Fifth Column

by Christopher Remy

  He squeezed her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek. "That's my girl. Don't be late on Sunday. We'll celebrate."

  2

  As she walked to the Dalys' house two days later, Johanna pitied the undergraduates she saw streaming out of the dormitories and boarding houses, busy packing up and going home for the summer. It was the same cruelty every year: winter in Michigan began shortly after school started in the fall and the first warm spring day came as students left. They had endured the frigid cold and endless snow, just to leave when the reward for their suffering was at hand.

  Now, for the first time in six years, she too faced the possibility of leaving. After studying under Charlie Daly at Smith College and following him to Michigan for her graduate work, she wanted to stay with her mentor. He was the first to inspire in her a passion for history and he was the one who convinced her that it could be a career.

  She had made no secret of her desire to stay in Ann Arbor, but was reluctant to ask Charlie to lobby his colleagues to hire her. If she was going to get an offer, she wanted it to be because she had earned it, not because of any pull she had with Charlie. Johanna had applied through the normal official channels, and now she waited.

  Turning down tree-lined Elizabeth Street, she thought about how much she would miss Sunday dinners if she had to take a job elsewhere. Since her days at Smith, Charlie and Eve had welcomed her into their family, knowing that she rarely went back to New York to visit her parents.

  She came up to the Dalys' periwinkle Victorian with its white gingerbread trim and walked around to the back porch. Through the door, she could see Eve's short red hair bent over the dining room table, undoubtedly reading final term papers from one of her freshman literature courses. She opened one of the French doors and went in. Charlie was at the stove, stirring three pots at once, a crisp white apron covering his Sunday best. He always did the cooking, once telling Johanna he had learned to cook only after marrying Eve and seeing that his survival depended upon it.

  Eve looked up, putting down her papers. "Well, hello, Doctor Falck," she said.

  "Good afternoon, Doctor Daly," Johanna replied with a smile. "And to you, Doctor Daly." Charlie waved one of his wooden spoons without turning around. Eve got up and embraced Johanna, squeezing her tight.

  "We're very proud of you. And not the least bit surprised that you've done so well," she said, finally letting go. "Come, come, sit down and tell me all about Friday. Charlie's already given me the summarized version. I want to hear every detail."

  Johanna did her best to remember every question asked and every answer given, especially her exchange with Lowe.

  "At one point, I thought she was going to jump across the desk and strangle him," Charlie added.

  Eve laughed and said she should have bought her a more revealing dress to neutralize the famous Lowe Inquisition. "He wouldn't have been able to look at you, that old curmudgeon."

  Dinner was served. When they were all seated around the dining room table, Charlie raised his wine glass and toasted Johanna on her accomplishments, predicting a long, distinguished career in scholarship. As they ate, Johanna noticed that, while Eve was her usual effervescent self, Charlie spoke little, mostly looking down at his plate. Johanna sensed that he had something to say and was afraid that it was bad news. I didn't get the job. That must be it. My 'long, distinguished career' is going to have to be somewhere else. As dinner wore on, she got a sinking feeling in her stomach and decided she couldn't stand the suspense any more.

  "I didn't get the job, did I?"

  Charlie started and looked up at her. "What? The job? No, no…I mean, yes, I think you will. They are sending out the offer letters first thing Monday, and Don Lowe assured me you would be getting one."

  Johanna was stunned. She was going to get the job. Eve grinned at her and kicked Charlie under the table.

  "So much for keeping it a secret," she said. "He wanted you to be surprised when you got the letter. I told him that was cruel and that he should tell you today." She patted Charlie's hand. "Either you're finally listening to your wise wife or senility is setting in. Given the extreme unlikelihood of the former, I suspect the latter."

  Charlie looked to Johanna and rolled his eyes in mock exasperation.

  Johanna pushed her empty plate away and said to Charlie, "You looked like you were trying to avoid telling me some bad news before, that's why I asked about the job. I assumed that's what it was."

  Charlie looked at her for a moment before answering. "I do have news to tell you, but whether it's good or bad will be up to you."

  He took a sip of his wine, looking to see Johanna's reaction.

  "What kind of news?"

  "I'm going to be leaving Michigan. Both of us, in fact. This semester was our last. We didn't want to tell you until you had finished."

  Johanna looked from one to the other in disbelief. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Neither of them had ever given her an indication that they were unhappy here or had offers to go anywhere else.

  "I don't understand. What do you mean you're leaving? To go where?"

  "Do you remember me talking about my friend from Princeton, Len Pollack, the one who works for the State Department?" She nodded. "Well, Eve and I will be going to work for him. He is heading up a new group within State called Intelligence Coordination. I am going to be in charge of the Research and Analysis group and Eve is going to be in charge of recruiting for R&A."

  "I don't know what to say," Johanna said, shaking her head. "Why?"

  "How much longer do you think it will be before we get involved in the war in Europe?"

  "I don't know. Not long, I suppose."

  "And do you think that we should intervene in order to defeat Hitler before he attacks us?"

  "Yes, of course. We've had this conversation before, but…"

  "Well, that's why." He finished off the last bit of wine in his glass and continued. "It may or may not surprise you to know that the United States is the only nation of its size and power without a clandestine service, like the British MI6 or the Deuxième Bureau in France. The Army and Navy each have their own intelligence service, but they are focused on military intelligence.

  "The State Department has traditionally collected intelligence from their foreign service personnel stationed in our embassies, but never as a concerted effort, and certainly never in wartime. In Germany, we don't even have anyone to collect newspapers and rumors. Neither the War Department's G-2 nor the Navy's ONI is too interested in sharing intelligence with other agencies of the government, and certainly notState. Len told me once that FDR doesn't think they even tell him everything they know."

  "The real solution is to have one central clearing house for intelligence to properly advise the President. Len says there are rumors around Washington that this may happen, but what he is doing at State is a good first step. We're going to be using every information-gathering means at our disposal and use various experts pulled from academia to analyze that information and supplement it with our own research."

  Johanna, still stunned by the suddenness of this announcement, admitted to herself that she could see the allure of it. "It does sound interesting. I can understand why you would want to do it, especially if you get to have a hand in creating that group."

  Eve smiled, "We thought you might say that. That's why we're asking you to come with us."

  "Me?"

  "Yes, you," Charlie answered. "The kind of work you've done these last years is exactly what we're looking for. Analysis of events in context."

  "Plus," Eve added, "we thought that, given your personal motivations, you would like to take an active role in defeating the Germans. A chance to do something for Julian."

  At the mention of his name, Johanna looked away and nodded. Julian Missbach had been a philosophy student at Heidelberg while she was there. In the short span of a few months, they had become inseparable. They finished each other's sentences and joked that they could read one another's mind
. It was the only serious relationship Johanna had had.

  She found that it was getting harder to remember his face. When she closed her eyes, she could picture his curly black hair, but his features were fading in her mind.

  One morning she had walked to his apartment on her way to a lecture, hoping to make him breakfast. Reaching into a flower box on his window sill, she had pulled out the key he always left for her.

  The door had been unlocked. Pushing the door open, she had seen Julian's landlady standing amid a mess of papers and books on the floor. Julian had been arrested, she had told Johanna. From the look on the landlady's face, Johanna could tell that it was the Gestapo that had taken him.

  "Yes," she said at last. "I'm interested."

  Charlie went on to explain the details, and when he told her of the other academics that would be working for him, Johanna recognized some of the names and was impressed. These were some of the best minds from the best universities. Historians, mathematicians, art history and even literature scholars like Eve.

  Charlie told her to think about it, but didn't give her much time. They were renting their house out for the first of June and planned to be in Washington by the middle of May at the latest. That gave her two weeks to decide whether or not she was going to abandon everything she had worked for in the last six years.

  Walking home that evening Johanna thought it over, but couldn't come to a decision. Everything that she had learned from Charlie Daly over the years told her that she could make a real contribution to the field, coming up with her own ideas and making her own discoveries. She had balked at the idea of teaching, but he had convinced her that passing on knowledge of the past was the entire point of studying history.

  For the past ten years, she had been driven toward that one goal. After focusing so long on her degree and her career, thinking of nothing else, she now felt completely lost.

  3

  Dropping off her dissertation at the printer last week, Johanna had anticipated the satisfaction of presenting the bound copy at the library for it to be catalogued and shelved. Even though she was sure no one would see it again once it had been lost in the bowels of the stacks, she knew it would be there long after she was gone. Now, as she walked across campus with it under her arm, she found herself unable to feel happy about it.

  Even as a child, Johanna had been stubborn, never wavering when she had made up her mind. As she grew older, this became the way she gave order to her life. A life that she thought, as a first act, would culminate in her PhD. She was happy her dissertation had received so much praise, even before it was completed. Now, just as she should have been enjoying her success and setting her next goal, she didn't know what to do.

  The worst of it was that she couldn't separate in her mind what were essentially two issues. The first was: did she want to go work for this new State Department intelligence group? Would the work be satisfying and challenging? Would it be a continuation of her work or a career derailment? She wanted to say that it would be interesting and it could even be fodder for further research and writing, assuming she went back to academia after the war. Which led her to the second issue: was she just thinking all of this because it was the Dalys who were asking her?

  Eve and Charlie had provided her with the kind of family she had always wanted – one of intellectual stimulation and erudition. While she loved her parents, their German immigrant, working class outlook had chafed her for as long as she could remember. Books were never a big part of her home life – she had had to go to the public library for that. Even as a young girl, when her endless questions were answered with blank looks, she knew that the scope of her parents' world didn't extend beyond the limits of their Manhattan immigrant neighborhood. While her younger brother Freddy had never shared her passion for books and learning, he also had felt something was missing in the Falck household.

  For both of them, their rebellion had taken the form of a rejection of all things German. Each had Americanized their own names, Johanna abandoning the German pronunciation of Yo-hanna in favor of Jo-anna and her brother choosing Freddy to replace his given Friedrich. They became embarrassed by their parents' thick accents and Old World customs, and avoided the pageants of traditional costume and ritual that would take over the streets of their predominantly German Yorkville neighborhood. Earning a scholarship to SmithCollege had offered Johanna the escape she craved and the chance to remake herself as Jo-anna, all-American girl, leaving behind Yo-hanna the German immigrant, daughter of Klaus and Elisabeth.

  She had continued this reinvention at Smith, where she had expected to fit right in with the intellectual inquiry and stimulation of college life. She was not prepared to feel like she was drowning in a sea of debutantes who sniggered at her accent and cared little for her scholastic achievements. She worked hard to shed what was left of her girlhood accent, firming up her ws and losing her guttural rs. She spared what precious pennies she could for a cheap imitation of the shimmering gowns her classmates would wear to campus events.

  None of this had worked, least of all after she attended a social organized with the men of AmherstCollege at the end of her first semester. Even in her not-quite-right dress, Johanna was noticed. When the other girls saw the attention Johanna was receiving at their expense, they only became crueler in their rejection. She dismissed them as vacuous non-intellectuals and rejected them. She vowed never to try to impress anyone who didn't impress her first.

  Then came Professor Daly's European History survey course. Teaching at Smith for two years as a favor to a friend, Daly's unique perspective on the subject of history lit a spark in Johanna's mind. He showed her that the study of history could be more than simply memorizing dates and reading the works of certified and long-dead experts, but could be a chance to develop one's own explanations of events. For the first time, Johanna felt she had found her calling. Mathematics, literature and science – all felt like work. But now, she had the chance to make her own unique contribution and, encouraged by Charlie Daly, she did.

  Eve and Charlie Daly recognized that Johanna stood out from the crowd in Northampton, not just for her achievements in the classroom, but also as an outsider in the College's social circles. The Dalys had pursued distinction in their academic careers at the expense of family, and now the childless couple took Johanna in. While Eve wrote her study of Emerson, Charlie arranged to extend his stay at Smith for two more years. Johanna had finally found the kind of family she had daydreamed about in her parents’ Yorkville apartment.

  Now, as she walked across Michigan's main quadrangle with its budding trees and greening grass, she realized that, although she was an adult and should be striking out on her own, she wasn't ready to leave the new family she had known for the last ten years. She would take the job in Washington. Her academic career could wait.

  Nearing the steps of the hulking Hatcher Graduate Library, she saw two tables manned by students in front of the library steps. One solicited volunteers for Bundles For Britain and the other encouraged homeward bound students to get involved in local chapters of various interventionist groups. Each handed out copies of articles by Walter Lippmann and others that aimed to convince Americans to support Britain in their fight against the Nazis. Johanna took one of the articles – one she had already read in Life magazine – as a gesture of support. It reminded her that there were bigger issues at stake than whether she maintained her relationship with the Dalys or stayed in Ann Arbor to teach German history to freshman.

  She and Charlie had discussed the European war and Japan's Asian conquests many times in the last few months. Now, as she thought about it, she felt foolish for not having suspected earlier that he might make this sort of decision. He and Eve both believed that war was coming to the United States whether anybody wanted it or not. Johanna agreed, and more important than her career or her personal feelings was the fact that she now had a chance to do her part in the fighting.

  4

  Washington, DC – May, 1941


  Washington was already sweltering barely one month into spring. Outside her apartment building on Connecticut Avenue, Johanna fanned herself with a folded newspaper and waited for the Dalys. With her hair pulled severely back and wearing one of her usual non-descript dresses, she hoped she would not be so conspicuous standing here on the sidewalk. It was all for naught. She heard three wolf-whistles that she tried to ignore and actually saw one passing driver swerve to avoid a parked car he hadn't seen while trying to get her attention. It didn't take long for her to remember why she didn't like big cities.

  Johanna had been surprised how a country at peace could have a capital and government that, to all outward appearances, was at war. The streets swarmed with men and women in uniform, and single women by the busload were streaming in to the city to find one of the many new jobs. She had expected to find an apartment of her own, but found not a single one vacant. There were, however, plenty of girls advertising for roommates wanted. One of these, a Rita from Maryland, seemed nice enough and Johanna had taken her steamer trunk and boxes of books and moved in to the two bedroom walkup.