Louise's War

by Sarah Shaber

  ‘It’s terrible,’ she said, ‘so terrible.’ Ada squeezed my hand even harder, so hard I had to pry her fingers loose.

  ‘I am married,’ she said, ‘to a German officer in the Luftwaffe.’

  ‘Oh, my God, Ada!’

  ‘He was an airline pilot for Lufthansa. Friends of my parents introduced us. His English was very good, he was handsome. We were happy together until the Nazis came to power. Rein – my husband – became an admirer of Hitler. We fought constantly. One day he didn’t return with his scheduled flight from Berlin. I remember it so clearly, it was a few days before Christmas in 1938. I got a telegram from him instead, telling me that he’d accepted a commission, asking me to join him in Germany. I refused. He still occasionally writes me letters, but of course I don’t answer them.’

  I instantly recognized the enormity of Ada’s predicament.

  ‘I was born here, my parents immigrated as a young couple to open a bakery. I never learned German, my parents refused to speak it in my presence. I am an American. I hate the Nazis. I never want to see Rein again. Sometimes I dream he’s been shot down, that he’s dead, that I’m free of him.’

  ‘Can’t you divorce him?’

  ‘Not now – that will draw attention to me. I have to wait until after the war.’

  ‘Oh, Ada.’

  ‘The government will intern me if I’m discovered.’

  I didn’t try to reassure her on that point. She was right to be worried sick. All over the country people with close relatives in Germany were being sent to detention camps, whether they were American citizens or not. Until this minute I had thought it was a good idea myself.

  I heard Joe’s voice, calling up the stairs to us.

  ‘They’re gone,’ he said.

  Ada buried her head in my shoulder.

  ‘Don’t tell,’ she said. For a second I wondered if it was my duty to inform the OSS that I knew the whereabouts of the wife of a Luftwaffe officer. I decided it wasn’t. I was just a file clerk.

  ‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

  Barbara didn’t come into work Friday morning. Ruth and Betty pestered me until I called her boarding house, but she refused to come to the telephone. Her landlady told me that she was sure Barbara was planning to leave Washington and go home.

  I could kick myself. If I’d assumed, or pretended to assume, that Barbara was ill, I could have waited until Monday, but now I had to report that she’d left the agency. If I didn’t I might face disciplinary action myself.

  I went to Don’s door and knocked.

  ‘Mrs Pearlie?’ he said. I couldn’t tell from Don’s demeanor whether he still thought I had wife potential. I hoped not.

  ‘Mr Murray, I’m sorry to say that Barbara Rollins has left OSS and plans to return home without permission or notice.’ I explained what had happened.

  ‘Oh, hell,’ Don said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his temples.

  ‘She had a breakdown and left the office yesterday. I didn’t say anything to you because I wanted to give her a chance to return to work today.’

  ‘You did the right thing. You’re sure she’s not coming back to work?’

  ‘I got that impression from her landlady when I called this morning. And Don, she has a child, and she’s a war widow. What would OSS do about this, do you know?’

  ‘Hell. Do you think you could catch up with her?’

  ‘I’m willing to try.’

  ‘Here,’ Don said, pulling a form out of a drawer. ‘This is a request for emergency leave. If you can find her and get her to sign it I’ll approve it.’

  Don rubbed the bridge of his nose before replacing his glasses. He’d acquired dark circles under his eyes since assuming Bob Holman’s job. He already looked years older.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I turned to go.

  ‘One more thing, Mrs Pearlie . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, turning back to face him.

  ‘About that missing file . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I trust you’re not spending any more of your time searching for it.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Not today, that is.

  ‘Please don’t. There is too much other work to be done.’

  ‘I understand.’

  That was interesting, I thought, on my way back down the hall towards my office. Now why did Don think it was necessary to mention the Bloch file? He’d already told me once before, during the meeting, to forget it. Had someone seen me while I was out of the office, supposedly at the dentist? What about Metcalfe? Had he called Don to ask if I had the authority to question him?

  Once I allowed fear to insinuate itself into my mind, suspicions galore rushed in. Had Joe seen me following him? Had the waiter at the cafe mentioned the curious woman who’d asked him questions about Joe’s building? Had someone notified the FBI, who staked out our boarding house this morning to watch not Ada, not Joe, but me? Most worrisome of all, could I trust Lionel? Wouldn’t it be reasonable to abandon my plan to pull a black-bag job at the Vichy French embassy before it became an international incident?

  I went into the ladies’ restroom to compose myself. I splashed cool water onto my hot face, and I tried to set aside my fears for Rachel and consider my position rationally. I reminded myself that Gerald Bloch’s file had been deliberately stolen and that someone, possibly a mole within OSS, had destroyed all evidence that it had ever existed. I had to assume that meant Bloch was an important person, perhaps more important than I realized based on what information I had managed to collect about him. I couldn’t talk to anyone at OSS about this because I didn’t have conclusive evidence that the file had been stolen, and I didn’t want to drive the mole further underground. Surely it was my duty to free Bloch to do whatever it was he was qualified to do for the Allies, for Torch, and so spare Rachel and little Claude from a future spent in a Nazi labor camp.

  I didn’t trust Lionel as far as I could throw him, but I had to behave as if I did to get inside the Vichy embassy.

  And I had to trust Joe, and this was where my feelings became complicated. I was going on a date tonight with a man who was undercover. There was no way to deny that despite my attraction to him, I knew nothing about him, and might even be in danger from him.

  I was going to do it anyway. First, because I wanted to, and second, because breaking our date might make him suspect me. The spy business was a game, I’d often been told, and I intended to play this one to its conclusion.

  But first I had to find Barbara if I could and get her to sign that emergency leave form.

  I knocked on the door of a run-down row house on Virginia Avenue. A woman wearing a faded housecoat and a dirty apron opened it.

  ‘I called earlier,’ I said. ‘I work with Barbara. Is she here?’

  The woman raised her index finger to her mouth and shushed me, cocking her head towards the downstairs front room comparable to the one that we used as a lounge at Two Trees. I could see beds lining the wall, all occupied by sleeping women.

  The landlady shooed me outside and closed the door behind her.

  ‘The night-shift workers are asleep,’ she said.

  The day shift must sleep in the same beds at night. Same sheets too, no doubt. Barbara’s wages were better than many, but she needed most of it to pay her baby’s boarding expenses.

  ‘Has Barbara gone?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ the woman said, shaking her head. ‘I tried to talk her out of it, afraid she’d get in trouble. But she packed this morning and went off to pick up her baby.’

  ‘Do you know how she’s leaving town?’

  ‘From Union Station, where else? First train she can catch to Newark.’

  It would take Barbara some time to pick up her baby and get to the train station, especially taking the bus. I might be able to catch her.

  The traffic on New York Avenue wasn’t heavy, but it intensified once my bus turned onto Massachusetts Avenue and approached Union Station. I hadn’t been to the g
iant railroad station since I arrived here in December, on a Southern Railway train. I’d never been north of Richmond before.

  For much of the trip I’d perched on my suitcase in the aisle of the train packed with GIs who spent their journey sleeping, playing cards, or writing letters, letters they tossed out of the train windows at every stop, knowing someone would stamp and mail them.

  Although I’d read, heck, practically memorized the Esso tourist map and guide Daddy gave me before I got on the train in Wilmington, nothing prepared me for the sight of Union Station. The white granite Beaux Arts building was monumental, covering more ground than any other building in Washington. Its vast gold-leafed barrel-vaulted ceiling soared almost a hundred feet overhead. During the war fully two hundred thousand people a day scurried beneath it, bound for hundreds of destinations. For many it was the starting point for adventures that would take them to distant parts of the world.

  The waiting room, over twenty-six thousand square feet, was designed to look like the central hall of the Baths of Diocletian. Five vast arches and Ionian columns and sculptured allegorical figures, not Roman gods of course, but modern ones, Fire, Electricity, Freedom, Knowledge, Agriculture and Mechanics, towered overhead. A secure Presidential suite and platform, included in the building design because President Garfield was assassinated while waiting for a train on a public railway platform, ran underneath the building.

  I’d seen a lot of great public buildings and monuments since coming to Washington, but frankly none of them held a candle to Union Station.

  I went in the entrance loggia, momentarily quailing at the sight of thousands of people jamming the waiting room. They crammed themselves onto rows of high-backed benches or slept on the floor, queued at restaurants, the barbershop, drugstores, news-stands and the ornate wood-carved information counter that jutted out onto the vast marble floor of the lobby. I’d never find Barbara here. But I pulled myself together, plunged into the crowd and elbowed my way to the Trains and Tickets entrance. I couldn’t get onto the concourse without a ticket, so I purchased one to Newark – the next one left in twenty minutes – and passed through the wrought-iron gate onto the Baltimore and Ohio platform. She would have to leave for Newark from there. A train marked for Pittsburgh idled on the tracks. I searched the platform for Barbara. She wasn’t there. I sat on a bench to wait. She might be in a bathroom, or at one of the restaurants or shops. The Pittsburgh train whistle blew, steam poured from its smokestack and it lunged forward like a racehorse leaving its gate, gathering speed as it chugged out of the station. Passengers hung, shouting, out of the windows, touching the hands of their loved ones running alongside the train. Soldiers stood on the railroad-car porches, smoking, trying to look nonchalant, as the train carried them to some northern port to be shipped out, probably to Britain to prepare for Torch, although none of them knew that.

  The Pittsburgh train was barely out of the station when the train bound for Newark arrived from Norfolk, its old-fashioned engine bell clanging like a church bell on Sunday morning. Passengers swarmed off the train, shoving each other and shouting for redcaps. I watched the gateway from the waiting room onto the platform and finally spotted Barbara. She carried her baby over one shoulder and a suitcase in the other hand. Behind her trudged a colored redcap hauling two more overstuffed suitcases, one tied shut with rope.

  I called out to her.

  She saw me and stopped, the redcap almost running into her. She put down the suitcase and shifted the sleeping baby, a barefoot little girl wearing a faded pink-checked dress and sunbonnet, to her other shoulder.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s talk, you have a few minutes before the train leaves,’ I said.

  Barbara turned to the redcap and gave him her seat number and a dime. He manhandled all three of her suitcases into the train.

  ‘Don’t try to talk me out of leaving,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not, I’m the one who suggested you apply for leave, remember? Which you neglected to do.’

  She shrugged, but followed me to a bench.

  ‘Let me take her,’ I said, reaching out for the baby.

  She handed the little girl to me and I cuddled her on my lap. She was about a year and a half old, I guessed, though I was no expert, with dark curly hair and a heart-shaped mouth. Barbara straightened her dress, tucked tendrils of damp hair under her straw hat and wiped her face and neck with a handkerchief.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she asked again.

  To save your hide, I thought. ‘There’s a form and a pen in my pocketbook,’ I said, my hands full of baby girl. ‘It’s an emergency leave request. Sign it and Mr Murray will approve it. That way you won’t get into trouble.’

  Impatiently she removed the form, scanned it, signed it and stuffed it back into my pocketbook.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You’ve done your good deed for the day.’ She reached for the baby.

  Remember what she’s been through, I thought to myself. ‘She’s sweet,’ I said, handing the little girl back to her.

  ‘I’m glad she’s a girl,’ Barbara said. ‘It’ll be easier to raise a girl by myself.’

  At the steps to the train she turned to me.

  ‘For people like you,’ she said, ‘this war is mostly an adventure, the chance to live in a big city, make lots of money, feel important. After the war is over you can pat yourselves on the back. For me, my husband is dead, and I’ve got two brothers in uniform who might be next. Nothing could replace them. You’ve heard the rumors about what’s going on in Europe. If only some of them are true, it’s a calamity, a disaster, for the Jewish people.’

  She turned and climbed on her train before I had a chance to respond.

  Rachel opened her door. She was ready. She’d been packed for days. She knew she could take one suitcase for herself and one for the children, and she’d sorted their clothing and blankets carefully. She added a few pictures removed from their frames, one of her parents, one of Gerald, and one of herself and Louise one weekend in New York that felt like a thousand years ago. She found room for a pad of paper and some pencils and a couple of children’s books. She’d sewn two silver spoons into Claude’s teddy bear and the last three links from her gold bracelet into the waistband of her dress.

  The man who came to fetch them was a Vichy policeman.

  ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘you understand, it is time to go?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘It will not be so bad,’ he said, taking the suitcases while Rachel grasped Claude’s hand and hoisted the baby to her shoulder. ‘There are children for your son to play with, and extra milk for the baby.’

  He loaded the suitcases into the police van and helped Rachel and the children into the back.

  ‘It’s not safe for you here any more,’ he said.

  The Nazis had ordered the Vichy French authorities to clear out the Old Port neighborhoods that lined the Marseille harbor. The Nazis feared the residents would assist any Allied invasion that might come from the Mediterranean, and planned to destroy the medieval buildings and build new fortifications.

  Rachel found she didn’t mind leaving so much. Prison was prison.

  SEVENTEEN

  I didn’t blame Barbara for her rudeness or her cynicism. She was right about everything she said, except one. It wasn’t too late to save countless lives in Europe, not only Jews, but soldiers, Resistance fighters, refugees and millions of civilians, by winning this war as quickly as possible.

  Outside Union Station I joined a queue for the next bus. It was still morning, already so hot the sticky asphalt pavement sucked at my shoes. I was awfully tired, and longed to go home to ‘Two Trees’ and nap on the wicker couch out on the porch under the ceiling fan. Instead I had to get back to the office, with Barbara’s signed leave request for Don to approve and a mountain of papers and memos on my desk to sift through. I felt a headache coming on at the thought of it.

  A faded blue Ford coupe pulled up and a
familiar voice called out to me.

  ‘Louise,’ Charles Burns said. ‘I was just driving by. Can I give you a lift?’

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you,’ I said, clambering into the front seat of the car. ‘It’s so hot, I can hardly bear the thought of the bus.’

  ‘Glad to be of service,’ Charles said, shifting gears and edging out onto Louisiana Avenue. ‘What are you doing here, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘One of my girls up and left work,’ I said. ‘She was on her way home. I brought a leave form for her to sign so that she wouldn’t get in trouble.’

  ‘That was good of you.’

  ‘I suppose. What are you doing out and around this morning?’

  Charles cocked his head towards the back seat of the car, which was piled with documents and books. ‘A retired geography professor wrote me and said he had a collection of African maps we could have, so I went out to Chevy Chase to get them.’

  ‘Anything useful?’

  ‘Haven’t really looked yet, but I sure hope so,’ he said.

  He shifted to a lower gear as traffic slowed. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘In lunchtime traffic this will take us forever. How about we stop and get something to eat?’

  ‘I appreciate the offer,’ I said. ‘But I need to get back to work. Don’s expecting me. If you like, I’ll get out and take the bus anyway, you don’t have to drive me.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘it was just an idea.’

  I lost myself in thought until I realized we were headed north instead of west.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s a great cafe a bit farther on,’ he said. ‘I ate there last weekend. It’s refrigerated. You’ll like it.’

  Fury boiled up inside me. The gall of the man, ignoring my wishes. I longed to tell Charles that I was on to him, the slug, but I bit my tongue. He was the head of a division of my OSS branch and one of my bosses. I had to be polite and deferential to him.

  ‘I need to get back to work,’ I said instead of what I wanted to say. ‘Please stop and let me out, and I’ll find a bus or a taxi.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you know you want to go. I’ll clear it with Don. I’ll say we had a flat tire or something.’