Shining Through (41 page)

Edward alone remained uncharmed. John’s smile faded. Edward simply shook his head. “No surprises. Well, perhaps, in that for once I’m not going to give you an argument, Norman.”

He lifted the last folder on his pile. “Peter Fuhrmann. I don’t have to go through his credentials. He’s done some remarkable work for Special Operations in Ham-SHINING THROUGH / 305

burg. He appears clean as a whistle. I think he’s your man, Norman.”

“Well, I have a surprise for you,” Norman said. “Peter wants out. Out of Hamburg. Out of intelligence entirely. He’s pleading exhaustion, and his contact seems to agree—says he’s on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Sorry to have put you to all this work. We just received the message this morning.”

“Quite all right,” Edward said. Norman nodded, and everyone in the room muttered “Too damn bad” or something like it. “All right.” Edward glanced at John, but it was an icy glance, and he didn’t say his name. “You checked on the last two fellows. Please report.”

“Hans Kuhn. Age, thirty-nine. A lawyer. Born in Cincinnati of German parents, moved back to Dresden when he was eighteen.” John adjusted and readjusted his tie in a nervous, almost desperate manner. Edward’s coldness had thrown him completely. “He’s a single practitioner in Berlin, and from time to time has passed information on to us through Alfred Eckert.

We’ve done what checking we could, with refugees, lawyers who practiced in Berlin, and from everything we can gather, he’s no good.”

“No good in what way?” Norman asked, almost off-handedly.

“Rumors he’s looted escrow accounts, stolen from widows and orphans. That sort of thing. Womanizer. One person claimed to have seen him drunk and disorderly.”

“Sounds like one of your partners, Ed,” Norman chortled.

“Sounds like quite a few of them,” Edward responded.

There was subdued male laughter. Everything was still pleasant.

“The last name on the list is Erich Erdmann.” Norman’s face brightened; I could see this was his man. “Forty years old. Born in Munich. Professor of Romance languages at the university in Munich until 1935. Jewish. Came to the U.S. in ’36. Taught at Tufts until this year, when he came to work for the OSS…Foreign Nationalities unit.”

“He wants to go back in,” Norman said. “He’s cultured, 306 / SUSAN ISAACS

good-looking. According to Rex”—Rex was Norman’s highest-placed spy, a career man who had worked in the foreign office since before the First World War but had had little contact with Alfred’s important Nazi official—“someone sophisticated like Erdmann would appeal to the foreign office fellow. And he’s open to any suggestion we have.”

“That’s the drawback, as far as I’m concerned,” Edward said.

“All this Erdmann wants is to make trouble for the Germans.

It’s certainly a commendable goal, but he’s too intent on revenge.

I’d send him in with a demolition team in a minute—if we could slip in a team and they needed a professor of Romance languages with them. But he’s seething with anger, Norman. You can’t send someone like that on a mission that requires infinite patience and self-control.”

“I think he could control himself if he’s willing to keep his eye on the ultimate objective,” Norman said. “And I know he’s more than willing.”

“But he’ll be in there alone,” Edward said. “He’ll have no one to get him to shape up when he starts losing his sense of balance.

Look, whoever takes Alfred Eckert’s place is going to have to walk on an invisible tightrope. We know there’s a traitor in the resistance movement. People will be suspicious. We’ll have to ease him in with extraordinary canniness. And only one person—as yet to be determined—will know his true identity. Then, gradually, he’ll have to make a place for himself. It’s an operation that calls for great subtlety, and this Erich Erdmann, for all his academic attainments, is about as subtle as a bull in a china shop.”

“But we’re
desperate
,” Norman interrupted. “Goddamn it, Ed, you keep shooting down almost every candidate we come up with.”

“Then come up with better candidates,” Edward replied. The congeniality was evaporating fast.

“Erich’s a courageous man. I tell you, he would rise to the occasion.”

“He’d fall flat on his face. He can’t even sit through an interview with me without banging his fist on the table every thirty seconds for punctuation. The man has no command SHINING THROUGH / 307

over his emotions. It’s not that I blame him. Believe me, I understand his rage. I applaud it.”

“He doesn’t look Jewish,” Norman said. “He’d fit right in.”

“I don’t care if he looks like the archbishop of Canterbury.

He’s an accident going someplace to happen, and I’m not going to let it happen in Berlin. I’m against him. I vote no.”

“Ed—”

“I’ll go to the mat with you on this one, Norman.”

The veins in Norman’s neck and temples started to bulge. His face got so red it was almost purple. He tried to yell, but he was so infuriated he choked on his words. “You’re doing this deliberately!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. This isn’t a plot to foil you. But I won’t allow any more suicide missions. I won’t send a man to a meaningless, unnecessary death.”

“I need an agent! You find one for me, then, goddamn it to hell!
You
find me a man we can slip in, someone with the brains and guts to knock on a Nazi’s door and invite himself in.”

There was silence. John, weary, closed his eyes. And all of a sudden, I found myself asking: “Hey, how about me?”

2 0

“T
his isn’t foolish!” Edward’s fist crashed down on a table.

“This is insane! What’s gotten into you?”

Two days after I’d suggested going into Germany, Edward had directed Pete, his driver, to forget his instructions to take us to a meeting at the Research and Analysis unit. Drop us at my place, he directed, and wait. I slid out of the car, not even bothering to take my pad and pencil, and strolled up the walk to his house.

I knew Edward; he was going to play gracious host, offer me a drink, and then, with great subtlety, try to talk me out of the idea. But the minute he closed the door, he’d yelled, “You idiot!”

That’s when I realized that the only reason he’d brought me to his peaceful Georgetown home was that he needed a place where he could scream his head off.

“If it’s all so insane, then how come Norman’s whole espionage unit’s for it?”

“Are you some kind of imbecile?” I had no idea such a low voice could be so terrifyingly loud. “What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you know by now that all he wants is another player for his game?”

I was stunned—and frightened—by his outburst. But I knew if I started quaking in front of Edward, the closest I’d get to Berlin was a map. So I banged my fist, hard, against his living room wall. “You have no damn right to shout at me like this,”

I yelled back.

Besides, I’d had it with him. He’d sat in that meeting two days earlier letting Norman and his men and even John 308

SHINING THROUGH / 309

debate my going into Berlin. Well, John had said, her
berlinerisch
is not flawless. Not an American accent, but it’s not…quite on the mark. But close enough? one of Norman’s men had queried.

And John had admitted he couldn’t be sure. Edward had sat rigid and wordless, and no one except me had noticed how spooky his silence was.

“The thing that’s
really
getting you is that you know I can do it,” I went on, “and you don’t want me to because of your dumb feud with Norman Weekes. And because it would be too much trouble to find a new secretary.”

“I have no patience for asinine remarks!”

“Would you please listen to me! I know the network, the codes, the whole operation. And I’m not some Tufts College professor with a crazy grudge. I’m an ordinary person. And give me three days with one of your refugees who speaks the
berlinerisch
dialect, and no one will ever know I’m not Frau Schmidt from around the corner.”

Edward stalked away from me, across the room toward the mantel. Suddenly he spun around, took three fast steps and was beside me. Before I even realized what was happening, I saw he had a fireplace poker in his hand. He drew it up fast, like a fencer; it was an inch from my throat. “Are you crazy?” I breathed, staring down at it.

“Come on. This is Berlin,” he said. “You can manage anything.” I turned my back on him, walked away and sat down in a big blue club chair. “
Now
do you understand that you can’t begin to manage something like this?”

I looked up at him. “I just managed it. You didn’t poke out my jugular with that thing.”

“For God’s sake!” he said, and hurled the poker to the floor.

It bounced from the fancy old rug and clanged onto the dark wood floor. Then Edward began to pace. His hands were stuffed deep in his pockets. He wouldn’t look at me.

“I know what’s going to come next,” I said. “You’re going to take your hands out of your pockets and come over here, sit down, and try to talk me out of it. You’re going to be very understanding and patient.”

Edward pulled his hands out of his pockets and took a seat 310 / SUSAN ISAACS

not far away, in a club chair that matched mine. “Linda,” he said understandingly, patiently. “You haven’t thought this through.”

“I have.”

“No, you haven’t. Don’t you realize that your life means nothing to a man like Norman Weekes? He’s just using you for his own purposes.”

“Let me clue you in on what I’ve learned in the last couple of years. People like Norman Weekes—people like you—
always
use people like me. Why else bother having lower classes? You use us to work for you, to clean up your messes, to fight your wars. You use us to listen to your secrets, so you can say: ‘What?

Me
a tough, unfeeling bastard? No! I’m a deep, fine, compassionate human being. If you don’t believe me, just ask my secretary.’”

He rubbed his watch chain between his thumb and index finger. “Is that what you think of me, Linda?”

“Pretty close.”

“It’s a shame you didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t have wasted your time. It would have been easier just giving you a five-dollar raise in exchange for your promise to vouch for my compassion.”

We sat there, half facing each other, not speaking. It was a terrible, long time. Finally I said, “There’s really no point in sitting around here.” I started to get up, but then Edward stopped me.

His voice, subdued, almost hypnotic, was what got to me.

“There’s a beautiful simplicity in all this. What you’re looking for is precisely what Norman is offering: a suicide mission.” I sat back in the chair. “You feel your life is…is unrewarding.”

Edward paused. “You’ve lost your mother. And your husband…”

His voice trailed off.

“My husband has been having a flaming affair with your daughter.”

“Yes.”

“So you think I want to go into Berlin, go undercover, because I really want to kill myself, but I’m too chicken to do it, so I’ll get some pig in the Gestapo to do it for me?

SHINING THROUGH / 311

Why when you do it is it heroic, and when I want to do the same thing it’s suicidal?”

“You’re distraught.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” But all he did was give me one of his kindly looks, his hard eyes softening, his head tilted a little to the side: the kind of look he gave all the sad victims of the war. And the lousy part of it was, it wasn’t a phony look.

His pity for me was real. “I walked in on them,” I told him. He stiffened. “No, not like that. It was when I got back from New York, from my mother’s funeral. Oh, they were in each other’s arms, but they were dressed to the nines and listening to classical music.” He reached over and tried to take my hand, but I jerked it away, into my lap. “You really must be proud of her.”

“You know I’m not.”

“I don’t know anything. All I know are the stories you decide to tell me.” He drew his watch from his pocket and stared at the case, but didn’t open it. “It’s getting late,” I said. “I really want to get out of here.”

Edward spoke as if he hadn’t heard me. “Nan’s my child. I love her. That doesn’t mean I approve of what she’s doing. It doesn’t mean I understand her.” He slipped his watch back into its little pocket and looked at me. “That’s a sad admission for a father to have to make, but even so, I have an obligation—”

“You know, you’re all sensational at throwing around words like ‘obligation,’ ‘honor,’ ‘moral imperative.’ Go ahead, if it makes you happy. You can carry on about your integrity, your profound humanity, until you’re blue in the face. I just don’t want any part of it. I want
out
of your world.” I got up and stood in front of his chair. “Send me to Berlin.”

Edward rose. He wasn’t all that much taller than I was, so we were almost eye to eye. His voice was very calm. “Don’t throw away your life on John Berringer. He’s not worth it. He has good looks and a good mind. But that’s all he has. His character isn’t worth two cents.”

“You know what the problem is? I’ve seen you at work 312 / SUSAN ISAACS

too often. You’re shocking me back to my senses with a brutal dose of honesty; you always have pretty good results with that technique.”

Edward broke away then and walked over to a cart that had whiskey and glasses on it. “Would you like a drink?” I shook my head, and he poured himself one. “I’ve been drinking too damn much lately. I wake up nearly every morning feeling…not right.”

I thought: What does he want—another heart-to-heart? “So don’t drink so much,” I said.

“Thank you. I’m touched by your concern.”

“You want my concern? Maybe you should drop the brutal-honesty business. John could wind up being your son-in-law.”

“I would hope not.”

“You ought to thank me for taking him off your hands. Well, temporarily. I don’t have what it takes for a long run, for chitchat in the drawing room. But for the short run, I’m great upstairs.”

“Don’t denigrate yourself.”

“Hey, I’m not. I’ll give you my other credentials. I’m smart.

Imaginative. And you were the one who said I have guts. If you’ll just listen to me, I’ll tell you
exactly
how I can get into Berlin. I figured the whole thing out.”