Louise's Dilemma (6 page)

‘I apologize for my husband,’ Anne said. ‘He seems brusque, I know, but he has little patience for anything other than his own business. It’s just his way. Excuse me, I have to get something out of the oven,’ she said. ‘Would you like some tea? I could put the kettle on.’

‘I don’t—’ Collins began.

‘If it’s not too much trouble, that would be lovely,’ I said. With her irritable husband out of the way, perhaps Anne could tell us more about Richard Martin and his mysterious mother.

Collins leaned back onto the sofa, crossing his legs and looking resigned.

When Anne opened the oven door, the most wonderful odor of cinnamon and apples drifted into the sitting room, but what she removed from the oven looked like no apple pie I’d ever seen before. It resembled a loaf of bread.

A few minutes later Anne brought us our hot tea on a tray, with milk and sugar.

‘I hope you like it strong,’ she said, pouring us each a cup and passing around the sugar and milk.

‘Whatever you’ve baked smells wonderful,’ I said.

‘It’s stollen, a sweetbread with nuts and fruit. The only thing that does remain from my life in South Africa is my grandmother’s cookbook. I bake from it whenever I can find the ingredients.’

‘Can I ask why you emigrated?’ I said.

‘The Boer War,’ she said, but didn’t elaborate.

I set down my cup. ‘I’m curious about just one more thing,’ I said. ‘Why do you think Richard Martin mentioned the date of your birthday?’

She shrugged. ‘When he visited it was right after my birthday. In fact I think I served him leftover cake. Perhaps he just wanted to let me know he remembered it.’

Anne Martin walked us to her door and we made standard goodbyes, but then she held out her hand, palm up. When we didn’t respond, she said, ‘The postcard. I believe it belongs to us?’

‘Of course it does,’ I said, handing it to her.

She tucked it into her apron pocket and closed the door behind us as we left.

‘Why did you give her the postcard!’ Collins said, after we’d gotten back into the government car. ‘That was stupid!’

I bit my lip, waiting until my urge to speak sharply to him passed. ‘It would have looked suspicious if I hadn’t, wouldn’t it? If the postcard isn’t innocent, now they’ll think we’re satisfied with their explanation. Besides, I took photographs of it back at OSS.’

Collins changed gears badly and swore at the grinding noise. ‘What a place to live, especially in the winter!’ he said. ‘It’s so isolated! We’re only a couple of miles from St Leonard but it feels like the off end of nowhere.’

We regained the state road and started back towards Washington.

‘We need gas,’ Collins said. ‘Let’s stop at the filling station in St Leonard.’

I weighed whether or not to speak. ‘We should stop at the next town over,’ I said. ‘We don’t want the folks in this town to notice us again.’

He didn’t answer me, but we drove past the St Leonard filling station. In fact we didn’t speak until he asked me what I wanted on my hot dog when we stopped at a hot dog stand before we crossed the Anacostia River into Washington.

I was fine not talking to Collins. I resented being asked to babysit him without even being told that’s what I was doing, but at the same time I was glad I was with there to run the conversation with the Martins.

I was sure Collins’s report would say that the postcard was harmless, and that the Martins had explained its content adequately. I wasn’t so sure. The reference to ‘Mother’ still worried me. Why would Richard Martin mention his mother in such a pointed way to people who had never met her, and whom he had only met himself once?

And it seemed to me that the Martins, and more than a few people in the lunchroom, weren’t exactly New Dealers.

I asked Collins to drop me off on a corner a couple of blocks from home so I could walk the rest of the way. I didn’t want anyone in my boarding house to see me in a government car with an Army lieutenant and ask me a bunch of questions I couldn’t answer.

Joe opened the door when he heard my key in the lock.

‘Good lord!’ he said. ‘You didn’t walk all the way home from work!’

‘No,’ I said, ‘a friend dropped me off on the corner.’

He cupped my face in his hands. I was so numb from the cold that I could barely feel them.

‘You’re frozen,’ he said. ‘Come into the sitting room. We’ve got a fire.’

He helped me take off my coat, and I unwound the scarf from my neck. The heat from the fire felt wonderful on my legs.

‘How was your day?’ Joe asked.

‘Same as always,’ I answered.

‘B
ack so soon?’ Ruth asked as I passed her file cart on the way to my desk.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it was a small errand.’ And although I was glad to be done with Collins, I dreaded seeing what had accumulated in my inbox during the day that I was gone.

It was stacked high, of course. There were two documents to read, index, and catalog and several research requests that needed to be completed. I settled in to work, ready to put in a very long day. I didn’t want to come in on Saturday if I could help it. I’d promised Joe I’d go see the houseboat. Just thinking about Joe and that houseboat made the heat rise in my face! I angled my chair so that I faced the wall. Desperate as I was to spend time alone with him, I was grateful that I still had more than a week to get used to the idea.

A Negro messenger tapped me on the shoulder, startling me. ‘Mrs Pearlie?’

‘Yes?’ I said.

‘Ma’am, Mr Egbert would like to see you. Right away.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. What now?

My boss, Lawrence Egbert, wasn’t alone in his office. Collins’s boss, DeWitt Poole, head of the Foreign Nationalities branch, was with him.

I put up my guard immediately. What had Collins told them? Had he tried to blame me for the mistakes he’d made yesterday?

I sat down in a desk chair in front of the two men, determined to protect myself. I was not going to take the blame for anything Collins said or did! I didn’t care if I
was
a file clerk, and therefore expendable.

‘We have Lieutenant Collins’s report here, Mrs Pearlie,’ Poole said, ‘and I’d like to ask you your opinion of his conclusions.’

‘Of course,’ I said. Poole handed me the report, and I read it quickly. It was only a page. He didn’t mention me at all! And the report was so terse that it just barely covered the facts of the day we spent in St Leonard. Collins had done his best to avoid admitting his mistakes.

Egbert folded his arms. ‘What did you think of Lieutenant Collins’s handling of this inquiry, Mrs Pearlie?’

I took a deep breath. I was not going to cover up for him. ‘Lieutenant Collins didn’t have a cover story prepared. He had a beer with lunch. He seemed to lack training on how to proceed in the field. But his questioning of the Martins was suitable and elicited the information we needed.’

Poole nodded in agreement, thank God!

‘I have to accept some responsibility for Lieutenant Collins,’ Poole said. ‘We are so short handed. Do you agree that the postcard mailed to the Martins wasn’t a covert message?’

I hesitated. I didn’t want to incriminate the Martins if they weren’t guilty of anything, but then again …

‘I don’t think the questions we have about the postcard were adequately resolved,’ I said. ‘The Martins appeared to barely know the sender, Richard Martin, and the wording of the postcard still concerns me. Why the emphasis on “Mother”? The Martins didn’t know Richard Martin’s mother. And why is Anne’s birthday date mentioned in such a clumsy way? It could be simply that the writer wasn’t corresponding in his native tongue, but still, it puzzles me.’

Poole nodded. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘But we have had an unfortunate complication. Apparently, Collins’s behavior in St Leonard caused a commotion, and someone complained to the Office of Price Controls, which was Collins’s improvised cover. The OPA called the FBI, since they’d never heard of Collins. The FBI maintains a list of our employees, and now the FBI has wind of our inquiry. As you know, the Hatch Act gives the FBI the authority to search for spies inside the United States. They have assigned an agent to investigate this postcard and the Martins.’

‘Of course the Foreign Nationalities Branch would like to keep tabs on the FBI in case the agent discovers something. Otherwise we might never know,’ I said, agreeing with him. My own limited experience with the FBI had been less than favorable. Hoover wouldn’t share intelligence with the OSS if he could avoid it.

‘We’d like you to act as OSS liaison with the FBI agent assigned to this case,’ Poole said. ‘Mr Egbert has agreed to release you from your current assignment as long as necessary.’

I’d been around OSS long enough to know I shouldn’t be too flattered. I was just a file clerk. I’d shown I was observant, and I had some field expertise. File clerks were a dime a dozen, and they could do without me. My job would be to make sure that if the FBI found anything interesting OSS would know about it. It was clear to me that Egbert and Poole didn’t attach much importance to this matter. Still, it would get me out of the files for a while longer!

‘Of course,’ I said.

Poole slid off the edge of the desk. ‘The FBI agent you’ll be working with is outside, let me introduce you.’

Poole opened the door, and a man in his late thirties entered the room. He was dressed conservatively, in suit and tie, like all G-men, but his grey fedora sported a small yellow feather stuck in the hatband.

‘Mrs Pearlie,’ Poole said, ‘this is Special Agent Gray Williams.’

I knew his name. We had met before.

‘Mrs Pearlie,’ Williams said, ‘it’s nice to meet you.’

The man didn’t remember me! Thank God!

His handshake was firm and dry. I hoped mine wasn’t damp!

‘Special Agent Williams,’ I responded. ‘Good morning.’

Special Agent Williams was the FBI agent who’d paid a terrifying call on me at my OSS office last summer. He’d gotten a report from a guest at the Wardham Hotel that I had been behaving in a ‘loose fashion’ with a foreigner, a Frenchman, in the bar. And that I’d made a ‘spectacle of myself’ at the Shoreham the following Saturday evening. The FBI had investigated me! Williams had then informed me that since I appeared to have an exemplary record, he wanted to warn me that it wasn’t acceptable for a government girl with Top Secret clearance to socialize with foreign nationals.

The Frenchman was Lionel Barbier, cultural attaché at the French embassy, and, dear God, if the FBI had discovered what we’d actually accomplished that Saturday night I might be whiling away long cold and lonely hours at the Women’s Federal Prison in West Virginia right now!

Of course, I’d apologized for my behavior, blaming my inexperience with champagne, and promised to be more circumspect when choosing my friends.

And now I had my very own FBI file, along with thousands of other Americans.

What were the odds that I would ever see Agent Williams again, much less be assigned to work with him? I couldn’t work with him, I just couldn’t! What if he remembered me? If he did he’d watch my behavior, professional and otherwise, like a hawk.

Of course, my appearance had changed since then. I wore my hair pinned up at work. I’d exchanged my harlequin eyeglass frames for new rimless round ones. And I’d lost weight. Not intentionally, but the shortage of sugar had forced me to cut down on Coca Cola, Hershey’s chocolate bars, and dessert. And I suppose that the few minutes we’d spent together in an empty conference room at OSS were not seared into his memory the way they were in mine!

Domestic intelligence was the FBI’s job, and they did it very well. Although our assignment would be to investigate the Martins, and the postcard I now wished I’d never set eyes on, he’d be working with me daily and might still remember me.

And then there was Joe. He was a ‘foreigner’. What if Williams found out about us?

I needed to think of a way to refuse this assignment.

Mentally, I reviewed excuses. I was just a woman, a research assistant. I wasn’t trained for this. Blood made me faint. I had a heart murmur. I racked my brain for a way out.

‘Mrs Pearlie,’ Williams said, ‘I saw the commendation in your file. It seems you’re wasted in the Registry! I look forward to working with you.’

Wasted in the Registry! Yes, I was indeed. And this assignment would get me away from the files, even if only for a couple of days. The more work I could do that distinguished me from most file clerks, the more likely it was I might get another promotion and keep working after the war. How would Williams find out about Joe and me? Discretion was my middle name.

‘Thank you, Agent Williams,’ I said. ‘I look forward to working with you, too.’

‘I
don’t know,’ Joan said. ‘I’m not sure it’s such a good idea.’

We edged our way through the crowd in the OSS cafeteria toward the only two seats we could see before someone else got there. I had to lift my tray over the head of an Air Force officer wearing an OSS patch and an arm sling, and Joan, who was a large woman, used her hips to clear a path. It was a miracle that we found two seats together.

Of course, we shouldn’t have discussed my new assignment, but I trusted Joan like a sister, and we were within the OSS campus. And the noise level in the room added another layer of protection. We had to lean close together to be heard.

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘I am so frustrated working in those damn files every single day. Who knows when I might get another chance to work in the field.’

‘I know,’ Joan said, ‘but you understand the FBI looks at every single foreigner as a potential enemy. What does this man friend of yours do, anyway?’

I had told Joan very little about Joe, and I couldn’t blow his cover. ‘He’s teaching Slavic languages at Georgetown University,’ I said.

‘Good God,’ Joan said, tucking into her jellied ham loaf, ‘he could be a Bolshevik!’

I knew she was teasing, but I still defended Joe. ‘He is not. Actually, he’s lived in England most of his life. He went to university there, then taught at London University.’

‘Even better. British universities are hotbeds of Socialism.’