“Aunt Andy?”
“Please, Harley.” She didn’t bother looking back.
“I just wanted to say one more thing. About Uncle Mark.”
“Let’s talk about it later.”
“I mean, there’s something you keep forgetting. That might get you off, you know, square one.”
She inhaled through clenched teeth and reluctantly halted. “Okay. What did I forget?”
“Well, you know how you keep looking for things you don’t have?”
“This is not a conversation, Harley. Get to the point,” she ordered, refusing to turn around.
“I mean, all those documents. Death certificate. Coroner’s report.”
“Harley—”
“All I’m saying is, why don’t you just start with the one thing you do have?”
Against her better judgment, she pivoted back toward the office.
“Okay. I’m listening. What do you think I have?”
“The ashes.”
The ashes. True enough. She certainly had the burger box. She made her way back up the stairs. “And what would I do with the ashes?”
“You could have them tested for DNA.”
She returned to her office, where Harley had stretched himself across the length of the sofa like a beached seal. Could you really get DNA from ashes, she wondered?
“And you know this about DNA because?”
“I watch a lot of—”
Andy’s hand shot up to stem the flow. “Got it. Let’s move on,” she said, reaching down to remove his feet from her furniture. Once again engaged against her will, she dropped onto the sofa next to him. “Why would I have them tested for DNA?”
“Well, the only reason you think your husband, former husband, is dead is because a Daughter of Beelzebub says he’s dead. So the question is, why would you trust someone like that?”
Andy felt a tingling along the nape of her neck, along with a wave of intellectual nausea. Where did Harley Davidson come up with this stuff? And it damn well better not be some creepy little plan by you-know-who.
“Harley,” she finally said. “I’m not sure how to put this without offending you. But if you are to remain living in my house, I need to say it.”
She thought he might be squirming, but with his current body build it was hard to tell.
“Say what, Aunt Andy?”
“I am beginning to believe you are smarter than you look.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“It is,” she admitted. “However, almost everything you know appears to come from only two sources: either the Bible or television.” She gave him a chance to contest her assertion, but he apparently agreed. “Therefore, whenever you are talking to me, I want you to concentrate on the latter. Not the former. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“Good. Now talk to me about what you think we should do with these ashes.”
Chapter 6
Such a Lovely Face
Sunset Boulevard wends its way through great commercial and residential real estate, from the notorious strip in Hollywood to the mansions of Pacific Palisades. On its way west along the Santa Monica Mountain foothills to the Pacific Ocean, the Boulevard also passes right by UCLA, one of the largest and most prestigious college campuses in the country. It was a place Harley had not yet visited, and Andy thought it was time her nephew skipped his classes at Our Savior’s Tabernacle University for the afternoon and got a glimpse of what the rest of the kids his age were up to.
“Why is Samantha coming all the way from Scotland to give a talk in California?” Harley wanted to know.
“It’s not a talk,” Andy explained. “It’s a lecture. And that’s what history professors do—give lectures.”
Harley rolled his eyes.
“Relax,” Andy said. “You’ll love it.”
“What’s it about?”
“Spies during World War II.”
The truth was Samantha Bravos was more than a lecturer; she’d become the academic storyteller-in-chief for the Scottish university system. Both the head of the history department and the administration at Edinburgh Uni loved to send her on globe-hopping tours to create interest in and attract students to their school. The university had discovered that this growing market of international students not only brought diversity to a campus full of pale-skinned gingers, but it brought a huge influx of tuition, as well. The fact that the university’s biggest recruiter was an American, born and raised in Hollywood, was not lost on the Scots. They were a practical people; if Tinseltown could make stars of Bravehearted William Wallace and Sean-007-Connery, then why not let a California beach-blonde make the pitch for their college degrees?
The lecture hall was packed, as Andy knew it would be. Sam had flown into LAX that morning and was giving her lecture in the afternoon, so she came to campus directly from the airport. Andy had not yet seen her daughter, but they were scheduled to meet up after the lecture. Andy stole a look at Harley as they settled into their reserved seats, and the expectant energy in the room began to mushroom into palpable excitement. His blue eyes hung open, as did his mouth.
Sam sat in the well of the lecture hall, while the chair of the UCLA history department introduced her. She was dressed in grey, pinstriped pants and a matching jacket that exposed a dramatic chartreuse cowl-neck sweater. Her long hair was pulled up in a twist, and she smiled when she saw her mother in the audience. Samantha had always been Andy’s most conventionally ambitious child, meaning she managed to make it out of adolescence and into a family and career without Ian’s dope smoking, Mitch’s rebellions, and Lilly’s indecision. Sam had known what she wanted and how to get it from the time she was in high school.
As a child, Sam had been the family rule-follower. Her siblings had dubbed her ‘The Strawberry’, derived from the insipidly sweet Strawberry Shortcake character that everyone in the family loved to hate. Sam’s good behavior, she often reminded her mother, had earned her the derogatory nickname and not much else. That’s because parental attention in the Kornacky family always went to the worst behaved person in the room, she said, making Mitch the chronically-lamented prodigal son to her faithful-but-forgotten daughter.
Still, Sam’s impeccable conduct and ability to function within a system, as well as deftly manipulate it, had earned her a PhD by the time she was twenty-six and a position at Edinburgh shortly thereafter. Her work since her faculty appointment had never been characterized as brilliant, which she liked to observe was not a system requirement. Rather, reviewers called her academic papers ‘intensely interesting’ and ‘almost irresistible,’ attracting a readership far beyond the university. And that, Sam once confided to Andy, was just the sort of thing that would make any system proud.
Sam stood at the podium and winked at Harley. He could barely contain himself.
“What we do for love,” the young Professor Bravos began, “can be remarkable. It can also be the stuff of history. Desire. Heartache. Courage. And betrayal. That’s a lot for one life. But during wartime, as you may know, there are people who seem to live life more than others. I discovered someone like this recently, an historic figure, who I think will interest you. And teach you about the vagaries of human behavior and the intimacy of geopolitical conflict. It’s a true story about a young woman once married to an Austrian baron—and the amazing and ultimately tragic things she did for love.”
The room was entranced. Harley had nearly stopped breathing. As Andy listened, she remembered Sam telling her that she had stumbled onto the woman’s story while reading the unpublished autobiography of an English mechanical engineer. During World War II, the man joined the British military to design innovative ways to camouflage Ally tanks and aircraft fighting in North Africa. In his manuscript, the engineer described meeting the young woman at the British Intelligence office in Cairo. Her name was Emma Linde. Only twenty-four, she was already a legend among her peers. According to both the legend and the engineer, Emma was strikingly beaut
iful. She had been married at age twenty to a young Austrian baron. Two years after the wedding, her new husband had been captured and killed by the Germans. Emma was fluent in three languages. And by the time the mechanical engineer met her, she had survived seven separate missions into Germany as a spy for the Allies. Here, Sam told Andy, was where the real story began. Unfortunately, this was also where Sam was due at a faculty meeting, so Andy never heard the rest. As a consequence, she now found herself as invested in Sam’s lecture as everyone else.
In the lecture hall, Sam arrived at the point in her narrative where Emma was taking her eighth, and what would become her penultimate, assignment. The young spy was sent undercover to work as a barmaid at a tavern in a small town in Bavaria, where she would help smuggle Jewish refugees out of the country.
“This Emma does for six months with enormous success,” Sam explained to her audience. “And then she makes a mistake. A critical mistake that not only affects her mission but the rest of her life. She lets the two small children, who she has been hiding in her room over the bar, look out the window. For only a moment, but it’s long enough for a neighbor to see them. Because Emma never mentioned having children, the villager immediately suspects they must be Jewish, and he reports both the barmaid and the children to German authorities. Suspicion spreads, and Emma knows she must move and move fast. She grabs the children and literally rides out of town on the back of a beer wagon, leaving everything behind—including her identification papers.”
In screenwriting parlance, this was the twenty-minute plot point. Andy couldn’t help but admire her daughter’s pacing. She watched as Sam paused, just long enough for the fade into the next transition.
“I won’t keep you in suspense,” Sam resumed. “Emma successfully gets the two children to safety in Sweden. Then, she returns to her handlers in Cairo. And all of this she manages without her passport, which you will remember is now in German hands. So although Emma has made it back safely, the enemy has learned her identity. For the first time, her photo begins to appear on wanted posters throughout Germany and across the occupied countries.”
Sam freed herself from the podium and her notes, stepping nearer to her listeners. “If history teaches us anything,” she said, reminding them why they were there, “it’s that life is often the result of coincidence, the confluence of two unrelated phenomena. And so it is with Emma’s story. The first occurrence is the dissemination of Emma’s passport photo by the Nazi regime. That event now makes it impossible for her to return to Germany. Her career working as an undercover agent in the field is over.” Sam let the idea linger momentarily so that her students could examine it more closely. “The second is equally life changing. Because at almost the same time, British authorities learn that Emma’s husband, the Baron, is not dead but being held in a prison camp in southern Germany.
“For Emma the news is not only thrilling, it’s unsettling. Her husband is alive. What’s more, he could be a valuable asset to the Allies if he could escape. Ironically, no one in British intelligence is better suited to navigate the labyrinth of war-torn Germany and attempt to free him than Emma herself. But everyone in the agency agrees that sending Emma back into Germany is out of the question.”
Sam perused the room, as if she were looking for someone to call on. Her eyes finally settled on Harley. But instead of asking a question, she spoke as if she were telling him a secret. “And this is where we reach the really interesting part.”
End Act I, thought Andy. That’s my girl.
“War, as you know, fulfills a great many human agendas,” Sam said, returning to her academic voice to establish the setting for the next part of the story. “Political. Economic. Philosophical. Professional. But most often, in my opinion, personal. Leaders go to war to make a name for themselves. Or exact some kind of revenge against an enemy who has slighted their self-image or insulted their family. Or simply because it makes them feel powerful. And war gives lesser players opportunities to fulfill their ambitions, as well. Men who thrive on violence get their hands on guns. Engineers and physicists are invited to explore science by creating new weapons of death. And entrepreneurs can suddenly make money in ways that, in times of peace, are thought to be morally corrupt. War is pretty much a free-for-all.
“So when Emma Linde pleads with her superiors that she simply must return to Germany, no matter what the cost, British Intelligence sees an opportunity to go where no one has gone before.”
It was hard to guess exactly which direction the professor was headed, Andy thought with admiration, and along with almost everybody else in the room, she leaned forward, waiting for the action of Act II to begin.
“With Emma’s consent, the men in Cairo call in a team of surgeons from London,” Sam explained. “These men spend the next five months making what was once such a lovely face—unrecognizable. In fact, Emma’s handlers willingly use her desire to go back undercover as an excuse to test every reconstructive surgical technique they have ever imagined.
“Here in 21st century California, we consider taking a knife to the face a routine, if expensive, act of vanity,” Sam observed, soberly. “But in Emma’s case, this is no act of vanity, and there is nothing routine about it. It is experimental and dangerous. Yet, in all my research, I did not find one indication that she ever objects to any of this butchery.
“Why, you may ask. Because, like everyone else in this war, she has her own personal agenda. So when she emerges from the hospital months later, ready to return to the field, Emma Linde is fully aware of what she has let them do to her. She is no longer naïve. Nor is she beautiful. In fact, I have seen correspondence in which those who know her describe her appearance as ‘ghastly.’ But Emma doesn’t seem to care. She is a woman on a mission.”
Sam glanced at her watch, setting off a ripple of anxiety across the room. That’s it, Andy nodded, make them beg for Act III.
“Let me just say,” Sam continued, picking up her narrative ever so slightly, “that the overlords in London are delighted by the results of their young agent’s transformation. And they are very eager for her to return to the belly of the beast to see if their experiment works. So Emma returns to Germany with a new face and new papers and a new purpose. This time it’s personal.
“Emma begins by embedding herself in the small community near the camp where the Baron is being held. She manages to get a job delivering potatoes to the camp, at one point walking by a wall in the prison with a wanted poster displaying her picture. Not a spark of recognition by anyone. This certainly seems like a good omen.
“Over time, several weeks, she manages to locate where in the camp the Allied officers are being held. Next, she smuggles a message to the Baron. Something innocuous and vague, indicating only that help has arrived. They rendezvous on a day when she makes a food delivery.
“The man Emma meets is gaunt and fearful. His hair is gray; his eyes are yellow. And yet she knows him instantly—
‘Can you get me out?’ he asks, anxiously.
She nods. But that doesn’t satisfy him.
Again he asks, ‘Can you get me out?’
She thinks for a moment his desperation must be blinding him.
‘I can,’ she says, hoping he will recognize her voice.
For the first time he really looks at her.
‘I am putting my life in your hands,’ he says.
She is looking at him now, too. ‘I know.’
And then he asks the question they have all asked, everyone she has ever helped escape, ‘How do I know I can trust you?’
“She waits, wanting to believe he will see the answer. But, of course, he can’t. He’s staring at a stranger.”
Sam walked back to the podium for the denouement. Her mother could not have been prouder.
“We can only speculate about how Emma feels at this moment. And there are no eyewitness accounts of what she does next, of course, except we know she does her job. With the same expertise and iron resolve that helped her smuggle
hundreds of refugees out of Germany, she gets the Baron out, too. He is free and in one piece. It is a remarkable accomplishment by any measure. And it is the last time Emma works as an agent.
“Records indicate that after the escape, the couple travels together to Egypt to be debriefed by intelligence officials. By her own admission, Emma does not tell the Baron that she is his wife until they are safely on the train to Cairo. When she does, he is not so much surprised or shocked, as he is incredulous. He simply doesn’t believe her. Given her appearance, perhaps he doesn’t want to. Whatever his motives, he will not be convinced until he meets with the men who have made her transformation possible. And when the truth finally hits him, he announces that what they have done is ‘appalling’ and leaves the room without saying another word.”
The young listeners stirred in their seats, as people often do during that moment before the final moment in any narrative, the moment where you hope for a happy ending but aren’t sure how the story will get there. And Andy knew from Sam that history rarely provides the destination you desire.
“The war ends, of course,” the teacher told her students. “But both Emma and the Baron live on. According to friends, they eventually return home to the Austrian castle where the Baron first brought his bride to live after their marriage. However, the war profoundly changes things, as wars always do. And love—an often-fragile emotion—is no match for its destruction.
“Emma has sacrificed her beauty to save the Baron’s life, and in the end, he finds it nearly impossible to look at her again. And that makes it impossible for him to love her again. He knows this, and no doubt, so does she.
“The local gossip, still remembered by friends of the family, is that the Baron begins having a series of affairs. He drinks. He rages. He fails in business.
“Of Emma, however, we know almost nothing.” Sam held up a plastic folder with what looked like a paper clipping inside. “Except this: a short news article that appears in the local Austrian paper on December 1, 1948. The reporter describes how the Baron’s car, despite good weather and driving conditions, bursts through a guardrail on the edge of an Alpine road at incredible speed one morning and plunges headlong into the abyss beyond. According to police, two bodies are eventually pulled from the wreckage: the Baron and his wife.”
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