The Brass Compass

by Ellen Butler

  The door swung open to reveal First Sergeant Glassman.

  “You’re looking much better.” He came to stand next to the bed. “The eye doesn’t look quite so gruesome.”

  “Gee, Sergeant, you really know how to boost a girl’s confidence,” I drawled, provoking a grin. “Thanks to Tank, I’m feeling much better. Which reminds me, I never properly thanked you for saving my life back there. If it hadn’t been...” I shuddered at the thought of what might have happened.

  “No problem, ma’am.” He gave a deprecating shrug. “If it hadn’t been for your wild-eyed signal, I might have been the one shot in the head.”

  I reached out and took his rough hand into mine and gripped it tight. “Thank you, First Sergeant. I owe you one.”

  Glassman blushed.

  “Well, there is something you can do for me.” Captain Devlin stood in the open doorway carrying a handful of papers.

  Tank saluted; I released Glassman and sat back against the pillows as he entered. “At ease. Gentlemen, can we have the room?”

  The men took their leave and Devlin closed the door behind Tank. “Madam, tales of your heroics and beauty are running rampant through the company, and half the men are smitten with you without even having set eyes on you. You’ll have them all at your feet once they actually see you.”

  I dismissed such blatant flattery, especially because I knew in my current state I must look like hell. “What can I do for you, Captain?”

  “Call me Jake.”

  “Very well, what can I do for you, Jake?”

  “My translator has come down with dysentery and is currently spending his time at the latrines.” He held up a sheaf of papers.

  A few I recognized as documents I’d encouraged Glassman to take. “Yes, of course. Do you want me to read them out loud or type them up?”

  “Read.” Jake seated himself in the chair vacated by Tank. While he sorted through the documents, I straightened the counterpane and shoved the German coat aside. He pulled forth one of the documents and laid it in my outstretched hand.

  “This looks like a command from the general field marshal directing troop movements.” I broke off a piece of the chocolate bar and popped it in my mouth. The sweet cocoa was an indulgence I hadn’t tasted in a long time, and I savored the treat as my eyes skimmed the paper.

  “That compass looks familiar.”

  I paused mid-chew.

  Jake steepled his fingers and gave an enigmatic smile.

  The chocolate, now as tasteless as chalk, tumbled down my throat. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The compass you are wearing around your neck. He used it to orient himself the night we jumped into Normandy. He once told me it was his father’s.”

  Possessively, I tucked the pendant beneath my collar.

  “You’re the girl. The girl from Paris.”

  I didn’t rise to his bait.

  “It’s funny, I haven’t seen the compass since his trip to Paris. And while he was there, he acquired a new trinket. It looks to me like a St. Christopher medal. Yours?”

  Once again, I was put into a position where I had no answer, and even if I did, I’m not sure I would have provided it. My training held me in a tight grip. I’d already told this man too much. I refused to allow him to goad me into a confession about Charlie. Especially if Charlie hadn’t seen fit to explain it to his friend himself.

  “Would you like me to continue?” I crossed my hands piously over the document.

  “Don’t worry, he’ll come around. He feels duped ... betrayed. But you and I know it’s all part of the job. Deep down, he knows it too.”

  I wasn’t so sure. I looked to my next meeting with Charlie with a sense of eagerness and trepidation. Since Jake had opened this door, I couldn’t hold back my next question. “Is it possible to see him?”

  His brows rose and a half smile crossed his features. “I can let him know you’re asking.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Lucky Talisman

  “I will be back in an hour. If you finish up and are looking for something to occupy you, there is a file next to the typewriter that needs to be translated.” He buttoned the top two buttons on his shirt. “You know how to type?”

  I smiled wryly at Jake. “Yes, Captain, I know how to work the typewriter.”

  “Good girl,” he said absently, in such a manner it made me feel like he was praising a favored pet, as he searched for his hat.

  Indeed, in the past few days, Jake Devlin seemed to have taken on the role of big brother. Truth be told, I liked him. Jake had the charm that comes from living the life of old money. He reminded me of the men I grew up around and worked with on Capitol Hill. Not only did Jake have an appealing charisma, he was highly intelligent without being condescending. As I had been patronized by so many men in my career, it was this humbling trait that had me valuing Jake’s opinion above all others ... except one.

  He patted his pockets as he visually scanned the room.

  “Jake.” I scooped the hat off the coffee table. “Catch.” It wheeled across the room and he snatched it out of the air one-handed.

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s cold. Don’t forget your coat,” I tutted. The door banged shut and I sighed in the peaceful silence. What a difference a few days made. My strength returned bit by bit. The headache, my constant companion since I left Oberndorf, finally abated, and the damage wrought by Lars was slowly healing. This morning the bathroom mirror revealed the ugly bruising around my eye had lightened to a purple edged in yellow. I suppose I’d been lucky that he hadn’t hit me with his fist and broken my cheekbone. The bruises at my neck had also faded to a dull ochre, the handprint no longer distinguishable in its outline, and today was the first day it didn’t feel as though a painful walnut stuck in my throat every time I swallowed.

  I adjusted the apron of my dress—a classic black, with red and white embroidery, German dirndl, handily acquired by Sergeant Peterson, who was better known as the battalion scrounger—and settled myself into the red-velvet wingback chair that I’d occupied only a few days ago. I pulled the photos out of the manila envelope and began sorting them across the low table. The strong coffee left a bitter taste and I added another lump of sugar. The door to the suite opened and closed. I peeked around the side wing of the chair expecting to see either Jake returning or his orderly, Private Karp. Neither man appeared.

  Charlie, humming “Moonlight Serenade” and wearing only a pair of olive trousers and a towel slung around his neck, went directly to the antique washstand and mirror next to the wardrobe. He proceeded to work up a lather and soap his face with a shaving brush. I froze, the coffee cup halfway to my mouth and my shoulders stiff, as I shamelessly watched, knowing full well he did not realize the room was occupied. I should make some sort of noise to alert him. Yet I couldn’t tear my eyes away, and I voyeuristically observed the muscles ripple beneath his skin while the razor rasped down the tender flesh at his neck. My tummy fluttered and my breath came out in shallow puffs. A new scar, still pink with healing, curved along his shoulder blade and undulated as he shaved.

  I hadn’t seen Charlie since our disastrous reintroduction. Though I’d had a parade of visitors come to my room in the past few days, Major McNair was not one of them ... at least not while I was awake. I did not know if his neglect was due to work or disgust, but I’d been reluctant to request Devlin, or any of my other visitors, to send Charlie to me. Now ... here he stood, and all the eloquent apologies that I’d thrashed out in my head over the past two days incoherently scattered, and my brain exited like a vaudevillian actor booed offstage.

  He wiped the residual soap off his face and combed his damp hair into place.

  The time had come. I swallowed and steeled myself. “Hello, Charlie.”

  He spun around to face me.

  “Or should I call you Major McNair?” Fortunately, I managed to return the coffee cup to the saucer without spilling. “Congratulations, by the way, on your promotion
.”

  He flipped up the lid on the footlocker that had been in my room the first day but disappeared as I slept, and drew out an olive drab T-shirt, which he pulled over his head. Then he opened the wardrobe and yanked out a Class-B gabardine shirt. His fingers quickly worked the buttons as he came around the sofa and took the seat opposite mine.

  “Lily, you’re looking”—blue eyes swept up and down my ridiculous costume, resting briefly at the bruises on my neck, and followed the chain that disappeared beneath the poufy white blouse—“much restored.”

  “I’m on the mend. Would you care for a cup of coffee?” I didn’t wait for a response, instead reached for the pot and extra cup. I held both in an iron grip to keep my hands from shaking under his intense scrutiny. “We seem to be out of saucers.”

  He took the cup without glancing at it.

  I licked my lips. “I’m sorry, Charlie.” The apology surged forth with zero finesse. “I’m sorry I lied to you in Paris.”

  His jaw flexed. “Was any of it true, or was I just part of the cover?”

  Stung by the accusation, I closed my eyes. “Journalism was the cover, but the rest ... it was all true. Everything. My mother’s death, the relationship with my stepfather, the dinner, dancing ... our night together. All of it.” I wrung my fingers and whispered, “It was all true.”

  Charlie didn’t respond. My gaze flicked up from my hands to find a frown marring his profile as he contemplated the fire. He rose, snatched the poker off the stand, and stabbed at the embers. His movements, so abrupt, had me shrinking into the chair. My reaction, caught in his periphery, seemed to anger him further, and the poker dropped back into its metal cleft with a clang.

  I purposely relaxed my fists and reached for the comfort of the coffee, cooled and now skimmed over. Following my lead, he returned to his seat and picked up his own beverage.

  “Why Fleur-de-lis?”

  The unexpected question startled me. The coffee went down the wrong pipe and I choked. Charlie handed me a cloth napkin as I coughed. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Jake told me it’s your code name. How did that come about?”

  “Oh.” I wiped the last of the spittle from my lips. “My name, the fact that I speak French, and the birthmark. You know.” The memory of Charlie stroking the flower-shaped stain at my hip had me flushing.

  His fingers tightened around the mug. “How did they know about the birthmark?”

  “Medical records.”

  His grip relaxed. “I would have worried had I known.”

  “Then it is probably best you did not.”

  “How long have you been in country?”

  “The orders I received in Paris.”

  “No, I mean how long have you been here in Europe?”

  “I shipped over to Britain in late forty-three to finish my training. Dropped into France a week before Normandy with French Resistance and SOE.”

  “What do you mean you ‘dropped in’?” His brows drew down.

  I remembered his lovely parachuting story from the Paris café and chewed my lip at the foolish mistake.

  “Did you parachute into France?”

  The napkin coiled around my fingers. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. “I trained at Manchester.”

  “My blathering ... you must have thought me a fool.” He laughed ruefully.

  “No! Good heavens, Charlie, no. You were ... lovely.” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that little speech had me falling tops over tails for him, but I held back. “Do you have any idea how I have savored our time together? Dreaming about the two of us in Colette’s dinky Paris apartment? Those treasured memories kept me going through the freezing nights in the Schwarzwald. We promised ... promised to meet up at the end of the war, and I was determined to hold up my end of the bargain. When things got bad ... I would close my eyes and pretend I was back at the club, dancing in your arms. You remember.”

  His jaw flexed at that, but I detected a softening around his eyes and plowed onward. “You came to me in my darkest moments. For a time, it allowed me to forget about the bitter cold wrapping around me, and the pain...” I raised the back of my hand to my cheek.

  “I don’t know you.”

  “But you do, Charlie. You know me better than anyone in the world.” I laughed at the irony. I’d poured my heart out to a man I spent a weekend with in Paris, and no one knew me better. Having spent much of my life hiding my true feelings, hiding who I really was, hiding ... always hiding, at school, at home, even my Washington roommates didn’t know about the rift I’d caused between my stepfather and myself. And why would they? I’d always been so reticent to talk about anything personal or close to my heart. Or perhaps it had been ingrained by the etiquette lessons at the British boarding school and Mont-Choisi.

  There had never been another man in my life. Not like Charlie. No one knew me better. Had connected with me at such a primal level, and yet here he sat, staring at me like he spoke to a stranger. It was a knife to my heart and made me realize that, through my own lies and secrecy, I couldn’t force a reconnection.

  Perhaps it would be best to let him go. Retain Paris as a beautiful memory, a weekend two souls, desperate for intimate human contact, united, but only for that miniscule moment in time. Maybe I wasn’t allowed more. After all, who was I but a disgraced agent who got her team killed and endangered an innocent woman? The depressing reality of my shame bore down on me.

  What had I been thinking?

  “Here.” Disgust at my own ineptitude had me withdrawing the compass from its resting place between my breasts and pulling it over my head. “I believe we said we would return our tokens when next we met.”

  The necklace swung from my forefinger.

  Recognition flared across his features, but he didn’t reach to retrieve the talisman. “Keep it.” He cleared his throat.

  I continued to hold it out.

  “It’s brought you luck.”

  “Lucky or not, it is your father’s. I always meant to return it. No time like the present.”

  He crossed his arms. “I want you to keep it. Besides”—he shifted uncomfortably and his eyes flashed over my shoulder—“I’ve lost your St. Christopher medal. Sorry.”

  It saddened me to realize the talisman I'd given him was gone. Lost, like our connection. However, he was correct, the compass brought me luck, and knowing it might come in handy again, I draped it over my head. It would be my remembrance of him and a time when I felt cared for.

  “Thank you.”

  Private Karp entered, interrupting our tête-à-tête. “Morning, Major,” he saluted, “Morning, Miss Saint James.”

  “Private,” Charlie responded.

  “Captain Devlin asked you to join him at the briefing.”

  “Very well. We’ll pick this up later.” He rose and left the room.

  “Your eye looks much better today, ma’am.” I’d told the private many times to call me Lily, but the military seemed so ingrained, or perhaps it was my advanced years compared to his nineteen that kept him from calling me by my first name.

  “Do you think so?” I rose to view it in the mirror so recently used by Charlie. The bruise didn’t look much different from a few hours ago, when I’d studied it under the dawning light.

  “Yes, ma’am. It was much more swollen the day you arrived. Looked like someone had put you through a meat grinder, I told my buddy Sims.” He flushed at my raised brows. “Not to say you still didn’t look pretty. I mean, you are a good-looking dame ... I mean ...”

  I decided to put him out of his stuttering misery. “Yes, Private. I understand. I am sure I looked a disheveled mess when I arrived.”

  “Sergeant Thompson said you’d had a bad time of it. Said he killed the Kraut who did that to you.”

  A shimmering flash of sunlight glinted off a piece of metal and caught my gaze. “Indeed, he did.”

  Dog tags hung off the towel bar, and I reached down to see to whom they belonged.

  McNair
, Charlie, AB positive blood type.

  It wasn’t the tags that paused my fingers. In between the two tags hung my St. Christopher medal. A long scratch with encrusted black dirt marred its surface. The chain was missing and the golden ring that originally curled through the pendant had been replaced with a larger ring of steel, wide enough to accommodate the thick silver chain on which it now hung.

  He lied to me.

  I touched the compass. It seemed Charlie was as unwilling to part with my talisman as I, his. Perhaps we weren’t as far apart as I’d imagined.

  “Private Karp, the major forgot his dog tags. Could you deliver them to him? And when you do, let him know I found them.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Operation Pony Express

  “Karp, sort out those maps at the end of the table and get them properly filed,” Devlin ordered. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  I packed a manila folder in the file box and closed the lid as Devlin exited. The unit had received orders—in forty-eight hours the 101st would be heading west, back to Mourmelon, France, where everyone expected to regroup and train for a jump into Berlin. I’d been in the room when the welcome orders were announced to leadership. There wasn’t a man in the paratroopers who wasn’t looking forward to getting off the front lines. They’d been on since December when Brigadier General McAuliffe sent them into the Ardennes Forest to shore up the Tenth Armored Division. They went in under-supplied, without proper clothes, ammunition, or medical supplies. I’d heard the stories how, when requested to surrender by Wehrmacht command, General McAuliffe replied, “Nuts.” It was the stuff of legends, became a byword for the paratroops, and was oft heard whenever a soldier lost a card game.

  They didn’t realize how lucky they were. American commanders made an effort to rotate units off the front lines. These days, German soldiers only got off the front lines through good connections, injury, or death.

  I’d received orders of my own on the same day as the 101st. My presence, which I had assumed Charlie or Devlin ... or someone ... had informed command about, was discovered by Lieutenant Colonel Kincaid quite by accident.