Cleopatra�s Perfume (45 page)

She looked back over her shoulder as she ran to board the plane. So pretty, so feminine, so totally without trepidation, yet knowing she still faced danger. He watched her long after she was out of sight, her scent lingering with him always. He was
impressed with her resolve, how she got through every obstacle thrown in her path without giving up. No matter what happened, what horror he would have to endure, he would cling to life with everything he had until he could see her again.

Only when he saw her flight take off for Lisbon did he return to where he’d parked the car. This was where the game changed. His orders were to leave the vehicle here and wait for his contact. That could mean hours. He pulled out a German newspaper from his side pocket, then lit a cigarette. Then another. Long minutes dragged by until he saw an old man wearing a wide-brimmed black hat with a red feather approaching him from a side street, whistling and holding an empty birdcage.

Chuck put out the half-smoked cigarette and stomped on it with the heel of his shoe. Too late he realized his mistake. With cigarettes rationed, someone may have noticed. He turned, looking left then right, his heart pounding. Nazi collaborators were everywhere, shopkeepers, women bent over and carrying heavy baskets filled with the day’s rations, mothers with their babies, even children bore the effects of Nazi brainwashing.

The old man brushed by him and put down his birdcage, then picked up the cigarette and put it between his dry lips. He said something to Chuck in German, then picked up his birdcage and walked off in the opposite direction. Chuck stood still, watching him, unsure what to do next. He put his hand inside his pocket to get another cigarette and felt something. He pulled it out. A letter with florid handwriting. Obviously a love letter to a soldier at the front. Where did it come from? Then it hit him.
The old man with the birdcage. He couldn’t read it, but that wasn’t important. He recognized the return address as not being far from here. That must be his next stop.

He tore up the letter into small pieces and dropped them into the gutter then started across the street. Before he reached the opposite corner, he heard the unmistakable diesel sound of a black Mercedes sedan slam to a halt at the curb. The back passenger door swung open and two Gestapo men jumped out, an officer and his aide. They grabbed him, restraining him.

“Is this the man?” the Nazi officer asked in English to someone inside the car.

“Yes,” he heard a woman’s voice call out from the backseat.
Laila.
“He’s an American spy. Get the woman, too.”

“There’s no woman with him.”

“You fools! She got away.”

It was clear to Chuck that the one meaningful aspect of this whole mess was getting Eve out of Berlin and away from this woman. He was grinning from ear to ear, pleased with himself, when the Muslim woman jumped out of the car and slapped him. The blow stung his cheek, but he refused to let her get the best of him. He glared at her, not backing down. Her distaste for him was obvious in the way she gained pleasure from watching him squirm, knowing he was angry enough to tear her apart with his bare hands, but her lust for the perfume was greater.

“She took the perfume with her, didn’t she?” Laila asked.

Chuck looked at her with an intense hatred in his expression. “You’ll never find out.”

“Tell your man to search him, Lieutenant.” Her voice was
tense, angry, her suspicion just under the surface. The Gestapo officer barked the command to his aide, aggravation etched on his face at taking orders from a woman. He drew his Luger out of his holster, waving it around to show his authority.

Chuck knew there was no moment to lose, or he was dead. He struggled to free his arm when the Gestapo man dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out the silk stocking. Laughing, muttering what he assumed were dirty words in German, the Nazi waved the stocking under Chuck’s nose then tied it around his neck. That was all he needed. With a sharp turn on his heel, he clipped the man on the jaw, sending him sprawling onto the ground, then ran with all his strength down the cobblestone street, his leather soles slipping on the smooth stones, not knowing where to run, yet knowing he must. Panting, sweat getting into his eyes, he could hear the angry shouted commands of the Gestapo officer somewhere behind him, ordering him to stop. He wouldn’t.

He heard the screams of a woman. Laila. Yelling something incoherent, her frustrated cries suddenly cut off as if someone had silenced her. But it wasn’t thoughts of her that ravaged his mind. Eve. Her body pressed against his, the feel of her softness making the blood rush through his veins madly, his need for her so intense, his hold on her tightened. This time he wouldn’t let her go.

Without warning, his nostrils were full of her fragrance. Enlivening his sense of smell. Then an insane idea hit him.
Why was he running?
He must have faith in the perfume. In
her.
It seemed to him the spicy scent of the perfume and the even spicier odor of her alluring female body were inextricably com
mingled, giving him the courage to slow his gait when he heard footsteps gaining on him.

He turned around and confronted the Nazi.

Shoot,
Chuck prayed silently.
Dammit, shoot me.

The Gestapo officer, in anger or frustration or both, fired several shots at him. In a momentary flash, Chuck suddenly realized there was a perceptible reduction of his senses, a deafening explosion in his ears, then silence. It was a strange, baffling sensation, disparate feelings of unbelievable lightness, and, in a very real sense, freedom. He held on, knowing what would happen next.

In that split instant, Chuck Dawn disappeared.

EPILOGUE

Coventry

September 29, 1945

T
he war is over. I promised to finish this diary and so I shall, dear reader. Though the exploits of this chorus girl turned spy would make scintillating background information for a novel, I have but one reason for writing down the aftermath. I must record my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams, for in that I draw strength. I’m writing it down in the last few remaining pages of my original diary in hopes of finding a happy ending to my story.

I never saw Chuck Dawn again after that day in Berlin. I have been in contact with the American war department for weeks, hoping for news of him. From what I’ve been told, he made his way out of Germany and into occupied France following a route using trains and the established links with safe houses Josette gave him. An RAF squadron, taking off from a secret base in Tempsford, England, picked him up outside Paris.

As for my escape, my flight to Lisbon was uneventful until we ran into a storm a few miles from the Spanish coast. Fog and rain prevented us from landing, so we continued on to a military airport farther south. I feared I’d be arrested upon landing, but the SIS had done its job forging my papers and, after spending the night at the Avis Hotel, I left Lisbon the next day on a regularly scheduled BOAC flight for Whitchurch in Bristol. A representative from the Foreign Office met me and arranged for me to travel by motorcar to London.

I must digress, dear reader, remembering that night in the Portuguese hotel. No air raids, no bombs, no blackouts, nothing but the soothing sounds of rain beating against my window. I questioned that night whether or not we would ever again know a world as peaceful. I pray we have it at last.

My heart is heavy as I wait for news of Chuck, but I can tell you now (how I wish it were Chuck reading this as he did all those years ago) what information I secured from Maxi the day we had lunch in Berlin. With her background in photography, Maxi had come in contact with a secret German method of transferring photographs to the size of what we in England call a “full stop” or period that have the clarity of standard-size typewritten pages. A microdot.

The invitation to her photography exhibit that I carried back to London with me contained several microdots with pictures she took of the development center and early plans for V-2 rocket operations being secretly carried on by one of Hitler’s top officials, Albert Speer. Quite by accident, she had gotten drunk one night with a disgruntled engineer who was in the process of being dismissed from his work on the project before being sent to the front. After serious
pillow talk and a romp in bed, he gave her access to the plant, where she photographed the plans on a clandestine trip under the cover of night. This was over a year before a Danish naval officer discovered the crash site of a test version of the rocket. Maxi’s photos aided the British government in their preparation for an attack on the installation at Peenemünde by the RAF later in the war, which delayed Hitler’s plans for long-range weapons and undoubtedly saved many British lives.

I have no regrets for what I have done. I believe I have honored Flavia and all those who died in this terrible war. I pray we shall never see the likes of it again, though knowing the covetous desire of human nature, man’s frailties, greed and need for power, I have my doubts. The tides of history have spilled the blood of men and women across this continent and all the world for centuries. Though we shall never understand war, it is for future generations to learn from it.

I am certain you’re wondering how I fared during those war years. Surprisingly, I found the world of espionage held an allure for me I didn’t know it had. I embarked on many exploits for the SIS during the rest of the war and later the American OSS. What I did was recorded in the war archives, but it must remain classified information (at least for the time being). I
can
say that I went to the United States as an agent for Sir_____ (who still wishes to remain anonymous) and moved about in society, keeping my ears open for any information that would lead me to German agents working in America. I also found myself in Hong Kong during the Japanese attack and I spent eight months in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp before being released. I’m certain you’re wondering what became of Cleopatra’s perfume. I used it sparingly throughout the war, pre
ferring to rely on my wits to do my job instead of its mystical power. The pale golden alabaster box with the nude, bare-breasted figure of a queen holding a scepter and perched on a throne sits on the mantel above the fireplace in the playroom here in Coventry in front of the secret wall plate where I’ve hidden the crimson cord. Who knows? Perhaps I shall call upon the power of the perfume again in the future…

This past year found me back in London working for the Political Intelligence Department, as it was formally known, writing “erotic propaganda,” spicy stories broadcast in German on a shortwave station (a top-secret endeavor by British Secret Intelligence Services) and without laying any claim to its existence. All this was part of psychological warfare against the Nazis. It seems my exploits in Cairo and Berlin lent themselves well to writing risqué stories about Hitler’s elite to jar the populace into believing their leaders were betraying them. Who knows, perhaps someday I will receive permission to have my stories declassified and I shall find a publisher for my work.

But enough about my adventures in this war. I’m certain you’re curious to know how the others fared, and so I shall relate what I know about them. Maxi continued passing along information to the Allies under the nose of the German secret police. Now, like all Germans, she is having a difficult time adjusting to life after the war. I have spoken to both the British and the American services for displaced persons, asking them to help her carry on with her photography work in the new Germany. And Laila? She disappeared soon after the day she confronted Chuck at the Berlin airport. My sources tell me she ended up in a concentration camp, which I have no doubt
occurred when the Nazis found out she was cheating them out of sizable amounts of money.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out if Josette survived the war. Using my influence with Sir_____, I gained access to my official file and read the statement of the prostitute who saw me sneaking upstairs in the brothel. She didn’t recognize me as being one of the regular girls, she said, but she didn’t report me because she thought I was a society woman recruited by the Gestapo to do my “patriotic duty.” When she was questioned by the man I now know was SS Intelligence Chief Heydrich during one of his sadistic personal inspections (humiliating the girls by forcing them to engage in whipping orgies), she blurted out she had seen me. (The irony, dear reader, is that the microphones were turned off when Heydrich visited the brothel.) No one had any record of my being there, but someone
had
seen me with the young kitchen maid. The girl was tortured with electric shocks until she revealed the location of the safe house. She was so ashamed of succumbing to Nazi torture, she hung herself in her cell. God rest her soul.

By this time, Laila had reported me to the secret police, insisting I was a spy and responsible for the suspicious disappearance of a missing SS officer last seen leaving the Hotel Adlon with another man and me. The Gestapo raided the safe house and arrested everyone there, including two downed RAF fliers. Nowhere in my file did it indicate whether or not Josette was among those captured. Did the perfume save her? I don’t know. Since I never knew her real name, it will be difficult to find out. I think about her often. Her pretty hands flying over the piano keys, her lilting, husky voice seducing the audience with a song. So many brave souls in the French
Resistance died for the cause of freedom. I will not rest until I know whether or not she is alive.

Which brings me back to Chuck Dawn. Neither of us ever spoke of Cleopatra’s perfume in our letters, only of our love for each other. The war has kept us apart, our situation more desperate because we know the power of the perfume, yet even its mystical powers cannot bring us together. From what he wrote in the letter I received from him soon after he returned to England (I was on assignment in New York City for the Foreign Office), he disappeared that day in Berlin, only to resurface somewhere outside the city before beginning his long trek to France then back to his squadron in England. Convinced of the power of the perfume, he subsequently flew many missions over Germany, including cloak-and-dagger sorties picking up other downed fliers.