by Sarah Shaber
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve already made plans.’
‘You can’t break them?’ he said, clearly disappointed.
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Perhaps the following weekend?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said.
My coolness made Don frown, but thank God, Ruth and Betty came into the office before he could speak. Betty’s face lit up with speculation.
‘Thank you, Mrs Pearlie,’ Don said, politely, on his way out of the office.
‘You’re welcome, Mr Murray.’
I should never have necked with the man. I should have parted from him yesterday evening with a handshake, a conveni ent widow accompanying her boss to an important party.
‘Oh, calm down,’ I said to my girls, as they erupted in giggles after Don was out of earshot. ‘I am not interested in Don. Don’t you dare spread it around that we’re an item.’
Betty felt my forehead.
‘No fever,’ she said. ‘So you’re not delirious. You must be bucking for a goofy discharge instead.’
‘Stop it,’ I said.
‘We heard in the cafeteria, from some of the other girls, that Mr Murray told Roger Austine that you’d be a perfect wife for a man with ambition. That you knew how to dress and when to join in a conversation and when to be quiet, and that you were a real sport when he left you alone so he could hobnob with the big shots.’
That reminded me of a recent Dorothy Dix witticism – I read her newspaper column without fail – that a man likes a woman with a brain as long as she only brings it out in an emergency.
‘He does have money, too. I checked the social register. His mother is a Gibbs, they own People’s Drug,’ Ruth said.
‘I’m not attracted to him,’ I said, ‘at all.’
‘Don’t you want to have a home and children?’ Betty said. ‘Belong to a country club? Do you want to work in an office for the rest of your life?’
I thought of Joan’s lovely apartment, her car and her clothes. Did I long for the same comforts enough to marry someone for his money? Marriage was difficult enough when you loved your husband. But who knew if I’d be able to work after the war, after the men came home to their old jobs. And if I could work, would I have to live in a boarding house for the rest of my life?
‘Enough of this,’ I said. ‘We need to get busy. If Barbara doesn’t come back, we’ll have to do her job too.’
Still clucking like a couple of matchmaking hens, Ruth and Betty went back to their desks. I retreated behind my partition to think, putting Don out of my mind. Where could I find more information about Gerald Bloch?
The original scribbled note about Bloch came to us from an operative in France through the OSS London office by way of a locked OSS diplomatic pouch, so there’d be no copies in Codes and Cables. No one had the keys to those pouches except David Bruce in London and General Donovan. General Donovan’s files were unavailable to me, Joan had made that clear.
When I received the memo and original request for information from Donovan’s office and added it to our subject file on Bloch I created the only OSS file on the man, and it was gone. I did find one document in another file, the program from the 1936 Edinburgh conference where Charles Burns and Marvin Metcalfe had first met Gerald Bloch. Metcalfe gave me a second copy of that program and reprints of three of Bloch’s obscure journal articles when I visited him. That was a start, but it wasn’t enough.
It was possible that the State Department had a dossier on Bloch, especially as he had applied for a visa, but I certainly couldn’t attempt to penetrate the State Department. Security was much tighter than at OSS. If I got past the squads of military guards, I’d never get out the building with any official papers. Even if I had one of those nifty matchbox cameras Eastman Kodak developed for photographing documents, which I didn’t, I needed original materials to make the file look authentic.
I needed to acquire actual documents, and the best place to find them? The embassy of Vichy France. It leaked like a sieve already. With Nazi record-keeping as obsessive as it was, it seemed likely to me that the Vichy embassy would have information on Gerald Bloch. He was a prominent scientist, a Jew who’d applied for a visa to leave France on more than one occasion; perhaps the Gestapo already knew he’d approached the Resistance. And I had a contact there, Lionel Barbier, who’d told me to call him if I needed anything, anything at all.
I prayed I was right when I sensed that he was anti-Vichy.
Joan and I had arranged to meet for lunch at the drugstore on the corner, but I arrived early, sliding onto a stool at the soda counter. I ordered a Coke and a grilled-cheese sandwich from the soda jerk.
Joan joined me. She looked uncharacteristically tired. Black circles rimmed her eyes.
‘I’m not all that hungry,’ she told the soda jerk, ordering vegetable soup. That was odd, too. She usually ate a cheeseburger, French fries and a vanilla milkshake, with gusto.
‘Look, Louise,’ she said, then stopped.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Nothing.’
‘What’s wrong, Joan? Are you okay?’
‘Why is it I’m always attracted to the wrong men?’ she said.
‘Like who?’ I asked, knowing what she would answer.
‘Charles Burns,’ she said. ‘The creep.’
I thought he was a creep, too, but I wondered how she’d come to that conclusion.
‘I ran into him outside my hotel last night and suggested we have dinner together. He accepted, we had a good time I thought – hell, I even picked up the check, since I’d asked him. You know what? He didn’t even walk me upstairs to my room! Much less kiss me goodnight.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘How rude.’
I didn’t tell her that Charles had made a pass at me minutes after he’d turned her down after that afternoon we’d spent at her apartment.
‘If you were a man, and some girl was making a fool out of herself over you, wouldn’t you be a gentleman and tell her you weren’t interested, instead of accepting bridge and dinner invitations?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I would.’ Perhaps Burns thought a connection to General Donovan’s secretary might be useful to him, I thought, but I kept that to myself.
‘I think he’s interested in you,’ Joan said.
‘What?’
‘He asked me lots of questions about you. Don’t be surprised if he calls.’
‘I wouldn’t go out with him if he were the last man on earth,’ I said. I suspected that Burns was after sexual adventure, not marriage. He couldn’t seduce Joan, she was wealthy, from a prominent family who could damage his career, and besides, Joan would expect an engagement before Charles got her in bed. Me, on the other hand, I was an insignificant widow; who would care if he lured me into an affair? No one would expect him to marry me, and having already surrendered my virginity, I was past ruination.
Joan stirred her drink with a straw.
‘All the girls from my sorority pledge class are married. Most of them have had babies. Some of them have two babies. I know I’m not pretty, but I’m not ugly, am I?’
‘Stop that,’ I said. ‘You’re one of the best people I know. You’ve got a million friends. You’ll meet the right man, I know you will.’
‘Sure. Let’s not talk about it any more.’ Joan looked around. The soda jerk was at the other end of the counter building a banana split.
‘I brought you these,’ she said, slipping several sheets of paper out of her handbag and passing them to me under the counter. ‘Much against my better judgment. Don’t look at them now. Just put them in your pocketbook.’
‘What are they?’ I asked.
‘Carbons of the documents we have about Gerald Bloch from General Donovan’s files.’
I was horrified.
‘Joan, you can’t! If he discovers they’re missing . . .’
‘No,’ she interrupted me. ‘The originals are still in his files. What I did was type new documents, copying what we had, with car
bons. Then I destroyed my typed originals.’
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ I said.
‘I couldn’t stop thinking about your friend. But don’t tell me what you’re going to do with these, I don’t want to know.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I won’t.’
‘I’ve got to get back to the office,’ she said. ‘Take care.’
I went to the restroom and assessed the pages Joan had given me. What luck! Just as I’d decided to reassemble Bloch’s file, Joan delivered crucial documents to me! Two carbons each of the translation of the French Resistance fighter’s note and the memo from General Donovan requesting information. I wondered if these papers, added to the copy of the 1936 hydrology conference program given to me by Marvin Metcalfe, were enough to create a replacement file on Gerald Bloch. Would such sparse information compel OSS to act? What other documents might be neatly tucked away in the file cabinets of the Vichy French embassy that could bolster Bloch’s chances?
With the Gestapo arriving in Marseille next week, there was no time to lose.
‘I can’t believe I’m abandoning you and the children,’ Gerald said.
Rachel buried her head on Gerald’s shoulder, but she’d given up crying weeks ago. Crying took too much energy, energy she needed to cope and to survive.
‘We’ll be safer if you’re gone,’ she said.
Gerald knew she was right. If the Nazis came here to arrest him, they would likely take Rachel and the children too. If he left them behind, the Gestapo might not bother with his family.
So much for his pitiful attempt to barter his family’s freedom for his expertise. He’d failed, and now he had to abandon them in hopes the Nazis would forget them. He’d join the Resistance anyway, of course.
Gerald’s arm circled Rachel’s newly slender waist, and he kissed her gently on the cheek. Yesterday, on his way home from work, four Vichy French police stopped him, inspected his identity papers, searched his pockets and his briefcase and interrogated him for an hour, right out in the street. Rachel watched from their doorway, sure he was about to be arrested. They’d let him go, but not for long. He was an authority on the North African coast, so he was destined for prison or execution. It was just a matter of time.
A heavy vehicle rumbled to a stop outside their house, brakes squealing. They both froze. Rachel cracked the front door and peered out. The truck bore the Vichy government seal, but the four soldiers in the truck bed, guarding more than a dozen civilian Frenchmen, wore German uniforms and carried machine guns. The truck idled while its driver consulted a map before driving away, down the street and around the corner.
Gerald hoisted his bag over his shoulder.
‘Don’t worry about us,’ Rachel said. ‘We’ll get extra rations because of the baby.’
She watched Gerald edge his way down the dark street, hugging the boarded-up buildings, pausing before turning the corner where the pâtisserie once stood. She had no idea where he was going or if she’d ever see him again. Tears coursed down her cheeks. She and her children were on their own.
I ducked into a drugstore phone booth, slipped a nickel into the slot and dialed the number Lionel had given me.
‘’Allo,’ Lionel answered.
‘Lionel, it’s me, Louise, from the party, remember?’
‘Of course. How could I forget? We had such a nice evening.’
‘I was wondering whether, well, I’ve got to run an errand for my boss, up on embassy row this afternoon, and I wondered if we could have a drink?’
‘Absolument. I would love to see you again. Shall we meet at Harry’s Pub, in the Wardman Hotel? What time?’
‘Six o’clock?’
‘A ce soir.’
I hung up the telephone. That was done. Now what? Marvin Metcalfe had sent the original 1936 conference program to OSS. Perhaps he had more material than he’d already given me.
I picked up the phone again and called my office. Pleading renewed toothache, I said I was on my way to my dentist’s office and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.
I found Metcalfe in his office grading a stack of blue books. The room was stifling. A floor fan on its highest setting whirled air around the room, to little effect. The windows were closed.
Metcalfe caught me looking at them.
‘Bloody things are painted shut,’ he said, offering me a chair. ‘What is it now?’
‘I wanted to ask you some more questions about Gerald Bloch,’ I said. ‘OSS is interested in compiling a more complete folder on him.’ For appearances’ sake I took a notepad and pen from my pocketbook and waited expectantly.
‘Anything I can tell you would be based on our conversation at dinner back in 1936,’ Metcalfe said. ‘Let’s see, he was a surveyor for a salvage company in Algiers for several years. I believe his family owned the company. Then he went back to France and studied at the University of Aix. He focused his studies on the French North African coast, which is why I passed on his name to OSS. He worked at the Marseille Hydrographic Office.’
‘What exactly is a hydrographic survey?’
‘A preliminary marine chart.’
My skin prickled. The Allies were searching for harbor pilots who knew their way around North Africa. Wouldn’t navigation charts our own people could use be even more useful?
And Algiers was a strategically critical city in French North Africa. It was of crucial importance for Operation Torch. Perhaps this was the key to why Bloch’s file had been stolen.
‘So,’ I said brightly, ‘that’s most useful. Do you have any more documents that we can add to Gerald Bloch’s file?’
Metcalfe sighed heavily, shook his head and got to his feet, swinging his braced leg under him.
‘If paper could win this war,’ he said, ‘we’d be in sight of Berlin by now.’
He dug into an old wooden file cabinet squeezed between his cluttered bookcase and the stuck-closed window.
‘Tomorrow I’m going to bring a hammer and chisel and open this goddamned window. I’m going to buy a window-mount fan and prop it in there. I’ll have to chain it to the radiator to keep someone from stealing it but I don’t care.’
As he spoke Metcalfe riffled through the file-cabinet drawers and drew out a folder, a cluttered, thick, beautiful folder. He sat down at his desk and began to remove papers and hand them to me.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘yet another copy of the 1936 conference program. And here’s one of the 1939 program, held here in DC. Bloch wasn’t there, do you still want it?’
‘Sure,’ I said. Why not? What was one more piece of paper?
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘and this. Taken when we were in Edinburgh in 1936.’
He handed me an unremarkable photograph of a half-dozen people in a Scottish pub. An old one, from what I could see of the plaster and half-timbered walls behind the group gathered around a table.
‘We got the bartender to take it. That’s me, Bloch and his wife, Burns, some Scottish girl he picked up and two German fellows whose names I can’t remember.’
Rachel looked very happy. She held a wine glass in her hand, and leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder. His arm encircled her. They were both smiling for the photographer.
I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ Metcalfe asked.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, picking up the papers he’d given me from the corner of his desk. ‘Why didn’t you send all this to OSS earlier?’ I asked.
‘OSS asked for names. I sent you a name.’
‘Can I keep these?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’
I didn’t offer Metcalfe a receipt and he didn’t ask for one. He was bent over his blue books again before I got through his office door.
I stuffed the papers into my pocketbook and headed back outside into the heat.
While preoccupied with my thoughts I almost ran Joe down. He strode ahead of me down Twenty-Third Street toward Washington Circle. On his way home, perhaps? For some re
ason I didn’t try to catch up to him. Instead I dropped back and followed him, curiosity overwhelming any sense of propriety. When he got to Washington Circle, instead of taking Pennsylvania toward our neighborhood, he went north on New Hampshire. Then he ducked into a grocery store, a classic espionage evasive tactic. What was going on here? Why would Joe be doing this?
Heart pounding, I followed him down the frosted-foods aisle, through swinging doors into a storeroom, past stacked boxes of cereal. He turned, scanning the storeroom, and I ducked behind an open door into a janitor’s closet. What in God’s name would I say to him if he spotted me? A few seconds later I heard him go out the back door. I rushed after him, cracked the door open and peered out. He was walking, more quickly now, down the alley. I followed behind. We came out, a minute apart, into a narrow, pretty street marred by a mound of scrap metal at the alley entrance. I ducked behind it, then cautiously edged around the corner. I watched as Joe climbed a flight of brick steps to the black front door of a small row house, inserted a key into the door and went inside. I heard the door catch behind him. The street was still empty. I ambled, at least I hoped it looked like ambling, my hat tilted over my eyes, down the street and passed the house while trying not to stare at it. The one street-level window was curtained and the blinds drawn. So I turned at the corner and went back to inspect the house more carefully. There was no sign identifying the building and no house number. A flight of steps led from the sidewalk down to a basement level with another locked door flanked by a barred and curtained window.
There was no indication at all of the purpose of the house. Surely if it was a language school there’d be a sign identifying it and advertising its purpose? Why did Joe try to conceal where he was going? And why didn’t the building have a street number? In DC that meant only one thing. Secrets.
FIFTEEN
The street remained empty. I put my ear to the door. I heard the distant sound of typing and a telephone ringing. I considered knocking, but if someone came to the door, what would I say? What if it was Joe?
I went further down the street and discovered a tiny cafe occupying the street floor of another row house. Inside the cafe was refreshing, window shades drawn, the breeze from a ceiling fan cooling it. The dining room was empty except for an elderly colored waiter reading a newspaper at one table who rose to show me to a seat.