Code to Zero (15 page)

On the day Italy surrendered, Billie bumped into Luke in the lobby of Q Building.

At first she did not know him. She saw a thin man, apparently about thirty, in a suit that was too big, and her eyes passed over him without recognition. Then he spoke. “Billie? Don’t you remember me?”

She knew the voice, of course, and it made her heart beat faster. But when she looked again at the emaciated man from whom the words issued, she gave a small scream of horror. His head looked like a skull. His once-glossy black hair was dull. His shirt collar was too large, and his jacket looked as if it were draped over a wire hanger. His eyes were the eyes of an old man. “Luke!” she said. “You look terrible!”

“Gee, thanks,” he said, with a tired smile.

“I’m sorry,” she said hastily.

“Don’t worry. I’ve lost some weight, I know. There’s not a lot of food where I’ve been.”

She wanted to hug him, but she held back, not sure he would like it.

He said, “What are you doing here?”

She took a deep breath. “A training course—maps, radio, firearms, unarmed combat.”

He grinned. “You’re not dressed for jujitsu.”

Billie still loved to dress stylishly, despite the war. Today she was wearing a pale yellow suit with a short bolero jacket and a daring knee-length skirt, and a big hat like an upside-down dinner plate. She could not afford to buy the latest fashions on her Army wages, of course: she had made this outfit herself, using a borrowed sewing machine. Her father had taught all his children to sew. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said with a smile, beginning to get over her shock. “Where have you been?”

“Do you have a minute to talk?”

“Of course.” She was supposed to be at a cryptography class, but to heck with that.

“Let’s go outside.”

It was a warm September afternoon. Luke took off his suit coat and slung it over his shoulder as they walked alongside the Reflecting Pool. “How come you’re in OSS?”

“Anthony Carroll fixed it,” she said. The Office of Strategic Service was considered a glamorous assignment, and jobs here were much coveted. “Anthony used family influence to get here. He’s Bill Donovan’s personal assistant now.” General “Wild Bill” Donovan was head of OSS. “I’d been driving a general around Washington for a year, so I was real pleased to get posted here. Anthony’s used his position to bring in all his old friends from Harvard. Elspeth is in London, Peg is in Cairo, and I gather you and Bern have been behind enemy lines somewhere.”

“France,” Luke said.

“What was that like?”

He lit a cigarette. It was a new habit—he had not smoked at Harvard—but now he drew smoke into his lungs as if it were the breath of life. “The first man I killed was a Frenchman,” he said abruptly.

It was painfully obvious that he needed to talk about it. “Tell me what happened,” she said.

“He was a cop, a gendarme. Claude, same name as me. Not really a bad guy—anti-Semitic, but no more so than the average Frenchman, or a lot of Americans for that matter. He blundered into a farmhouse where
my group was meeting. There was no doubt what we were doing—we had maps on the table and rifles stacked in the corner, and Bern was showing the Frenchies how to wire a time bomb.” Luke gave an odd kind of laugh, with no humor in it. “Damn fool tried to arrest us all. Not that it made any difference. He had to be killed whatever he did.”

“What did you do?” Billie whispered.

“Took him outside and shot him in the back of the head.”

“Oh, my God.”

“He didn’t die right away. It took about a minute.”

She took his hand and squeezed it. He held on, and they walked around the long, narrow pool hand in hand. He told her another story, about a woman Resistance fighter who had been captured and tortured, and Billie cried, tears streaming down her face in the September sunshine. The afternoon cooled, and still the grim details spilled out of him: cars blown up, German officers assassinated, Resistance comrades killed in shootouts, and Jewish families led away to unknown destinations holding the hands of their trusting children.

They had been walking for two hours when he stumbled, and she caught him and prevented his falling. “Jesus Christ, I’m so tired,” he said. “I’ve been sleeping badly.”

She hailed a taxi and took him to his hotel.

He was staying at the Carlton. The Army did not generally run to such luxury, but she recalled that his family was wealthy. He had a corner suite. There was a grand piano in the living room and—something she had never seen before—a telephone extension in the bathroom.

She called room service and ordered chicken soup and scrambled eggs, hot rolls and a pint of cold milk. He sat on the couch and began to tell another story, a funny one, about sabotaging a factory that made saucepans for the German Army. “I ran into this big metalworking shop, and there were about fifty enormous, musclebound women, stoking the furnace and hammering the moulds. I yelled: ‘Clear the building! We’re going to blow it up!’ But the women laughed at me! They wouldn’t leave, they all carried on working. They didn’t believe me.” Before he could finish the story, the food came.

Billie signed the check, tipped the waiter, and put the plates on the dining table. When she turned around, he was asleep.

She woke him just long enough to get him into the bedroom and on to the bed. “Don’t leave,” he mumbled, then his eyes closed again.

She took off his boots and gently loosened his tie. A mild breeze was blowing in through the open window: he did not need blankets.

She sat on the edge of the bed watching him for a while, remembering that long drive from Cambridge to Newport almost two years ago. She stroked his cheek with the outside edge of her little finger, the way she had that night. He did not stir.

She took off her hat and her shoes, thought for a moment, and slipped off her jacket and skirt. Then, in her underwear and stockings, she lay down on the bed. She got her arms around his bony shoulders, put his head on her bosom, and held him. “Everything’s all right now,” she said. “You just sleep as long as you want. When you wake up, I’ll still be here.”

>>><<<

Night fell. The temperature dropped. She closed the window and pulled a sheet around them. Soon after midnight, with her arms wrapped around his warm body, she fell asleep.

At dawn, when he had been asleep for twelve hours, he got up suddenly and went to the bathroom. He returned a couple of minutes later and got back into bed. He had taken off his suit and shirt, and wore only his underwear. He put his arms around her and hugged her. “Something I forgot to tell you, something very important,” he said.

“What?”

“In France, I thought about you all the time. Every day.”

“Did you?” she whispered. “Did you really?”

He did not answer. He had gone back to sleep.

She lay in his embrace, thinking about him in France, risking his life and remembering her; and she was so happy she felt her heart would burst.

At eight o’clock in the morning, she went into the living room of the suite, phoned Q Building, and said she was sick. It was the first day she
had taken off for illness in more than a year in the military. She had a bath and washed her hair, then got dressed. She ordered coffee and cornflakes from room service. The waiter called her Mrs. Lucas. She was glad it was not a waitress, for a woman would have noticed that she wore no wedding ring.

She thought the smell of coffee might wake Luke, but it did not. She read the
Washington Post
from cover to cover, even the sports pages. She was writing a letter to her mother in Dallas, on hotel stationery, when he came stumbling out of the bedroom in his underwear, his dark hair mussed, his jaw blue with stubble. She smiled at him, happy that he was awake.

He looked confused. “How long did I sleep?”

She checked her wristwatch. It was almost noon. “About eighteen hours.” She could not tell what he was thinking. Was he pleased to see her? Embarrassed? Was he wishing she would go away?

“God,” he said. “I haven’t slept like that for a year.” He rubbed his eyes. “Have you been here all the time? You look as fresh as a daisy.”

“I took a little nap.”

“You stayed all night?”

“You asked me to.”

He frowned. “I seem to remember. . . .” He shook his head. “Boy, I had some dreams.” He went to the phone. “Room service? Let me have a T-bone steak, rare, with three eggs, sunnyside. Plus orange juice, toast, and coffee.”

Billie frowned. She had never spent the night with a man, so she did not know what to expect in the morning, but this disappointed her. It was so unromantic that she felt almost insulted. She was reminded of her brothers waking up—they, too, emerged stubbly, grouchy, and ravenous. But, she recalled, they generally improved when they had eaten.

“Hold on,” he said into the phone. He looked at Billie. “Would you like something?”

“Yeah, some iced tea.”

He repeated her order and hung up.

He sat beside her on the couch. “I talked a lot yesterday.”

“That’s the truth.”

“How long?”

“About five hours straight.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Whatever you do, please don’t be sorry.” Tears came to her eyes. “I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

He took her hands. “I’m so glad we met again.”

Her heart jumped. “Me too.” This was more like what she had hoped for.

“I’d like to kiss you, but I’ve been in the same clothes for twenty-four hours.”

She felt a sudden sensation inside, like a spring breaking, and she was conscious of wetness. She was shocked at herself: it had never happened this fast before.

But she held back. She had not decided where she wanted this to go. She had had all night to make a decision, but she had not even thought about it. Now she was afraid that once she touched him she would lose control. And then what?

The war had brought about a new moral laxity in Washington, but she was not part of it. She clasped her hands in her lap and said, “I sure don’t aim to kiss you until you’re dressed.”

He gave her a skeptical look. “Are you afraid of compromising yourself?”

She winced at the irony in his voice. “Just what does that mean?”

He shrugged. “We spent the night together.”

She felt hurt and indignant. “I stayed here because you begged me too!” she protested.

“All right, don’t get mad.”

But her desire for him had turned, in a flash, to equally powerful anger. “You were falling down with exhaustion, and I put you to bed,” she said wrathfully. “Then you asked me not to leave you, so I stayed.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Then don’t talk as if I’ve acted like a . . . whore!”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It sure is! You implied I’ve already compromised myself so much that anything else I might do makes no difference.”

He gave a big sigh. “Well, I didn’t intend to imply that. Jesus, you’re making a hell of a fuss about a casual remark.”

“Too darn casual.” The trouble was, she
had
compromised herself.

There was a knock at the door.

They looked at one another. Luke said, “Room service, I guess.”

She did not want a waiter to see her with an undressed man. “Get in the bedroom.”

“Okay.”

“First, give me your ring.”

He looked at his left hand. He wore a gold signet ring on the little finger. “Why?”

“So the waiter will think I’m married.”

“But I never take it off.”

That angered her even more. “Get out of sight,” she hissed.

He went into the bedroom. Billie opened the suite door and a waitress brought in the room service cart. “There you go, Miss,” she said.

Billie flushed. There was an insult in that “Miss.” She signed the check but did not tip. “There you go,” she said, and turned her back.

The waitress left. Billie heard the shower running. She felt exhausted. She had spent hours in the grip of a profound romantic passion, then in a few minutes it had turned sour. Luke was normally so gracious, yet he had metamorphosized into a bear. How could such things happen?

Whatever the reason, he had made her feel cheap. In a minute or two, he would come out of the bathroom, ready to sit down and have breakfast with her as if they were a married couple. But they were not, and she was feeling more and more uncomfortable.

Well, she thought, if I don’t like it, why am I still here? It was a good question.

She put on her hat. It was better to get out with what dignity she had left.

She thought about writing him a note. The sound of the shower stopped. He was about to reappear, smelling of soap, wearing a dressing
gown, his hair wet and his feet bare, looking good enough to eat. There was no time for a note.

She left the suite, closing the door quietly behind her.

>>><<<

She saw him almost every day for the next four weeks.

At first he was in Q Building for daily debriefing sessions. He would seek her out at lunchtime, and they would eat together in the cafeteria or take sandwiches to the park. His manner reverted to his characteristic relaxed courtesy, making her feel respected and cared for. The sting of his behavior in the Carlton eased. Maybe, she thought, he, too, had never spent the night with a lover and, like her, he was not sure of the etiquette. He had treated her casually, as he might treat his sister—and perhaps his sister was the only girl who had ever seen him in his underwear.