugees to America as his guests? The one that mostly got buried in the depths of the papers because of the whole Normandy landing?”

  “I was a little busy that month,” she reminded him.

  “Stop wallowing and try reading the news instead of making it up.”

  “Okay, that was below the belt.”

  “Sorry. I’m trying to help you. Do you want my help or not?”

  Once again Suzanne felt tears threatening to overwhelm her. “I do,” she whispered then sniffed loudly. “Refugees coming to America … to Oswego?”

  “To Fort Ontario in Oswego.”

  “When?”

  “They are on a ship crossing the Atlantic—scheduled to arrive by the end of the week.”

  “How many?”

  “There were supposed to be a thousand, but officially only 982 made it.”

  “From?” She felt the stirring of her journalist juices. She was sitting up now, gathering facts.

  “The ship sailed from Italy, but my understanding is the group represents at least fifteen or twenty different countries.”

  Suzanne stood up, picking up the phone and stretching the cord as far as possible as she reached for pen and paper. “Men? Women?”

  “And children—whole families in some cases.”

  “Jewish?” Everyone had finally accepted that the Nazis were specifically targeting the Jews. Some stories Suzanne found impossible to believe, yet apparently those stories weren’t the worst of it.

  “Mostly Jews but also Catholics, Protestants—I think some Greek Orthodox.”

  She scribbled as fast as she could. “So they come here and then what?”

  “Well now, see that’s the story. Then what?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Roosevelt has labeled them ‘guests,’ which means they have no legal status here. The State Department is adamant that once the war is over they are to go back to wherever they came from, and FDR has agreed to those terms.”

  “But that’s barbaric. I mean what if their homes and countries have been bombed to smithereens? What if their homes have been taken over by someone else? What if—”

  Edwin chuckled. “Now that’s much better, Suzie. You’re sounding like a real reporter.”

  “I am a real reporter,” she huffed.

  “Prove it.”

  In those two words stood the challenge she didn’t realize she’d been waiting to hear—the chance she had been sure had been lost to her forever.

  “I will.”

  “I can’t pay you—at least not officially.”

  “I don’t need your money,” she shot back, although she was practically broke. Her mind raced even as she struggled to capture all the information that Edwin continued to rattle off at lightning speed.

  Refugees traveling on a troopship with wounded soldiers.

  As Edwin suggested, I could maybe sublet my apartment and save some money that way.

  Crossing the Atlantic in a convoy accompanied by two other ships carrying German prisoners of war.

  I have a little savings, and my mom …

  Scheduled to stay until war ended, so at least several months.

  Months? Where would I live in the meantime? Maybe there is a boardinghouse in Oswego.

  “Look, I’m sending you a train ticket and some primary documents by courier.”

  “I thought you weren’t paying me.”

  “It’s a loan. You need to get up there and get settled.”

  “When are the ‘guests’ scheduled to arrive in Oswego?”

  “Saturday if all goes according to plan.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there. And Edwin? Thanks.”

  “Don’t make me regret this, Suzie. It’s an assignment that a lot of reporters could parlay into a Pulitzer.”

  In his tone she heard a hint of having second thoughts.

  “I’ve learned my lesson,” she assured him. “I won’t let you down.”

  This had to be the hottest summer that Theo Bridgewater could remember—at least for Wisconsin. He was harvesting feed corn with his father when he saw his mother come running across the field. She was waving a piece of paper and shouting to be heard above the racket of the harvester. He touched his dad’s shoulder and motioned toward his mother.

  “Ellie?” Theo’s father called out as he shut down the engine and the machine wheezed to a stop in the middle of a row of corn shocks. He jumped to the ground and removed his baseball cap to wipe sweat from his face with a faded bandanna. “What’s happened?” Both men started across the already harvested rows to meet her.

  “Oh, Paul, they’re alive,” she shouted, stumbling over the flattened stalks. “They’re alive, and they’re coming to America. My brother, Franz, and Ilse and little Liesl—they are all alive.” She burst into tears as she hugged them both.

  Theo met hi
s father’s disbelieving eyes. It had been two years since they’d had word of Ellie’s brother and his family. The last letter they had received told them that Franz, Ilse, and their eight-year-old daughter, Liesl, were joining Ilse’s sister Marta and her family for a skiing holiday in Switzerland. That letter had raised alarms on several fronts, for Theo’s parents immediately understood that skiing holiday was code for escape. With the war raging, few people could manage a holiday. But of far greater concern had been the absence of any mention of Theo’s sister, Beth, traveling with them.

  Beth had gone to Munich in the late 1930s to act as a nanny and companion for Liesl. Theo remembered their aunt Ilse as a mousy, nervous woman given to attacks of depression and anxiety. Liesl had been born late in life for Franz and Ilse, and according to Beth she was a lively child who could easily exasperate her mother. But his uncle’s last letter had made no mention of Beth, who Theo and his parents had been trying to persuade to come home to America from the day the Nazis first occupied Poland.

  Following the news of Franz, Ilse, and Liesl’s supposed escape there had been no word for months until they received another letter—this one from Beth. She told them that she was now living on a small island off the coast of Denmark with her new husband—a German doctor named Josef—and their good friend Anja and her family. Her next letter had come to them from Belgium and reported that she and Josef were running a café and expecting their first child. Both letters were carefully worded to avoid providing too much information for the censors, and neither mentioned Franz, Ilse, or Liesl. Also neither letter had included a return address. The letters that Theo’s mother sent to the apartment in Munich, hoping they would be forwarded, went unanswered.

  Finally, just this past April they had received a long, uncensored letter from Beth reporting that she and Josef were in England with their newborn daughter, Gabrielle. Beth also added that she had had no news from her aunt and uncle. She wrote that she and Josef were doing everything they could to locate the rest of the family but so far had been unsuccessful.

  Since then, Beth’s letters had come regularly, but there had been no further news of Franz, Ilse, and Liesl, and at every meeting for worship the family attended as members of the Religious Society of Friends, they stood and asked their fellow Quakers to please continue to hold their daughter, her husband and child, and Ellie’s brother, his wife, and their child in the Light and pray for their safety.