Face of the Enemy

by Beverle Graves Myers

  “Where would I go, you mean?”

  Louise nodded.

  “Not to Tokyo, that’s for sure. I would be seen as a traitor there.”

  “A traitor?” Louise frowned. This gentle artist was no Benedict Arnold.

  “Japan is very different from America—you can scarcely imagine. My disobedience to my father. Marriage to a well-known American. Then there are interviews I’ve given, critical of some Japanese ways.” She swallowed—hard. “I fear what might be done to me there.”

  “What could happen?”

  Mrs. Oakley sat very still for a moment, then shuddered. “The emperor’s government is particularly harsh where public disloyalty is concerned. The stories I’ve heard…Father would be unable to save me—even if he wished to.” Her complexion paled. “I…would rather not speak of it—”

  Louise wanted to reach out and take her hand, but it wouldn’t be proper. This was her employer. Instead, “Do you and the professor still have friends in Paris?”

  The other woman gave Louise an incredulous look. “The Nazis have taken over Paris.”

  “Oh, of course.” Abashed, Louise sank back down in her seat; how many times had she seen newsreels of Nazis goose-stepping down some Paris boulevard?

  “Robert does have friends in Peru. That’s where he wants me to go. But how?” The Japanese woman gestured to her finely etched features. “Anywhere I go, I take this face with me—the face of the enemy. You think they will allow me on any ship or airplane?

  “Besides.” She raised her chin. “I will not leave Robert. He needs me now, more than ever. How could I go? If I lose him, I lose everything.”

  Louise stretched a hand across the table, propriety be damned, and the women’s fingertips touched. “Mrs. Oakley, you’re exhausted. Go on, take a bath, put on a fresh pair of pajamas, bed down in the guest room. I’ll take care of everything.”

  ***

  Once Louise heard the bath running—such a civilized sound—she took a deep breath. The apartment was quiet, her patient resting easy. She was beginning to get things under control at last.

  The shards of the green porcelain vase still littered the hallway. As she picked them up, Louise reflected on the sprawling, Upper West Side apartment. She’d never been in such an elegant home, unless she wanted to count that disastrous visit to meet Dr. Preston Atherton’s mother at her imposing Fifth Avenue mansion. She didn’t. This comfortable, book-strewn apartment filled with artifacts collected on the professor’s many travels suited her just fine.

  And, of course, Mrs. Oakley had put her own artistic stamp on the place. In the living room, a modern, black-lacquered mirror added elegance to a nook featuring two Arts and Crafts chairs with slatted wooden arms. Across the room, a carved mahogany chair with stylized peacock sides and teal upholstery sat beside a library table that could have come straight from a venerable British men’s club. The scents of sandalwood and cinnamon permeated the air. And paintings hung everywhere.

  As Louise placed the porcelain shards on the table next to a glass vase of bronze chrysanthemums, she gave one of the artist’s own canvases a long look. The background had the quality of a rice-paper scroll. The foreground suggested a stand of bamboo blown by the wind. Louise could identify that much. But what about the pair of miniscule brush strokes of vivid green, almost like wings? And the wide, rough, green slash that thrust up and across the entire painting, until it bent back upon itself and ended in a tight spiral? Then there were the Japanese characters running down the right side. What could those spidery figures mean?

  Mrs. Oakley had explained that her art blended the ancient, highly codified techniques of Shodo, or calligraphy, with abstract images that hit her, often with the force of a lightning bolt. Sometimes she would stand before her easel for hours, quietly, patiently waiting for the mental picture to form. When inspiration flickered, she wielded her brushes like a mad woman, completing the painting in a matter of minutes.

  Feeling her artistic shortcomings keenly, Louise tilted her head to take in the curves and shapes from different angles. Then she spotted a line of words in English, white on white, almost transparent, near the bottom of the canvas: Cling new bird against / cold wind. Old branches blossom. / Cherry! Pink, then green.

  Louise blinked. Suddenly the green slash made perfect sense. Brilliant! Mrs. Oakley was both poet and artist.

  Time to check on her patient.

  She found Professor Oakley breathing more easily, temperature only slightly elevated.

  Good. She glanced at her watch. 11:48. All was quiet from the guest room as well. Louise eased into the red leather club chair by the patient’s bed. With a sigh, she interlocked her fingers and stretched her arms above her head. It had been a calamitous day, but now it was over.

  Chapter Five

  As if in a trance, Helda Schroeder watched the last of the soap suds from the dinner dishes swirl around the drain. Breaking her gaze reluctantly, she dried her hands on a cotton dishtowel. Almost midnight. Surely everyone in the boarding house was asleep by now—even that night owl, Fraulein Sutherland. It was time to do what she’d been dreading. Yes, now was the time.

  The oak door directly opposite Fraulein Rosen’s room on the third floor groaned as Helda opened it. She crept up the attic stairs on tiptoe. The top stair creaked, causing her to jump and hold her breath for a full moment. But no one seemed to have heard. Her flashlight beam picked out brass-bound trunks, rope-tied crates, and a busty dressmaker’s form wearing a half-finished cotton housedress—all covered with a layer of dust at least five years thick.

  She stifled a sneeze. The room needed airing.

  Then she shuffled past the great carved mahogany chairs and side tables, that huge oaken wardrobe, now on its side, taller than the ceilings in any room of this American house. What had they been thinking to bring all these old-world furnishings to a new-world home where they…where she…had been planning on building a brand-new life. The memory gave her a twinge. Her hand flew to her heart. She had learned not to cling to the past, to der Vaterland, but Ernest hadn’t. Oh, how he clung—so hard there was no more room for work, for family—

  Nein! Just get on with it! She began shifting hat boxes and the dress bags that hung from the rafters. Finally, from beneath a stack of men’s shoe boxes, she retrieved a battered leather portfolio tied with cord. She clutched it to her chest.

  Inadvertently she glanced out the double attic window: leafless branches lit by the street lamp, a neighborhood mutt sniffing a tree, an unfamiliar Studebaker parked across the street. She strained her eyes. Was someone behind the wheel?

  Could it be…?

  Dummkopf! What did it matter—someone parked on a public street? She was in her own attic—her home that she’d fought so hard to keep after Ernst had deserted them. Her husband hadn’t shown his face in Brooklyn ever since. Why would he be nosing around now?

  Helda untied the portfolio’s brown cord. Letters postmarked in Berlin and Hamburg slid to the floor, revealing a battered passport and a folder holding a few photos.

  She sank down on a nearby trunk. Tucking the flashlight under her arm, she shuffled through snapshots. Howie at Camp Siegfried—in his swimming trunks, at calisthenics with the other boys, marching in a parade. She tightened her lips. She should never have allowed Ernst to involve them in the Bund.

  Good fellowship with other German-Americans—the homeland food, the songs, friends who spoke the old language—there was no shame in that. But that was never enough for Ernst Schroeder with his big dreams of returning der Vaterland to greatness. When the social evenings began to turn into Nazi rallies branding President Roosevelt as a communist and denouncing his “Jew Deal,” she’d had enough of it.

  With a deep sigh, she laid the snapshots aside. She hadn’t climbed to the attic to relive memories of the Bund.

  Ach! Here was
she’d come for…the portrait.

  Helda took a deep breath and trained the flashlight’s cold beam on an image of her and Ernst in their wedding garb. How handsome he’d been, enough to bewitch a young girl’s heart. And she…so innocent in her Bruxelles lace.

  She allowed herself one long moment to contemplate their images. Then she removed the wedding portrait from its cardboard frame and ripped it directly down the middle.

  Chapter Six

  Monday, December 8, early morning

  Relentless pounding rattled the front door of the Oakley apartment. Louise woke from a light doze. Who? What? Her watch read 2:14.

  She glanced at the professor. Still sleeping.

  Three additional blows. Louder, more insistent. She had to stop that racket before it woke him.

  She ran to the foyer, threw the door open. “Silence!” she ordered. “I have a profoundly ill patient here.” Then she saw them. Really saw them. Four men in fedoras and dark overcoats, silhouetted by the wall lights in the corridor. Large men. Men with faces hewn from granite. Louise drew a deep breath, stepped back to slam the door.

  The lead man slapped a meaty palm on the thick oak, flashed a gold badge in her face. “Special Agent Cyrus Bagwell, FBI, ma’am. We have a warrant to search this residence.” His face was long and sallow, with deep lines etched around the mouth.

  Louise was stunned, but nonetheless she shot him the cobra glare she’d learned from Miss Willard, her nursing school supervisor. “I don’t care who you are. My patient can’t be disturbed.”

  The agent’s eyes widened, but only for the space of a second. “We’re not here for any sick man. We want the Japanese citizen Masako Fumi. Where is she?”

  Louise was suddenly cold all over. Marion’s gentleman friend had been right—the government was rounding up Japanese!

  Without thinking of the consequences, Louise braced her rubber-soled nurse’s shoes in the opening and propped spread hands between door and frame. Her heart was pounding—the FBI!—her government! Shuddering at her own defiance, she managed to snap, “Come back in the morning at a civilized hour.”

  Bagwell clamped both hands on her shoulders. Louise resisted, but she was no match for the man’s superior strength. He twisted her out of the doorway and flung her against the foyer’s oak paneling as if she were a rag doll. His voice was tense, but flat, as he and his men poured into the foyer. “We don’t have time to waste, ma’am. Where’s the Jap?”

  Steadying herself with a hand on the wall, Louise kept her lips pressed shut. For a split second a sense of utter unreality paralyzed her.

  The G-man strode into the living room, focused immediately on a vase of chrysanthemums that graced the lacquered table. His expression turned from grim to grimmer. One of the men had a camera, and Bagwell jerked his head toward the flowers.

  “Get a shot of that, willya? Jap flowers.”

  Louise suddenly felt like a kettle on the boil. She shot forward. “Those are chrysanthemums—as American as you are. And Masako Oakley is an innocent woman who happens—”

  His big hand was on her shoulder again, its mere weight a threat. “Lady, tonight there’s no such thing as an innocent Jap.” Louise had never seen such hard eyes—gunmetal gray. “You keep obstructing us, and I’m gonna arrest you. Impeding official government business.”

  “Arrest me?” For simply acting in her patient’s best interests?

  “Take us to her—pronto.” The brute stench of power was in the air.

  Louise gasped, but, undeterred, her mouth spoke the truth she felt. “I’m a nurse, not a cop. If you want her, find her yourself.”

  But Mrs. Oakley was already there, standing bewildered in the hallway. Louise knew she was a grown woman, thirty-eight years old. But in cotton pajamas, half asleep, with her straight black hair hanging down her back, she looked like a child, saying, “Mon Dieu, qu’est-ce qui se passe?”

  “The suspect spoke Japanese,” Bagwell snapped. “Get that down, Flanagan.” A squat, rumpled man who looked like a police officer scribbled something in a notebook.

  “Masako Fumi,” Agent Bagwell intoned. “In the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the President of the United States, you are under arrest as an enemy alien.” His big hand clutched her arm. He towered over her. “You have ten minutes to get dressed and pack toiletries. Then you come with us.”

  “Go with you?” Masako whispered, her face pasty white.

  “Get your toothbrush…a change of clothing…and, you know, whatever stuff you women need. Go on.” He gave her a little shove, and she stumbled.

  Louise caught the trembling woman in a protective embrace and stormed at Bagwell, “Do you have to be such a bully?”

  “Listen, Nursie, I’ve about had it with you. You want to make yourself useful? Get the Jap into some street clothes. We’ve got work to do.” He turned to his team. “Okay, guys. You know the drill—box up anything suspicious as evidence. Any question, it goes.”

  The men fanned out into the large room. A youngish redhead threw his hat on the credenza, then stripped off his coat and tossed it on top of the hat. He stood back, scrutinizing the comfortable furnishings. “Whew,” he whistled through his teeth, “not doing too shabby for herself, is she, this little Nip?” He hefted an exquisite porcelain heron from a low table and tossed it in his hand.

  “Nurse Louise—” Masako whispered weakly, and pointed.

  Professor Oakley was reeling down the corridor. “What in the name of holy hell is going on out here?” Barefoot, barely able to stand, pajama top unbuttoned over his bony chest, the sick man snorted like a bull.

  “Robert!” Masako pulled away from Louise and ran to her husband, almost knocking him over.

  “You’re going to kill this man!” Louise shrilled at Bagwell. “I’m calling his doctor, right now.” She sprinted to the telephone, but scarcely did she have her finger in the dial when she felt the receiver ripped from her hand. The one called Flanagan picked her up bodily and sat her down on the telephone bench with a hard thump.

  “Unhand her,” Oakley croaked. Then another thump followed, louder. A shriek from Masako. Robert Oakley lay flat on the Persian carpet, wheezing as if he would never draw another full breath.

  Louise struggled, and a nod from Bagwell ordered Flanagan to let her loose. She raced to Oakley, knelt beside him, her professional instincts taking over. Her patient was in trouble, out cold, pulse barely palpable in the notch under his jaw.

  “I’ve got to get the doctor,” Louise insisted.

  Bagwell studied the unconscious professor, then motioned to a florid-faced, dark-haired man in his twenties. “Get him in bed, Tucker.” He turned to Louise. “And you? Keep him, there. Ya hear me? Or you’re goin’ downtown with Madame Butterfly, and your patient will be carted off to Bellevue. Got it?”

  Louise bit off her outraged protest.

  The sturdy Tucker transported the professor to his bed, not without care. “Listen, lady,” he said to Louise, as she settled a groaning Oakley on his pillows, “I’m City police, just along for the ride, so I can’t really help you out. But lemme tell ya—ya can’t fight this. Japs are being picked up all over the city tonight—by the Feds and police detectives. The orders come from the top—the very top.”

  “But, where—”

  Tucker put his finger to his lips. When he left the room, he shut the door behind him. Louise heard the key turn.

  Quickly, she reapplied the gauze swathe the professor had torn from his chest and repositioned his pillows to provide for maximum lung expansion. “Pain?” she asked, when his eyes fluttered open. He nodded, rubbing a flaccid hand over his right flank. Once she’d administered the pills Dr. Wright had left, she expected a hundred questions, but Professor Oakley simply closed his eyes and lay motionless.

  He knows, Louise thought. He knows exactly wh
at’s going on. Like a wounded animal, he’s retreating until he has the strength to fight.

  Sinking down on the red leather club chair, Louise slowly became aware of sounds from elsewhere in the apartment. Thud after thud from the professor’s study. Books falling to the floor? Then a crash as something shattered in the living room. She cringed. The key turned, the bedroom door opened, and Bagwell’s bulk appeared against the brighter light of the hallway. “You,” he barked, beckoning to Louise. “The Jap’s got instructions for you…About her husband.” His lips twisted, sour.

  The living room was chaos, books and papers everywhere, dark rectangles on the walls where paintings had hung. In the foyer, wearing gray trousers and a blue cardigan, Masako stood handcuffed (handcuffed!) between two men—straight and proud. Louise’s heart melted for her. She understood that in the short few days she had known Masako Oakley, the Japanese woman had become a friend.

  “Nurse Hunter,” Mrs. Oakley said. “I will be all right. Tell Robert that, and—take care of him. You know how that man is. Don’t let him do anything stupid.”

  “Okay, lady,” Bagwell said. “That’s enough. You’re going downstairs.”

  Between the two large officers, each with an arm hooked through hers, Mrs. Oakley was propelled to the door. A navy-blue coat from the hall rack was thrown over her shoulders. She looked at Louise, beseechingly. “Robert must get well. Tell him I said that. Tell him to do it for me. You will, won’t you? I can trust you to care for him?”

  “Yes. Yes,” Louise vowed as the apartment door slammed shut.

  Forgotten by Bagwell, who turned his attention to some photo albums his men had retrieved from Professor Oakley’s study, Louise ran to the living room window. Idling under a streetlight in front of the building was a long black sedan. She watched until Mrs. Oakley crossed the sidewalk, the men still flanking her. She watched them put her in the back seat. She watched the car pull from the curb and head downtown, the only moving vehicle on the misty, sleeping street. She watched it until its tail lights disappeared in the darkness.