Ulterior Objectives: A Lillian Saxton Thriller

by Scott Dennis Parker

  If looked at from a plane, the building was U-shaped with three wings and a rectangular atrium serving as the apex. The carpeted stairways were large, wide, and shaped like squares. To get to the next floor, a patron ascended three flights of stairs with two landings. The corridors and rooms had high ceilings, and the paneling along the hallways. Unique among hotels in Belgium was the Le Plaza Theatre. Showing movies and stage concerts, the theatre was housed completely within the hotel itself.

  The lobby was just as she remembered. Better, to be honest. Breathing in the air of the hotel was like breathing in splendor. Her heels clacked on the checkerboard marble tiles. She glanced over and noted the couch where she and James had sat waiting for the taxi to take them to the ferry and then back to Oxford.

  So many memories.

  A flash of anger charged through her. Why the hell had James chosen this hotel, of all hotels? She was going to ask him the moment she saw him.

  “Everything okay?” Henry was looking down at her.

  Lillian stood straighter. “I’m fine. Now, listen, Frank booked our room before he died. You’ll just have to go up there and check in for us. I’d do it, but I’m not sure it would be appropriate to have a lady register. Remember what I told you: you are Frank Monroe. You’re a banker out of England.”

  Henry tapped his temple. “Don’t you worry about my memory.”

  He left and approached the desk.

  Lillian looked around at the people. No one seemed in a hurry. They milled around, talking with one another, reading newspapers, checking in and out. There didn’t seem to be a sense of urgency about them at all.

  To conquer her roiling emotions, Lillian decided to sit on the exact same couch as she and James had. She chose James’s spot over her own. The fabric was just as soft, even with years of people sitting on it. She looked at the ornate lobby and remembered.

  ***

  It was November. The late autumn light filtered into the hotel and dispersed into a gentle hue. The hustle and bustle of the people in the lobby was unhurried. Outside, the chilled air foretold the coming of winter.

  Lillian Saxton sat on a couch and dreamed. She watched James Geiger, dapper as always in a three-piece suit, settle the bill with the concierge. She wore a new dress he had bought for her on the trip. She had balked at the price, but he insisted. Actually, he gave her no choice. He picked out the dress and made sure the tailor could customize it for Lillian’s figure before they left Brussels. A little slipping of cash into the palm and the dress was finished in under an hour.

  And it was spectacular. Being a poor girl from California meant that Lillian read the fashion magazines and Hollywood rags and dreamed of wearing a dress like the starlets. Now, she had one. It made her feel special, but not as must as the look on James’s face when he saw her in it.

  James paid the concierge and returned to her. She stood, and he stopped dead in his tracks. His gaze was one of pure rapture. He opened his mouth. “Okay, we have a room.”

  Lillian frowned. That’s not what James had said. He had told her she looked ravishing. That he loved her. That he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

  She blinked. James Geiger wasn’t standing in front of her. Henry was. He gave her a quizzical look. “We have a room. You okay?”

  Lillian shook her head and brushed by him. “I’m fine.”

  Henry hurried to catch up. “Listen, if something’s bothering you, tell me. We’re in this together.”

  Lillian stopped and turned. “It’s not mission-critical. It’s personal.”

  “Okay.” He held out a sealed envelope between his fingers. “Since your friend is dead, perhaps you ought to open this.”

  Lillian took the envelope. On the face, written in James’s distinctive cursive, were the words “Frank and Lillian.” Swallowing another pang of regret for Frank, Lillian used her nail to open the envelope. Inside, on hotel stationery, was a message from James: “I hope your trip was uneventful. Get settled in. Dinner is at 8:00 p.m.” Underneath the message was a single cursive capital J.

  She blurted out a dry bark of laughter. “Uneventful.” She passed the note to Henry. “Looks like we have an afternoon to kill. Let’s get up to our room and have a complete look around this place. With all the excitement up in England, I can expect more of the same here.”

  They walked up the stairs. The room was on the sixth floor. It faced north, overlooking the Rue du Progrès. Henry turned the key and let Lillian into the room first.

  The room was one of the modest ones, but a modest room in the Hotel Le Plaza surpassed many other rooms in which Lillian had stayed. The heavy curtains that blocked out the light were drawn up. The sheer curtains underneath diffused the late afternoon sunlight and gave the interior a soft glow. A dressing table and mirror sat on the wall with the window. A larger wardrobe occupied a position opposite the window. To the right was a door that led to the small lavatory.

  In the center of the room was the bed. A queen-sized bed. Not two beds.

  Lillian stared at the bed. Two thoughts swirled in her mind. One, what the hell had Frank been thinking in reserving a room with only one bed. Two, how was she going to convince Henry to sleep on the floor?

  “I get the bed.” She tossed her valise in the middle of the comforter.

  Henry closed the door behind him. “How about we take turns? I get it tonight. You get it tomorrow.”

  Lillian huffed. “I hope to be gone tomorrow.” She checked her watch. “I’ll need to freshen up before we eat.”

  “You look fine.” Henry shoved his bag in the wardrobe. He stopped. “Did you pack anything nicer?”

  Lillian opened her valise and pulled out a dress she had packed back in Washington. When James’s message had arrived and Colonel Honeywell had cleared her to make the journey, Lillian knew exactly which dress she was going to wear upon meeting James Geiger again after all these years.

  Not the dress he bought her. Not coincidentally, that dress never made it back to America from Paris those many years ago. No, the dress she picked out specifically to wear the day she again saw James Geiger was the one made just for her. Kanji Tanaka knew a seamstress in the hills of California who could make any dress for any lady. The seamstress, a middle-aged Mexican woman named Aurora, was a genius in seeing a woman’s figure and tailoring a dress to accentuate her curves and body structure. Lillian had met Aurora in Tanaka’s hermitage and they had become good friends. When Lillian joined the Army, Aurora made a dress for Lillian as a parting gift. Lillian had worn it only once, at a dance the Army threw around Christmas time. Attending alone, Lillian wore the dress, a green one-piece with a modestly plunging neckline, off-the-shoulder sleeves, and a hemline higher than normal. Sergeant Lillian Saxton had been caught unaware by the attention she received. Every non-married officer asked her for a dance. She didn’t buy a drink the entire night. In fact, she became the star of the party, something she initially hated, but came to relish. The entire evening was summed up by an old general who wouldn’t even make it to Christmas Day. “Sergeant, seeing you in that dress makes me believe Santa Claus is real.”

  That’s the dress she had selected to wear to see James Geiger again. She unfolded the dress and laid it over the comforter. “I’m wearing this.”

  As a garment, Henry didn’t give it the slightest notice. “It’s nice.”

  “Wait until you see it on me.” She winked. “Now, will you be a dear and order us some drinks?”

  CHAPTER 35

  Drinks turned out to be gin martinis. By the time Henry had returned with a tray, shaker, ice cubes, the liquor, and two glasses, Lillian had donned her dress. She sat at the dressing table and applied her make-up. She stopped applying her eye liner and watched Henry stand next to the writing table and prepare the martinis. The clatter of the ice in the shaker was loud in the small room. His back was to her so he didn’t notice her gaze.

  The whole scene made her chuckle. He turned and she began applying the eye liner again.


  “What’s so funny?”

  “You seem so confident mixing drinks. Do you often have cause to prepare cocktails?”

  Henry smirked. “I’ve been undercover for over a year. Those Germans back in Liverpool only preferred beer and whiskey. I’m good with that, mind you, but there’s something special and refined about a cocktail. The preparation, the mixing, the presentation.” He poured the clear contents into the two martini glasses, giving a little flourish at the end. Not a drop landed on the tray. He plopped two olives into each of the coupes. Taking the glasses in his hands, he glided across the room and placed one on the dressing table. “Don’t you agree?”

  Even though she wasn’t finished preparing her make-up, Lillian stood and took her cup. “I do.” She offered a toast. “To our success.” They clinked glasses and sipped. The ice-cold liquid burned her throat. She relished the feeling.

  Lillian wouldn’t admit it to Henry but she was nervous about meeting James again. After six long years, after that horrible breakup, she was going to be in the same room as the man she had loved and with whom she had wanted to spend the rest of her life. That James had picked this hotel was, frankly, a dirty trick. She would make sure to ask him about his choice.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Henry’s voice was soft and smooth like the martini.

  “I still need to put on my face and you need to freshen up. Do you want some base for your cheek?” The spot where Henry’s fellow agent had decked him was much smaller, but still visible.

  “Naw. It just helps in the looks department considering we’re going to meet your old boyfriend.” He winked. “I’m a handsome bloke who’ll be escorting you to dinner. I’ve got a nice suit. The bruise’ll just make Geiger wonder about what he left behind.” He downed the rest of his drink and put the glass back on the dressing table. “I’m right, yeah?”

  Lillian bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying the wrong thing. Instead, she shrugged.

  “I’m right.” Henry turned and grabbed his bag. He went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Lillian sat back down and looked at herself in the mirror. With her base and powder on, no lipstick, and eye liner only on one eye, she looked off kilter. Comical even. Henry was right. She had definitely noticed his ruggedly handsome appearance. The closer this meeting got, the more she realized she was glad he was here. Not that she wouldn’t have preferred Frank. In fact, if it had been Frank and not Henry, much of the worry would evaporate. The meeting would have been more like a class reunion than what its true purpose was: a military mission.

  The more she and Henry talked and participated in this mission, the more she came to appreciate how well he operated. That was to be expected considering he had been good enough to work undercover for nearly a year. No, the simple truth was there for anyone to see: the Nazis knew about her and Frank and their arrival in Liverpool. They had tried to kill them both. Then there was Dover and the spies who had found them there. Clearly, they were being watched and tracked.

  But Henry’s deft handling of the Channel crossing gave her some hope that they had lost the tails. As Lillian applied rouge and the rest of her eye liner and the rouge, she had to be honest with herself: she could have done something like that and gotten them across the Channel, but Henry, with his local knowledge, had done it better and smoother. Yes, she was glad he was here with her.

  The bathroom door opened and Henry emerged into the room. Lillian was leaning forward, applying her mascara. She stopped and looked at Henry through the mirror. His suit was dark blue, nearly black. The trousers, pleated at the hip, were cuffed at the ankle. The pants touched the top of his black shoes, highly polished. The starched white shirt allowed the brilliant red tie to take all the attention. A pocket square matched the tie. The suit coat was buttoned, giving his physique a sleek, classy look. For his hair, he had swept it back and applied something to it. The strand that seemed perpetually to be falling over his forehead was nowhere to be seen.

  In short, he was a knockout.

  “Well, don’t you clean up nicely!” To hide her admiration, Lillian picked up her glass and downed the rest of her drink. “Got any more?”

  Henry put his bag back in the wardrobe. He took her glass and prepared another drink. She finished putting on all her make-up. She stood as he approached her. In his hands, he held two more drinks.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  “Like someone who’s out to prove to an old boyfriend that he was wrong.” He smiled.

  Lillian smiled. She took the glass. They toasted again.

  “You’ve been trained well. You know just what to say to a lady.”

  “It’s all my mum. And how do I look?”

  “Like the perfect man to emphasize the mistake an old boyfriend made.”

  They sipped their drinks in silence. Henry broke the ice. He unbuttoned his coat and held it open. “I’m carrying. You?”

  “In my purse.”

  Henry hiked his foot onto the bed and lifted a trouser leg. A knife in a sheath affixed to his calf appeared. “Back-up. You?”

  “Silly man. You’re my back-up. Oh, and I’ve been trained in karate. It’s a martial art from Japan.”

  “Well, I guess we have it covered. Shall we?”

  Lillian drained her glass. She leaned to look at herself in the mirror and applied her lipstick. Bright red. She blotted her lips on a napkin. “I am now.”

  She let Henry open the door for her and lead her to the elevator bank. Cognizant of what happened in Liverpool with Bauer following them, Lillian kept a sharp eye out for anyone else. No other person walked the hallway.

  The elevator arrived and they rode it down to the ground floor. With her hand inside Henry’s arm, Lillian took in all the splendor that was the Hotel Le Plaza. The lobby showcased architecture that reflected a classical approach with marble columns and arches. The grand central staircase spun upward to the second floor. Other guests, all decked out in their finest, seemed to forget there was a war on. The chandelier emitted a soft glow. Lillian felt like a queen.

  “We have reservations with James Geiger’s table,” Henry informed the head waiter. His voice was as smooth and debonair.

  “Mr. Geiger gave me instructions to show you to the table.” The head waiter seemed to have his thin eyebrows in a perpetual arch. “This way, Mr. Monroe.”

  Lillian stifled a groan at the reminder that Frank was dead. The restaurant proved to be elegant yet muted. The arches and color palette gave the room a Grecian feel. One wall consisted entirely of a mirror. The bar, made of dark wood, showed every bottle of liquor available, each colored bottle sparkling in the light. The head waiter escorted them to a table. Being the professional she was, Lillian noted where the kitchen entrance was as well as the front door. She faced the main entry while Henry, to her immediate left, had eyes on the kitchen.

  “Fancy,” he murmured.

  She smiled. “James’s family is generationally rich.”

  “You ever have second thoughts?”

  Lillian paused only a second. In that instant, all she had been feeling about seeing this place again and imaging her life with James juxtaposed itself with the woman she had become—the woman James had made her—and found she preferred the present. Still, there was something there.

  “None.”

  The wine steward and their waiter both materialized seemingly out of nowhere. Henry scanned the wine list and Lillian deferred to him. He chose a French pinot noir for them both. The wine steward glided away and the waiter presented menus. The prices took Lillian’s breath away, but she knew money was no object with James.

  “Order whatever you want,” she told Henry. She recognized the look on his face. It was the look of a person who worked for the government and was accustomed to the lifestyle that income brought. “James wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  Their wine came and they toasted. “To suc
cess,” Henry said.

  “To success,” Lillian echoed. She sipped the wine as his eyes traveled to the entryway.

  James Geiger stood in the doorway.

  Lillian Saxton audibly gasped.

  Henry noticed. He turned to see where she looked.

  James Geiger, of course, wore a tuxedo, a black number with black bow tie. The jacket was single-breasted and featured peaked lapels of black silk that caught the light of the chandeliers. His shirt had a winged collar, the points expertly layered behind the bow tie. She noted the French cuffs jutting from the jacket sleeve with cuff links sparkling. His clean face showed no sign of aging. His radiant smile, just like she remembered it, made her stomach do a flip. The dark hair was styled and swept back.

  “My God,” Lillian whispered.

  If being in the Hotel Le Plaza brought back memories, seeing James in person, even from across the room, broke the dam of emotions. Image after image flooded her mind and consciousness. The two of them sneaking around the Oxford library, finding a secluded spot to study each other and kiss. The two of them on the beaches of France on a lazy summer day when Lillian refused to return home and instead spent the warm month living the life of luxury in one of the Geiger family’s homes. The two of them on their first date to a performance of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. The two of them on a steamer back to Boston to meet James’s parents.

  All of these memories and more swept over Lillian as she stared at the man she had loved so passionately, so devotedly, so completely. Her heart began beating faster. Her vision tunneled down to one thing—James Geiger. Everything else, including Henry Clark, faded to nothingness.

  This entire time, James talked and laughed with the head waiter. Lillian willed him to find her with his eyes, those gorgeous, perfect hazel eyes. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until her lungs ached and she sent a fresh burst of air down into her body.