Soldier Spies

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  But it was starting all over again. Nothing had changed. And she felt foolish for having hoped.

  She did what she could with her hair and dressed carefully (as a whore should, she thought bitterly), even to underwear that was no protection against the cold but would be pleasing to a man.

  When the time came, she left the apartment and stood on the snow-covered street wondering which would be the better route to catch the Strassenbahn, which would take her to the Südbahnhof.

  The Strassenbahn ride would be shorter if she turned left and went down the hill—the Marburg—that way. But the walk was almost twice as far as it would be if she went off the Marburg in the other direction and caught the Strassenbahn on the other side of the Marburg, by the City Baths.

  She decided that since it was snowing, the shorter walk made more sense even if the ride was longer, and she started down the street toward the City Baths, her hands jammed in the pockets of her coat.

  After the Strassenbahn put her off into the snow in front of the Südbahnhof and she started walking up the ice-slippery cobblestone road to the Kurhotel, Gisella thought of Eric Fulmar. Probably because she was going to the Kurhotel; she had spent a good deal of time with him in the Kurhotel.

  She wondered if he ever thought of her, wherever he was. Probably on the Eastern Front, but possibly, because he was able to walk through rain-drops, in Berlin. Or, for that matter, in Paris or Budapest, safe, warm, and in bed with some woman. Right now she would have been pleased to have been that woman.

  She then wondered about the Standartenführer she would be entertaining tonight. Would she be just a little bit lucky, and would he be reasonably young and pleasant? Probably not. Christmas was over.

  As she walked into the foyer of the Kurhotel, already crowded with drunk and exuberant New Year’s Eve revelers, she remembered how furious Peis had been—and what Peis had done to her—when one day in the early spring of 1940, after returning for his fourth year at the university, Eric von Fulmar had simply vanished.

  Peis had been unable to accept that Fulmar had said nothing to her about that. She still remembered Peis’s words, between brain-jarring slaps:

  “You sucked his cock for two years, and he just took off without a whisper? You don’t really expect me to believe that, you stupid cunt!”

  Gisella Dyer gave her coat to the attendant and entered the dining room. The room was full, and extra tables had been crowded into it to accept the New Year’s Eve crowd.

  She wondered, What does anyone have to celebrate?

  She saw Peis at a table across the room. There was a thin, long-haired blonde with him, doubtless some whore of Frau Grumbach’s. And a stocky man in the black uniform of the SS.

  She fixed a smile on her face and made her way through the crowded room.

  “Heil Hitler!” she said, making the gesture. “Good evening. Happy New Year!”

  “My dear Gisella,” Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Peis said, rising and kissing her hand. “You look very lovely tonight.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Herr Standartenführer Müller, may I present Fräulein Gisella Dyer?”

  Müller shook her hand, then held her chair out for her.

  He was neither as old as she had feared, nor as unattractive. And he had intelligent eyes, with neither sexual interest in them nor contempt for a rounded-heels female. The blonde from Frau Gumbach’s smiled at Gisella warmly, as if they were old friends.

  Shortly after one in the morning, Gisella found herself in the suite the Kurhotel had made available to Standartenführer Müller. She had known this was going to happen, but the way it was happening was making no sense. During the evening he had been formal and correct, which she suspected was because he did not want to act incorrectly in public with a woman whose morals might be questioned.

  But once he had locked his bedroom door, the correctness did not end.

  She had steeled herself to be pawed, but he made no move to touch her. He was in fact acting as if she were not in the room.

  He took off his tunic and hung it up, then sat on the bed and pulled off his boots. Next he arranged his breeches on the couch so as to preserve their crease.

  “How much have you had to drink?” he asked suddenly. “Are you sober?”

  "I’m a little happy,” she said.

  “Are you drunk is what I’m asking,” he said, looking at her.

  “No, I don’t think I am.”

  “I have a message I want you to deliver,” he said.

  She looked at him with the unspoken question in her eyes.

  “From Eric von Fulmar. He wishes to express his best wishes to your father. ”

  She felt a chill.

  “I don’t quite understand,” she said, her voice faint.

  “But you heard what I said?” Müller asked, somewhat impatiently.

  “Yes, but I don’t understand the message,” she said.

  “It is a very simple message. When you go home in the morning—I think it will be best if you stay the night—you will give that message to your father, and then at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon you will go to the Café Weitz. I will meet you there and you will relay his answer to me.”

  She felt the tears start, and she couldn’t stop them.

  “Herr Standartenführer,” she said,“I swear on my mother’s grave that my father doesn’t know who Eric von Fulmar is!”

  “But you know him?”

  “Yes, I knew him.”

  “That’s all?”

  "He was my lover when he was at the university,” she said.

  “You were in love with him?”

  “I . . . I was performing a service to the state at the request of Hauptsturmführer Peis,” she said.

  Müller went to her and grabbed her shoulders and put his face close to hers.

  “It would be very dangerous for you, my girl, to lie about von Fulmar’s relationship to your father,” he said.

  Gisella was now shaking.

  “I swear before Christ he never met him,” she said.

  “He was your lover and he never even met your father? Why not?”

  “Because I didn’t want him involved,” she said.

  “When was the last time you heard from Fulmar?”

  “I’ve been over this again and again and again. I don’t know where he went, and he never told me he was going.”

  “And you have not had any contact with him since May of 1940?”

  “No. I swear, I don’t know anything about him. My God, why won’t you believe me?”

  Müller let her go, walked to his tunic, and took out a package of cigarettes. He handed her one and lit it, then lit another for himself.

  “Gisella,” he said, almost in a fatherly tone,“I want you to consider your answer very carefully before you give it. If you should be contacted in any way by Eric von Fulmar, in any way at all, would you promptly notify Hauptsturmführer Peis?”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Yes, of course I would,” she said,“if that is what is desired of me.”

  "I don’t believe you,” Müller said matter-of-factly.

  She looked at him in horror.

  “Peis would. I don’t. Which is a good thing for you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said helplessly.

  “Eric von Fulmar is now an officer in the United States Army,” Müller said. “He sent a postcard, postmarked Bad Ems, to a mutual friend, asking that his regards be given to your father—”

  “I tell you,” she said desperately, interrupting him,“he doesn’t know my father!”

  And then the implications of what he had said sank in. He didn’t sound as if he were a security officer looking for a spy or a spy’s accomplices. Gisella stared at Müller in utter confusion.

  “—and I want to know what he meant by that,” Müller finished.

  “He didn’t know my father,” she wailed. “He doesn’t know my father.”

  "Fulmar sent his regards,
” Müller said flatly. “We have to find out what the hell he meant by it. My life, and now yours, Gisella, may damned well hang on that.”

  “I don’t understand—” she began, and he shut her off.

  “Yes, you do.” he said. “You’re a very intelligent young woman.”

  “Has this anything to do with Reichsminister Speer?” Gisella asked. She saw immediately in his eyes that the question confused him. “I don’t know,” he said. “If you’re asking if I am making inquiries on behalf of Speer, no. Quite the opposite, Gisella.”

  She looked at him curiously, and he nodded his head to confirm her suspicions.

  “I want you to ask your father, right out, if he can think of any reason why Fulmar would send him his regards,” Müller said. “Do you understand? If he can’t think of anything, have him guess. Whatever he tells you, you tell me. I’ll decide whether it’s important or not.”

  He kept looking at her until finally she nodded her head, and said, very softly,“All right. All right.”

  He nodded, then turned from her and stripped down to his underwear and got in the bed.

  Baffled, she crawled in bed beside him, careful not to touch him.

  Was Müller up to something with Peis? Or was he up to something deeper than Peis was ever capable of?

  She had a nightmare. Peis was slapping her face, and this time Müller was watching. When Peis ripped her blouse and brassiere off and applied the tip of his cigarette to her nipple, she woke up, breathing heavily, soaked in sweat.

  "What’s the matter?” Müller asked.

  “I had a nightmare,” she said.

  He sort of chortled. But it was not unkind.

  “I was in it?”

  “You and Peis,” she said. “He was burning my breast with a cigarette.”

  “He did that to you?”

  “Yes, when Eric disappeared and I had no idea where he was, or even that he was going.”

  “That may happen again,” Müller said,“I am sorry to say.”

  She started to shiver.

  He rolled over and put his arm around her.

  He held her until she stopped shivering, then started to turn away from her.

  “Don’t let go of me,” Gisella said.

  “I’m not a fucking saint,” Müller said.

  "Neither am I, Herr Standartenführer,” she heard herself say faintly, but very clearly.

  VII

  [ONE]

  Washington, D.C 5 January 1943

  Although Ed Bitter was about to leave his wife and child and—at last— approach, at least, the field of battle, he, and they, were in much better shape than other families whose head had been ordered overseas.

  For one thing, he didn’t have to worry about where Sarah and Joe would live. Just after Ed announced he was going overseas, his parents and Sarah’s father began a very polite but quite serious competition for the privilege of housing Sarah and Joe until Ed came home.

  Thus, Ed’s mother argued that there was more than enough room in the Lake Shore Drive apartment. And besides, she’d love the chance to get to know her grandson better.

  Joseph Child, on the other hand, argued that while it was of course up to Sarah, he thought she would be more comfortable in New York, as she had so few friends in Chicago. And besides, happily, a very nice apartment had just become vacant in a building “the bank owned” not far from his own apartment.

  Sarah, Solomon-like, announced that if there was no objection, she would like to go to Palm Beach. Her father’s house there was, of course, closed. But there was the guest house, right on the beach, which could be easily opened. Six rooms were more than enough room for the two of them. And even for her father or the Bitters, if they decided to drop in for a week or ten days. Besides, she said, Florida would be good for Joe.

  With exquisite courtesy, the grandparents split the problem of transporting Sarah and Joe to Palm Beach. Joseph Child would come to Washington and provide Sarah company until the guest house in Palm Beach could be made ready. Pat Grogarty, who had been the Childs’ chauffeur more years than Sarah was old, would then drive Sarah and Joe to Florida, where Ed’s mother (who now liked to be referred to as “Mother Bitter”) would be waiting,“to help Sarah get settled.”

  Meanwhile, Ed had managed to convince both Sarah and the grandparents that he was simply moving from one desk assignment to another. Not, in other words, to sea, much less to war. Though their anxieties about his safety annoyed him, he was nevertheless a little touched as well. He was, after all, a professional naval officer, and the nation was at war. He had obligations on that account.

  But on the other hand, there was no point correcting their belief that because of his wound, he would no longer be required to go in harm’s way. So he had not let Sarah know that he was now back on flight status, despite the still-stiff knee.

  The funny thing was that leaving Sarah and Joe turned out to be difficult, more difficult than Ed had imagined.

  While he wasn’t madly, passionately in love with Sarah, he respected and admired her more than any other woman he had ever known. She had character. She’d handled the shock of her pregnancy, for instance, in a really decent way. She’d accepted her share of responsibility, and told him straight off—and he was sure she had meant it—that he had no obligation or duty to marry her.

  He had accepted, of course, his duty to legitimize his child, and would adhere to his wedding vow to “keep only to her, forsaking all others.” For her part, Sarah had agreed not only to an Episcopal wedding ceremony but also to raise Joe in the Christian faith. She was a splendid woman and a splendid mother, and she loved him.

  On balance, their marriage was a good thing for both of them, even without considering Joe.

  Ed had come, and this was rather unexpected, to really love his son.

  That experience, in fact, was one of the reasons he was sure he didn’t love Sarah. He had never felt for her anything like the emotion he felt when his son smiled at him or gave him a wet kiss. Such things really made Ed melt. With Sarah, he never melted. Yet marriage seemed a very cheap price indeed for having a son like Joe.

  Ed’s new assignment was incredible good luck: He was getting back in harm’s way, and this previously had seemed out of the question. Up to now his only reasonable expectation was to spend the war as a staff officer, a shoreside staff officer, far from action. He was a crippled aviator, who stood virtually no chance of passing a flight physical again. And alas, he was a very good staff officer. Very good staff officers are usually much too important to send to sea. A very good crippled staff officer was a double kiss of death.

  As the work he was doing for Admiral Hawley had become less and less important, his feeling of frustration had grown. When he first went to work for the admiral, the disaster at Pearl Harbor had still been a bleeding wound, and the assignment of Naval Aviation assets had been critical. There had been neither many planes nor the spare parts and support equipment for them. Thus the appointment of these throughout the world had been very much like an intensive, indeed, deadly, game of chess.

  As aircraft and equipment had trickled from assembly lines, daily decisions—based on losses—and educated guesses—based upon less than complete understanding of war plans—of requirements had to be made. A wrong guess—or estimate, as it was called in the trade—was at the time a genuine threat to the conduct of the war. Sending more aircraft, or fewer, than the tactical situation required could have lost more than a battle.

  But that situation had changed. Everybody was still screaming for more aircraft; but in point of fact, the major problem for the last several months had been scrounging shipping space rather than equipment to ship. The trickle had become a flood. Aircraft manufacturers who had been delivering four aircraft a day were now delivering twenty. Or forty. The Naval Flight Training Program, vastly expanded, was delivering a steady, and steadily growing, stream of pilots.

  Bitter knew that his job could just as easily have been accomplished— per
haps been better accomplished—by one of the directly commissioned civilians who had entered the Navy in large numbers, men from automobile and furniture factories, grocery distribution, railroads, even five-and-ten-cent -store executives. These people were skilled and practiced in moving “supply line items” from Point A to Point B in the most efficient manner.

  The need for someone qualified to base the supply decisions on tactical considerations had ceased as soon as the American industrial complex began to stamp out airplanes with the same efficiency that it spit out automobiles and refrigerators.

  As often as he dared, he had asked Admiral Hawley to have him returned to aviation duty or to a ship. He was a naval officer first and an aviator second, and he could hold his own on a ship, as executive officer or even as captain, with luck.

  Admiral Hawley had always courteously but firmly refused. The Navy needed him most where the Navy had put him, the admiral kept telling him.

  And, as things had turned out, the admiral had been proved right. He was going overseas, going in harm’s way, back on flight status, because that was what the Navy needed.

  Four days after the DCNO marched into Admiral Hawley’s office, Sarah drove Ed to Anacostia Naval Air Station in the Cadillac, as she had fifty times before. The only difference was that this time he wouldn’t be back in a couple of days. Otherwise, it was the same routine. He traveled in a blue uniform, carrying two suitcases (his priority orders waived weight restrictions) and a stuffed leather briefcase.

  Sarah clung to him when the public address system announced the boarding of the Air Force C-54, and the pressure of her breasts against his abdomen reminded him that he was going to miss that part of their marriage. Joe cried, and there were tears in Ed Bitter’s eyes when he kissed his son.

  The plane refueled at Gander, Newfoundland, and again at Prestwick, Scotland, after fighting a headwind across much of the Atlantic, and then took off again for Croydon Field outside London, where it was scheduled to land at half past ten in the morning London time.