by Sarah Shaber
Tomorrow I had planned to break and enter the Vichy French embassy and steal foreign government documents with the help of an embassy attaché I barely knew.
Cold fear gripped me. What if I got caught inside the embassy? I would be on French soil and subject to French law. A French prison! The Devil’s Island penal colony outside French Guiana was the closest. Maybe Lionel had already informed on me. Maybe gendarmes would be waiting to arrest me once I set foot on the embassy grounds.
And if I escaped the Vichy embassy but the OSS found out about my activities? What if Charles was pestering me, not because he had designs on my virtue, but because he was suspicious of my preoccupation with Gerald Bloch’s missing file? What if Marvin Metcalfe had called Don to check up on me? What if the FBI agents outside ‘Two Trees’ yesterday morning were watching me, not Joe or Ada?
The US federal woman’s prison was in Clarkson, West Virginia.
At the very least I’d lose my job and find myself back in Wilmington, deep-frying hush puppies, at my parents’ fish camp.
I must have been out of my mind to think that I could do anything to help Rachel. I was just a file clerk. I wasn’t trained, not to mention authorized, to pull off an operation like this.
I’d had way too much confidence in my abilities and let my imagination run away with me.
The obvious, sensible thing to do was to destroy the documents I’d collected, cancel my lunatic plan for tomorrow, go into work on Monday and brief Don about the tiny torn corner of the index card that convinced me Bloch’s file was stolen. He would listen patiently, and when I could offer no evidence for my suspicions, placate me, and I would have done everything I could. Rachel’s fate, along with Claude’s and the baby’s, was out of my hands. Always had been. There was simply nothing I could do.
Except arrange to send Rachel and the children a Red Cross package. I’d read about the contents of the standard relief food package. Raisins, a can of corned beef, crackers, a chocolate bar and two packs of cigarettes. Rachel didn’t smoke. Maybe she could barter the cigarettes for food.
I couldn’t bear it.
Was there a remote chance that the wild plan I’d concocted, of planting a new Bloch file at OSS, could work?
If there was, I had to try. Or I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
I heard the grandfather clock in the downstairs hall strike midnight. It was Independence Day, 1942. Today I was going to pull a black-bag job at the Vichy French embassy.
‘This hamburger is, without a doubt, the best thing I have ever eaten in my life,’ Joe said. ‘No wonder you Americans live on them. Look at everything on it, minced beef, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise . . .’
‘When you have cheese on it, we call it a cheeseburger,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you had one yet?’
‘No, I wanted to try one, but it always looked so messy. I’m not used to eating with my hands.’
Henry, wrapped in one of Dellaphine’s aprons, the red-and-blue-checked one with white lace trim, in honor of the occasion, appeared at the door of the porch with a plate of hot dogs. Joe gingerly took one.
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t had a hot dog either?’ Ada asked.
‘This is my first. Henry, what is this flavor? It’s sort of woodsy.’
‘I always barbecue over hickory.’
‘You absolutely must have mustard and onions on a hotdog,’ Phoebe said, passing Joe the condiments tray, as Henry loaded up his own plate with Dellaphine’s potato salad and baked beans. Patriotic songs from the radio floated out onto the porch, while the fan circled overhead.
No one mentioned the drama of the night before, but Joe, Ada and Phoebe were being excessively cheerful this morning. Even Henry was kind to me, asking me how I wanted my hamburger cooked, whether I wanted my bun toasted and if I’d prefer my cheese melted on the burger or the bun.
‘It doesn’t seem like the Fourth without fireworks,’ Ada said, ‘or a parade.’
‘I’ve got sparklers,’ Henry said. ‘We can fool around with those.’
‘Dellaphine’s going to make ice cream,’ Phoebe said. ‘But we all have to take a turn cranking.’
‘Aren’t you going out later?’ Joe asked me.
My mouth went dry. ‘I was supposed to go to a pool party at the Wardman,’ I said, ‘but I haven’t heard from my friend.’
Nine o’clock had come and gone several hours ago and Lionel hadn’t called. At first I was nervous, then I became terribly distressed. Something must have happened to discourage him from our hare-brained scheme. I didn’t blame him. It was an awful risk, and as the hours passed until we were supposed to undertake it, it seemed more and more risky.
There wasn’t anything I could do without Lionel’s help, no way to get the documents I wanted without access to the Vichy French embassy files. Maybe I had to accept that there was nothing I could do for Rachel and her children.
If only I could get the sight of those frozen corpses strewn across the pages of Life magazine out of my mind.
Out in the hall the telephone rang, and I heard Dellaphine leaving the kitchen to answer it.
She stuck her head out onto the porch and looked right at me. ‘Mrs Pearlie, it’s for you,’ she said.
‘Maybe that’s your friend,’ Ada said.
I went out into the hall and picked up the telephone receiver, waiting for Dellaphine to get back to the kitchen, where she and Madeleine were eating their lunch, until I spoke.
Lionel answered me.
‘I am sorry to be so late calling,’ he said. ‘Listen carefully.’
Later that afternoon I went up to my room to get ready. I selected the same black suit I’d worn to the Wardham, but beneath the jacket I added a low-cut cornflower-blue silk blouse with the art deco necklace that Phoebe had lent me and then insisted I keep. I planned to clip on the matching earrings later. I stowed my compact, a red lipstick, a pair of black high-heeled pumps, and a hairbrush in a black handbag, the roomiest one I owned. The irony of it didn’t escape me – a black bag for a ‘black bag job.’
I tied a silk scarf that matched my blouse around my head and slipped on my sunglasses. I was ready to go. And I was truly scared.
I went downstairs into the front hall. My hands were shaking and I thought I might lose my lunch.
Then I heard the President speaking on the radio, which was turned up loud so we could listen to music on the porch. It was Roosevelt’s July Fourth address to the nation, and you could hear a pin drop in the house. ‘Not to waste one hour,’ he said, ‘not to stop one shot, not to hold back one blow – that is the way to mark our great national holiday in this year of 1942.’
‘Where’s your swimsuit?’ Ada asked me, coming out into the hall, after the President stopped speaking and the strains of ‘God Bless America’ filled the air. I could hear the grinding noise of the ice-cream maker resume from the porch. More than I could say I wished I were waiting to take my turn cranking.
‘Right here,’ I said, holding up my bag.
‘I hope it’s a two-piece,’ she said.
‘It’s not.’
‘Have fun,’ Phoebe said, passing by with a tray full of dirty dishes.
‘I may be getting home late tonight,’ I said.
I walked two blocks to the corner of 23rd and ‘I’. A dusty black Citroën pulled up next to me. Lionel leaned over from the driver’s seat to open the door. I slid in.
‘Ready for our little adventure?’ he asked.
‘I am,’ I said. Misadventure was more like it.
We arrived at the Sheraton, a hotel that overlooked the French embassy, parked, went in a back door and walked three flights up to the safe room Lionel had booked under an assumed name.
‘Okay,’ Lionel said. ‘Now we begin the performance.’
We’d already decided that if we were caught in any other state than in possession of stolen documents, we’d pretend that we were really having an affair. Who was to say we weren’t?
I took off my j
acket, put on my earrings and heels and layered on thick red lipstick, blotting it with tissue. I stuffed the blue scarf and my sunglasses into my pocketbook, brushed out my hair, and the two of us went down the back stairs to the street. There was no one in sight, so we sauntered around to the front door of the hotel, and went inside to the bar. I did my best to look and act like a floozie.
We had a drink, ordered all the canapés on the bar menu, talked and laughed, and generally attracted attention to ourselves. Once Lionel put his hand far up my skirt and rested it on my thigh. I pushed it away.
He leaned over to whisper to me, ‘You must act the part, my dear, sophistiquée. This is not your small town.’
He was right, of course, we needed to be convincing. I let him replace his hand.
After we had performed the roles of reckless lovers as long as we could without getting arrested for drunk and disorderly, Lionel took out his wallet and gestured to the waiter.
‘Two bottles of cold champagne to take with us, please,’ Lionel said. ‘It’s our anniversary.’
We left the hotel carrying the champagne, still laughing. Lionel took my elbow and steered me around back of the hotel.
‘This way.’
We walked through the dimly lit grounds of the Sheraton until we arrived at a service gate that opened onto Kalorama Road. It was unlocked. We slipped through and crossed the street, still in character, holding hands and talking. We paused outside the stone gates of the embassy.
‘Ready?’ Lionel said.
‘I’m ready,’ I said.
Together we staggered up the driveway to the stone mansion. Lionel inserted a key in the front door that looked like it should open a dungeon in a medieval castle, and the door swung open.
He led me through the handsome foyer floored with marble deep into the building and down a narrow corridor and up two flights of stairs.
‘Et voilà,’ he said, flinging open a door.
Lionel’s office was quite large, once a dressing room, I thought, because of the cupboard and closet inset into the interior walls. A long mullioned window overlooked the back entrance and service area of the embassy. Papers, books, newspapers and a few framed photographs jammed the cupboard. A desk and office chair stood in front of a row of file cabinets, and a sofa, covered in a rich but worn red brocade, sat under the window. Lionel promptly drew heavy curtains across the window before he turned on his desk lamp.
‘We wouldn’t want anyone to witness our love-making, would we?’ he asked.
A rap sounded at the door. I sat down on the sofa, crossed my legs – negligently allowing my skirt to ride up quite a bit – and unbuttoned my blouse to reveal the swell of my breasts, augmented by tissue paper stuffed into my bra, as Ada had once recommended.
Lionel opened the door.
‘My dear friend,’ he said, pulling the guard inside the room. ‘Have some champagne, celebrate with us!’
The guard’s dog, a huge Alsatian straining at his leash, his ears flat against the back of his head, followed him in. The guard kept the dog close, but he still made me nervous. But once Lionel gave him a peppermint he wagged his tail like any household mutt.
‘This is Nancy,’ Lionel said, introducing me to the guard. ‘Nancy, meet Carobert.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ I said, reaching my hand out to him languidly, an adverb I’d read often in romance novels, and he took it, bowing.
Lionel popped the cork of the first bottle of champagne and toasted us. Carobert drained his glass, and Lionel offered him another. At first he declined, but then reconsidered, draining that glass, too.
‘I must go,’ he said. ‘My duties, you understand.’
He and the dog left, and Lionel dropped back down on the sofa next to me. He put his arm around me, and his hand on my thigh again.
‘My dear, you were splendid,’ he said to me.
‘Of course,’ I answered. ‘The role of sexy mistress is second nature to me. What now?’
‘We wait for a few minutes. Until the guard is on the other side of the building. Then we go on to the file room.’
In the meantime Lionel popped the cork on the second bottle of champagne and poured the contents into a potted philodendron.
‘What a waste,’ he said, ‘but we must look as if we have enjoyed ourselves without clouding our wits.’
Lionel opened the office door slowly and peered out into the hall, listening quietly. I kicked off my heels.
‘Come,’ he said, reaching for my hand. I grasped it, he pulled me into the hall. It was quite dark, even embassies were subject to the dim-out regulations, and we were pursued by long shadows as we crept down the hall, through a door, and down another hall, this one so narrow I could reach out my arms and touch the walls, deep into the building.
We stopped in front of an anonymous door and waited, listening. My heart pounded and there was a harsh roaring in my ears. Lionel opened the door with another ornate key, we slipped inside and closed the door behind us.
The vast room was once a ballroom, I suspected, two stories tall, with stained-glass windows and parquet floors. We’d come in a back way, probably a service entrance. I saw the main double doors on the other side of the space, secured with a bar and a lock the size of my hand. The space now stored documents.
Shelves of outsized folders lined two walls. Legions of wooden file cabinets stood at attention in rows, with barely enough room between the aisles to move. Lionel led me into the thicket, past the Hs, Is, Js, across an aisle, and to yet another bank, the Cs, and finally to the Bs. ‘Bloch,’ I said, ‘Gerald.’ Lionel opened a file door and rummaged through it. He shook his head.
‘I am sorry, my dear, there is nothing here.’
‘No,’ I said. I pushed him aside and went through the files myself. No Gerald Bloch. ‘No,’ I said again. ‘It can’t be.’
Lionel shrugged.
Since I’d conceived of this little amateur caper of mine, I hadn’t let myself consider the chance that the Vichy French embassy had no record of Monsieur Bloch, hydrographer, resident of Marseille. I wanted those documents, without them I could do nothing for Rachel’s family. I was deeply disappointed.
‘Louise,’ Lionel said. ‘Come. We are supposed to be making passionate love in my office. If the guard returns and we are not there, he will sound the alarm.’
Tears welling, I gazed out over the ballroom, at row upon row of file cabinets.
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘We must keep looking.’ As I pulled away from him I knocked over a floor lamp. It landed on the floor with a crash. We both flinched, and Lionel dragged me behind a file cabinet, where we sank to the ground and hid. We waited, but no one came.
‘We’ve got time,’ I said. ‘I’m not leaving without searching through as many files as I can.’
‘Are you demented?’ Lionel said. I got up, pulling my hand out of his grip.
I ran over to an ‘M’ catalog and looked up Marseille Hydrography Office. Nothing. I ran down an aisle to the ‘I’s. Nothing on the International Hydrological Association. Where else could I look?
Lionel had followed me, but now he gripped my arm, hard.
‘Let’s go,’ he insisted.
‘Not yet, let me think,’ I said.
‘The time for thinking is done,’ he said. ‘Now is the time for leaving.’
I still resisted him. ‘Surely we have a few more minutes,’ I said.
This time he twisted my arm, hurting me so much I gasped.
‘Now,’ he said, his eyes narrowing. I didn’t argue with him.
Lionel guided me out of the room and locked the heavy door behind us. We crept back the way we came until we got to his office. Inside I dropped onto the sofa, cradling my arm.
‘I’m sorry, Louise,’ he said, looking again like the friendly, kind Lionel I knew. ‘It was necessary for us to go.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Of course we needed to leave.’ I didn’t mean it. I no longer liked him much.
We heard a sound
at the end of the hall, the slam of a door followed by human footsteps and the four-legged pattering of a dog.
‘It’s the guard!’ Lionel whispered.
We both looked at our watches. Only twenty minutes had passed since we’d left. I remembered the guard’s Karabiner slung over one shoulder and the handie talkie that dangled from the other.
‘He’s back much too soon,’ Lionel hissed.
‘Do you think he suspects?’ I asked.
‘If he did surely he wouldn’t return alone.’
‘Maybe he wants more champagne.’
We both hesitated, thinking the same thing. We hardly looked like lovers who’d been alone for twenty minutes.
‘Quickly,’ I said.
The steps came closer and closer, the dog whined, perhaps anticipating peppermints, and the door opened, without a preliminary knock.
I squealed and jumped up from the sofa, stark naked except for Phoebe’s necklace glittering between my breasts. I covered my most private body parts with my hands. The guard shined his flashlight directly on me, and shrieked himself.
‘Idiot!’ Lionel shouted, rising beside me, as naked as the day he was born. ‘Imbécile! What are you doing?’
Gallantly he wrapped his crumpled shirt around me. I tried to cry, but couldn’t pull it off, instead burying my face in Lionel’s shoulder.
The guard fell back and dropped his flashlight from my body.
‘I am so sorry!’ he said. ‘I thought, I was just checking!’
‘On what? How far we had gotten! Get out of here!’ Lionel said.
The guard and the dog, still whining for a treat, left the room, leaving Lionel and me scared out of our wits.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘you have so much courage!’ He laid a hand on my shoulder, but I shook it off.
‘Get dressed quickly,’ I said. ‘He must be suspicious of us, or he wouldn’t have come back so soon!’