Louise's War (24 page)

I ran over to an ‘M’ catalog and looked up Marseille Hydrography Office. Nothing. I ran down an aisle to the ‘I’s. Nothing on the International Hydrological Association. Where else could I look?

Lionel had followed me, but now he gripped my arm, hard.

‘Let’s go,’ he insisted.

‘Not yet, let me think,’ I said.

‘The time for thinking is done,’ he said. ‘Now is the time for leaving.’

I still resisted him. ‘Surely we have a few more minutes,’ I said.

This time he twisted my arm, hurting me so much I gasped.

‘Now,’ he said, his eyes narrowing. I didn’t argue with him.

Lionel guided me out of the room and locked the heavy door behind us. We crept back the way we came until we got to his office. Inside I dropped onto the sofa, cradling my arm.

‘I’m sorry, Louise,’ he said, looking again like the friendly, kind Lionel I knew. ‘It was necessary for us to go.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Of course we needed to leave.’ I didn’t mean it. I no longer liked him much.

We heard a sound at the end of the hall, the slam of a door followed by human footsteps and the four-legged pattering of a dog.

‘It’s the guard!’ Lionel whispered.

We both looked at our watches. Only twenty minutes had passed since we’d left. I remembered the guard’s Karabiner slung over one shoulder and the handie talkie that dangled from the other.

‘He’s back much too soon,’ Lionel hissed.

‘Do you think he suspects?’ I asked.

‘If he did surely he wouldn’t return alone.’

‘Maybe he wants more champagne.’

We both hesitated, thinking the same thing. We hardly looked like lovers who’d been alone for twenty minutes.

‘Quickly,’ I said.

The steps came closer and closer, the dog whined, perhaps anticipating peppermints, and the door opened, without a preliminary knock.

I squealed and jumped up from the sofa, stark naked except for Phoebe’s necklace glittering between my breasts. I covered my most private body parts with my hands. The guard shined his flashlight directly on me, and shrieked himself.

‘Idiot!’ Lionel shouted, rising beside me, as naked as the day he was born. ‘
Imbécile!
What are you doing?’

Gallantly he wrapped his crumpled shirt around me. I tried to cry, but couldn’t pull it off, instead burying my face in Lionel’s shoulder.

The guard fell back and dropped his flashlight from my body.

‘I am so sorry!’ he said. ‘I thought, I was just checking!’

‘On what? How far we had gotten! Get out of here!’ Lionel said.

The guard and the dog, still whining for a treat, left the room, leaving Lionel and me scared out of our wits.

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘you have so much courage!’ He laid a hand on my shoulder, but I shook it off.

‘Get dressed quickly,’ I said. ‘He must be suspicious of us, or he wouldn’t have come back so soon!’

‘Perhaps we should linger,’ Lionel said, ‘won’t it seem odd if we don’t conclude our assignation?’ I couldn’t help but notice that Lionel was aroused. I’d never seen an uncircumcised man before, and was not inspired to prolong the experience.

‘Come on!’ I said, reaching for my clothes.

Lionel grasped my arm again.

‘My darling Louise,’ he said, ‘you do not look sufficiently
satisfaite.
This is not acceptable. I have my reputation to consider.’

‘Your reputation will survive,’ I said.

He pulled me toward him, wrapping his arms around me, pinning mine to my side, his intentions obvious. Lionel was much stronger than his foppish appearance suggested. I was as angry as I was frightened. If I resisted, fighting and screaming, it might bring the guard back. If I didn’t it wouldn’t be rape.

‘Let me go, Lionel, please,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to do this.’

‘Ah, but I do,’ he said. ‘And I’ve risked my life to bring you here. I expect some reward. One instant of ecstasy in this terrible world that is almost intolerable for me to live in otherwise. Is that too much to ask?’ He pinned my arms behind my back with one hand, and with the other began to caress my flank.

‘I’ll scream,’ I said, ‘I will.’

‘Why? You’re not a virgin,’ he said. ‘An act of reluctant love would be much more bearable than arrest, would it not?’

He was correct, of course. He knew that when he brought me here. That I would submit in order to escape exposure, a cheap price for a chance to rescue Rachel’s family.

Then I knew.

‘You have it,’ I said.

Lionel raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I fetched it as soon as you told me of it.’ He released me, knowing I could hardly escape while still naked. He opened a desk drawer and drew out an envelope file secured with a thin red ribbon. ‘Monsieur Gerald Bloch, hydrographer of Marseille, husband of Rachel? That’s him, is it not?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Give it to me.’

‘I have been through it many times,’ he said. ‘With a fine-toothed comb, as you say, and I find nothing remarkable.’

‘Why the charade?’ I asked. ‘Why bring me here, pretend to search, when you had the file all along? Why put yourself in danger of being caught with me?’

Lionel shrugged. ‘I hoped you might have some good intelligence to share with me, some nugget I could relay to my superiors, that you would give up at the last minute to help your friend.’

‘I thought you loathed Vichy.’

‘I do. More than you can imagine. So much I do not want to set foot in France until the war is over. So I wish to ingratiate myself with the ambassador to preserve my own position here. As for your precious file, I might still give it to you, if . . .’ and he gestured to the sofa.

Well, why not? Women all over the world were sleeping with men they despised for scraps of information that might help defeat Nazism. Honey traps, they called them. What made me so special, my body so precious? Lionel was right, I wasn’t a virgin, and although I loathed being intimidated, sleeping with Lionel wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to me. If I was discovered, arrested or lost my job, that would be unbearable.

He smiled at me, kind Lionel again. ‘Who knows, you may not regret it.’ He reached for me.

A bell sounded, three times. It echoed in the hall outside Lionel’s office door.

‘
Merde!
’ Lionel said. He drew aside the window curtains. I caught a glimpse of three black Cadillacs motoring up the drive.

‘It’s the ambassador, the
collaborateur
,’ Lionel said. ‘Why is he here, on a Saturday? Get dressed, quickly!’

He didn’t have to suggest it twice. We both threw on our clothes.

‘This is a catastrophe,’ he said, with an ear to the door. ‘He never arrives without an entourage, deputies, bodyguards. They will guard all the doors.’

‘How will we get out?’ I asked.

‘It’s you, not us,’ he said. ‘No one will care if I am here, the guard will never report that I entertained a guest.’

Simultaneously we looked toward the window. Lionel’s office was on the third floor, but I remembered the thick ivy that shrouded the embassy.

Lionel shoved the sofa aside, and the two of us struggled to raise the sash. It creaked and shuddered, but finally rose. Lionel held it open.

‘Out,’ he said, ‘quickly, quickly!’

‘Please, Lionel, give me the file!’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t risk it, if they capture you with it, they’ll know I helped you steal it! Without it we could still pretend we were lovers looking for a quiet spot to spend the evening.’

‘Please!’

‘No! Get out!’

I swung myself onto the ledge of the window. I’d climbed enough trees and vines during my childhood that I figured the ivy could hold my weight. And it did, mostly. I edged my way down the wall, grasping thick ropes of ivy, feeling with my feet for footholds, and easing my way down. Once a vine did give way, tearing free of the stone wall, but I only slid a few inches before I caught hold of another.

I reached earth safely. The vast rear grounds of the embassy were empty. I looked up at Lionel’s window, overwhelmed with anger and frustration. I picked up a rock and threw it towards the window, imagining it crashing through glass and cracking Lionel’s skull.

‘God damn you!’ I screamed at him, uselessly.

I was livid with Lionel and furious at my own naiveté. If I’d had a gun I swear I would have shot him dead.

The rock I threw bounced off a mullion, and to my surprise the window opened. Lionel leaned out and dropped a file envelope towards me. It fell, drifting a bit, at my feet. I retrieved it, ripped off the ribbon that tied it closed and drew out a handful of papers. I saw Gerald Bloch’s name, stuffed the papers back into the file and looked for a way out of the still empty back grounds of the embassy.

Lionel leaned out the window and screamed at me.

‘Run, idiot!’ he shouted. ‘Run!’

As I turned the guard’s huge Alsatian, dragging his leash, careened around the corner, not barking, but running flat out straight at me. His intensity was terrifying.

NINETEEN

T
he dog bounded toward me, his ears flat back and teeth bared, his handler nowhere to be seen. I searched the ground and selected the largest rock I could find. If I could stun the dog, I could still escape. I wondered how close I should let him get before I struck. Then he was just a few yards away from me, and I could feel my bowels lurch and blood rush to my heart.

Then I heard Lionel screaming.

‘
Couché! Couché!
’ he shouted. The dog skidded to a halt, confused, and looked up at Lionel, who leaned out of his window. ‘
Viens ici!
’

A shower of peppermints dropped from the window. The dog considered his choice, looking at me, then at the peppermints scattered under Lionel’s window. If I hadn’t been terrified, his confusion would have been amusing. The Alsatian decided in Lionel’s favor, trotting over to the treats.

‘
Bon garçon!
’ Lionel screamed to the dog. ‘
Au pied!
For Christ’s sake, Louise, run!’

I ran pell-mell across the rear grounds of the embassy, so fast my lungs burned. I tore across the dry brown lawn, past an empty garden shed and wood house, and through a back service gate onto Kalorama Road.

Once outside I forced myself to walk. Casually I went down the street and crossed into the Sheraton grounds. I had the key to the hotel room Lionel had rented, and I saw no reason why I shouldn’t go there to collect myself. Besides, I’d left my jacket and headscarf there and I badly wanted to cover myself.

Once inside the hotel room my nerve abandoned me. I sat on the bed and began to sob. I couldn’t stop trembling. My arm hurt. A deep black bruise was forming where Lionel had twisted my elbow.

After a few minutes I ran out of tears. In the bathroom I soaked two towels and washed the sweat of fear and heat and exertion from myself as best I could.

I remained in the hotel room in case the embassy guard raised an alarm, but from the window I saw that the embassy was dark and quiet. I’m embarrassed to say that instead of instantly examining the documents I’d stolen, or rather ‘liberated’, as real spooks said, I fell sound asleep.

When I awoke it was pitch black. I could just detect a murmur of voices from the hotel lobby. I washed what was left of my make-up off my face, put my jacket on over my blouse and wrapped the scarf around my head. I slipped out of the room, went down the back stairs and out into the street. By God, I’d gotten away with it.

I unlocked the door of my boarding house and tiptoed into the dark hall. I’d been lucky to find a taxi at this late hour. Otherwise I would still be walking, fending off sailors and soldiers on weekend leave looking for a bed for the night.

I was starving, so I felt my way back to the kitchen, where I hoped I could find something in the refrigerator to hold me until breakfast. I didn’t want to turn on any more lights than I had to. I wasn’t in the mood to make up any stories about the Fourth of July party I had supposedly attended.

A dark shape that rustled when it moved rose up in front of me and we collided. Madeleine and I both managed to stifle our exclamations. She reached for the light switch on the stove, which cast the dimmest of glows.

She looked beautiful. Her chocolate skin gleamed against the topaz of the party dress Ada had given her. Whatever you called the color of her lipstick, it was perfect with her complexion.

‘Where have you been?’ I asked. ‘It’s very late.’

‘I could ask you the same thing!’

‘At my pool party.’

‘You don’t look like you’ve been swimming.’

‘No, I guess I don’t.’

‘I’ve been to a jazz club on “U” Street. Cab Calloway was playing. He was jumpin’ tonight.’

‘By yourself?’

‘No. My man drove me. He has a car.’

‘Does your mother know about this?’

‘I’m eighteen. Besides, she got a Nembutal from Mrs Knox on account of she hasn’t slept well for the last few nights. She doesn’t even know I’m gone.’

I let it go. Madeleine was a grown-up working girl, and smart, and looking out for her was not my job. I started to root around in the refrigerator, but the pickings were slim. Pickles and leftover hotdog rolls didn’t sound appetizing to me.

‘There’s peach ice cream in the freezer,’ Madeleine said. ‘Mr Joe insisted we save some for you.’

I reached into the freezer compartment and pulled out a bowl of ice cream covered with a dish towel, way more than I could eat.

‘Have some with me,’ I said.

‘Sure,’ Madeleine said.

We found spoons and sat at the kitchen table and ate out of the bowl together. The ice cream was sweet, creamy and cold. Every now and then I’d bite into a frozen chunk of fresh peach. Between us we finished the entire bowl.

‘Well,’ Madeleine said, stretching her arms. ‘To bed.’