by Susan Isaacs
“Thank you.”
“Every once in a while, say something to me in German. ‘Are you all right, darling?’ ‘Can I get you anything?’ That sort of thing.” I nodded and closed my eyes. A minute later, he started to stroke my hair. “I gave you a damned good haircut, Ingeborg.” I kept my eyes closed. He turned my face toward him. I looked up. “Linda, I’m sorry.”
“Really? What for?”
“For the way I behaved before.”
“Actually, it felt like Old Home Week.”
“I was never that rough on you in Washington.”
“Want to bet?” He knew what I meant. Suddenly, he became absorbed in studying the medals on his uniform. “You know, you can be the coldest, most heartless…Sometimes, when I was working for you…Oh, never mind. It wasn’t that often.”
“I’m sorry for all those times.”
The train jolted, then started to move. No toots, no whistles. It just eased out of the station, through the city.
“Would you like me to help you off with your jacket, darling?” I asked, out loud, in German. Then I whispered. “Are you saying you’re sorry because you think we won’t make it?”
“Shhh. Relax.”
“What are our chances? Twenty-eighty? Sixty-forty?”
“I’d say about fifty-fifty. That’s being objective. Subjectively, I wouldn’t have come in if I didn’t think I had a good chance of getting you out.”
“Or just getting me before the Gestapo did.”
“If that was all I could get, I would have settled for it.” The train picked up speed and we rushed through the countryside. “Linda.”
“What?”
“It’s been eighteen months of hell for me. Ever since I came back and found out you’d gone in, I’ve been…Quick! Say something in German!”
“I love it when you do that to my hair,” I said. As I was saying it, there was a knock on the door. I tried to grab Edward’s hand, to squeeze it; I was so scared. But he just shook his head and put his hand on my shoulder. Possessively. “Come in,” I called out.
The door opened, and there was a conductor in a white jacket. He bowed. “General! Miss. I am Martin. I am at your service.” I lifted my head from Edward’s lap, sat up slowly and curled up against him. He gave me an icy look that said, This is inappropriate behavior. I expect more from my mistress! I pulled away. I lowered my head, ashamed. The conductor took it all in.
“General Steinhardt would like some brandy or aquavit,” I said. “And some tea for me.”
“Will you be going to the dining car, Miss? Or may I bring you something? Bread, perhaps some cheese or cold cuts?”
I looked at Edward, expectantly. So he nodded. “Some bread and cheese. The general is tired. He does not wish to be disturbed again.” Martin clicked his heels and closed the door.
“What was that all about?” Edward whispered.
“You don’t wish to go to the dining car. He’s bringing some stuff in for you. You don’t wish to be disturbed.”
“Speak German again!”
“Should I have ordered coffee, darling?”
We sat silent for twenty minutes, until Martin returned with a tray on a cart and set it before us on the couch. After he left, Edward reached into his pocket and came out with two white pills; I poured some water and took one. “I’ll tell you if I need the other one. I don’t want to get too fuzzy.”
“All right.”
“Edward…”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry I did what I did. Sneaking behind your back to Norman Weekes the minute you left the country.”
“Are you really sorry?”
“I’m sorry about what I did to you.” I took a slice of cheese and made a sandwich. “How mad were you?”
“Very. And terrified. I’d read the reports on the RAF attacks on Berlin and—” His voice broke off. He ignored the brandy but took a piece of cheese. “There wasn’t one damned day that I didn’t…fear for your life. Even after the intelligence you were getting started coming out. Especially then. I knew you were in that house all the time.”
“I was a cook. Did you know that?”
“Yes. Were you a good cook?”
“Of course I was a good cook, but that creep had no taste buds.” I took some more bread and cheese. “Ed.”
“What?”
“I just want to tell you…I don’t think there was ever a day I didn’t think about you. Whenever I got scared, and that was almost all the time, or whenever I didn’t know what to do, and that was almost all the time too, I’d ask myself, What would the great Edward Leland do?”
“If the great Edward Leland were living in Horst Drescher’s house, stealing state secrets, being bombed every night, I think…I know he wouldn’t have made it.”
“Sure you would have.”
He took my hand for a minute. “I’m glad you thought about me, Linda.”
The train sped on.
I thought I was being professional, alert, but I woke up later and my head was in his lap again. “How long did I sleep?”
“About three quarters of an hour.”
“Could I have the other pill?”
He leaned over, got some water and gave it to me. “How bad is it?” I tried to sit up by myself. I needed his help.
“Bad.”
“Do you want a shot of brandy?”
“No, thanks.” I touched the silk sleeve. At least it was dry. “I’m not bleeding.”
“That’s good. I wish I could do something more for you.”
“Ed. What if we make it out and they have to amputate my arm?”
“Stop it!”
“Rolf, my contact, only had one arm. You should have seen him clean fish. But who’s going to want a one-armed typist?”
He smiled, then sat back. “Are you planning to go back to work?”
“Can you think of another way to earn a living?”
“Well, you’re a wife.” I didn’t say anything. “You haven’t asked me about John.”
“I guess that’s because I’m not really interested in John.”
“He’s your husband.”
“Not for much longer. Death or divorce, whichever comes first.”
“Linda…”
“Ed, in all those months in Berlin, when I was holed up in bomb shelters waiting to die, I thought about him, oh, maybe two or three times. But never: Oh, my dear beloved, how I yearn for you. Not even: Gee, I wish John was here to hold my hand.” I peeked through the blinds. It was dark outside. “He didn’t love me. You know that. And I didn’t love him.”
“You gave a fine imitation of it.”
“Well, I loved what he was. His intelligence, his looks, his classiness. I thought: Here is what I should love. So I loved it. It was like I was reaching out for something beyond me, something better. But he wasn’t better.”
“He’s waiting for you in London.”
“He went with you to London?”
“Yes.”
“How come?”
“He knew…we all knew your life was on the line. You’re our hero, you know. Heroine.”
“They must be hard up for heroes.”
“You know what you did. Living there all that time. And finally, giving up your chance to live so you could get the Grayson report to us. They confronted him, you know. He tried to commit suicide, but they caught him in time. Now he’s feeding false information to the German agent—just slightly false, so everything he says becomes suspect and the Germans will decide he’s a plant. Linda, what you did was so important, and so brave.”
“But I didn’t do it out of bravery. I did it because I was stuck there, in Berlin, and it was my job. What else could I have done? Run? Where could I run to?”
“That’s pretty much what happened to me in the last war. I was crawling on my belly, they started shooting, and I kept crawling. Where could I run to?”
“But you are a hero. You’ve gone in again and again, knowing how dangerous—”
About an hour later, I said, “I feel giddy. Not silly. I mean, the pills. I’m having a lot of pain, and I feel it, but it’s like my mind is somewhere else, looking down at the pain. I had that same feeling when I was in the hospital, when I lost the baby.” Edward looked as if he wanted to say something, but then he just nodded. “You know, John never came right out and said he didn’t want it. He said it would have been inconvenient. We’d have to move. Good old honorable John.”
“Don’t be so hard on him.”
“Why not?”
“Because he does the best he can with very little.”
“He’s not much of a man, is he?”
“Linda, my guess is that if we make it to Bern—that’s where we’re headed, actually, not Basel—you’ll recuperate for a week or so and take the first plane out to London, back to him. So let’s stop the discussion right where it is. It’s gone too far already.”
“I don’t want him.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Well, I say that if he wants me now, it’s because I’m the Sweetheart of OSS. All of a sudden I’m a hero. He can take me to dinner parties and not cringe over my accent. And you know what else I say? I say, if he was a man who wanted his wife, he’d have come and gotten me. He’s fluent in German, for God’s sake. But he left it to you.”
A timid knock. Martin. “Forgive the intrusion. Shall I make up the bed, General? I don’t wish to disturb you again, but…” I looked at Edward, as if asking what I should do, and then I told Martin to go ahead.
When he left, I asked Edward, “When do we get to the border?”
“About ten tomorrow morning. Go to sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“Go to sleep.”
I got into the bed. They gave the SS such soft sheets. “Ed?”
“Yes.”
“How is your daughter?”
“Well, she’s going to make me a grandfather.”
“From her…”
“Yes. She went back to him soon after you left. Well, back and forth. Nan seems to thrive on marital crises, and her husband puts up with them. She goes off to think things over and then comes back. The last couple of times, at least, her distress was genuine. She didn’t run back to John. She had a lot to think about, and it seems that for the time being she’ll stay with Quentin and be a wife and mother.”
“Well, congratulations, anyway.”
“Thank you.”
“How old are you?”
“Fifty-five.”
“I thought it would be about that.”
“Rapidly approaching fifty-six.”
“I hope you live to see your grandchild.”
“Linda, go to sleep.”
The awful thing was that right from where we were sitting, we could see the Swiss flag. But we were inside the German customhouse, with an army officer at an official desk, across from us. He had a thin face, like a hatchet. “I am sorry, General Steinhardt, but we have been ordered to stop all women of the description of Miss Ingeborg Hintze.” Edward stared at him. The officer inched back in his chair, uneasy but not afraid. “And if you will be so good, General, could you please unwind your scarf so I might take a look at your wound.”
Edward just kept eyeing him. And with the officer eyeing me, I couldn’t even move my finger to my neck as a signal. But just then, Edward sensed what was expected; he opened his collar. He kept the scarf tied, but slowly he unbuttoned three buttons and pulled open his uniform. As the officer tensed, his chair squeaked. Short, thick red scars covered Edward’s chest and shoulder. A livid one, like a crater, was dug into the top of his chest; the surgeons who had put his face back together hadn’t even tried with the rest of him.
The officer averted his eyes—not enough to seem unmanly, but enough so that he was looking just beyond Edward’s shoulder. He was a deskman. Edward began to unwind his scarf.
The officer said, “Please, that is not necessary, General Steinhardt. I hope you will accept my profound apologies.” Edward began buttoning his uniform, ignoring the man, which only made his apologies more profuse. “It was simply that your not being able to speak…I—we—there was some concern that perhaps you were hiding a foreign accent.”
Beyond the small window, the Swiss flag fluttered in the breeze. A perfect spring day over there. “Can we go now?” I asked.
“The general can go, Miss. I am afraid we must detain you.”
I got emotional. Well, I was. To see the flag, no more than a couple of hundred feet away…“Please. I have an appointment at the clinic in Basel. I must be there. Some…some surgery.”
“I am sure it can be postponed a day or two.”
“It’s really very important, and the general has been kind enough to accompany me. I can’t ask him—”
“I am afraid you will have to.” He reached under his blotter and offered me a sheet of paper. A handbill from the Gestapo. Attention! it said. And beneath it was Lina Albrecht’s passport photo. I took it and handed it to Edward. He glanced at it, made a face—such a dreary little girl—and threw it back on the officer’s desk.
“I regret to say, General, there is a certain vague resemblance.” He wasn’t sure; the general, with his perfect papers, perfect uniform, perfect bearing and perfect scars, wouldn’t…but any man can be duped. “You, sir, are free to go, but I must phone my superiors and ask that they send an investigator to scrutinize Miss Hintze’s documents.”
Edward nodded, as if he understood completely.
“May I see you out, General?”
It couldn’t just end. I looked over at Edward and remembered when I thought it was all over for me at Margarete’s apartment. I’d said to myself, Remember one wonderful thing. And what had comforted me, and then flooded me with pleasure, was the memory of sitting in the Packard beside Edward on an ordinary day, almost touching, having a long conversation comparing Churchill and Roosevelt, and his brilliant half smile when I’d said, “Ha! Got you!” after he admitted the two men had a lot in common. I remembered his suit, the smell of starch on his white shirt, his hands resting on his briefcase, and I remembered not letting myself think about how I felt about him.
The officer shrugged his apologies to Edward. And Edward seemed to understand. He put his hands on the desk and pushed himself up from his chair. As he did, the officer leapt to attention. Edward smiled. The officer moved to go to the door, but Edward put a hand on the man’s shoulder: Stop. The man’s pale, thin face began to darken at this abuse of military etiquette. But suddenly the face brightened.
Sticking out from under the blotter was a souvenir from Edward: a thick wad of cash. As they used to say in Ridgewood, enough to choke a horse. Enough to buy a German officer, plus, I thought, some extra. The officer reached out for it and stuffed it into his pocket.
Then he picked up the handbill with my picture, crumpled it, and stuffed it in his other pocket. “So many people pass over this border. Naturally, we are always besieged by papers such as these. The dull, bureaucratic mind at work.” The officer smiled. Edward turned toward the door. “Please, allow me, General! Miss Hintze. If you will follow me, I will escort you to Switzerland.”
27
My bed was like a crib, with high white railings on four sides. When the nuns in their white habits and their head coverings that looked like upside-down canoes came sweeping in to change my bandages or give me pills for the pain and the infection, they’d lower the side, go about their business and then raise it again. If I hadn’t been so sick, I probably would have thought of it as a prison, but with my fever at a hundred and four for a few days, I was a baby again, and all those German-speaking nuns were like sugar-coated Grandma Olgas, straightening my blanket, feeling my forehead, making sure I was all right.
I wanted all the comfort I could get.
Edward came to visit me, and he brought me American presents: a Hershey bar, a Coke and, on the third day, an Eveready flashlight. He said the only other American
object he could find was the American consul’s Oldsmobile, and he couldn’t fit it into the elevator.
I asked him how much it had cost to get me out of Germany. About twenty thousand dollars—in Swiss francs.
I know we talked now and then, but I don’t remember what we said. The second afternoon, he brought in the head of the OSS in Bern, and they asked me all about Margarete. I guess I was speaking for a while, because finally Edward turned and said, “Really, this is too much for her.” I hadn’t thought it was, but I must have fallen right asleep, because I never saw them leave.
He came at night, and he’d sit in a chair next to the bed. When I’d wake up, he’d ask me how I was, and I’d say fine. I could have said a few things more, but what was I going to say? I love you? I love you now, and to make it worse, I probably loved you for ages and didn’t even know it? Somewhere between New York and Washington, my awe turned into understanding and my respect into love? On the third night I asked, half hoping for something, “Aren’t you bored, sitting here?”
“Yes. Excruciatingly. If you go back to sleep, I can leave.”
On the fifth day, my fever was down. The doctor took off the heavy bandage and covered my wound with a gauze pad. I ate boiled eggs and toast for breakfast. And at ten o’clock, Edward Leland came to say goodbye.
“I’m going to Madrid later this afternoon. And then back to Washington.”
It had to happen. I knew it. I was prepared. “Well, have a good trip. I’ll see you in Washington or, more likely, New York.”
“Yes. I’ll look forward to it.”
“Edward.”
“Yes?”
“You’re really going?”
“You’ll be fine. In a few days, you’ll be out of here. Back to…wherever.”
“And you? You’ll be back to wherever?”
“Yes.”
It still wasn’t easy for me to move, because of the intravenous needle, but I edged over to the side of the bed and managed to grab a lever; the bedrail came crashing down. “Sit down,” I said. He sat beside me, all dressed for the plane. Suit, striped tie, wingtip shoes, a gray felt hat in his hands. “Your Republican uniform.”