Louise's Dilemma
Authors: Sarah R Shaber
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Historical
Table of Contents
A Selection of Titles from Sarah R. Shaber
The Professor Simon Shaw series
SIMON SAID
SNIPE HUNT
THE FUGITIVE KING
THE BUG FUNERAL
SHELL GAME
The Louise Pearlie Series
LOUISE’S WAR *
LOUISE’S GAMBLE *
LOUISE’S DILEMMA *
*
available from Severn House
Sarah R. Shaber
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First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.
eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2013 by Sarah Shaber.
The right of Sarah Shaber to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Shaber, Sarah R. author.
Louise’s Dilemma. – (A Louise Pearlie mystery; 3)
1. Pearlie, Louise (Fictitious character)–Fiction.
2. United States. Office of Strategic Services–Employees–Fiction.
3. Suspense fiction.
I. Title II. Series
813.6-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8295-0 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-452-2 (epub)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
In honor of Nancy and Jim Olson and the extraordinary bookstore they founded, Quail Ridge Books, in Raleigh, North Carolina.
I am always so grateful to my family for their support and encouragement of my writing. My daughter Katie is my first reader and my son Sam my expert on computer issues and social media. Steve, my husband, is my arm candy and dearest friend.
I could not write these books without the Women of Weymouth, my writing buddies, Margaret Maron, Katy Munger, Diane Chamberlain, Alexandra Sokoloff, Kathy Trochek (Mary Kay Andrews) and Bren Witchger (Brynn Bonner). Our retreats at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities are always productive, and fun!
For this particular book I relied on The Calvert County Historical Society for research I could not travel to Maryland to do myself. And many thanks to Dan Cooper and Leah Bowman for finding answers to several questions that stymied me.
I am so fortunate that Vicky Bijur is my agent and friend, and that Quail Ridge Books is my home bookstore.
W
as it an ‘h’? Or just a smudge? I pulled a magnifying glass out of my desk drawer. The mark in ‘St Leonard’ did look something like an ‘h’, or ‘St Leonhard’, although the rest of the address was in English.
Mr Leroy Martin, near St Leonard, Maryland, United States of America
, the address read.
‘I just don’t know,’ I said. ‘It could be.’
‘Obviously, we would like to know why a postcard written in English and mailed from occupied France to an American contains a German word,’ the lieutenant said. ‘If that’s what it is.’
The message seemed harmless enough.
Dear Leroy
, I read,
I am well and working here, no need to worry. Mother is safe too. Wishing your wife Anne a happy birthday on February 13th. Your cousin, Richard Martin.
Thousands of people living in Axis-occupied Europe used a neutral mail service through Lisbon to correspond with friends and family in Allied countries. But I could see why the censor had passed this particular postcard to OSS – the Office of Strategic Services. If the writer was French, and Richard Martin could be a French name, why would he spell ‘St Leonard’ as ‘St Leonhard’?
Every odd or suspect piece of mail the U.S. censor intercepted could be an Axis coded message. Who were Leroy and Anne Martin? Who was Richard Martin? Who was ‘Mother’? Was that a German spelling of ‘St Leonard’, and why did the writer include the date Leroy’s wife’s birthday? Surely the woman knew the date of her own birthday!
‘I’m Art Collins, by the way,’ the thin lieutenant said, extending his hand to shake mine. ‘Foreign Nationalities Branch. I mean, Lieutenant Arthur Collins. I’m not used to being in the Army yet.’
Collins’s uniform was brand new. I could still see the creases where his shirt had been folded over cardboard. He was quite young, attempting but failing to grow a mustache.
Most of the men at OSS were in uniform now. The Army had taken to drafting everyone in sight, including the staff of the Office of Strategic Services. After boot camp the draftees were returned to ‘temporary’ duty at their old stations. So now most of the men in the building wore uniforms. And got paid less! Women weren’t being drafted yet, or I’d be in a WAC uniform myself and living in a barracks by now.
‘The postmark,’ Collins said, tapping the card, ‘is from Nantes, not far from the St Nazaire submarine pens in Brittany. We can’t ignore any questionable mail that comes from that area.’ Collins ran his hand through his short hair and bit his lip, distracted by worry and exhaustion. Hitler’s U-boat Wolf Pack was stalking Allied convoys in the North Atlantic, sinking so many transport and supply ships that our victory against Rommel in North Africa and our future European invasion plans were in serious jeopardy.
The OSS mission had shifted substantially since the early days. Instead of writing and distributing broad reports, we were now engaged in target analysis and estimates of enemy forces. OSS had reorganized appropriately.
The Research and Analysis Branch, where I’d worked since coming to Washington, was split into four desks: Europe/Africa, Far East, USSR and Latin America. Each had an Economics, Political and Geographic Section. The Central Information Division, or Registry, where I now worked, was created as the reference library of OSS, where all classified and unclassified material was catalogued and stored. I was one of dozens of women who worked long days analyzing and indexing intelligence so that it could be accessed by generals, assistant secretaries of state and our own OSS operatives. Our vast card catalog contained two million index cards at last count. We maintained a War Room and a Reading Room for OSS staff. The Registry held thousands of intelligence documents, the best map collection in the world, almost a million maps, a library of 50,000 books on specialized subjects and countless captioned photographs. We maintained and added new information to thousands of biographical files.
Most of our resources these days were spent acquiring and reviewing the intelligence needed to defeat the Nazi U-boat assault on our convoys in the North Atlantic.
‘This could be important,’ Collins said, tapping the postcard.
As if I didn’t know that. Every request that passed through this office was critical, vital to the war effort, and needed to be completed yesterday! I had an inbox full of critical documents to analyze and index. Fine, I would deal with Collins’s job first thing tomorrow. I was too tired right now to even focus my eyes.
After work I waited with my fellow employees, shivering in the glacial cold, for a bus. Despite wearing wool trousers, a heavy cardigan, my beloved fur-collared wool coat, a scarf wound so many times around my face that I could barely see, and heavy gloves over the fingerless mittens I wore all day every day to keep my joints warm, I still shivered. Phoebe’s thermometer had read six degrees this morning. Six degrees! I’d grown up on the coast of North Carolina, and I’d never experienced these kinds of temperatures before.
Noticing my dismayed expression, a young woman in a WAC uniform and cloak spoke up. ‘It’s going to be a long wait,’ she said. ‘The streetcars still aren’t running. Ice has shorted out the electric current to the rails.’
Last night I’d eaten the macaroni and cheese special at a diner nearby and waited until the crowds thinned out to catch a bus, finally boarding one an hour after dark. I’d stood up in the aisle all the way and arrived at my boarding house about eleven. I couldn’t tolerate the thought of waiting that long again! It wasn’t that I was afraid; I still carried the Schrade switchblade I’d been issued at the Farm, the OSS training camp outside Washington, and often practiced the close fighting techniques I’d learned there.
An icy gust of wind blew through the crowd, and we all muttered and huddled together in misery. I didn’t want to walk home, damn it! I had a sudden mental picture of myself frozen solid waiting for the light to change at the corner of ‘K’ Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
‘I heard the Army is sending extra buses from Fort Myer, and the police are ticketing anyone driving a car without passengers,’ said a man standing near me with his head scrunched deep into his coat. His breath froze into frost on his collar.
‘Maybe when the Pentagon gets out,’ someone else said. ‘All those cars headed north, they’ll have to pick people up off the slug lines, or they’ll get pulled over.’
‘Pentagon traffic doesn’t come this way,’ another voice responded. ‘They use the highway bridge further south.’
A gay jingling interrupted us. Two sleds appeared, each drawn by a matched pair of Belgian horses, occupied by a crowd of bright young things headed for any fancy hotel or supper club that might be open. The horses, blowing steam from their nostrils, wore red plaid blankets and harnesses with bells. Their passengers, wrapped in blankets, held martini glasses aloft as the horses thundered by us, cheering and laughing as they went by. The sight raised all our spirits, but as soon as the bells and laughter ebbed away and the sleds turned onto 23rd Street, our collective mood crashed again.
Just as I despaired of a warm and early night, I heard a familiar jolly voice calling out to me.
‘Halloo, Louise!’ It was Joan Adams, my closest friend at OSS. Since I’d been promoted I had seen little of her, or of the scholar/spies who once worked on my floor.
‘Over here!’ Joan called out again, and I stood on my toes to see her waving at me from the back seat of an Army Jeep. ‘Come on! We’ll take you home!’ Joan was General Donovan’s secretary, which came in handy at times. I pushed my way through the crowd to the curb and stepped cautiously into the icy street.
An Army corporal at the wheel of the Jeep extended a hand to help me climb into the back seat. ‘Isn’t this swell!’ Joan said, pulling me further into the seat beside her. The Jeep’s top was up, but afforded little protection from the cold. Joan drew half of her motor blanket over my lap, and we snuggled together to combat the cold. ‘General Donovan requisitioned a ride for me as long as this artic weather lasts. We’ll have you home in no time.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I was about to go back to my office and curl up on my desk to sleep, I’m so damn tired!’
‘You would have frozen solid,’ she said. ‘They turn off the heat at nine.’
