A Covert Affair (12 page)

After their last class, she and Jane giddily made their way to the ladies' room to repair their faces before heading back to town. Now that they were graduates of gun school, they were feeling victorious, smug in the conviction that they were ready to face any emergency. Moments later, they were rocked back on their heels by a loud explosion, and acrid smoke quickly filled the bathroom. It took them only a few seconds to recover their wits and another few to work out that the nasty little surprise had been triggered by the flush chain of the toilet.
“We had been introduced to our first booby trap,”
recalled Betty, noting that it was just a little OSS reminder that an agent can never be too prepared.

Thankful to have survived their postgraduate training, they were beginning to feel they would be lucky to get out of Washington in one piece. During this period, they also discovered they were to lose their civilian status. The OSS required its male operatives—those who were physically fit, of an age, and not yet drafted—to be classified as “specialists” and inducted into the U.S. Army, Navy, or Marines, and after the requisite training the men would emerge as officers with a rank and salary roughly commensurate with their previous professional qualifications. Similarly, it wanted its female personnel to be inducted into the WACS. The problem, as Jane understood it, was that the secretaries balked at becoming enlisted women because instead of the high salary they earned in civilian life they would have received the standard starting rate of sixty dollars a month, which was an insult to their pride as well as their pocketbooks. When push came to shove, and patriotism hit the pay wall,
“the professionals stuck by the secretaries and voted overwhelmingly to remain civilians.”
The compromise that was eventually worked out provided OSS women with adequate pay and “assimilated military ranks,” thus making them subject to military discipline (meaning they could be court-martialed) and the Articles of War (which meant they could not resign). In accordance with her civil service rating, Jane was given the assimilated rank of captain, while Betty was, as she put it, “a lowly second lieutenant.”

On a stifling July afternoon a few days before they were scheduled to leave, a sergeant appeared outside Jane's office, unceremoniously dumped a massive pile of gear at the foot of her desk, and barked:
“Foster, here's your overseas equipment.”
The army-issue kit consisted of a bedroll, a pith helmet with a small roll of green mosquito netting attached to the brim, fatigues, canvas leggings, gloves, dog tags, a rain poncho, a compass, a water canteen, a Hamilton wristwatch, two oral thermometers, and a portable typewriter. She was relieved to see she had not been issued the black “L” (for lethal) cyanide pills “to be taken in case of capture.” Although the pills were legendary within OSS, she
had never actually heard of anyone downing one and had no desire to have the poisonous stuff on her person in the event she fell into enemy hands. Last but not least, there was an Abercrombie & Fitch flight bag, though Jane worried that it was not nearly big enough to hold all her warlike equipment, not to mention a specially purchased tropical-weight wardrobe for the Orient that she was not about to leave behind.

Betty received the same parting gift from the OSS Service Office and faced much the same packing dilemma. Into an additional trunk that would be shipped by sea she crammed all the “operational equipment” that was deemed indispensable for MO selectees headed to India, including
“several boxes of squash and tennis balls which the major wrote would be of value in trading with the British; trinkets such as lipstick and cigarette lighters for the ‘natives,'”
as well as “several long evening gowns which the personnel branch whispered were
de rigueur
at official functions; face lotions and potions for the rigors of the field; and a book that OSS Visual Presentation Branch sent around, entitled
This Is No Picnic.
”

Unlike Julia, who traveled to India on a slow boat, Betty and Jane were blessed with favorable air priorities. They would be flying a commercial plane bound for Miami, Florida, the staging area, where they would board the first of several transport planes for the long, circuitous trip. They were to keep this information strictly confidential. Dutifully, they told no one, not even family, of their plans. After trying and failing to find a suitably nondescript way to allude to her new post, Betty scribbled a postcard to her parents, telling them they
“wouldn't hear from her for several weeks, but not to worry.”

On the eve of their departure, Betty and Jane were handed special passports enabling them to pass through territories held by the British, French, and Chinese. They were told to be at the Washington airport a half hour before takeoff, where their major, just back from India, would meet them. And they were warned in no uncertain terms:
Don't lose your orders!
“Sew 'em in your corsets or something,” the adjutant advised.

They did not get off to a good start. Early on the morning they were scheduled to leave for Miami, a sheriff showed up at the door of Jane's
apartment and announced his intention of arresting her for nonpayment of back taxes. Indignant, Jane explained that she
“did not mind paying taxes”
but objected to the fact that she “could not understand how to make out the tax returns.” She had even written a nasty letter to the IRS along those lines, claiming that she “had heard President Roosevelt's speech about the American people having a right to an understandable tax law.” As was her way, she talked a mile a minute, stringing together excuses, anecdotes, and funny asides in one long, loopy tale. The sheriff, charmed by her madcap volubility, and seeing by the GI gear packed and waiting by the door that she really was heading overseas to serve her country, allowed her to catch her flight.

Things did not go any better once they rendezvoused at the airport. Both Betty and Jane were under the impression, because their orders were secret, that they would sail past the flight clerks with the rest of the folks from Main Street and were shocked when the man behind the check-in desk said in a bored drawl,
“OSS girls bound for the wars, eh?”
and demanded to see their papers. When they parroted the rehearsed response that they were merely research analysts in the employ of the U.S. government, he snapped, “Don't give me any of that cloak-and-dagger stuff” and pointed out that anyone carrying “shush-shush orders” and planning to travel halfway around the world at the taxpayers' expense, was obviously OSS.

Embarrassed that they had managed to blow their cover before even leaving the gate, they meekly hoisted their flight bags onto the scale and said a silent prayer that the bags met the sixty-five-pound weight allowance. Neither of their bags passed inspection. As a result of what Betty called their
“wishful packing,”
they were a good forty pounds over the limit. When Major Little arrived at the airport a short time later, she recalled, he found them sidelined in a small anteroom, huddled over their
“disemboweled flight bags, trailing stockings and underwear.”
No doubt a veteran of such scenes, the major, she noted, “patiently seated himself and held our jettisoned dresses in his lap while he explained something about our overseas job.” They only half heard the last-minute advice he imparted, as their minds were on their discarded finery, which they already missed.

They were billeted at the Floridian Hotel in Miami, a formerly grand establishment that had been requisitioned by the Air Transport Command and now catered chiefly to servicemen. The once-fashionable hotel retained its aura of luxury and elegance on the outside, with its huge pool and palm-fringed walks, but the illusion was shattered the minute they stepped into the spartan lobby. The army had placed its indelible utilitarian stamp on the interior, which now featured a PX in the nook once occupied by the gift shop, slot machines in the lounge, and crackling loudspeakers on the verandas announcing flight times. Only the prewar postcards for sale in the PX, Betty noted,
“recalled the era when the Peacock and Crystal ballrooms were the last word in décor.”

No sooner had they checked in with the corporal manning the front desk than Jane was handed a summons. Although Jane had thought she and the sheriff had ended on the best of terms, he'd sicced the law on her. The bottom line was that she was going to have to pay her back taxes before being allowed to leave the country. As she was not traveling with anywhere near the sum of money she owned, she had to call one of her closest friends in Washington, Charlie Flato, a former colleague at the OWI and discarded beau, and beg him to wire her five hundred dollars, promising that her parents would repay him. Flato obliged, of course, but not without having a little fun at her expense. Jane soon discovered that the hotel's services included the censoring of all phone calls, telegrams, and mail, because the next day she was called into the billeting office, where she was greeted by a half-dozen officers standing around grinning and “leering” at her.
“One of them said, ‘Here's a telegram for you and a money order.' The telegram read: ‘Darling, forgot to leave this on your mantel. Love, Charlie.'”

Betty and Jane tried to make the best of their layover in Miami, but after a few days they tired of pretending to be tourists. It was just as well, as the last week of their stay they were confined to the hotel for “military security reasons,” which put an end to Jane's shopping spree. By then they had been joined by two OSS colleagues, Marjorie Severyns, a bright, slender brunette who had graduated from the University of Washington a few years after Betty and had a degree in international law, and Lieutenant Edmund Lee, a security officer who they suspected
had been sent along to babysit them. In his parting comments to them at the airport, the major had told Betty he would be sending Marj Severyns to help her set up the new MO unit in New Delhi and to keep an eye out for her en route. He had bigger things in mind for Jane, who was to be MO desk head for Malaya and Sumatra and would be working out of Ceylon.

When the Floridian's tinny PA system announced their flight—
“The following will please report to the transportation desk at 1300 hours”
—Betty was dismayed when Jane's name was not called. She waited, counting about twenty-three names in all, but Jane was not on the list. They knew they had different final destinations but had always expected to make the long, arduous Atlantic crossing together. Her excitement at finally heading overseas was dampened by the wave of doubt that washed over her at the thought of parting with the friend and comrade in arms who had been with her every step of the way during the seven months of training in Washington.
“The prospect of splitting up was the only regret I felt at leaving Miami,”
recalled Betty, who had no way of knowing when they would see each other again. When she met up with the rest of their OSS contingent in the hotel foyer, however, she could not help laughing at the sight of Jane ransacking Lieutenant Lee's luggage in a last-minute effort to retrieve all the new clothes she had sweet-talked him into carrying for her.

Determined to be a good sport about being bumped, Jane accompanied Betty to the airfield to see her off. The next day she managed to get herself on a plane for Georgetown, British Guiana, the first of many stopovers on her circuitous route out east. Without fail, the flight officer at every fueling depot she touched down at from Miami to Colombo identified her as OSS at a glance and cut her orders without question, even though her passport bore the ordinary stamp “Jane N.M.I. (no middle initial) Foster, government employee.” She was halfway to Ceylon before a grinning officer tipped her off that the trusty Abercrombie & Fitch flight bag on her shoulder was a dead giveaway. The identical khaki bag was issued to all agency personnel going oversees. They might as well have had OSS emblazoned on the flap.

After a series of hops in transport planes across India—touching down in Karachi, Agra, Bombay, and Madras—and getting lost in heavy fog over the Bay of Bengal in a C-47 that was rapidly running out of fuel, Jane finally reached Ceylon on July 12. While she was none the worse for wear, it was not a package tour she cared to repeat anytime soon. She had to keep shaking herself in order to realize she had survived the journey and was actually there. Major John D. MacDonald,
*
the commanding officer of the small OSS camp in Colombo, found her a bed for the night and filled her in on the events up in Kandy, the resort town in the mountains where Mountbatten had reestablished his command. Judging by the pea-soup quality of the air in the port city—her body was covered in a sticky film of perspiration seconds after landing—she could see why Mountbatten might want to seek relief at a higher elevation.

The news of their little OSS contingent in Kandy was not good. Shortly after Julia, Ellie, Cora, and company arrived, they all contracted
dengue fever and were laid up in the hospital.
“Breakbone fever,”
as Jane remembered all too well from her own bout with it in Batavia, was a painful mosquito-born viral disease that began with a high temperature that typically lasted three to four days. When the fever finally broke, it left its victims extremely weak and covered from head to toe in a nasty rash. Complete recovery took about two weeks. Another three girls had succumbed the day before, according to Johnnie (as Major MacDonald insisted on being called), and more were dropping all the time. It seemed to Jane that this lush tropical paradise, the fabled land of Sinhala kings and Kipling heroes, was full of hidden dangers quite apart from the Japanese, who were a good thousand miles away in Burma.

At eight the next morning, Johnnie put her on what looked like an old-fashioned toy choo-choo train, known as the SEAC Special, which the Americans affectionately called the
“Toonerville Trolley.”
Although rickety in appearance, it would take her up the mountains to Kandy. The British had installed the narrow-gauge line back at the turn of the century, when their chief object was the expansion of trade and the tea merchants needed an efficient freight route from the Assam highlands to Bengal. It was now operated by Mountbatten's crew. Two antique engines hauled the daily load of passengers, a mixture of military personnel and colorful locals. The service was impeccable. The minute the little locomotive lurched into motion, waiters in starched military uniforms appeared with platters of eggs and bacon, along with toast and tea, as well as Indian gin for the old empire types (“I say, care for a drink, old bean?”) who could stomach it.