Louise's Dilemma (21 page)

The Captain walked out onto the porch, commanding in his black leathers and peaked cap, and all the men, and the one woman, came to attention. He barked out his orders, and the crew moved quickly toward the inlet, the dock, and the submarine.

As I watched the crew prepare the submarine for departure, I thought about Jarvis’s gun. It had eight bullets. I could do some damage with eight bullets before they could stop me. But not to Anne. She was the first ‘crewman’ who’d descended into the submarine. Now there were just two seamen on the dock untying the ropes that held it there. Another two, including the captain, stood on the conning tower scanning the area with binoculars.

I groped around the deep pocket in my oilskin and grasped Jarvis’s gun, fully understanding the expression ‘itchy trigger finger’. There was nothing I could do with the gun, but I felt better holding it, imagining myself shooting someone, anyone, the captain, or Anne. Even running down the dock and pumping every bullet into the hull of the sub appealed to me. The bullets would ricochet off the steel plate and kill me, of course, but that didn’t stop me from relishing the prospect.

The submarine slowly moved out of the Martins’ inlet with the high tide. Once clear of the inlet I saw it turn toward the Bay. The sub would cruise on the surface of the water as long as possible while the diesel engine charged its batteries, only submerging if its sonar picked up a vessel nearby. Since it was Sunday, and as foggy as the Chesapeake Bay can be on an early winter morning, traffic on the Bay would be light.

I watched until I could barely see the submarine, then crawled down the dock for the last time. The submarine could change its bearing anytime, but to me it appeared to be heading due east. I could see in my mind’s eye, as if it was actually happening, the sub cruising into one of the deep coves on the eastern shore of Maryland. The crew would abandon ship, scuttle the sub, and hide in the woods that edged the shore. When night fell they’d split into small groups, make their way across the quiet farms and pastures of the eastern shore, and meet again at some predetermined spot on the Atlantic coast. There rubber dinghies from another German submarine, a big new one, would ferry them out to the sub and they would head back to one of the impregnable submarine bases on the coast of France. Anne would escape too. I could picture some SS officer pinning an Iron Cross on her chest!

I understood Eastern Command’s decision not to detain the submarine. I did, really, but I hated it with every fiber of my being.

I got to my sore feet and lingered at the end of the dock, looking toward the spot where I’d last seen the submarine, Jarvis’s Colt .45 dangling at my side.

It was time to do something about my own disordered condition. Get back to Lenore’s and clean myself up. I hoped I could get upstairs without her seeing me. I would need to call Williams and make myself available to the FBI for debriefing. And I’d make a verbal report to Lawrence Egbert at OSS first thing in the morning and then write a written report for, what else, the files! It made me queasy to think of General Donovan or even the President reading it, but that was inevitable. I would tell no lies. I’d realized the French postcard file was incomplete, even though we’d closed the investigation, and perfectionist that I was I decided to verify Anne’s birthday while on a holiday weekend trip. I found a German submarine docked at her cottage and notified the Coast Guard as soon as possible. End of report. Signed Mrs Louise Pearlie, OSS Registry Research Assistant.

But the Martins’ cottage, so quaint and picturesque in its clearing, beckoned to me. The FBI would be crawling all over it in a couple of hours, after Eastern Command was sure the submarine was out of the Bay, looking for clues to the targets of the saboteurs. FBI photographers would snap pictures of every square inch of the place but I’d earned the right to see it for myself first.

The door to the cottage wasn’t locked. It swung open, and I went inside. Clearly, twenty men had spent twelve hours here. The floor under my feet in the entry was caked with dirt and mud. In the once tidy kitchen, plates, glasses, and cups were stacked on every surface. Greasy pots and pans were piled in the stone sink. Toast crumbs and coffee grounds crunched under my feet. A half-empty milk bottle rested on a window sill, and I had to edge around a crate of empty beer bottles to get to the sitting room, where blankets and pillows were strewn all over the floor, sofa and chairs.

The bathtub looked as if all twenty of the Nazi seamen had bathed and washed out their allotted two pairs of underwear in it.

It seemed the seamen had stayed out of the bedroom and that Anne had slept alone. The bed was unmade but not tossed, one of the drawers in the dresser was ajar, and the picture of her family and her pearls were indeed missing. Other than that the room was orderly.

I was done here for good. It was time for me to go.

A
nne sat in Leroy’s desk chair with her legs crossed as if she was at a tea party. I started as if I’d seen a ghost.

‘What, no questions for me?’ she asked. ‘No interrogation about postcards and such?’

‘Where did you come from?’ I asked.

‘The shed. I was waiting there to see if you’d come out of the woods. It took you long enough. I got cold, and I wanted a cigarette.’

Anne had altered her appearance significantly. If I’d caught sight of her somewhere else I don’t know if I’d have recognized her. She’d dyed her hair a deep brown and twisted it into a bun at the nape of her head. Perched on her head was a stylish grey fedora that matched a wool coat thrown over the arm of her chair. She wore a smart dove-grey flannel suit and pumps that matched her roomy black pocketbook. Thick make-up – eyeshadow, rouge, and lipstick – coated her face.

‘Where was the radio?’ I asked. She must have had a suitcase radio.

‘Hidden in the skipjack under the canvas,’ she said. The one place Williams and I hadn’t searched. ‘It has new owners now.’

Anne must have handed over the radio to the team of spies and saboteurs the submarine had brought. What an efficient use of assets.

I would have happily lunged at her then, but couldn’t because she pulled a Luger out of her handbag and trained it on me. She motioned me over to her, stood up, and patted me down, finding the Colt and my knife in the pockets of my coat. She tucked them into her large handbag.

‘Sit down next to me,’ she said, sitting on the sofa and patting the cushion next to her. ‘You must be tired. You look like you washed up on the beach from a shipwreck.’

I perched on the arm of the sofa instead. ‘You expected me,’ I said. ‘How did you know I was here?’

‘Lenore called last night about midnight. She said she was worried that you hadn’t come home from visiting me. I told her you’d fallen asleep on the sofa and I didn’t want to wake you up. Oh, and we’re spending the day together. You’re going to help me clean out Leroy’s things and take them to a thrift shop in Washington for me.’

‘Richard Martin’s postcard was your signal that the submarine was on its way, wasn’t it?’

‘So many questions,’ she said. ‘What a curious young woman you are. But we don’t have time to go into all that right now.’

‘I expected you to leave with the Germans,’ I said.

She made a disgusted face. ‘Live in Germany? That awful place! What a nauseating culture the Nazis have created. I’m not a Nazi!’

‘You’re doing a damn good imitation of one. Are you going to kill me?’

‘Not if you do exactly as I say. It’s so convenient that you have a car. Let’s find you some clothes, though, before we leave. You’d attract the attention of a blind man looking the way you do.’

‘Good lord,’ she said, as I stripped down to my underwear in her bedroom. ‘You’re creative, I give you that.’

Anne was a bit heavier and taller than me, but with the help of a belt notched in its last hole I gathered a pair of her wool trousers around my waist. When she saw my feet she grimaced, but I just shrugged and pulled on a pair of Leroy’s heavy socks. I added a flannel shirt, buttoned my new blueberry sweater over it, and pulled on my sea boots again.

On our way out of the front door Anne found me a pea coat to replace the Navy-issued parka Jarvis had given me. I was warm for the first time in hours.

‘Here.’ She handed me a wicker basket waiting by the door. ‘Sandwiches and coffee,’ she said, as if we were going on a picnic. ‘We won’t want to stop anywhere public to eat.’

She urged me down the path to the shed and nudged the door open with her foot. ‘Get one of the cans of gas,’ she said.

It was heavy, and I struggled back up the path ahead of her with both the basket and the gas can, her Lugar just inches from my back.

This wasn’t going to end well for me. Once we got out into the country Anne could put a bullet in my head and dump my remains into some stream or river. She’d had more rest and food than I had and no injuries. She’d have Phoebe’s car. She could escape as cleanly as if she’d left on the submarine.

‘Wait a minute,’ Anne said. Keeping the Luger trained on me she edged over to the dock, drew Jarvis’s Colt from her bag and threw it into the water.

When we got to the car, Anne gave it the once-over. ‘This will do,’ she said. ‘Fill the gas tank.’

I did, and she flung the empty can into the woods. When I opened the car trunk to stow the basket she noticed the gas can I’d brought from Phoebe’s.

‘Any left in that one?’ she asked.

‘Almost full,’ I said.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘You don’t need to know that right now,’ she said. She sat in the passenger seat next to me with the Luger cradled in her lap. ‘Just turn right on St Leonard Road.’

North. If we stayed on Solomons Island Road we could be in Annapolis, or even Baltimore, by tonight.

We cruised through St Leonard, shut down tight on this Sunday morning, past the Esso station and Bertie Woods’ café.

The first floor of Lenore’s guesthouse was bright with light. I imagined Lenore baking bread or muffins, with Lily at her feet hoping for a bite.

‘If you’re not going to kill me, why take me along with you?’ I asked.

‘I need someone to tell my story when this is all over.’

‘So what
is
your story? You told me you were proud to be an American, that you were happy here.’

‘Oh, I am, and I was. I’m going to start a new life somewhere else in the United States. The Nazis provided me with documents.’

‘That makes no sense. You must be insane!’

‘Not at all. I just hate the British more than I love the United States.’

I shifted gears as I braked at the stoplight on Courthouse Square in Prince Frederick. ‘You did this because you hate the British? How does that work?’

‘If the Allies lose, Hitler will rule Great Britain. What a glorious, splendid thought!’

‘Why!’

‘The British destroyed my life. During the Boer War.’

‘That seems farfetched to me.’

‘Farfetched,’ she said, taking her eyes off the road and turning to me. Her eyes burned into mine. ‘Farfetched! The British army burned our farmhouse to the ground. They salted our fields and butchered our livestock, even our pets. My father and older brother died fighting in the war. My mother and younger brother died of typhoid fever in Bloemfontein concentration camp. We’d been a wealthy family, but when my grandmother and I arrived here we shared one room at a boarding house. She worked as a seamstress to support us.’

‘It’s terrible what happened to you and your family,’ I said. ‘But think what this war is doing to innocent American families. You’ve set Nazis loose in our country!’

She shrugged. ‘War is ugly,’ she said. ‘People die. Are you hungry? You must be. There’s a lane coming up we can turn down.’

I drove about a mile down a dirt road canopied with bare oak trees and shielded from the main road with chokeberry bushes. The lane ended at a rusty metal gate that hadn’t been opened in years.

We had our picnic – there was no other good word for it – in the car. I hadn’t eaten since dinner yesterday. Anne had made ham and cheese sandwiches with plenty of mayonnaise and homemade bread, leftovers from the feast she’d prepared for her German guests. The sandwiches were delicious. With a cup of coffee and food my dizziness disappeared, but I was exhausted.

‘You look all done in,’ Anne said to me. ‘I was up all night too. We’ll nap here until dusk.’

Anne tied my hands to the steering wheel with a length of rope she’d packed into the picnic basket. Did she really think I could sleep here?

I woke up with my head resting on the steering wheel.

Anne was awake and already outside, opening my door, untying my wrists, and gesturing me over to a bush to take care of my business, her Luger in her hand.

‘Hurry up,’ she said, ‘and we’ll be on our way. We’ve slept all afternoon.’

Twenty miles later we turned east on Maryland State Road Four, towards Washington. Inside the city it became Pennsylvania Avenue.

‘Turn north on Second Street,’ Anne said.

Union Station! That must be Anne’s plan. If she didn’t intend to kill me, she could tie my hands to the wheel again and leave me in Phoebe’s car in a deserted alley. I wouldn’t be found until morning, and by then she’d be long gone, her destination unknown. That sounded like a good plan to me, and I clung to it.

Instead we turned on Massachusetts.

‘Please tell me where we are going,’ I asked. My nerves were taut, and I wondered what she planned to do with me. The more time I spent with her, the more unbalanced I thought she was.

‘You’ll see.’ Anne seemed edgy, even excited. She gripped her handbag as if it held a sack of gold coins.

We passed the Post Office and the Government Printing Office. Six blocks later we reached Mt. Vernon Square, where the Washington Public Library, with its stunning marble façade, sat regally, ruling over the entire square. When I first lived in DC I’d spent many Saturdays reading magazines and newspapers from all over the world in the War Reading Room.

‘Go around to the back of the library,’ Anne said. ‘There’s a staff parking lot down a ramp, on the lower level. Park the car there.’