Out of Control (61 page)
Mid-November, 1946, I received a letter from Hank.
It was too thin to be the divorce papers I’d sent—besides those were to be returned to my lawyer’s office. It had been almost a month, though, and there’d been no response.
Until now.
I opened the envelope, I confess, with shaking hands.
Rose
No Dear. Just my name, written in his so-familiar hand.
I will be visiting New York on November the 12th and should like to see you. Please will you join me for dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria at seven o’clock p.m.
Yours, Hank
November the 12th was the next day. I tried somewhat desperately to talk myself out of going, but of course, in the end, I couldn’t stay away.
I arranged for Evelyn to come out and watch the boys, and, wearing my best dress, I took the train into the city.
The Waldorf was just as I’d remembered it, the lobby perhaps more crowded than it had been, with reporters and newspaper photographers everywhere I turned.
I went toward the restaurant, stopping to ask a young woman in a big purple hat what the fuss was about. (Why do I remember that hat? But I do. As clearly as if I’d seen it yesterday.)
“Some VIP’s in town,” she told me with a snap of her gum. “A war hero—some European prince.”
Hank. She was talking about Hank. These reporters were here because of him.
I gave my name to the maître d’, whispering that I was to be dining with Heinrich von Hopf, whispering for fear one of the reporters with particularly good ears might overhear me and start asking questions.
I was led into the main dining room, which surprised me. I was certain Hank would have arranged for us to dine in a private room where no one could see us and speculate on our relationship.
If those reporters only knew—but I was determined not to let our secret slip. Not just for Hank’s sake, but for my sons’ sakes as well.
“I think there must be some mistake,” I told the maître d’, but then I saw him. Hank.
He was already there, sitting at a table near the big window that overlooked the street. My heart lurched at the sight of him. He was thin and his color wasn’t all too good, but oh, it was Hank.
He didn’t stand as he saw me coming, and I stopped short—my heart doing another flip as I realized he was sitting in a wheelchair.
None of the articles Anson Faulkner had sent me—and there were quite a handful about Hank in both the London and Wien papers—had mentioned anything about a wheelchair.
He used his arms to shift his chair, pulling himself out from beneath the linen table cloth. And I saw that Hank, my dearest Hank, had lost the lower half of his left leg.
“Oh, God,” I said.
“So you didn’t know,” he said.
I wanted to run to him. To fall to my knees in front of him and run my hands over and across him—making sure that the rest of him was healthy and whole. But there were reporters just outside in the lobby.
“It was an infection,” he told me, as I sank into my seat across from him instead. “The doctors couldn’t shake it, it nearly killed me. They opted to amputate in late September.”
I wanted to reach for his hand across the table, but I didn’t dare. “I wish someone would have told me. I would have come.” I realized as the words left my mouth that if he’d wanted me there, someone would have told me. “I’m sorry, I’m . . .” I cleared my throat. “But you’re over the infection now? You seem quite well.”
He nodded, the muscles in the side of his jaw jumping. “Yes, the infection went with the leg.”
“Thank God.” I tried to smile even though I couldn’t hide the tears in my eyes.
“I was quite ill—bedridden until just a few weeks ago. The doctors tell me I was taken out of the Soviet camp just in time. Another week or so, and I surely would have died. I don’t remember any of it. I mean, I remember being brought to the camp of course. I remember being wounded. But the damn leg just wouldn’t heal. It just kept getting worse and worse. I don’t remember them taking me out of there at all. I just woke up one morning in Vienna.”
“That must have seemed like such a miracle to you,” I whispered.
“Yes, well,” he said, shifting slightly in his chair. “It was somewhat lacking, particularly when I found they’d taken my leg, but I suppose one can’t be picky about miracles.”
There was silence for a moment.
Then, “Will you be fitted for a prosthetic?” I asked. “I recently read an article about the new medical technology. They’ve come such a long way since the days of pirates with peg legs and hooks for arms, you know.”
Hank smiled. “Count on you to cut to the bottom line. And yes,” he said. “I’ve been told I’m a good candidate, although there are no guarantees. I should like to be able to walk again. I’ve been feeling rather short these days.”
“Once you get your strength back you should be able to swing about on crutches, don’t you think? I know that’s not the best solution,” I said, “but it’ll get you where you want to go. And to be perfectly honest, even if for some reason you have to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair, you’ll always have plenty of beautiful women eager to push you around.”
He laughed at that.
“You’ll always be easily identified as a war hero,” I continued, “and women will fall—no, swoon—at your feet.”
“Foot,” he interjected, but he was still laughing.
“Look around,” I told him. “You’ve still got the eye of every woman in this room.”
Hank stopped laughing. “Including you, Rose?”
I couldn’t lie to him. “Including me,” I said quietly, unable to look him in the eye. “Always me. I’m the one who found you irresistible even when I thought you were a Nazi, remember?”
“Excuse me, sir. Madam. May I take your order?”
“No,” Hank said. “Go away.”
“Indeed, sir.” The waiter vanished, and as I looked up, I realized that Hank had tears in his eyes.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out a packet of papers. He placed them carefully on the table, and I saw that they were my petition for divorce.
“Okay,” he said. “You didn’t know about my leg. I thought you did, I thought you were repulsed by the idea of—”
“No!” I said. “Oh, God, no!”
“Obviously a one-legged man isn’t a problem for you,” he said. “So why? Why didn’t you come to me? God, how I needed you, and you sent me this.”
What was he saying? That he wanted me to be there with him in Vienna? I couldn’t stop myself from reaching across the table and taking his hand. “Oh, Hank . . .”
“I know how hard it must’ve been for you,” he said, gripping my fingers. “You believed I was dead for over a year.”
“No,” I said.
“At first I thought you’d found someone new. That had to be the answer. But you haven’t. Unless you’ve been extremely discreet . . . ?”
“There’s no one,” I told him. “And I didn’t believe you were dead. I didn’t believe it for a minute.”
“Then I don’t understand,” Hank said. “I need you to explain as simply as you can possibly manage, why you don’t want to be married to me anymore.”
“You have an English fiancée,” I told him. “Lord Someone’s daughter. I thought . . .”
He sat back. “You thought I didn’t want you.”
“This was the real world,” I explained. “The after-the-war world. You’re a prince. I’m—”
“A war hero, too,” he said. “Elizabeth Barkham was never my fiancée. That was my mother’s wishful thinking—I wasn’t even conscious when that notice went into the Times. You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, Rose. Good grief, what would I want with a fiancée when I’ve already got a wife? The only wife I’ve ever wanted. You, Rose.”
But I’d had months and months of talking myself into believing that even if Hank did still love me, our marriage would never work. “Are you just going to come home with me, then?” I asked. “To live in New Jersey? An Austrian prince in Midland Park?”
“How about Hong Kong?” he asked. “I’ve always wanted to take you to Hong Kong.”
He was serious.
“Yes, it’s going to create something of a . . . stir when the news of our marriage gets out, but I’ve been gone from Vienna for so long, it’s not home for me anymore. This is home,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Right here in the Waldorf. Or in Hong Kong. Or in Midland Park. Wherever you are.”
He brought my hand to his lips and kissed me, and about twenty-five cameras flashed. Oh dear! I pulled my hand away, but Hank didn’t even blink. I realized with some shock that the sidewalk outside was crowded with those reporters and photographers.
Hank didn’t give them as much as a glance. “Tell me you don’t love me, and I’ll sign these papers right now,” he said. “Otherwise I’m ripping them up.”
He didn’t have to rip them, I did it for him.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to come to me so I can kiss you,” he said. “But you better do it quick, because I’m about to knock this table over to get to you.”
“But . . .” I looked at the window. Didn’t they realize how terribly rude they were being, staring in at us like that?
Hank started to move the table, and I quickly stood up.
As soon as I came close, he pulled me down, right onto his lap and kissed me. Oh, what a kiss that was.
And oh, how those cameras flashed!
One of the more bold reporters knocked on the window. “Who’s the lady, Prince?” he shouted through the glass.
Hank wouldn’t let me up. He turned his chair with me still in his lap, so that we faced the window. I laughed and blushed and he kissed me again, and again the cameras flashed.
Then Hank’s voice rang out, loud enough for them to hear him in the street. “May I present the daring double agent who helped me penetrate the Nazi war offices in Berlin during the last years of the war, Mrs. Ingerose Rainer von Hopf—my wife, whom I love with all my heart.”
The cameras flashed again and again and again, and just like that the crowd of reporters dispersed. I could almost hear the newsroom phones ringing. With one sentence, Hank had irrevocably changed both of our lives.
He kissed me a few more times, and then helped me off his lap. “How about taking me home to meet my sons?”
He knew about Alex and Karl! I was surprised for a second, but then I realized—of course he would know. This was a man who had been gathering intelligence for most of his adult life.
“They’ll be asleep when we get home,” I told him as I wheeled him out of the dining room. “But of course we can wake them.” I smiled down at him, my dear, wonderful Hank. “Or we could sneak into their room, you could take a peek, and then we could let them sleep . . .”
His smile made my heart sing.
And so I took my prince home, and together we lived happily ever after for thirty wonderful years.
Alyssa closed Rose’s book as the seaplane prepared to touch down in the harbor. Jules glanced at her and opened his mouth as if to speak, but she shook her head. She didn’t want to talk right now. She was afraid if she opened her mouth, she would start to cry.
A short boat trip to a shorter taxi ride, and then they were at the temporary FBI headquarters.
The elevators were out, and as they climbed the stairs, Jules finally spoke. “Are you all right?”
“No,” Alyssa said as she pushed through the door to the fourth floor. She turned back to glare at him. “I want to live happily ever after. Where’s my goddamn happy ending, huh? That’s what I want to know.”
She left Jules standing there, gaping at her as if she’d gone mad.
It was entirely possible she had.
There was blood on his runway.
There were bodies, too. Several still sprawled on the concrete, but four were neatly lined up in the shade of the Quonset hut, covered with tarps.
Jones landed on his first pass, searching for Molly among the missionaries and villagers who were moving the bodies.
She wasn’t there.
At least not among the living.
He leapt from the plane, running past Otto Zdanowicz, who lay clutching his bloody chest, eyes staring sightlessly at the sky. Running for those tarps.
Please God . . .
“She’s not here.” It was Angie, one of the missionaries, but Jones wasn’t satisfied until he lifted those tarps and stared down at the unfamiliar faces.
“Where is she? What happened?” And then he saw it.
The metal attaché case, open and empty. Lying several feet from Zdanowicz. Oh, God.
“They came to the village,” Angie told him. “Threatened to kill Billy. Molly said she knew where the money was.”
Angie had sent Tunggul running to get the other men, to get their guns, and she’d raced up the trail to the airfield.
She’d seen it all. By the time Tunggul and the others joined her, General Badaruddin’s men had come, and the battle was over. There were far too many of the soldiers. It would have been madness for the villagers even to consider attacking.
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