Louise's Chance

by Sarah R. Shaber

  ‘The devil!’ I said, cradling my hand. I turned to see who had interrupted me.

  It was Ruth (thank you, Jesus). ‘You scared me to death, sneaking up on me!’ I said.

  Ruth took my left hand and felt all its fingers, one by one. ‘I don’t think you’ve broken anything,’ she said. ‘But that hand will ache tomorrow. I’m sorry I startled you. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Research for my new job,’ I said. Ruth and I had worked together in the files until I’d moved to the MO branch. The woman was a filing machine. She could file twice as fast as any of the clerks and had the memory of an elephant. She looked just like always. A Mount Holyoke graduate, she wore makeup and pearls even when dressed in a smock and trousers.

  ‘How is the new job?’ she asked.

  ‘I like it so far.’

  ‘Can I help you find something?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m looking for a list of German prisoners of war in the United States,’ I said.

  Now I was committed. I had no one’s request or permission to look for Rein Hermann’s name in the OSS files, but I was going to do it anyway. Ruth would assume I had a good reason for my search, and she wouldn’t mention it to anyone. She helped dozens of people find files every day.

  ‘I bet you expected to find it under “Prisoners of War, German”, didn’t you? You know better than that. Come with me,’ Ruth said.

  Ruth led me to a separate bank of file cabinets in a corner of the archive, away from the reception desk and Shera’s office, I was glad to see.

  ‘These are files that are so active we keep them here to make it easy to add files quickly,’ she said. ‘This cabinet contains the prisoner-of-war lists by camp name.’

  Luckily for me most of the file jackets were empty, since few prisoners had arrived stateside yet. It took no time at all for me to look through the alphabetized lists. Rein Hermann’s name wasn’t there. Yet, anyway. I could ease Ada’s nerves for now.

  I’d missed lunch but was due back at the MO office soon. I stopped by the OSS snack bar on my way back to the Que tempo and bought a package of peanut butter crackers and a Coke. That would have to hold me until dinner tonight.

  Sitting on a stone wall in the middle of the OSS campus I choked down the crackers and Coke. I was disappointed that I hadn’t found any information about the two German men who died crossing the Atlantic on their way to Fort Meade, but I knew beforehand that was unlikely. I’d really hoped to find a city map of Reichenberg too, so I could locate where Muntz and Aach lived. It seemed to me that it was important somehow that the two men lived at the same address and I was terribly curious about their neighborhood.

  But I had a new idea, one I didn’t plan to ask Miss Osborne’s permission to implement. Joe was Czech, and when I saw him I’d share the story of the two dead German prisoners of war with him and ask him what he knew about Reichenberg. I thought I knew Miss Osborne well enough now to be sure she wouldn’t want me to talk to anyone outside OSS about this. But I was also sure that if I brought her usable information she would be glad to have it and excuse me for involving Joe to get it. At least I hoped so.

  Merle and I drank coffee and waited an hour for Miss Osborne to appear in the conference room. She flew in with her coffee in one hand and a stapler in another.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I had to approve some “black” materials we’re flying to London tonight. Good work on your letter, Merle.’

  Merle nodded his thanks.

  ‘Merle,’ she continued, ‘Louise had a couple of spare hours after lunch, so she went to the Registry to see if she could learn anything about the two prisoners of war that went overboard while crossing the Atlantic to the States. Anything, Louise?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Muntz and Aach weren’t referenced at all. And I looked everywhere. Even in a 1939 Reichenberg telephone book. I found a file on Reichenberg itself, but there was nothing unexpected in it. I hunted for a city map too, hoping to pinpoint our deceased prisoners’ neighborhood, but the Map Room didn’t have one.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ she said. ‘So we have nothing to add to the information we already have about them?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Well, you tried. Let’s put our curiosity about these men aside for the moment. You have the rest of the summaries, both Merle’s and ours?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, putting my hands on the two stacks of papers.

  ‘Now,’ she said. ‘We need to merge and alphabetize these. Please use the stapler. I despise paperclips.’

  The three of us shuffled paper for an hour. When we were finished we had an organized description of the population of German prisoners of war at Fort Meade. After we’d returned the prisoners’ intake papers and paybooks to the camp headquarters we would work from our own summaries.

  The last thing Miss Osborne did was to locate the summaries for each of the men we had already interviewed and attach my interview notes to them. I noticed that Miss Osborne also flagged the summaries for Muntz and Aach, the men who had disappeared off the Abel Stoddard.

  ‘Louise,’ she said to me, ‘I expect you to guard these documents with your life. There are no copies. I’ll commandeer a briefcase of some kind you can use to carry them. If it wouldn’t attract so much attention I’d handcuff the case to your wrist!’

  ‘I will take good care of them,’ I said, drawing the mound of paper toward me. I well understood the importance of our notes. From these men we might recruit the first operatives who would carry ‘black’ propaganda behind German lines in northern Italy.

  I left the stack of papers on the seat of my office chair and shoved it under my desk. Miss Osborne had given me a key to my office, and for the first time since I’d started this new job I locked the door after I left.

  EIGHT

  Billy Martin’s Tavern was a squat brick building, painted white, in the middle of Georgetown. Narrow-paned windows framed with black shutters pierced the second floor. A narrow roof sheltered the entrance from the weather. I’d heard of the Tavern, of course, but had never been there.

  I was early for my date with Joe, so I waited around the corner of the building. I didn’t want him to find me already seated at a table, on my third glass of iced tea; he might think I was desperate to see him. Which I was, but I didn’t want it to be obvious.

  Georgetown was once a town in its own right, set down at the highest navigable point up the Potomac next to Rock Creek Park. It was named ‘Georgetown, DC,’ and stayed independent until the Washington and Georgetown horse car company made travel between the capital city and the little port easier. That, plus the silting up of canals and the Potomac, sealed Georgetown’s fate, and it became a small but colorful Washington neighborhood. It was old and historic, and as I looked around I was charmed by its tiny stone houses and quaint shops.

  I idly watched an old Buick pull up to the front of the Tavern and park, and was startled to see Joe and another man get out of the car. I’d expected him to come on foot from the bus stop and I prayed he didn’t see me holding up an alley wall of the Tavern.

  The two men went inside and I waited for my breathing to return to normal before I collected myself and breezed inside. Inside the Tavern was dark, lit by hanging lamps with Tiffany- style shades and dim wall sconces that did little to light the gloom created by mahogany paneling, the long mahogany bar and the dark wood tables and booths. What a perfect meeting place for secret lovers!

  Joe and his companion had taken seats on one side of a booth. When Joe saw me he beckoned me over. Both men stood up and then Joe kissed me, so sweetly I instantly forgave him for all his past and future mistakes. Slightly dizzy from the kiss, I managed to slide in to the hard bench of the booth. The two men sat down after me.

  ‘Louise, this is my roommate, Ken Tutterow,’ he said. ‘I wanted you two to meet.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Ken said, ‘I need to leave for home shortly, but I wanted at least to meet you. Joe talks about you with such admiration.’ Tutterow was wel
l into his sixties, I guessed, maybe almost seventy. Grey hair circled a prominent bald spot. His warm smile revealed a narrow gap between his front teeth.

  I felt myself blushing at his words. ‘Well, it’s very nice to meet you too.’ I said.

  ‘You,’ Ken said to Joe, ‘I will see Sunday night.’

  After Ken left Joe took his seat again and reached across the tabletop for my hand.

  ‘He seems like a nice man,’ I said.

  ‘He’s doing good work,’ Joe said, ‘implementing the Lanham Act.’

  ‘Thank God something is finally being done about child care,’ I said. ‘Have you seen those awful stories in the newspapers about little children chained inside trailer homes or even locked in cars outside factories all day while their mothers work? There aren’t enough day nurseries or relatives to care for them.’

  The Lanham Act allocated funds to local communities to build and staff their own day nurseries. The nurseries were open to everyone and heavily subsidized, so poor women could use them too.

  ‘Ken didn’t need to take me in, either, he can afford the apartment rent on his own. I was looking for another boarding house, which I didn’t think I could bear, considering our situation, and he instantly offered to share his place with me.’

  ‘I’m so glad to see you,’ I said, squeezing his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry about Monday night,’ he said, ‘showing up like that at Phoebe’s without any notice. I was sort of stuck. You handled it brilliantly, though.’

  ‘It was a shock,’ I said, ‘but Joe, we just cannot let Phoebe know about us. She’s so old-fashioned, she might evict me. And my job depends on my security clearance.’

  ‘I understand. It’s that suspicious Slav accent of mine.’

  A waiter stopped by our table and seemed irritated that we hadn’t looked at the menu yet. We ordered drinks, a Coke for me and coffee for Joe. We had to release each other’s hands to look at the menu.

  ‘They serve a lot of seafood here,’ Joe said. ‘I know you don’t like fish, but they have other dishes too.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. I’d be willing to eat jellied eels as long as I sat across the table from Joe.

  When the waiter returned I ordered Brunswick stew, which I hadn’t had since I’d left North Carolina. Joe requested a fried oyster sandwich and fries.

  ‘So,’ I said, after the waiter had picked up the menus and walked away, ‘why are you back in Washington so soon?’ I lowered my voice. ‘Are you still working for the JDC?’

  Joe closed his eyes for a second and winced, as if he’d had a stab of pain. It frightened me and I reached for his hand.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m still working for the JDC,’ he said, looking directly at me again. ‘We lost one of our people in Lisbon. Murdered. He was shot in the back while having a coffee in Rossio Square.’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, I’m taking the place of the man they’re sending to Portugal to replace him.’

  Consciously we talked for the rest of the meal about anything but the war. The weather was cooling off quickly, so Joe planned to borrow Phoebe’s car to get his winter clothes from the boarding house attic, where he’d stored them when he went to New York City. We both badly wanted to see the new movie For Whom the Bell Tolls. Starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, the film had had a War Bond premiere in Washington attended by scores of celebrities and government notables like Admiral King and Harry Hopkins. Five million people had already read Ernest Hemingway’s bestseller.

  The Organization of Colored Locomotive Firemen was again threatening to march on Washington to compel President Roosevelt to abolish ‘Jim Crowism’. I wanted the march to go forward. I didn’t think colored people would ever get free of discrimination unless they held more marches and sit-ins. Joe sided with most of the rest of the country who said that during the war race conflicts would hurt the war effort. Of course, Joe was a man. I had a different perspective. If women were being encouraged to return to domesticity after the war, then the Negro would be pressured to take up his past role too. The government needed us now. They had to pay attention to us. Would they after the war?

  After Joe paid the check he helped me out of my seat. ‘Let’s go catch a bus,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you my new place.’

  I could feel Joe’s breath and his soft beard on my neck and the warmth of the length of his naked body pressed up to mine. We were spooned into one of the two single beds in the only bedroom in Joe and Ken’s tiny apartment. Without a word we’d gone straight to the bedroom after we’d arrived, pausing only long enough to lower the window blinds.

  ‘I’ve got to get up,’ I said to Joe.

  ‘No, not yet,’ he said. ‘Stay.’

  ‘Can’t. Must go!’

  He sighed and unwrapped his arms from around my body. I slipped out of the bed and hurried to the bathroom. When I returned to the bedroom he was gone, leaving behind the depression in the bed where we’d loved each other. I got dressed quickly and went through the living room and into the tiny kitchenette, where I found Joe making a pot of coffee. I slipped under his arm and we kissed.

  ‘Do you know it’s four o’clock in the afternoon?’ he said.

  ‘We must have fallen asleep,’ I answered.

  ‘How long can you stay?’

  ‘I should leave soon. I told Phoebe I was having lunch with a friend and going shopping. She’ll expect me back in time for dinner.’

  Joe and I never discussed regularizing our relationship. He would always be a foreign refugee. The JDC, his employer, had become a clandestine organization the minute Germany had declared war on us, so his work was illegal. Even if we married I might lose my job. Besides, I didn’t know much about him, just what he told me, and I wasn’t convinced some of it wasn’t a cover story. All that stuff about his Czech grandparents and their dairy farm and their Holstein-Friesen cows and milkmaids! I was only sure that he was a Czech national who went to university in England. He had a British passport. I knew that he worked for the JDC because I saw him at his office. His cover story while he lived at ‘Two Trees’ was that he was a Slavic language instructor at George Washington University. I was also positive that Joe was one of the good guys, whatever secrets he might be keeping from me.

  As for Joe’s intentions, he simply told me he wasn’t free to marry. Which was fine with me. I wasn’t in a rush to remarry. I liked earning my own money and doing what I pleased. If my parents even suspected I thought this way it would shock them to their core. And that would be before they found out I hadn’t been to church a single Sunday since I’d arrived in Washington.

  I curled up on the corduroy sofa in the small living room. Joe brought me my cup of coffee and settled down next to me. The apartment was tiny, a typical two and a half, with a living room, a bedroom with twin beds, a bathroom and a kitchenette. Rent would be about ninety dollars a month. Hundreds of similar apartments had been renovated and built to accommodate the flood of war workers that flooded Washington. Joe and Ken’s place was in a large complex called Potomac Plaza two blocks west of George Washington University in Foggy Bottom, about five long blocks from my boarding house. The building itself couldn’t be less impressive despite its size, but the apartment was cozy, and I liked the anonymity of it. It would make a great safe house, if I was in the business of looking for one.

  Joe got up to answer the telephone in the bedroom and I allowed my mind to review the story of the two prisoners of war who’d died, or committed suicide, crossing the Atlantic. Ever since I’d learned they lived at the same address in the Sudetenland, been conscripted on the same day and vanished on the same day months later, I’d been obsessed with their perplexing story. I gathered from Miss Osborne’s comments that she felt the same. But the camp commander and the captain of the ship were sure the two men had killed themselves, so there wasn’t much we could do about it. Solving their murders wasn’t part of our mission. Our job was to identify pr
isoners we could recruit to go behind German lines in Italy with new identities and distribute black propaganda. Period. But if a killer lurked in the prisoner-of-war camp, and the prisoners knew it, couldn’t this obstruct our mission? Who would volunteer to help us if there was a murderer in the camp? I had selfish reasons for worrying about this too. I wanted my first assignment for my new job to be a success.

  ‘You look like you’re miles away from here,’ Joe said, slipping back on to the sofa and putting his arm around me again. ‘What are you daydreaming about?’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I said. ‘My mind wandered off for a minute.’

  ‘I must be forgettable,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘You know that’s not true!’ I said, upset with myself.

  ‘I’m just teasing you,’ he said, pulling me closer to him. ‘God knows there’s plenty to think about. I suppose your new job?’

  Without hesitation I acted on my plan to ask Joe to help me, without Miss Osborne’s approval.

  ‘I have a question for you,’ I said. ‘About an incident that we’re investigating at work.’

  ‘If I can help I’d be glad to.’

  ‘Two ethnic German men lived in Reichenberg, in the Sudetenland, at the same address. They were drafted into the Wehrmacht on the same day, but into different units. Both men served in North Africa and were captured by Allied forces. They were sent here to a prisoner-of-war camp, but before they arrived they both vanished off the Liberty Ship ferrying them to the states. They died on the same day. Where else could they go but overboard, of course, and the naval authorities ruled that they had both committed suicide.’

  Joe arched an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘That’s odd. So with all those coincidences, you’re wondering if there was another reason they vanished.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, taking the final swallow of my coffee. ‘Do you think it’s reasonable to wonder if they were murdered?’

  Joe finished his own coffee and set the cup on to the packing crate that served as a cocktail table. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think it is perfectly reasonable. I mean, the coincidences aren’t that striking until the two men disappear together. They were out of the war for the duration; why should they want to kill themselves? And on the same day too?’