Bliss, Remembered (39 page)

He just looked away. “I thought I was supposed to leave you out of it.”

“I’m sorry. My fault.”

“Don’t ask me to dream anymore, liebchen.”

I let it pass. I drank my beer. Finally I went on: “OK, so now you plan to go to the FBI, turn yourself in & tell them about Goldstein—”

“The whole plot. They have to alert the English about Churchill, too.”

“And then you’ll be in custody.”

“Yeah, but hey, Sydney, I was just being dramatic. If I give myself up & give them Goldstein, they won’t hang me. I’m pretty sure. You know about the Nazis who landed in U-Boats a few months ago to sabotage stuff?”

“Sure.”

“Well, they hanged some of them already—”

“Yeah.”

“But the guys who lost their nerve & turned themselves in—they only put them in jail.”

“Horst, they got something like 30 yrs. You want to spend 30 yrs in jail?”

“They wouldn’t sentence me to that much. Those guys just gave themselves up. I’m giving them the biggest Nazi spy in the country.”

“OK. You get l0/l5 yrs. That’s crazy. You can mail them all the information & they’ll never know you existed.”

“I thought about that. But think of all the mail that comes into the FBI. It could sit around for days. Goldstein’s already trying to figure out what happened to me. He’s not going to stay put much longer. They could shoot Churchill tomorrow.”

“So, OK, listen to me, Horst: we send it certified mail, then I call up the FBI & warn them to look out for a letter that tells about a plot to kill the president. That’ll certainly get their attention.”

“They’ll trace the call.”

“I’ll take the train to Wilmington, make the call from a pay phone—”

“You?”

“Yeah, I’ll do it. Horst, for God’s sake, you’ve got to get lost.”

“But then, maybe you’ll get caught, &—”

“Horst, please. I’m a pregnant woman w/ a husband fighting for the country in Guadalcanal. The only possible thing they could want from me is to know where you are, & once you leave here, I won’t KNOW where you are.”

I couldn’t imagine where I was getting all this stuff—all these ideas—from. I didn’t understand how I’d suddenly taken command of the situation. Maybe it was simply because all these wks I’d been so helpless, just waiting to hear about Jimmy—waiting, unable to do anything myself. And now, I actually had the chance to DO something—to think, to plan, to act. I’ll be honest: it was exhilarating.

But who was I fooling? It was the chance to do something FOR Horst. Not for an instant did I question anything he told me. Not for a moment did I doubt that I shouldn’t help him. I just knew that anything I could do for him, I would. I must. So I did.

He was listening to me. He needed me. He took in everything I suggested. “OK,” he asked, “what’s certified mail?”

“Special treatment. Whoever gets the letter has to sign for it.”

“So then it sits on a desk.”

“I said I’d call them about it.”

“I don’t know, Sydney. Goldstein’s bound to get nervous & run. Maybe he even thinks they captured me.”

“So they’ll find him. That’s what the FBI does. It finds bad men.”

“I don’t know.”

“I do,” I said. “I know.” All right, I would make him do what I thought best. I got up & came over to his chair & kneeled before him. “You love me?”

“Sydney, please. You know I do. Don’t, don’t—”

“Then do this for the girl you love. OK? Save yourself, Horst. For me, save yourself.”

“But I can’t have you.”

“But you love me?” He nodded. “Then we DO things for people we love.” I had to pull out all the stops. I couldn’t let him go to jail for yrs & yrs. “Or do you just love me because you want me?”

“Come on, Sydney, that’s not fair.”

“No, come on, Horst. That’s not love.”

He looked down at me, & I knew he wanted to kiss me, & God forgive me, there was a part of me then that didn’t know Jimmy Branch any more, didn’t know I was married to Jimmy Branch, didn’t even know I was carrying Jimmy Branch’s baby—& that part of me, which was a bigger part of me than I wanted to admit, wanted Horst to reach down & take me in his arms & kiss me. And I think Horst knew that. But, God bless him, he didn’t try. He just said, “Then what do I do, Sydney? Where do I go?”

“Come on.” I stood up & took his hand & led him out onto the dock. “I used to come here just to think . . . of you. Mostly. Sometimes I’d go in the water, sometimes only sitting here, dangling my feet, wondering what you were doing. Sometimes I’d smile. Sometimes I’d even cry. But always, I’d think: someday Horst will be here w/ me.”

“And here I am.”

“Yeah. But I never thought it’d only be for just a little while.”

“No.”

“But that’s the way it has to be, doesn’t it?” He nodded. “OK, you’re a smart guy, Horst. When you leave here, go to a city. People get lost in cities. Pick one, any one. You’ve got some $. You’ll get a job. A war’s on—remember? Companies are desperate for bright young men.”

“They’ll want to know why I’m not in the army.”

“You’re 4-F.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s the designation for someone who’s physically unfit.”

“But I am fit. Look at me.”

I did. “You don’t have to ask me to do that.” We both smiled for the lst time in a while. “All right. You have a bad back. You have flat feet. Asthma. There’s all kinds of things that aren’t obvious.”

“OK.”

“And what I’ll do is: as soon as you get a room, wherever, call me right away & I’ll write a letter on Robert Stringfellow Insurance Agency stationary giving you the greatest recommendation a man ever had.”

“So if I was so damn good at my job, what do I tell anyone about why I left?”

“You got tired of a little town. You didn’t like selling insurance. Whatever. Come on, Horst, you’re a spy. Spies should be good at this kind of stuff.”

“I told you: maybe I’m not a good spy.” We both laughed a little again. A small motorboat passed by in the middle of the river w/ a man & a woman out for a holiday spin. They waved at us, happily. You didn’t see that much anymore since gas was rationed.

“Look,” I said, “lst thing tomorrow, we’ll take the train up to Wilmington. I’ll mail the letter. Then you get a train to . . . somewhere.”

Horst looked a little puzzled. “You mean spend the nite here?”

“Well, sure.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t do that, Sydney. I couldn’t take it, being in the same house w/ you.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Yeah.”

I looked at my watch. “All right, the last train is another hour. I’ll drive you to the station.”

He asked one thing, then. He asked if he could just stay on the dock for a few minutes by himself. So I left him there. I believed that now that Horst was at my place, he wanted to dream a little about what might’ve been.

I understood. It was all I could do not to dream, too. And I was ashamed of myself for thinking that way, too, for, of course, I was another man’s wife.

III.

I hardly slept that nite. I’d wake up & see the envelope w/ the letter I’d written to J. Edgar Hoover himself sitting on my bureau. Along w/ it were the coded pages Horst was supposed to hand over to Goldstein, & on plain stationary, in my handwriting, unsigned, an outline of Operation Haupstadt, & Goldstein’s address & phone #, & the notation that he was the top Nazi spy in the whole U.S.

Surely, I thought, as soon as somebody reads this, they’ll be breaking down his apt. door. But then I’d think: suppose the letter just laid there in a pile? A diamond is forever. Bureaucracy can be too. Right? The commission studying Pearl Harbor had shown that we’d had ample indications of what to expect. Still, nobody had put 2 + 2 together. Maybe Horst was right. Maybe he had to personally show up & give himself up to bring enough attention to the plot.

At one point I got up & took out a box from my bottom bureau drawer. Once it had been mostly souvenirs of Horst, but I’d long since thrown out all his letters & the other remembrances of us. Now it just held remembrances of things Olympic. But there was one item that did relate to us that I’d kept: the invitation to Goebbels’ party. It was embossed in gold, swastikas on the corners, so fancy & grand: “. . . erbittet die Ehre Eurer Teilnahme an dem Jubelfest zum Ruhmwe der Olympschen Spiele.” I pulled that out, & before dawn, when I couldn’t even pretend to try to sleep any longer, I put it in my pocketbook along w/ my anonymous letter & the coded pages.

The lst train to Wilmington wasn’t till 8:30. I ate breakfast impatiently. My mind was racing. I checked my gas rationing book. I still had some stamps. So, a new plan: at 7, I got in the car & headed south. It wasn’t all that far to the ferry that crossed the Bay. On the other side, when I got to Annapolis, I parked & took a bus into Washington. Even after I got there, I kept looking into my pocketbook at the letter. Mail it, you Dumb Dora.

Instead, I went to a phonebooth, looked up the # for the FBI, put in my nickel & started to dial to tell them about the letter I was going to mail. But I hung up. No matter how I tried to stop myself, I knew deep down that I’d go to the FBI. Well, I told myself, when I got there I’d just tell someone how important the letter was & then drop it off & leave. Yes, that’s what I’d do.

I caught a cab. The FBI didn’t have its own bldg yet. Its offices were in the Dept. of Justice bldg on Constitution Ave, between 9th & 10th. I walked in. There was a desk there at the entrance w/ 2 men in guard uniforms. I pulled out the envelope.

“Yes, miss?” the one guard said to me.

I started to hand him the envelope. And then I stopped. To myself I said: Oh, what the hell, Sydney: in for a penny, in for a pound. Before I knew it, I heard myself say, “I’d like to meet an FBI agent.”

“Do you have an appointment, miss?”

“No, but this is very important.”

“Well, you have to have an appointment.”

“No, I just need to see an agent. It’s about the president.”

The guard shook his head at me, smiling snidely at my naivete. He was obviously not taking me seriously. It was still warm, in the 80s, & I had on a light summer dress, a patterned rayon crepe w/ a fairly deep neckline. It was tight in the belly. I wouldn’t be able to wear it again till after I had the baby. The bldg didn’t have air conditioning & Washington was very humid. The dress was clinging to me some, so if the guard really wasn’t paying any attention to what I had to say, he was still paying attention to me. I could tell that. So I flirted a little: “Please, sir. There must be one agent who could see me for 5 minutes.”

“It’s about the president, huh?”

“Yes. The Nazis want to assassinate him.”

“Is that so?” he said. Now he’d become downright patronizing. The SOB. But I kept myself in check.

“Yes, it is. Sir, I swear. Please, there must be one agent.”

Maybe it was just that I remained so polite. Whatever, I could tell: he wasn’t quite sure what to make of me. Still, he wouldn’t bend. “Here’s a # to call,” he said, handing me a slip of paper.

But, by chance, at exactly that moment, a nice-looking young man in a tan suit came in & passed by the desk. “Hey, Charlie,” he called over to the guard. He slowed down just enough to give me the sly old once-over.

Well, as I said: in for a penny, etc. I reached out & touched his sleeve. “Are you an FBI agent?” I asked, trying to make my eyes bigger.

The guard said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Anderson. She’s—”

But Mr. Anderson held up his hand. “It’s OK, Charlie.” And then he turned to me, & rather like he was addressing a child, he said, “Well, yes, I am an FBI agent.”

“I have to talk to you.”

“Well, what do you want to talk to me about, miss?”

I sighed. You know, it’s one thing to use your feminine wiles to get something from men who’re only interested in feminine wiles, but at a certain point: no more of the little girl lost. So I cut the big eyes, & as straightforward as possible, I said, “I happen to know that the Nazis are planning to try & assassinate Pres. Roosevelt. Now, that’s what I would like to talk to you about, Mr. Anderson.”

Well, that did take him aback. He looked me hard in the face to see if he could tell if I was blowing smoke. So, quickly, I added: “It’ll only take 5 minutes. Tops.”

It was apparent that he was still dubious, but, hey, why not a lousy 5 minutes w/ a lady in a clinging summer dress, even if she might be as nutty as a fruit cake? “Let her sign in, Charlie,” he said.

Stupidly, I wasn’t prepared for that, for signing anything, but I wrote down Joan—because the last movie I’d seen had been w/ Joan Fontaine & that popped into my head—& then you know what came to my mind? Gunther. For the beer I’d had yesterday w/ Horst. So: Joan Gunther. And for an address, I made up a # & a st.—something like 37 Elm St.—and wrote down “Hagerstown, Md.,” because that was in the opposite direction from C’town. It was that simple. This was back before you had to give your social security # just to get a Coca-Cola.

I turned back to the agent. “I’m Joan Gunther, Mr. Anderson. Thank you very much.” He nodded & led me to the elevator. His office was on the 3rd floor. We headed down the long hall, past the stairs & the restrooms & the offices, one after another, lined up behind frosted glass doors.

We came to his. It was hot & cramped in there. He took off his jacket, revealing that he had suspenders on. He hung up his jacket & his hat & threw open the window, then turned on a little fan. It didn’t help much. Mr. Anderson became very businesslike then, motioning me to take the chair in front of his desk. I think he’d decided on the way up that I really was barmy, & so he wanted to get rid of me in a hurry. “Okay, Miss Gunther—”

“Mrs.,” I corrected him, holding up my left hand.

That only irritated him more. “OK, Mrs. Gunther, what is all this about the president?”

“Write this down, please,” I said—but very forcefully.

He kind of rolled his eyes, but he reached for his fountain pen & poised it over a legal pad. I gave him Jerry Goldstein’s name & address.

“So?” he said. Like that.

“So, Mr. Goldstein is the biggest Nazi spy in the country.”

“Oh sure. Goldstein.”

I held my temper. “Obviously it’s an alias,” I said. “And a pretty good one if you’re a Nazi spy.”

That took him back a little, so I went on: “You want his phone #, too?” He grunted, & I gave it to him. It was a Trafalgar exchange—TR something. Telephones still had name exchanges in those days & weren’t all #s.

“And he’s a big Nazi spy?”

“Probably the biggest over here.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you.”

“Then why should I believe you?”

I reached into my pocketbook & handed him the pages that Horst was supposed to deliver to Goldstein. He looked at them, curiously, dismissively. And fair enough: they were simply a bunch of typewritten pages—and in German gibberish, because it was code. I said, “That was sent from the Abwehr in Berlin to Goldstein. You know what the Abwehr is, don’t you?”

Reluctantly, he shook his head, so I told him: “The Nazi spy agency.”

He nodded & said “Oh, yeah,” like he’d just remembered that.

I gestured to the papers. “That’s all in code, but maybe someone in the OSS can make something out of that.”

“So where’d you get it?”

“That’s what I can’t tell you.”

He frowned. “You walk in off the street, Mrs., uh, Gunther, you hand me a bunch of . . .”—he waved the pages in the air—“you tell me a guy’s name, & I’m supposed to accept this pig-in-a-poke at face value.”

“Look, I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the truth. It’s like I’m the lady in red.”

“What about the lady in red?”

“Well, did the other guys in the FBI care who she was? She gave you a tip that John Dillinger was at the movies & that’s how you got him.”

“Let’s leave John Dillinger out of this,” Mr. Anderson said.

“I’m just saying it’s apropos,” I replied. “But if you don’t do anything & Mr. Roosevelt gets assassinated, well, I’m sorry, but it’s blood on your hands.”

OK, I went over the top w/ that, & I knew it even before he leaned forward & snapped his fingers right toward my face. “I don’t appreciate that.” He was irritated now, I could tell, & when folks get irritated, they don’t tend to believe what you tell them. My mistake. So I backpedaled.

“OK, Mr. Anderson, I’m sorry, but Goldstein is involved in a plot to shoot the president. It’s called Operation Hauptstadt. Hauptstadt means capitol—like Washington & London are the capitols. Because it’s also part of the plan to try & assassinate Mr. Churchill.”

He leaned back. “You know this?”

“I do.” I paused. “Look, I’m sorry. I know I’m just a strange woman come out of nowhere, but that’s the God’s truth.”

That threw him a little. I could see, every time he started to dismiss me as some ditzy girlie, I’d say something in a way that’d make him wonder again. Especially, when I’d said “Operation Hauptstadt.” Foreign words give you an air of credibility. So he stood up & looked out the window for a few seconds, cogitating—or, anyway, appearing to cogitate for my benefit. Whatever, when he turned back to me, his tone was more conciliatory & polite. “Look, Mrs. Gunther, try to see this from my point of view. You come in out of the blue, & you seem very sincere—you do—but if we chased every crazy—”

“Excuse me, I’m not crazy.”

Good. That put him on the defensive. “I didn’t mean that. What I meant was, if you put yourself in my shoes, this could seem crazy. I mean, who are you? Have you got, like, a driver’s license?”

Of course I had it, but I lied. “I don’t drive. I took the bus from Hagerstown.”

“Well, have you got anything? A social security card?”

“Not w/ me.”

“Have you got a darn library card? Anything?”

“I’m sorry. I only brought the information.”

“OK, OK.” He went to his coat, hung up behind the door, & pulled out a pack of Chesterfields. He lit up, then remembered to offer me one. I shook my head. “OK, OK,” he said again. “Just tell me this. In general terms. In general, how did you come by this information? Now, please understand: you got to give me that. You got to help me a little here.”

I didn’t reply right away. I was thinking. #l: yes, I did have to give him some more information, but, I figured, so long as I didn’t give him Horst’s name, there was no real risk. Horst was gone. Besides, once they got Goldstein, he was probably going to blow the whistle on Horst, anyway. And #2: I’d been pretty innocent to think the FBI would just accept the information w/o dying to find out who I was. Now how was I going to get the heck out of here?

“All right,” I said at last. “I see your point.”

“Thank you.”

I took a breath. “So I learned this from the Nazi agent who was sent over to shoot the president.”

“Sent over from Germany?”

“That’s right.”

“So, you, up there in Hagerstown, you got it from the horse’s mouth, direct from Berlin?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And how exactly did he get here . . . from Germany?”

“I can tell you that—exactly.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Four days ago, he arrived on U-Boat 5l8.” I pointed to his pad. “5-l8,” I said. He wrote that down. Curtly, like I was delivering expert testimony, I went on: “The submarine surfaced off Bar Harbor, Me., in Frenchman’s Cove, & he was rowed ashore there at Hancock Pt. You can look it up.”

“Just ’cause it’s there, doesn’t mean the U-Boat came there.”

“No. But it did. You wanted to know how he got into the country. I’ve seen the watch towers they built down at the beach, down by Ocean City. So, we’re on the lookout. Right?” He nodded. “Well, that’s how he got here. I guess they don’t have anybody looking out for U-boats up around Bar Harbor.”

“And what’s his name?”

“That’s what I won’t tell you.”

He leaned forward on his desk, right into my face. “Excuse me, you say you know a Nazi spy, in this country, out to shoot the president, but you won’t tell me?”

“Yes, that’s right. Because he’s not a Nazi spy anymore. Don’t you understand, Mr. Anderson? He’s the one who gave me this.” I pointed to the papers on his desk. “He’s the one who told me about Goldstein. Because he hates the Nazis. He’s a hero, Mr. Anderson. Don’t you understand?” I reached into my purse & took out a handkerchief, as if I was going to tear up.

“OK, OK. So why did this Nazi . . . excuse me, Nazi traitor—”

“That’s right.”

“Why did he tell you all this?”

“Because he loves me.”

“Oh, I see. And you love him?”

“I did. Once. I’m married now. To somebody else. An American.”

“Okay, so where did you meet him—the German?”

“I don’t want to get into that.”

That made him slump back down & put on a great show of exasperation. He took another drag on his cigarette. “All right, just a second.” He picked up his phone and dialed 3 #s—obviously, an extension.