by Lyn Cote
Her stiff back to him, Bette marched him out of the room. “I’ll just take maternity leave. After the child’s born, I’ll hire a nanny or leave the baby with my mother until she’s a bit older. I don’t know.” She sounded ruffled, irritated. “I can’t do the traditional mothering with you gone.”
“Why not? I’ll be near. My parents and your parents will help out. You should be home at Ivy—”
“Curt,” she snapped, “you don’t get to commit adultery, ask for a divorce, and tell me how to live my life. You made your choice. I’m making mine. Good day.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nuremberg, Germany, September 1946
Near the rear of the press section, Bette sat on a hard wooden bench in the grim, dark-paneled, very crowded courtroom. In a dark-red suit with black gloves, she wore a press badge, identifying her as a reporter for a newspaper that had not sent a reporter to Germany, but who would claim her if her credentials were challenged. They hadn’t been.
Then Bette saw her.
She blinked her eyes, unable to believe who she’d just recognized—or thought she had—among the bank of numerous translators. Nearly lifting the black net veil on her hat, she quickly sat forward on the edge of her seat, trying to catch another glimpse.
The witness on the stand muttered on. Bette would be heartily glad when she could leave this dismal place. After a few days spent here with eyes and ears open, she would visit occupied Berlin and then try to get into Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia and anywhere else she could weasel herself in. This was a fishing trip. Bette was to gather any and all information about what was happening—names and faces and places.
The chessboard was still being set up for the struggle between the free nations and the Communists. Her orders were to travel wherever she could and to notice people and things. She had a few old Resistance contacts to meet in various capitals. Stalin was consolidating his grip over Middle Europe and had his own minions out doing just what she was.
Realizing suddenly that by sitting forward, she was calling attention to herself, she slid back in her seat. Had her eyes deceived her? Bette stretched her neck as if it were stiff—all the while trying to get a better view of the translators. But she wasn’t able to. So to fit her role, she jotted down a few meaningless notes on her pad of paper. She couldn’t concentrate. Her heart pounded with the possibility that she was right—that her eyes hadn’t played tricks on her.
Before this trip, in a quick two weeks in Washington, D.C., Bette had been trained in new spy techniques: bugging rooms, taking photographs without being seen, and learning how to develop her own film. She’d also been primed with a large assortment of faces to memorize—faces of suspected KGB agents from the USSR and Eastern Europe, faces of Nazis who were still on the loose, some Abwehr agents that had slipped through the Allied net, and more.
Now in the stuffy, oppressive courtroom, she only half listened to the horrifying testimony from a witness being cross-examined by US Prosecutor Robert Jackson. The man answering questions had witnessed atrocities in Poland, where he’d been a concentration camp prisoner. The main defendants in the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal were Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer, and other Nazis.
Not just because she was distracted, she had trouble listening to the witness’s graphic account of the disposal of corpses. Of course, she’d known of Hitler’s “final solution to the Jews,” genocide, because even before the war she had moved in espionage circles where the truth was known. She now thought of Breckenridge Long in the State Department who’d worked so hard before and even after Pearl Harbor to block Jewish refugees from reaching America. How many had been gassed because of him? Shouldn’t he be here, too, standing trial?
One of the many black-robed judges announced the lunch recess and gaveled the session to an end. Set free, Bette rose and with practiced ease cut through the crowd surging toward the nearest open doors. She knew just where she must stand to be sure to catch the person she’d seen. If she’d really seen her. Her pulse raced with the possibility. Maybe this was just a trick of the mind, bringing up a treasured dream.
Bette reached the door and waited, blocking everything from her mind but the face she sought. People streaming past her buffeted her, but she held her place, but craning her neck, trying to glimpse . . . Finally, she saw the back of the woman’s head and caught her arm. The woman swung around and . . . after nearly a decade apart, Bette stood face to face with Gretel. Her friend was a lovely blond woman now, but she had a fine white scar over her right eyebrow and she was very thin. Otherwise, this was Gretel.
After a visible double take, Gretel stared at her as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. Bette clung to Gretel’s arm, suddenly unable to speak. Shock raced up her arms like electrical charges. People pushed Gretel and Bette closer and moved around them, flowing away. Finally, it was just the two of them and two strangers who stood behind Gretel. “Gretel?” one of them asked her a question in German. Gretel waved them away with a brief answer. Reluctantly, they walked away with several backward glances.
“Gretel,” Bette was finally able to speak in the deserted hallway, which had gone so quiet.
“How are you here? Why?” Gretel rubbed her forehead. “It’s like a dream.”
Bette couldn’t answer Gretel honestly so she went on, “I saw you out of the corner of my eye. I couldn’t believe it was you, really you. Why are you here?”
“I’m a translator, of course.” Gretel let go of Bette’s hand and pressed her hands to her face. “Seeing you . . . It takes me back. How are your mother and father? Your brothers?”
“Fine. All fine. Did you . . . did you find your parents?” Bette held her breath.
“No. I lost everyone.”
The words were cold and bleak. Bette folded Gretel into her arms. “I’m so sorry, so sorry.”
Gretel accepted the first few moments of comfort and then pushed away. “Why are you here?” she repeated.
Thinking fast, Bette studied Gretel. “We must find some place private to talk.” Where we won’t be overheard. Bette had been sworn to secrecy again and she would have to let Gretel think she was really a journalist. But somehow she had to heal the rift between them. She might never get another chance. Meeting Gretel like this—it almost felt like a miracle.
Gretel nodded. “Come.” She led Bette outside into the cool autumn sunshine and down the street to a park, surrounded by the shells of bombed-out buildings. Shabby street vendors were selling sandwiches and the peeling park benches were filled with people from the court snacking and chatting. Gretel and Bette bought sausages in buns and black coffee and then sat down on the grass with their legs folded under their skirts, far from the benches.
“I can’t believe we’re here together.” Bette held her sandwich and gazed around, making sure no one was taking any interest in the two young women having an impromptu picnic. She was still awestruck. Gretel’s here, right in front of me.
“Eat your sandwich and tell me why you are here.” Gretel unwrapped her egg salad on dark rye. “When did you become a journalist?”
Bette bit into her sandwich, trying to think of what to tell Gretel. What could she tell her? She remembered with aching poignancy the last time she’d seen Gretel—in Philadelphia at the 1940 GOP Convention. Bette had been with Lundeen. She had to make that right—no matter what. “Gretel, first I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone else,” Bette said recklessly, but in an under tone. “And it must remain secret.”
Gretel’s eyes narrowed. She nodded. “I will not repeat anything you tell me.”
Bette nodded once and then said in a lower voice, “I worked in espionage before and during the war.”
Gretel’s mouth opened. “You? A spy? How? I can’t . . . You?”
Bette smiled grimly. “You just pointed out a big part of my success. I don’t look or act the part of spy, do I?” She sobered. “That day you saw me in Philadelphia—I was working for the FBI trying to ke
ep tabs on Senator Lundeen and the Abwehr agent he was so chummy with. The man didn’t have a clue who he was working with and the harm he was doing with all his isolationist propaganda. That’s the best I can say of him.”
“I thought . . . I thought—”
“That I would work for a skunk like Lundeen?” The old wound rankled. Still, her eyes roamed the park. Were there any faces she should recognize? Was there anyone close enough to overhear them?
Gretel looked pained. “It was . . . it never made sense. I couldn’t figure it out.”
“Why didn’t you write me, call me?” Then the foolishness of this hit Bette. She put her sandwich down on the brown paper it had been wrapped in. Not all of that was Gretel’s fault. “I couldn’t have told you. I couldn’t tell anyone. I’ve never told anyone.” Not even Curt.
“I understand that.” Gretel worried her lower lip. “I had my own secret reason for not coming to your wedding. Soon after that day, I returned to Europe.”
Bette stared at her friend, astounded. Gretel had risked returning to Nazi Europe. It boggled the mind. “To find your parents?” she finally asked.
Gretel put her sandwich in her lap, too. “That was at the back of my mind, of course. But I came to do whatever I could to fight the Nazis. From a southern port, I was smuggled into unoccupied France and then made my way east into Germany and then Czechoslovakia. I worked with the Resistance all through the war.”
Bette put her hand over Gretel’s. She knew others who’d done this dangerous work. “You were brave.”
Gretel looked away. “I survived. Most didn’t.” Gretel shook her head as though shaking off memories. “Where did you go after Lundeen?”
“I was sent to Bermuda to work at the mail censorship center at Hamilton there.” She picked at her crust. “I read mail and looked for coded messages, secrets being sent to Germany.”
“I bet you were good.” Gretel grinned.
Bette caught Gretel’s eye. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you don’t do things by half measure. You always give everything.” Before Bette could react to this, Gretel continued, sober now. “Where’s Curt? Did he make it through the war?” She began nibbling again, not meeting Bette’s eyes.
Bette took the question like a punch to her mid-section. She hadn’t thought about Curt since she’d arrived in court this morning. But now, seeing Gretel brought it all back—starting with the burning cross on the very morning when Curt had asked her to the senior dance. Events that were inextricably linked with Gretel. She dropped her sandwich back onto its paper. “Curt wants a divorce.”
“I can’t believe that.” Gretel looked aghast. “Curt—a divorce. Never.”
“That’s what I thought.” Her mouth felt filled with sawdust. Bette leaned back, resting on her palms, trying to look nonchalant.
“But why?” Gretel watched her closely.
Bette looked away into the distance to the few trees that had survived Allied bombing raids, at the ragged people who hurried past on the bleak city street. “He’s leaving me for a pretty little French war . . . mistress.” Each lightly said word chipped away her peace.
Gretel cursed in German—or that’s what it sounded like. “What is he thinking? You are a . . . special, so special.”
Bette smiled sadly, soaking in Gretel’s sympathy. Then she halted that. She couldn’t give into emotion. “Curt and I waited too long.” Her tone was brisk. “We should have married after I finished secretarial school. We would have had a few years then before the war separated us.” Should have—should have . . . Meaningless.
Gretel shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Who can know these things?”
Bette nodded and picked up her sandwich, though her appetite had died. She sighed. “I feel a million years old sometimes.”
Gretel nodded soberly and swallowed. “I also.”
No doubt. But Bette knew better than to ask Gretel for specifics about her part in the war. Those who’d lived on the edge didn’t want to put the horror into words. Too many close calls, too many friends and comrades killed—hadn’t Gretel said so? Bette tore off a piece of her bun and tossed it to cooing pigeons that milled nearby. “We can never get back those years, lost years.”
“Well, we are alive,” Gretel pointed out pragmatically. “And you will meet someone else and make a new life.”
Bette shook her head. “I can’t even think of divorce. In any case, I won’t marry again. I’m pregnant.”
“What?” Gretel’s eyes widened, stunned.
“Curt got me pregnant before he told me he wasn’t staying around.”
Gretel cursed in German again.
Bette took comfort from Gretel’s anger on her behalf. She’d wanted to curse Curt, too.
“Why would he do something so low as that? It’s unconscionable.”
Bette shrugged. “He said, how could he come home with everyone celebrating our being together again and say, ‘By the way, I want a divorce’?”
“He could have taken precautions. Is the man an idiot?”
Bette had wondered this also. “I might have wondered about his doing that, too. Why shouldn’t we try to conceive after all those years apart?”
Gretel made a sound of disgust and tossed pieces of crust to the pigeons, scattering them. “Don’t make excuses for him.”
“I’m not.” Telling Gretel—telling her best friend—had somehow lightened Bette’s load. She was able to draw a deep breath. “I’m just telling you what happened, what he said.”
“Did Jamie survive the war?” Gretel looked away this time.
Did she still have feelings for Jamie? “Yes, he is a decorated Navy pilot. He’s still in the service stationed in Hawaii.”
“I’m glad he made it through the war,” Gretel murmured.
Bette nodded in agreement, pursing her lips tightly.
“Have you seen Ilsa?” Gretel asked in a suddenly uncertain voice.
Bette paused, remembering all those times Ilsa had wished for Gretel to be near her. “Yes, they had two more children after Sarah, a son and then another daughter. She and Drake seem very happy together, Gretel.”
“I’m happy for Ilsa.” Gretel looked directly into Bette’s eyes. “I was young—too young—to understand all Ilsa had suffered.”
“Why don’t you call them . . .” Bette asked impulsively, “tonight?”
“No, I couldn’t put you to that expense.”
Bette decided she’d ignore Gretel in this.
A few little girls with tight golden braids ran through the park, giggling like little children everywhere. Their carefree sound contrasted with a serious subject in this somber, ravaged city of judgment.
Bette had a sudden thought. But she’d have to okay it with Souers before she said anything.
Gretel stood up. “I must get back to court on time and get ready to interpret. We will get together after court today, yes? I want you to meet my friends.”
“Good.” Bette stood up also. First, she’d go back to her hotel, make an important phone call and then send a telegram—a coded one to Souers. Meeting Gretel might be helpful, very helpful.
After sharing an evening meal with Gretel and some of her fellow translators, Bette invited Gretel back to her hotel room for the surprise she’d planned. She’d put through more than one call to the US today. They entered the neat but sparsely furnished hotel room together. Gretel looked around. “Very nice. Your paper must pay well. I share one room with three other translators.” Then she paused, looking to Bette.
Bette glanced at her watch. “I hope you won’t mind but I set up a kind of date for tonight.”
Gretel looked shocked. “What? You want me to date someone?”
“Not that kind of date.” Bette went to the phone and dialed the operator and started the process of placing a long distance call to Drake and Ilsa’s number. “I called Drake at work today and we calculated the time difference and he promised he and Ilsa would be at home awaiting your call.”
“Bette.” Gretel held up a hand. “You shouldn’t do this. It will cost the moon and stars.”
“Nonsense,” Bette replied. “And besides, the call might not go through. You want to talk to them, don’t you?”
Gretel gazed at Bette, but Bette could see she wasn’t really seeing her. Gretel took a few paces and then halted. “Yes, after all this time. Yes.”
The placing of a transatlantic call took a few more minutes of operators talking back and forth. Gretel began pacing again, rubbing her arms as if she were cold. Then Bette heard Drake’s voice over the line. “Drake, here’s Gretel.”
With regret and hope, Gretel took the phone from her friend and forced herself to gather her nerve to face her cousin—the cousin she’d scorned and wounded. “Drake, hello.” A shiver shook her.
“Gretel, we thought me might never hear from you again.” Drake’s voice was thick. “Here, here’s Ilsa.”
“Gretel?” Ilsa’s voice quavered.
“Ilsa,” Gretel gasped. Then it hit her. One member of her family still drew breath. “Ilsa, I’ve missed you so.” Then tears clogged her throat. “Can’t talk,” she gasped, wiping her face wet with tears.
“Neither can Ilsa,” Drake said, coming on the line again. “But just stay on the line. I’ll have Sarah say hello.”
“Hello,” a little voice said. “Hi, I’m Sarah.”
“Hi,” Gretel said. She began shaking all over. “Hello, Sarah, this is Gretel.”
“I’ve got a brother and a sister and we went to the park today,” Sarah explained. “Are you sad? You sound like you’re crying.”
“I’m happy. Sarah, please . . . ask your mother to take the phone again.” Gretel waited, longing to hear her cousin’s voice again.
“It’s me again,” Ilsa said. “Ich liebe dich, Gretel.”
“I love you, too, Ilsa. Always.”
The operator came on the line. “We are sorry, but a higher priority call must be allowed. Please say good-bye and disconnect. Thank you.”