Bette

by Lyn Cote

  “Fine,” she forced out the single word. Why did you think he’d come looking for you? “How’s Julia?”

  “Fine.”

  They lapsed into silence. The elevator descended, taking Bette’s mood down with it. Staring at the closed elevator doors, she was hit with a desperate ache to tell this man that she loved him. But he remained detached, obviously unwilling to treat this meeting as anything more than casual. Miserable, afraid she might blurt out her feelings, she clamped her jaw shut. Her heart was rioting inside her. Words bounced around her head, wanting to get out, to speak the truth.

  It was impossible to contain them. As the elevator reached ground floor, Bette gave in to the yearning she’d fought for too long. Her heart overflowing with feeling, she turned to Ted. The doors hushed open and he started to leave her. She whispered, “Ted, I love you.”

  He showed no sign he’d heard her. Bette’s hope died as he lifted a hand and waved good-bye, strolling away without looking back.

  She remained frozen in place as strangers entered the elevator. She rode back up with them, standing stiff and straight, concealing her utter desolation. When she finally reached the haven of her office, she stood and gazed at the patch of blue sky outside her window. Just keep breathing, she told herself. Just go on living. And someday each breath won’t slice your heart.

  She’d told Ted she loved him. And he hadn’t cared.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Virginia, December 1947

  On Saturday afternoon, Bette heard the doorbell peal and walked through the living room to answer it. Knee-high, Linda staggered after her, still unsteady in her newest skill: walking. Bette opened the door to a Christmas tree. “What?” she exclaimed, trying to see who was holding it.

  “It’s me.” Ted’s face peered around the deep green boughs.

  Shock jolted through Bette. “Ted?” She hadn’t seen him since that September day in the elevator. “What are you doing here?”

  “I would think you’d figure that out for yourself. I brought your little girl a Christmas tree.”

  “Oh,” was all she could think to say. But of course this was something she could see Ted doing—for a friend. She forced down the thickening in her throat. Just be pleasant. He doesn’t know you still cry every night over losing him. And he doesn’t need to know.

  “Let me in.” He pushed through the doorway. “It’s chilly out here.” He had taken her by surprise—just as he’d planned.

  She fell back and the prickly needles grazed her bare arms. Linda squealed.

  Ted led her into the living room, where he paused and looked around. The cozy room beckoned him, calling him to sit in the wingback chair by the fire and kick off his shoes. “Where do you want it set up?”

  “Ted, this is really sweet of you,” she began, quelling the urge to burst into tears. “But I wasn’t going to have a Christmas tree. I’ll be going home to Ivy Manor for Christmas.”

  “No, this little sweetheart”—Ted glanced down at Linda, who was gazing up at him as if he were Santa Claus himself—“deserves a tree of her own.”

  “Ted, I—”

  “No arguments.” He leaned the tree against the wall. “Decide where you want it set up. I’ll be right back in.” He left her staring around trying to get a grip on her runaway emotions and trying to figure out how to make space for the large tree in the small room. This was so sweet of him, but she wished he hadn’t.

  Ted came in with boxes piled up in his arms. “A tree stand and lights and a few ornaments.” He set the tower of boxes on the sofa. “I didn’t get a lot because I thought you would want to buy some of your own.” He bent down and scooped the baby up into his arms.

  “Where’s Julia?” Bette forced herself to ask. “Couldn’t she come with you?”

  “I don’t know where Julia is. I don’t know why I proposed to her, but the engagement didn’t last three months.”

  Bette couldn’t help herself. She burst into tears and ran to her bedroom.

  Within seconds, Ted was there with Linda riding high in his arms. The baby had accepted him immediately. Such a beautiful little girl. He’d love hearing her call him Daddy.

  Bette sat up on her bed, digging into her pocket for a hankie. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . .” She didn’t know what she could ascribe her outbreak of tears to that he’d buy.

  “Thanks.” Sitting down beside her, Ted laid the baby on her other side. And then he pulled Bette into his arms. “I hoped you wouldn’t be difficult about this.”

  “About what?” she said to his shoulder.

  “The tree is a package deal. It includes me for the rest of your life.”

  Bette stopped breathing and just stared at him.

  “But I must stress—it’s a one-time offer. We’re going to put the tree in water and then drive to Maryland where we can get a license and marry all in the same day. Then we’ll come back and decorate the tree to celebrate our wedding. But this is strictly a one-day offer. I’m not going to jump through any more hoops for you—”

  Bette stopped his words with her lips. She let her kiss tell him her answer. And he gathered her even closer, kissing her in return. “Yes,” she whispered finally. “Yes, please marry me today.”

  Ted gazed down at her. “You mean it? You know I would have cheerfully killed Curt for what he did to you. But all I could do was stand there and watch it happen, watch him torture you.”

  She hadn’t realized that Ted had suffered, too. He was always so upbeat. Was it true? She pressed herself to him, craving his touch. Tears of hope, of letting go of the past, hovered only a breath away. “I might have known that you’d come up with a very strange way of proposing,” she said, trying to lighten her voice.

  He let himself shout a laugh of triumph and wrapped his arms tightly around her. The baby girl beside them watched him with her innocent blue eyes. You’re going to be my little girl, sweetheart. He slid his fingers into the hair above Bette’s nape and pulled her face close and kissed her. “You and I don’t do things the way other people do,” he whispered against her soft lips. “We’re different. We’re spies.”

  Though his lips were as persuasive as ever, Bette leaned away. His words brought her a measure of regret. Her work at the CIA had become very important to her and so crucial, she felt, to the US’s future. “But I won’t be a spy after we marry.”

  “Why not?”

  He’d astounded her again. “How can that work? You’ll be at the FBI in Washington. And I’ll be wherever Mr. Souers sends me. And what will we do with the baby?”

  “I’ll work at the FBI. You’ll work at the CIA.” Linda fussed and he picked her up, soothing her. He held her tiny hands as she stood, swaying on his lap. “Sometimes we’ll work in the field. Sometimes we’ll be at base working in the office. You’ve already hired a good nanny for Linda Leigh, and in a pinch our girl has two—make that three—grandmothers. My mom will want a turn with her, too.”

  His saying “our girl” moved Bette to tears once more. She closed her eyes and thought of the past, what she had envisioned for her life. “I wanted to be a wife and mother. I dreamed of taking care of my children myself. I wanted to clip recipes and cook delicious healthy meals.”

  “We’re not like other people,” Ted interrupted. “You could have done that with Curt before 1939. But this is 1947 and you are an excellent operative. So am I. Cooking and cleaning are highly overrated.”

  Blinking away tears, Bette tried to put this all together in her mind. Marry and still work. It sounded too good to be true. “But will it be good for Linda Leigh?” She stroked her daughter’s fine hair. “I want her to have everything.”

  “No one gets everything. It isn’t good for them.” Leaning forward around Linda, Ted kissed Bette again and again, taking his time. He’d waited so long to claim this woman and now this child. He breathed in their mingled scents—Chanel No. 5 and baby powder. He pulled away from her lips and finished, “But finally, I will get you. And you will get me. And
Linda Leigh will get both of us.”

  Bette stared at the man who was right when he said he knew her better than any man ever had. She’d never have to lie to Ted. He’d never ask her to break a vow of secrecy. The dry, thirsty years—the war, Curt’s betrayal, and almost losing Ted—were over. “I love you,” she whispered.

  “I love you, Bette Leigh.” He slipped a ring box out of his pocket. “To seal our deal.” He grinned his usual cocky grin.

  Without opening it, she slipped it into her pocket. All the loneliness of the past months, past years, shivered through her like an arctic front and then shattered into ice crystals. “Kiss me, Ted.” Warm me. Love me.

  And he did.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Bette lived in a special time in American and world history. The rise of Hitler in Germany, Tojo in Japan, and Mussolini in Italy threatened the world’s peace and freedom in a very real way. I did a great deal of research on both the plight of Jews trying to flee Germany and Nazi espionage in the 1930s in America. America was not a world power in the true sense in the 1930s and so had no previous reason to have a strong espionage for defense. FDR early recognized the Nazi threat and authorized J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to take charge of defeating Nazi espionage. Though Hoover’s reputation, later in life and history, has suffered some tarnishing, his understanding and efforts in this area were superb. Without Hoover and his FBI agents, the US would have entered the war with its enemy knowing all its military secrets. Very scary.

  I dipped into history for some of my story. The plot to undermine War Department officials with a Georgetown brothel that Bette discovered actually happened. (I made up Bette and the dots.) Nazi agents with flirty blonds did travel around to defense factories and army bases and were given guided tours—until the FBI put a stop to it. A Nazi agent was killed in a Manhattan traffic accident. An American woman did uncover new ways to make invisible ink at the very real Bermuda Mail Censorship Center.

  And unfortunately, the FBI didn’t accept women until 1972. Susan Lynn Raley and Joanne E. Pierce were the first women FBI agents. However, the OSS, which took over espionage from the FBI during WWII, used women such as Betty MacDonald McIntosh and Virginia Hall, and so did the CIA. So while Bette had to work unofficially for the FBI, she could have been recruited by the CIA just as I described.

  And though it may be hard to believe, Bette’s visit to Mrs. Hoover was accurate to the period. Washington, D.C., was just a small provincial town in the 1930s. And there were no spy schools. People who showed an aptitude for espionage like Bette were recruited informally and did “on the job” training.

  I also tried to portray Ilsa and Gretel’s experiences accurately. It’s hard to believe that someone like Senator Lundeen could abet Nazi agents with his isolationism or Breckenridge Long would actively block Jewish immigrants from coming to America in the years before Nazi Germany decided that the “final solution” to the Jews was extermination. But he did. Eleanor Roosevelt was often the one who swayed her husband not to listen to Long, who maintained that spies would be planted among the immigrants. Mrs. Roosevelt saved at least one shipload of Jews on the SS Quanza. Unfortunately, the SS St. Louis and many other ships full of immigrants were turned back to Europe and then to the death camps. Gretel’s desire to immigrate to Palestine after the war was the fruition of years of Zionist fervor and the result of the Jewish frustration over the fact that no nation wanted the German Jewish immigrants—as Ilsa found out as she hunted for a visa to freedom and life.

  If you’d like to read more on this exciting era, I suggest William Breuer’s Hitler’s Undercover War: Nazi Espionage Invasion of the USA and Henry L. Feingold’s The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust.

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  1.Do you have any family members who served in WWII? What stories have they related to you in the past? Are there any questions you wish you had already asked them? (If so, do it; their time remaining with us is short.) What are they?

  2.Divorce is an ugly fact of our time. Contrast how it was handled in Bette’s time and ours. Do we treat divorced women the same now as then? Think before you answer.

  3.What was Curt’s fatal or tragic flaw? How do you feel about his feelings for Bette and then Maurielle? What about his views of the perfect wife?

  4.Bette was greatly influenced by both Curt and Ted. In what ways? Was she the better for those influences?

  5.Have you ever been in a situation like Bette’s, where you had to keep secrets about your life from those you love? How did that affect you and your relationships?

  6.Drake and Ilsa married in spite of their religious and cultural differences. What are the pitfalls of such a marriage and how may they be overcome—or can they be? Do you know anyone in such a marriage? How have they handled it?

  7.How would America be different today if Rosie the Riveter had not gone back to the kitchen after the war?