Louise's War (13 page)

But Joe shared his bedroom with Henry, Mr Cold Water Bath himself. And Ada was next door to mine.

I pulled gently away.

‘Did I do something wrong?’ Joe asked. Hell, no, I thought, I just want to do more of it in private!

‘No, no, not at all,’ I said. ‘I don’t want anyone to see us.’

We heard Henry downstairs, slamming the porch door.

Joe grinned. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Sleep tight.’

Joe released my hand and went on up the next flight of stairs to his attic, and I floated across the landing into my room, closed the door and flung myself across my bed. Way too overheated to think about sleeping, I dug out a Hershey’s chocolate bar, unwrapped the foil and ate the whole thing.

Then I heard it, the sound of three sharp clangs echoing down the water pipe from Joe’s bedroom. The sound was embarrassingly loud, but then I remembered Henry was still downstairs, so Joe had no reason to be quiet. I reached for my brass bookmark and tapped the pipe twice. Covering my head with my pillow in shame and anticipation both, I listened for a reply. It came – one quick ring. I guess that was our signal – three, two, one – our private good night. I wondered if Joe and I would ever find ourselves alone in this house, and what might happen if we did. It was some time before my heart rate slowed enough for me to go to sleep.

TWELVE

W
hen I arrived at work the next morning I found Barbara at her desk in tears, with both Betty and Ruth comforting her.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘Eighteen- to twenty-year-olds register for the draft today,’ Ruth said, tears welling in her own eyes.

‘Barbara’s younger brother,’ Betty added. ‘Richard.’

Barbara blew her nose into her handkerchief.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Pearlie,’ Barbara said. ‘I’m so worried about my brothers, and about my mother being left alone.’

I sat down next to her and took her hand.

‘I believe,’ I said, ‘that if you applied for hardship leave you would get it. It would be better for the baby too, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose,’ she said. ‘But I want to do my part to win the war.’

I bit my lip. For heaven’s sake, I thought, stop being a martyr and go home. Nothing you can do here will bring your husband back.

‘Maybe you could get a defense job back home,’ I said instead. ‘Is your mother able to take care of the baby?’

‘Sure,’ Barbara said.

‘You should go, Barbara,’ Betty said. ‘Besides, you’ll never meet a new man here, not with working and everything.’

‘That’s all you think about,’ Ruth said to Betty. ‘Men. You can get along without one, you know.’

‘That’s easy for you to say, Miss Mount Holyoke.’

‘Enough,’ I said. ‘Back to work, everyone.’

Barbara dried her eyes and before long the office rang with the sound of clacking typewriter keys.

Don appeared at my door and crooked his finger at me.

I went into the hall. He glanced around, then took my hand.

‘You ready for tonight?’

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ I said.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ll pick you up at seven.’

‘I’ll be ready.’

Someone opened a door nearby, and Don dropped my hand.

‘I’m calling a division meeting at ten this morning,’ Don said, ‘to get all of us up to speed after Mr Holman’s death. Would you please attend? And could you take notes and type them up for me?’

‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there.’

Holding Don’s hand didn’t feel as good as holding Joe’s.

Tall metal file cabinets, Re–Ru, to be precise, crowded the conference room. We had barely enough space to squeeze ourselves into the hard wooden chairs that surrounded a table that looked as if someone once butchered meat on it, it was so heavily scarred.

‘Before you sit, Mrs Pearlie, would you mind bringing me a cup of coffee?’ Don asked.

‘I’d like one too, if you don’t mind,’ Guy Danielson said.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ll be right back.’

I noticed no one asked Dora to get coffee. But that didn’t mean the men regarded her as an equal. I’d heard that General Donovan once said Dora would be a division head if she weren’t a woman. Her doctorate only went so far.

On the way out of the cafeteria with two steaming cups of coffee, I paused at a table behind a pillar and set the cups down. How much would be too much, too obvious? After glancing around to make sure no one saw me, I sprinkled about a quarter teaspoon of salt in each cup, a little trick I’d learned from a veteran secretary at the Wilmington Ship Building Company back home. ‘You don’t want them to think you did anything on purpose,’ she told me, ‘you want them to associate you with bad coffee. They’ll never send you for it again.’

Don slurped from his cup, and a disappointed expression crossed his face.

‘Is it all right?’ I asked.

‘Sure,’ Don said, ‘it’s fine.’

Guy sipped his coffee, then set the cup down with a gesture of finality.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, ‘it must have been the dregs. I should have made a fresh pot.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Don said, ‘let’s get down to business.’

Guy, Roger, Dora and Don’s replacement, Alex Singer, another economist, rustled their papers. I noticed that we all wore eyeglasses. The Bad Eyes Brigade, the other branches of the OSS called us.

‘So,’ Don said, ‘I need you to brief me on what you’re working on. Only the most important projects. I know, Alex, that you’ve picked up my analysis of those international insurance files sent to us by the London office.’

‘Yes,’ Alex said, ‘I’ve reviewed your work to date, and I’ll be able to send a list of German industrial plants to the Joint Chiefs by the end of next week.’

‘Good,’ Don said. ‘What’s next for you?’

‘Special Ops sent over a stack of seized tariff records. I’m to review them and identify new oil refineries.’

‘Good. Dora?’

‘I’m finishing a study of class conflict in France, requested by the State Department, so they can understand the backgrounds of the various French Resistance groups.’

‘All they need to know is that de Gaulle is a horse’s tail,’ Guy said.

‘I agree,’ Dora said mildly. ‘But probably not for the same reason you do.’

Roger kept his temper, restricting his response to a clenched jaw.

‘What’s next for you, Dora?’ Don asked.

‘Vatican politics,’ she said.

‘That’ll take a couple of years,’ Roger said.

‘Not at all,’ Dora answered. ‘I’ve got two students from the theological college at Catholic University researching the topic right now.’ Good God, Dora had priests working with her! Talk about cats and dogs sleeping together!

I couldn’t help thinking of my mother, who called the handful of people who attended Wilmington’s tiny St Joseph’s church ‘Roaming Catholics’.

‘Guy?’ Don asked.

‘The Foreign Nationalities Branch has sent me boxes of transcripts of interviews with Russian refugees, most of whom were living in Paris before they fled here. My directive is to analyze them for “items of interest”. I’ve just started.’

‘Roger?’

‘As you know I’ve been reading French underground newspapers smuggled to Switzerland and forwarded on to us. The most important trend continues to be the German advance into Vichy.’

‘Why is that?’ Dora asked. ‘Didn’t we think the Nazis would occupy Vichy eventually?’

‘The Nazi strategy has been to insist that a legitimate France does exist, that it has chosen freely to ally itself with Germany, that it is unoccupied. That’s been a psychological advantage when dealing with the French people.’

‘Vichy controls the French navy,’ Don said. ‘Where are they in port now?’

‘Toulon. And we don’t know which side the navy’s on, frankly. We hear they might be convinced to join the Free French.’

‘What makes you think that Germany will occupy Vichy soon?’

‘Little things,’ Roger said. ‘Like—’ and here he glanced at his notes. ‘Theodor Dannecker will be welcomed to Marseille at a reception at the mayor’s residence on July 7. That’s next Tuesday.’

‘Dannecker,’ Dora said. ‘The Gestapo’s deportation expert in France.’

‘And Eichmann himself is expected in Paris sometime in July,’ Don said. ‘That’s common knowledge.’

I felt sick. The Gestapo would arrive in Marseille on Tuesday, less than a week away. For all practical purposes any chance of escape for Rachel and her family would be over soon, very soon. Bloch was certain to be on some SS watch list. He’d applied for a visa to leave the country. He’d made contact with the French Resistance. He spoke English, and he’d traveled abroad at least once.

Dora asked the question I wanted to but couldn’t.

‘Is it too late for people to get out? What is being done?’

‘Very little,’ Don said. ‘There are no visas available. Our own country won’t issue an entry visa without a Vichy exit visa, which Vichy isn’t granting.’

‘That’s appalling,’ Dora said.

Guy shrugged. ‘The State Department thinks that Jewish refugees are all Communists and Zionists.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Dora said. ‘Of course they are. You would be, too.’

‘Ears only,’ Don said.

I stopped taking notes.

‘There’s an official in our consulate in Marseille who is known to ignore orders and issue U.S. visas to Jews without Vichy letters of transit. And there’s a female French clerk at the town hall that helps refugees obtain false papers. And someone in the prefecture of police. Then there’re the Quakers and the Mennonites and the YMCA. They do what they can.’

‘Can these people be contacted?’ Dora asked.

‘By us? Absolutely not,’ Don said. ‘We might attract attention to them, blow their operations.’

So it was still possible to escape, I thought. I hoped Bloch knew whom to approach, since his overture to OSS had been stymied by the ‘loss’ of his file. Don nodded to me to start taking notes again.

‘On a related topic, Mrs Pearlie tells me that a file she left in Bob Holman’s office went missing after his death.’

I knew the file was stolen, but I had no proof, so I kept my mouth shut, as usual.

‘An important one?’ Guy asked.

‘It concerned contact with a Frenchman, from Marseille as it happens, some kind of . . . what, Mrs Pearlie?’

‘A hydrographer,’ I said. ‘An expert on the Mediterranean coastline of North Africa.’

‘Mr Bloch wanted us to get his family out of Marseille in exchange for helping the Allies. Mr Holman planned to refer the file to the Projects Committee. There’s been no sign of it since his death,’ I said.

None of us mentioned Torch, the planned Allied invasion of North Africa, by name.

‘There are dozens of local marine pilots with practical knowledge of the North African coast,’ Guy said. ‘And I understand that our people are making good contacts with the French Resistance in North Africa. Do we need this man’s help?’

‘Probably not,’ Don said. ‘But if any of you come upon this file, please return it to Mrs Pearlie.’ He nodded at me. ‘Otherwise, don’t concern yourself with searching for the Bloch file any longer, Mrs Pearlie,’ he said. ‘It’s not high priority.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

That file was important enough for someone to steal it and rip out its reference card in our index files. The remaining torn corner was evidence, plain as the Romanov nose on Guy Danielson’s face. I couldn’t prove any of it; I couldn’t even prove the torn corner belonged to the Bloch index card. But I knew it. And no one could stop me from doing everything I could to find out what happened to Bloch’s file.

The Gestapo would arrive in Marseille in just six days.

I made up my mind to speak to General Donovan in private and tell him the story of the missing Bloch file. He was the only person in OSS I could be absolutely sure I could trust. The McLean party tonight was my best chance to approach him, maybe my only chance, without alerting the person who’d stolen the file.

THIRTEEN

‘
I
love these,’ I said, drawing a string of faceted jet beads out of Phoebe’s jewelry box.

‘They are nice,’ she said, ‘but you can’t wear black in the summer. Unless you’re in mourning. Here, these are what I had in mind.’

She handed me a lavaliere with a blue center jewel surrounded by sparkling clear stones on a silver chain and matching ear clips. The art deco pieces were angular and bold, out of fashion now, but I liked them.

‘These are lovely,’ I said, ‘but I’m afraid I might lose them.’

‘Rhinestones and zircons,’ Phoebe said, ‘not worth anything. If they were, I would have sold them years ago.’

She helped me fasten the chain around my neck, and I clipped on the earrings. In the mirror it looked like I was wearing real diamonds and sapphires, at least to my unsophisticated eyes.

Phoebe hadn’t noticed I wasn’t wearing my hoarded silk stockings. It was too hot to encase my legs in silk. It might not be ladylike, but leg make-up would have to suffice.

Out in the hall I bumped into Ada.

‘You look swell, Louise, you really do,’ she said. She pulled me into the light from the hall window and gave me the once over. ‘Don’t wear your glasses,’ she said. ‘You look so much younger without them. And you need more face powder and rouge.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘I’d rather be able to see than look younger. And I hate thick make-up. It feels like I’m wearing a mask.’

‘I could quick tweeze and pencil your eyebrows . . .’

‘No.’

Ada shrugged. ‘It’s your date,’ she said. ‘It seems to me you’d want to show this man you’ve got the goods.’

Joe was in the kitchen when I went back to display my finery to Dellaphine and Madeleine, as I’d promised.

‘Mrs Pearlie, you do look grand,’ Dellaphine said. ‘This man coming, he must be your beau.’