by Nancy Thayer
But too much was at stake. If she was going to do this, she’d do it right. She lifted out the pile of papers and put them on the floor behind a big red leather chair. If her mother walked past on her way to the kitchen and happened to glance in, she’d see nothing out of place.
Rapidly Jean began to scan the papers, one by one, picking up each one and placing it facedown to the right of the original pile. When she was done, everything would be in its original order. Most of the papers were on stationery with navy insignia. A few had the president’s seal. Many were memos, scribbled in her father’s handwriting. Nothing looked like what Jean was searching for. Nothing seemed coded or brief enough.
She rose and carefully replaced that pile of papers. Gently pulling out the pile from the bottom shelf, she sank once again to the floor behind the chair. These, too, were military business—memos, requisitions, orders, briefings. Only the papers that had columns of statistics looked even slightly like the sort of thing Erich wanted.
Leaving the stack of papers on the floor, Jean rose and rummaged through the rest of the safe. She opened the jewelry box—nothing there but jewelry. She took out the accordion file folder that held family papers and, on the spur of the moment, extracted her birth certificate. Why not take it now? She checked through every alphabetized partition in the file and found nothing unusual. Finally she took everything out of the bottom of the safe and looked. Nothing. She stuffed the papers back in.
What now? She was bitterly disappointed. If she had to sort through the papers on her father’s desk, she’d be there for hours and probably wouldn’t get through it all. If the code was as important as Erich had said it was, certainly her father would keep it in the safe. Or—he wouldn’t bring it home at all.
She’d go through the papers on the shelves one more time.
Slowly, patiently, she removed the bundle and went through the papers one by one. She took the time to study every sheet. Nearly in tears, she rose to replace the documents.
Over an hour had gone by. The sun had shifted. Now a gleam of light reached into the safe, hitting something dark at the back. It was black and thin and flattened against the safe wall so that it looked like part of the wall.
Jean reached in and pulled it out. It was only a wallet. A common black leather man’s wallet.
She opened it. Inside was a strip of paper, thick, cheap, creased paper. Something was written on it—something she couldn’t understand, for it seemed to be a combination of a mathematical formula and a language that she didn’t know but thought was Russian. Not German, but Russian! This had to be it. In her elation, she almost kissed it. Instead, with trembling hands, Jean slid the paper into the pocket of her dress. She replaced the pile of papers exactly as they had been and shut the safe door, twirling the knob. She replaced the map on the wall. She tiptoed out of the library and down the hall. The house was still quiet. Her mother was snoring gently to a Viennese waltz. Jean slipped into her coat and quietly crept out the front door, pulling it closed behind her without a sound. She hurried down the street toward Erich and his car.
In her fantasies, she’d imagined that Erich would greet her with an embrace, but when she slid into the front seat next to him, he said only, “Did you find it?”
“I think so. I’m as sure as I can be. Want to see it?” She held out her hand. She’d removed it from the wallet and refolded it according to its crease lines. Now it lay in the middle of her palm, a slender strip the size of a cigarette paper. She unfolded it to show the odd line of letters, numbers, and signs. “I can’t make any sense of it, but it was in this leather wallet at the back of the safe. I brought that, too, but it’s empty. It took forever. Still, I thought—”
“You did the right thing.” Erich slipped the paper and wallet into the pocket of his jacket. “Let’s go. We don’t have any time to waste.” Erich started the engine and began to drive. His face was impassive. “I’ll drop you at your boardinghouse, then go on to meet the others. We’ll probably be all night working on this. I’ll pick you up around seven tomorrow morning. That will give me time to drive you to your house. You can replace the code, then I’ll drive you in to work. Or will your father be at the house then?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t spent the night there for weeks. He usually doesn’t leave the house before eight.”
“All right, I’ll pick you up at eight. You’ll just have to be late for work.”
“That’s all right. I’ve never been late before, and Polly Anderson won’t mind. Do you think I got it?”
“I won’t know until the others see it. It fits the description. It’s small enough to be carried by pigeon; it’s been creased and weathered. And it certainly looks like a code. We’ll just have to see if it’s the code we’re looking for.”
“If it isn’t, I can always go back and look again.”
“I hope you won’t have to do that,” Erich said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
Jean studied Erich’s face as he drove in silence. In the vivid afternoon light he looked older, tired. She longed to scoot across the seat and caress his hair, massage his neck and shoulders, ease away some of the tension.
He brought his car to a halt in front of her boardinghouse but didn’t turn off the engine. Turning toward her, he stretched his arm along the back of the seat. He stroked her hair and drew his hand gently down the curve of her cheek.
“I can’t come in, Jean. I wish I could. But I’ve got to get back with this.”
“I know. Oh, Erich, I hope this is what they need!”
But Erich didn’t return her excitement. Instead, he sat looking at her in silence. He seemed to be memorizing her face.
“I do love you, Jean. Never forget that.”
She put her hands on his face. The bristles along his jawline scratched the tender skin of her palms.
“I love you.”
Leaning forward, he kissed her tenderly, then hugged her against him with a barely restrained urgency. She buried her face against his shoulder.
After a long time, gently, he pushed her away.
“I’d better go.”
“All right.” She gathered up her coat and purse. With one hand on the door handle she said, “I’ll see you tomorrow at eight in the morning.”
“Right,” Erich agreed. How sad he looked, how grave. She stood on the curb watching until his dark car rounded a corner and disappeared.
All that afternoon and evening she hand-hemmed and embroidered a set of heavy percale bedsheets and pillowcases, a wedding present for Betty and Bobby. As she worked, she imagined telling Myra and Hal Farmer and Stanley Friedman what she’d done. Would they ever be impressed! She wished she could go out for a long, gossipy dinner with Midge. How Midge’s eyes would widen if Jean told her. But she’d promised Erich she wouldn’t tell, and she wouldn’t. Ever.
At eight o’clock the next morning she was standing just inside the front door, watching out the side window for Erich’s car to pull up.
By eight-fifteen, she went outside and waited at the curb, as if that would make him arrive sooner.
By eight forty-five, she was worried. She shook her wrist and put her watch to her ear: she could hear it ticking. Perhaps her watch was fast. Click-clacking up the front walk, she hurried back inside the house to check the clock on the mantel in Mrs. Connors’s living room. Eight forty-six.
She drew her raccoon coat around her shoulders as she went back out into the weak winter sunshine. She shivered. Something was wrong. If Erich knew his code breakers needed more time, why hadn’t he called her? He would have called her. So he had to be on his way. He’d been delayed somehow.
She paced up and down the sidewalk. She counted the cars that passed by, superstitiously deciding that Erich’s car would be number thirteen. Number thirteen came and went. She decided that if she didn’t look up and down the street for five full minutes, he would show up. Religiously staring at the sidewalk, she continued to pace. After five minutes, Erich still hadn’t arrived.<
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She saw Mrs. Connors looking out of the upstairs bedroom window. Jean waved cheerily at her landlady, pretending to be at ease. Mrs. Connors returned a timid, limp wave and let the curtain drop back into place.
It was nine o’clock. She should be at work by now. If Erich did come by and found her gone, he’d know where she was. He could come into her office if necessary. Or call her there. He’d given her no instructions for this sort of complication. She could only do what she thought best and trust him to find her.
When she finally arrived at the office, an hour late, Polly Anderson took one look at her and suggested she go back home. But the thought of lying in her tiny room alone with her worries was hardly appealing. She was fine, she insisted; she wanted to work. Polly gave her the easiest project that day, a repetitive pile of requisition forms to be typed. Jean worked through her lunch hour to make up for the lost hour that morning.
The day drifted by like smoke at a party. The babble of her fellow secretaries, the uniformed and bemedaled men who came and went, all blurred around her. She concentrated on typing as if her life depended on it. Still her forebodings gathered into one shrill and ceaseless voice, like that of a witchy teacher she’d had in elementary school. Where was Erich? Why hadn’t he called? What was wrong? Could he have gotten caught? Caught by whom? He loved her; he would not willingly put her through this torture. Perhaps he’d had a car accident and was now lying injured in some hospital. That was possible, even likely; it was about the only way she could explain his absence. Or what if someone had killed him!
She had to stop imagining things. She had to relax and trust Erich. She forced herself to think of him as a lover, to remember the sweetness of his mouth on hers, the endearments he’d whispered to her. Erich. He was her one true love. She had to be patient, which was never easy for her, and he’d come to her as soon as he could and explain everything.
There were no messages waiting for her at Mrs. Connors’s when she returned home that evening.
Jean stripped off her clothes and wrapped up in her warm winter robe. As she heated some soup on her hot plate, she realized she hadn’t had anything but coffee since breakfast. She wasn’t hungry even now. Anxiety filled her. She sipped some soup, unaware of its heat or saltiness, grateful for its warmth. She curled up in her bed, pulling the covers up to her ears for the comfort. She waited for the phone to ring.
At some point when the windows filled with darkness, she fell asleep. In the middle of the night she awakened in a sweat, heart thudding, a nightmare curling around her head. What had happened? Nothing. The house was quiet. Gradually she calmed herself, closed her eyes, and waited for the dawn.
The next morning she called Polly to say she couldn’t come in that day; she was sick. She dressed carefully, taking the time to curl her hair and put on powder and lipstick.
She hurried to the trolley and rode through the morning sunshine, not down to Constitution Avenue but up to the Wardman Park Hotel. Chin up, she strode through the lobby to the elevator as if she belonged there. At his floor she hurried to knock on his door.
No answer.
She went back down to the lobby and approached the main desk.
“I’d like to leave a message for Mr. Erich Mellor,” she said.
The man flipped through his books. “I’m sorry, miss. We have no Erich Mellor listed.”
Jean let out a sigh of impatience. “He’s not in the hotel. He has an apartment here.”
Smiling pleasantly, the man went through his records slowly, carefully. Jean knew when he looked up at her that he was sure of his information, and sorry for her.
“We have no record of a Mr. Erich Mellor at all. Sorry, miss.”
“Thank you,” she said, her voice scratchy.
She was so very tired, she took a taxi that was waiting by the hotel back to Georgetown. Drained, she went up the stairs to her tiny room. It was a sunny day, but she was cold. She stripped off her clothes and let them fall on the floor. She pulled on her nightgown and crawled into bed. She was still too shocked, too disbelieving, too baffled, even to cry.
All afternoon she fell in and out of a restless doze. When the sky turned dark in her small square of window, she rose, found the bottle of scotch she kept for Erich, and poured some into a water glass. It tasted medicinal and harsh, but she forced it down. Sitting in a chair in her robe, looking out at the black sky, Jean sipped the scotch, and finally it loosened the knot of misery inside her and she began to cry. Erich had left her. She had betrayed her father, and her country, and the man she loved beyond reason had betrayed her and disappeared from her life. She had to hide her face in a pillow to smother the noise of her sobbing.
At some point during the night she fell asleep. Because she was young and healthy and of an optimistic nature, and because the day was clear and bright, she felt less gloomy when she woke up. As she lay on her back for a few moments, soaking her puffy tear-swollen eyes with a cold, damp washcloth, she counseled herself to have faith and patience. She wore her snazziest outfit to work, exhorting herself to enjoy the budding cherry trees just ready to burst into bloom, the cheerful chatter of the other secretaries in the office, and the sweet hot coffee and iced cinnamon rolls Polly Anderson set on her desk when she entered. She felt her energy reviving, and suddenly she had a brilliant idea. As soon as her coffee break came, she hurried down to the public phone by the ladies’ washroom, called the telephone operator, and was connected with the switchboard of the Upton and Steward Bank.
“I’d like to speak with Mr. Erich Mellor, please.”
Even if he’d been moved to another city, they’d have a forwarding address for him.
“I don’t find a Mr. Erich Mellor in my directory,” the operator said. “Do you know what department he’s in?”
“He was … well … I know he worked there. He was an executive. He worked with the branch in New York, too.” Jean’s head filled with exploding lights. She couldn’t think straight.
“I’ll check again,” the operator said pleasantly. After an eternity, she said, “Sorry. We have no Erich Mellor listed.”
“Thank you.”
Jean hung up the phone and leaned against the wall. She had never called Erich at work; she’d never even asked for his number. He’d always called her. It was possible that the operator was mistaken. But given his disappearance, it was more possible that he’d never worked at the bank, or that he’d worked there under a different last name, one she didn’t know.
She’d been in love with someone who didn’t even exist.
The knowledge descended on her, a heavy iron weight crushing her heart.
She went back to her desk and sat down to work.
Over the next few days Jean’s hope changed to despair, and she forced herself to face the truth. She would never see Erich again. He had used her. Why? For what purpose? Had she endangered her father in some way? What would her father do when he couldn’t produce the paper she’d stolen? Her father had never trusted Erich. Bitterly she acknowledged to herself that he had been right, after all. What she thought had been love, profound, eternal, had been only an illusion.
She had been a fool.
Sorrow and self-loathing numbed her.
In March, two weeks after she had seen Erich Mellor for the last time, Bobby returned to Washington for his wedding to Betty. Al also had leave, to serve as Bobby’s best man. Their first night back, the Marshalls invited “the young people”—Betty and Bobby and Jean and Al—to dinner, and Jean was honestly glad to go, glad to get away from her lonely apartment and bitter thoughts. She was unusually quiet all through the evening, watching her father, relieved to see he showed no particular signs of vexation. In fact, he seemed reinvigorated, and he, Bobby, and Al talked enthusiastically about Roosevelt, Hitler, and the coming vote to renew the draft and the many steps that would have to be taken to rebuild the United States military forces. Germany had been at war with Great Britain and France since September, and Commander Marshall, Bobby, and
Al agreed that now it was only a matter of time until the United States entered.
These men could die, Jean realized as she sat in the luxurious safety of her family home. These good men could die. She wondered what Erich had really wanted the code for, what nationality he was, what political affiliation he held. How horrible it would be if she had somehow given Erich information that would hurt the U.S. military—and her brother and father and Al! She shivered with remorse and with fury at her own stupid gullibility.
“Are you all right, dear?” her mother asked.
“I’m fine, Mom. Just tired.”
“Are you working too hard?”
“No. I’m fine, really.” Even her mother’s solicitude, which Jean usually found overprotective and intrusive, tonight seemed terribly kind, and she wanted to put her head in her mother’s lap and be soothed as she had as a child. Jean studied her mother’s carefully coiffed white hair and slender, upright figure. Mrs. Marshall paid attention to the details of life, and because of her things went smoothly: the leg of lamb served tonight was perfectly cooked, not too well-done, and the dining room gleamed with polished silver, hand-shined mirrors, and mellow candlelight. “I really admire you, Mother,” Jean said quietly, so that she wouldn’t interrupt the men. “You make everything so beautiful.”
Her mother looked startled, then blushed pink with pleasure. “Why, thank you, darling. I didn’t realize you noticed, and I can’t think of anyone whose opinion means more to me than yours!”
After dinner the group rose and went into the living room, but quickly Bobby and Betty excused themselves to go off to talk about the wedding, and Al asked Jean if she’d care to go out for a drink with him. Jean said she would. Al looked slightly different to her after his three months in Norfolk. He had a weathered look about him, and an air of authority, and Jean realized that he was in charge of people and secrets and plans about which she knew nothing. In spite of her low spirits, the mysteriousness of it all excited her.