Louise's Chance Page 4

  ‘So long,’ I said.

  ‘Bye.’

  I was the first to turn, walking quickly back to ‘Two Trees’. Letting myself into the backyard through a side gate, I grabbed a couple of late tomatoes and some butternut squash from the garden and climbed the back steps to the kitchen. Thankfully no one was there to see me arrive, breathing hard and flustered. I dumped the vegetables on the drain board and walked quietly down the hall toward the staircase. I wanted to be alone. I heard the radio in the lounge but no voices.

  I tiptoed up the stairs and went into my room, throwing myself on the bed, my heart pounding. I waited for it to slow down before I went into the bathroom I shared with Phoebe and Ada to wash up. Since it was Ada’s day for a full bath I just sponged off in the sink.

  Back in my bedroom I changed into my pajamas and climbed into my bed. It was still early, but what a day I had had! It felt like midnight. I picked up Lloyd Douglas’s new bestseller The Robe but fell sound asleep before I came to the end of the chapter.

  Lying on his bunk in his tent in the dark, waiting for reveille to sound, Thomas Hanzi couldn’t believe his good fortune. From the moment he’d marched off the crowded Liberty Ship Abel Stoddard on to the dock in Baltimore Harbor he’d felt like he was living in a dream.

  What a place America was! The German press had described the country as a ruin, bombed almost into submission by the Luftwaffe, but there was no sign of damage or suffering anywhere. Well-dressed people carrying shopping bags or briefcases walked quickly, with purpose, in the streets of Baltimore. Once his train moved into the lush green countryside he saw fields thick with bales of harvested hay and fat cows. In Germany soldiers had ridden in cattle cars, sometimes for days on end, eating canned meat and hard crackers for each meal. Here the prisoners traveled in passenger compartments and ate fresh sandwiches layered with real meat and cheese and fruit for lunch. The bread on their sandwiches was white! He was accustomed to black bread that had to be soaked in coffee before he could chew it.

  Most astounding to him were the colored people. He’d been told that all colored people were slaves in America. But the army sergeant who’d marched his column of prisoners of war from the Baltimore dock to the train station was a colored man! And so was the train conductor! In Germany this would be unthinkable. Thomas was a gypsy, and he was well aware that only his blue eyes had kept him from being sent to a forced labor camp years ago. Not that he was much better off in the Wehrmacht. He had dug ditches in the sand and dirt under a broiling sun for an engineering squad in Tunisia. He’d worked in sand, slept in sand, his clothes were full of it and it seasoned the sausage stew he ate for midday dinner, the only hot meal he received during the day.

  When he arrived at the American camp for German prisoners of war Hanzi was assigned to a tent with just three other people. The cots had mattresses and blankets. Every meal was hot and included vegetables and dessert. His German money had been converted to credits at the camp PX, where he could buy beer after dinner! And he had a free daily ration of cigarettes and candy.

  As a child he’d detested, loathed the man, whoever he was, who had given him his blue eyes. But as the Nazis gained control of Germany his eyes became his salvation. Himmler classified a few Roma gypsies as acceptable – part-Aryan, so to speak. Someone had to collect the garbage. So Hanzi watched his dark-eyed friends and family disappear, but the little bit of Aryan blood he had meant he was allowed to sweep streets and keep his caravan in Marzahn, the open field outside Berlin, a gypsy ghetto where those of his people still left were forced to live, until he was conscripted into the army to dig ditches and latrines.

  In America he was treated no differently than any other prisoner of war by his captors. But he wasn’t a fool. He knew he wasn’t completely safe. His fellow prisoner Obersturmführer Steiner was a Nazi, Waffen SS; he despised Hanzi for his gypsy blood, he could see it every time he caught Steiner staring at him. Steiner would kill him if he could find a way.

  He was also careful to stay far away from Sturmbannführer Kapp. He often found this SS major staring at him too, but in an odd way, not with hate, like Steiner, but with a look he didn’t understand or like. Hanzi and his people had always survived by avoiding attention, and that would remain his strategy unless he was backed into a corner.

  The camp speakers played reveille, and someone turned on the light in his tent. But instead of jumping up to dress so he could go to the mess for coffee and breakfast, Hanzi started to moan like a man in pain. Right above his head, so close that it almost touched him, dangled a noose.

  Hanzi was so terrified he couldn’t move, his eyes fixed on the noose, and kept moaning until that kind Leutnant Bahnsen grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him off his cot and out of the tent.

  THREE

  I was awake so early the next morning that I ate in the kitchen with Madeleine instead of waiting for the others to come downstairs. Dellaphine fixed us fluffy scrambled eggs, courtesy of our own chickens, with a strip of bacon and plenty of toast each. Madeleine ate quickly, smearing a teaspoon of strawberry jam on her second piece of toast, then got to her feet, throwing her pocketbook over her shoulder and pushing her straightened shoulder-length hair back from her face. Dellaphine frowned at her.

  ‘You finish eating at the table,’ she said to Madeleine.

  ‘I don’t want to miss my bus,’ she said. ‘And, Momma, I won’t be home for dinner. Some of us girls are going to eat at the YMCA cafeteria and go see Stormy Weather.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Dellaphine asked.

  ‘It’s a new movie,’ Madeleine said. ‘With Bill Robinson and Lena Horne.’

  ‘You know how I feel about you going out on a weeknight,’ Dellaphine said.

  ‘I’m not in high school anymore, Momma. I’ll be back by ten o’clock, I promise,’ Madeleine said, waving her hand goodbye to us as she went out the back door.

  ‘That girl,’ Dellaphine said. ‘If I got up from the table before I was finished eating my momma would rap me on the knuckles.’

  ‘She didn’t want to miss her bus,’ I said. I felt for Madeleine. She was an adult with a good job but had to share a room in the basement with her mother. She couldn’t get decent housing anywhere else because she was colored.

  Dellaphine set her mouth and added more bacon to her skillet.

  I heard the telephone in the hall ring and Phoebe’s voice answer it. A minute later she appeared at the kitchen door, still wearing her dressing gown, her hair fastened in pin curls with bobby pins.

  ‘It’s for you,’ she said to me. ‘It’s a woman.’

  Thinking it might be my mother, wondering if there was an emergency of some kind at home in Wilmington, I hurried down the hall to the phone and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Mrs Pearlie, it’s Miss Osborne,’ said the voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, wondering what on earth she was calling me about at home so early in the morning.

  ‘You and I are going out of town today,’ she said. ‘Bring your suitcase, be prepared to stay overnight for a couple of days. Meet me in the conference room at nine.’

  I had my mouth open to ask her to explain, but she hung up before I could get a question out, leaving me staring at the receiver.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Phoebe asked. She paused at the foot of the staircase with her cup of coffee in her hand. She would take it upstairs to drink while she dressed and wouldn’t come downstairs again until she was fully clothed and made up, ready for the day.

  ‘I’m going out of town on business,’ I said. ‘I’ll be gone overnight for several days.’

  Phoebe looked incredulous. ‘What next?’ she asked. ‘In my day no single woman would do such a thing!’

  ‘I need to pack a bag and catch an early bus.’ I had to pick up my office supplies before I met Miss Osborne so I would have what I needed to do my work.

  I followed Phoebe upstairs. She was still shaking her head as we parted in the hall. I
pulled my late husband’s scarred leather valise out of my closet and threw in enough underwear for three days, and my pajamas and robe. I chose a felt fedora to wear instead of my summer straw. It looked more businesslike. Then I selected another dress to take so I could change at least once, and a cardigan sweater in case the weather cooled. I wondered where on earth Miss Osborne and I were going. I figured that I’d need my largest handbag to carry a notebook and paperwork, so I dug out my square black leather bag with the wide opening.

  I sat down to write a note to Ada, explaining that I hadn’t yet found a way of getting a list of the German prisoners of war arriving in the States. I gathered up my valise, handbag and the note and left my room. Pausing outside Ada’s door, I listened carefully. I didn’t hear anything, so I slipped the note under her door. Coward, I said to myself.

  At the OSS supply depot, inside another tempo built on top of a stone patio deep inside the OSS compound, the private on duty filled a file box with everything I’d requested, including a used copy of the Gregg shorthand manual.

  ‘Can you carry this OK?’ the private asked, nodding at the valise at my feet. ‘That’s a lot of weight for a girl. Can I call a porter for you?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said, ‘I’ll be fine.’ Shoving the narrow handle of my valise over my wrist and throwing my handbag strap over my shoulder, I picked up the file box and strode confidently out the door.

  Halfway back to the Morale branch tempo I had to stop and catch my breath. The box and valise weren’t heavy, but carrying them was clumsy. I had to lean to the side to keep my balance with the valise while hanging on to the corners of the box, which cut into my forearms. I didn’t want to fall and make a fool of myself, but I didn’t want to call a porter either. It might get back to the annoying private at the supply depot.

  Help arrived in the person of Merle, who appeared at my side carrying a cardboard suitcase tied shut with rope. Merle must be going out of town too. He raised an eyebrow at the sight of my valise, but of course we couldn’t ask each other questions out in the open, even in the OSS compound.

  ‘Let me help you,’ Merle said. ‘Give me your valise and I’ll carry it to your office.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, relieved I wouldn’t have to call for a porter.

  Merle dropped my valise on the floor behind my door while I set the box of supplies on my desk. I rummaged around in the box and found a stenographer’s notebook, a couple of pencils and a bottle of ink for my fountain pen. I shoved everything into my handbag.

  ‘Well,’ Merle said, still gripping his own suitcase, ‘we’re both leaving town, obviously. I’m going for work. You?’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Where are you headed?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ he answered.

  ‘Me either,’ I said.

  ‘Do you have a meeting at nine this morning with Miss Osborne?’

  ‘I do! Do you think we’re going on the same trip?’

  ‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough.’ Merle checked his watch. ‘We’ve got enough time to leave my suitcase in my office and get a cup of coffee before we’re due at the conference room.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ I said.

  Merle’s office was a bit larger than mine, holding a drafting table set under the only window and a tall stool instead of the usual desk and chair. A battered metal cabinet on wheels crammed with art supplies stood within reach of the table. A rickety set of shelves held stacks of paper of all kinds. What seemed to be genuine personal letters written in German, with German postmarks and stamps, were nailed to the wall over his drafting table. A gooseneck lamp was angled over the table, where I could see that he was working on a project.

  ‘We have a few minutes,’ Merle said. ‘Want to see some of my work?’

  ‘I’d like to very much,’ I said.

  ‘I’m writing a personal letter from a fictional soldier,’ Merle said, showing me the half-written letter, ornate fountain pen and ink bottle labeled in German on his drafting table. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘the pen, ink and paper are all authentic. Bought or stolen for us by our agents in Europe.’ He nodded in the direction of the German alphabet posters fastened to his wall. ‘I use those as examples. The Germans use several alphabets, and sometimes they mix up the letters in one document.’

  Merle’s letter looked damned authentic to me. ‘What does it say?’ I asked.

  ‘The gist of it is it’s a letter from a soldier to his mother, complaining that German officers have better food than the enlisted men, that hundreds of young German men are dying every day and that he’s terrified he’ll be next. OSS London will get the letter to a resistance agent in Germany, who will plant it somewhere German civilians are likely to pick it up, like a train station or a bar. They’ll feel less confidence in the Reich and the progress of the war.’

  I was impressed by Merle’s forgery, and I wondered about his background. He might look like a cowboy, but the man was an artist.

  ‘What did you do before the war?’ I asked.

  ‘I was an illustrator for the Amarillo Daily News,’ he said. ‘My parents own a small ranch, but I didn’t want to spend my life mucking out stables.’

  I checked my watch. ‘We’d better go,’ I said. ‘We don’t want to be late.’

  We poured ourselves cups of black coffee on our way to the conference room. What sugar and milk had been there first thing in the morning was already gone.

  Miss Osborne and a man in a khaki naval ensign’s uniform, with a single bar and star on the sleeves and shoulder epaulets, were already seated at the conference table.

  ‘Don’t take any notes,’ Miss Osborne said to me before I even sat down. ‘This is ears only. Mr Ellison, Mrs Pearlie, this is Ensign David Winton, the Executive Officer of MO branch.’

  Ensign Winton half rose from his seat and shook our hands. He didn’t look like a naval ensign to me, or how I expected a junior naval officer to look. He was some years older than me, maybe forty. He had thinning light brown hair and a slight, unfit body. Surely his glasses were too thick for the military. But then I realized that the naval commission was part of the effort to militarize the OSS. I’d had some pressure to join the WACs myself, but I excused myself on the basis of being too old and jaded to live with a bunch of nineteen-year-old women. And I didn’t want the pay cut, to live in a barracks or get ordered around any more than I was already. Which sounded so unpatriotic that I kept it to myself.

  ‘I don’t have much time,’ Winton said, taking his seat again. ‘I’m due at General Donovan’s office in half an hour.’

  ‘OK,’ Miss Osborne said. She turned to Merle and me. ‘You are both familiar with “Wie Lange Noch?”, the “How Much Longer?” propaganda campaign? Mrs Pearlie, you may not recognize the title, but the stencils you cut yesterday are part of it. And of course, Mr Ellison, your forged letters. It’s our first complex “black” campaign, designed to demoralize the German people.’

  ‘General Donovan is pleased with the operation so far,’ Winton said. ‘The materials you’ve generated have been excellent. Our problem is that we have few people to distribute them. We’ve invented a German resistance group to take credit for the operation, but the materials still need to be distributed.’

  ‘There are very few actual German resistance members,’ Miss Osborne said to us, ‘which I’m sure doesn’t surprise you. So we plan to recruit operatives to deliver much of this mater-ial in northern Italy behind German lines.’

  Winton paused to take a cigarette out of a battered pack of unfiltered Marlboros and offered the pack to us. Merle and I refused, but Miss Osborne took one and lit it from the match Winton offered her. Both of them inhaled deeply.

  ‘You know that the Germans are putting up a real fight in Italy,’ Winton said. ‘The Italian surrender hasn’t discouraged them one bit. We think, and OSS London agrees, that because of the chaos there, and because of a sympathetic population, if we deliver our propaganda behind German lines in northern Italy, much of it will find
its way into Germany.’

  ‘But we need people to deliver it,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘Native Germans who look and sound like they belong wherever our subs out of Malta can drop them off.’

  Winton crushed out his cigarette in one of the metal ashtrays on the table. ‘I need to go. But I wanted to be here for a few minutes this morning to emphasize to you how important this mission is. Miss Osborne will finish briefing you.’

  I hoped so. I didn’t have the faintest idea what mission Winton was talking about, or what we were supposed to do. Short of landing in Italy ourselves and nailing posters to trees I had no idea.

  After Winton left Miss Osborne stubbed out her cigarette and leaned over the table toward us. ‘You know one of the first groups of German and Italian prisoners of war has arrived in the United States,’ she said. ‘We want to recruit German POWs to go back into northern Italy and distribute our propaganda materials. They’ll be able to penetrate further into the German lines than the Italians. It’s our job to interrogate these prisoners of war to see whom we might be able to trust. The Nazis will be tough nuts to crack, but not all of the captured Germans are Nazis. Some of them are just soldiers, many of them drafted. Soldiers who might be willing to work with us to bring the war to an early end. I’ll be conducting the interviews with the German POWs at Fort Meade and you will assist me. When we’ve identified and trained our recruits we’ll send them to Malta to begin the operation. But there’s not much point in generating propaganda material until we have operatives to deliver it. We’ve got to recruit them right away.’

  ‘Miss Osborne, I don’t speak German,’ I said.

  ‘Neither do I,’ she said.

  ‘Will Fort Meade provide a translator?’

  ‘Mr Ellison will be translating for us.’

  I shifted in my seat and looked at Merle. I already knew that Merle could read and write German, because he was forging a letter in German, but speaking it fluently was an altogether different matter.