Follow the Dotted Line (7 page)

“Why, you may ask. Because, like everyone else in this war, she has her own personal agenda. So when she emerges from the hospital months later, ready to return to the field, Emma Linde is fully aware of what she has let them do to her. She is no longer naïve. Nor is she beautiful. In fact, I have seen correspondence in which those who know her describe her appearance as ‘ghastly.’ But Emma doesn’t seem to care. She is a woman on a mission.”

Sam glanced at her watch, setting off a ripple of anxiety across the room. That’s it, Andy nodded, make them beg for Act III.

“Let me just say,” Sam continued, picking up her narrative ever so slightly, “that the overlords in London are delighted by the results of their young agent’s transformation. And they are very eager for her to return to the belly of the beast to see if their experiment works. So Emma returns to Germany with a new face and new papers and a new purpose. This time it’s personal.

“Emma begins by embedding herself in the small community near the camp where the Baron is being held. She manages to get a job delivering potatoes to the camp, at one point walking by a wall in the prison with a wanted poster displaying her picture. Not a spark of recognition by anyone. This certainly seems like a good omen.

“Over time, several weeks, she manages to locate where in the camp the Allied officers are being held. Next, she smuggles a message to the Baron. Something innocuous and vague, indicating only that help has arrived. They rendezvous on a day when she makes a food delivery.

“The man Emma meets is gaunt and fearful. His hair is gray; his eyes are yellow. And yet she knows him instantly—

‘Can you get me out?’ he asks, anxiously.

She nods. But that doesn’t satisfy him.

Again he asks, ‘Can you get me out?’

She thinks for a moment his desperation must be blinding him.

‘I can,’ she says, hoping he will recognize her voice.

For the first time he really looks at her.

‘I am putting my life in your hands,’ he says.

She is looking at him now, too. ‘I know.’

And then he asks the question they have all asked, everyone she has ever helped escape, ‘How do I know I can trust you?’

“She waits, wanting to believe he will see the answer. But, of course, he can’t. He’s staring at a stranger.”

Sam walked back to the podium for the denouement. Her mother could not have been prouder.

“We can only speculate about how Emma feels at this moment. And there are no eyewitness accounts of what she does next, of course, except we know she does her job. With the same expertise and iron resolve that helped her smuggle hundreds of refugees out of Germany, she gets the Baron out, too. He is free and in one piece. It is a remarkable accomplishment by any measure. And it is the last time Emma works as an agent.

“Records indicate that after the escape, the couple travels together to Egypt to be debriefed by intelligence officials. By her own admission, Emma does not tell the Baron that she is his wife until they are safely on the train to Cairo. When she does, he is not so much surprised or shocked, as he is incredulous. He simply doesn’t believe her. Given her appearance, perhaps he doesn’t want to. Whatever his motives, he will not be convinced until he meets with the men who have made her transformation possible. And when the truth finally hits him, he announces that what they have done is ‘appalling’ and leaves the room without saying another word.”

The young listeners stirred in their seats, as people often do during that moment before the final moment in any narrative, the moment where you hope for a happy ending but aren’t sure how the story will get there. And Andy knew from Sam that history rarely provides the destination you desire.

“The war ends, of course,” the teacher told her students. “But both Emma and the Baron live on. According to friends, they eventually return home to the Austrian castle where the Baron first brought his bride to live after their marriage. However, the war profoundly changes things, as wars always do. And love—an often-fragile emotion—is no match for its destruction.

“Emma has sacrificed her beauty to save the Baron’s life, and in the end, he finds it nearly impossible to look at her again. And that makes it impossible for him to love her again. He knows this, and no doubt, so does she.

“The local gossip, still remembered by friends of the family, is that the Baron begins having a series of affairs. He drinks. He rages. He fails in business.

“Of Emma, however, we know almost nothing.” Sam held up a plastic folder with what looked like a paper clipping inside. “Except this: a short news article that appears in the local Austrian paper on December 1, 1948. The reporter describes how the Baron’s car, despite good weather and driving conditions, bursts through a guardrail on the edge of an Alpine road at incredible speed one morning and plunges headlong into the abyss beyond. According to police, two bodies are eventually pulled from the wreckage: the Baron and his wife.”

Sam ran her fingers over the folder in her hand. “I know this article is just an artifact,” she said. “Probably the most mundane piece of evidence I found in all my research; a single piece to the puzzle of one woman’s life. If you have a moment, stop and take a look at it before you leave today.”

Sam put the folder down and drew the eyes of the audience into her own. There was nothing contrived about this moment, Andy realized. Her carefully controlled daughter was as exposed as Andy had ever seen her.

“You’ll discover that the article tells us nothing about this young woman’s classified work for the British government,” Sam said, with tangible sadness. “Nor is there anything about how the war changed her—both inside and out. And yet, even this small piece of paper is a clue to Emma Linde’s history. Because the one thing it does tell us is that
she
was the one driving the car.”

Out to black, thought Andy. Well done, Sam.

No Rescue from the Inevitable

It took nearly an hour before the last of Sam’s fans left the hall and her daughter was free to join Andy and Harley for the ride home to Valencia. They left right away in order to avoid the late afternoon congestion along the 405 north over the Sepulveda pass and through the San Fernando Valley. Still, the drive took nearly an hour.

“Did you enjoy the lecture?” Sam finally asked Harley, who was in the backseat and had remained silent, while the two women in front caught up on family events.

He rose from his slouch and smiled. “Really amazing,” he answered. “So much stuff I never knew.”

“It was a big war,” replied Sam. “There’s a great deal to know.”

“Tell me about the Jewish kids,” he said, unexpectedly.

“Sorry?”

“Those two kids in the story. The Nazis didn’t like them because they were Jewish, right?”

“Right.”

“My pastor says that’s wrong.”

This kid should have come with a warning label, Andy thought, incensed. She tried to head off any engagement between preacher and victim at the pass. “Harley would like to be a pastor someday, Sam,” she said, widening her eyes for subtext. “He’s thinking of starting his own denomination.”

“Hmm,” said Sam, who was paying more attention to the passing palm trees than she was to her cousin. “Well, I agree that the way the Nazis treated the Jews, and a great many other people, was certainly immoral. And indefensible.”

Andy winced at the opening her daughter had inadvertently given Harley.

He took it. “You see, according to Scripture, we ignore the Jews at our peril.”

“Remember, what I said, Harley!” Andy cut in. “You can’t talk about that. Not in my house.”

“But we’re in your
car
, Aunt Andy. And this is important. My professors always say that secular historians like Sam don’t really understand why we need the Jewish people.”

He had Sam’s attention now. “Secular historians? I’m not sure I know that term. What professors are you talking about?”

“At Our Savior’s Tabernacle U,” he told her, sitting up like a fisherman who just felt a pull on his line.

“And why do your professors at—”

“OSTU.”

“OSTU say we
need
the Jewish people?” Sam asked. She pivoted in her seat and trained her curious eyes on him.

Harley smiled, clearly happy to be the one to fill her in on something she didn’t know. “It’s simple,” he said. “We need them for the Second Coming.”

There it is, fumed Andy. He’s like a homing pigeon; no matter where we go, he always ends up back at the same place.

“You know what, Harley?” Andy asked, feigning calm. “We’re going to make a rule against discussing
anything
about the ‘End of Days.’ Have you got that?
Any
time.
Any
where. Okay?”

“But you can’t survive without knowing these things, Aunt Andy,” he declared, gravely serious. “The return of Israel and the fight for Jerusalem are the first two signs of the End Times.”

She dug her fingernails into the steering wheel. “Har-ley,” she hissed.

“Okay, okay,” he said, quickly.

They drove in a strained silence for a minute or two, just long enough for Andy to loosen her grip on the wheel. She glanced at Sam, who looked back at her, shell-shocked.

After another minute, a timid voice from the rear of the car ventured, “Aunt Andy? Can I say one more thing?”

When Andy didn’t respond, Sam felt compelled to fill the uncomfortably empty space.

“What is it, Harley?” Sam offered.

“I just wanted you both to know that, when I get my calling and start my own church, I’ll be sure to ask God for a personal revelation about plastic surgery.”

Sam looked at Andy, who growled, “Do not engage, Samantha.”

Evidently, her daughter was too weak to resist. “What do you mean, a ‘personal revelation’, Harley?”

“You know, where God speaks to me and then I tell my people.”

“Oh,” Sam smiled. “You mean, like Moses?”

“Exactly, Sam.”

“Okay. Well, do you have any idea what God’s going to say about what happened to Emma?”

“Oh, the Bible’s against facelifts,” he said. “Everybody knows that. That’s why I’m going to ask for a revelation. Because, when we get to the end of—,” he indicated the back of his aunt’s head and said conspiratorially, “When we get to J-Day and the Almighty actually
hears
that poor lady’s story, I’d like to be able to tell my people, you know, that He’s going to cut her some slack.”

Samantha leaned over the armrest and whispered in her mother’s ear. “This child can’t possibly be related to us, can he?”

In order to avoid the temptation of mentioning his faith and, thereby provoking his aunt, Harley stayed in his room for most of the next twenty-four hours, meals excepted. But the animated arrival of Lilly Bravos the next afternoon was enough to lure even the wariest groundhog from his hole.

“Annnnndy!” Lilly yelled, rushing to hug her mother, as she blew in the door after Sam had fetched her from the airport.

“I can’t believe you actually came without the kids,” Andy said, wrapping her arms around the tornado. “How does it feel to be without them?”

“Like I am missing two arms and two legs. And it feels great!”

“How are the twins?” Andy asked.

“Cuter than the first two. No doubt about it; I get better with age.”

Harley loitered in the background, reluctant to make an entrance. Lil opened her arms and motioned the terrified teenager forward.

“Come on, Harley. I’m your cousin, not your executioner. I’m giving you a hug. It won’t hurt. And I promise not to do it again for at least two hours.”

Head down, hands sweating, Harley walked into the embrace. Lil pulled him to her, squeezed, and then held him at arm’s length. He felt like a small moon in the pull of a giant planet. At 5’ 10’, she was two inches taller than he was, and her exuberant red hair made her look even bigger. And, although she was nearly 15 years older, she had a youthfulness he’d already discarded. As with all his cousins, Harley felt he was no match for the person or the personality.

“Well, Harley, I hear you are studying to be a minister and have ambitions to start your own church, is that right?”

He kept his insecure eyes lidded.

“I’m not supposed to talk about that in the house,” he said, softly. “Or the car, either.”

“Ah,” Lil observed. “I see my mother is no longer a defender of religious freedom.”

“I am, too,” Andy said, curtly. “Just not in my backyard. Is anyone going to make salsa?”

Lil smiled sympathetically at Harley, pulled him to her for another squeeze and finally freed him.

“You’re damned right I am,” Lil announced. “Sam and I stopped at the store and got the tomatillos and jalapeños.”

Andy watched her daughters cook together, just as they had from the time they could stand on chairs next to the counter. Only a year apart, the girls had always been close. Now they mixed margaritas, mashed avocados, and minced garlic without ever discussing who was to do what. Instead, they chatted about their children and their attendant varicose veins. Andy sat on the sidelines, sipping her drink and remembering the pleasures of having raised her four babies; pleasures she missed but had no desire to recreate. Those were the most exhilarating and exhausting days of her life, and she was both glad and sad they were over.

From the unfolding conversation, it was clear that Lilly was busy getting ready to return to a career as soon as her youngest started school. She was telling her sister that she wanted to start a high-end, high-tech matchmaking business in Boise, a fast growing metropolitan area with lots of professional singles moving in. Not a bad choice, thought Andy, as she listened. Lil imbibed and deconstructed relationships the way a sommelier does wine. And she was good at it. Andy suspected busy men with demanding careers would pay big bucks to have Lil help them find the right woman. But Andy wanted her daughter to be a writer, and she wanted Lil to write with
her
.

Ever since Sam’s lecture, Andy had been mulling over the possibility of writing a spec script based on the story of Emma Linde. The problem was that she wanted Lil to do it with her. Andy was desperate to introduce the topic but wasn’t sure how. It was, after all, a completely self-serving plan, no matter how brilliant it was. And it was brilliant. Still, she knew Lilly would see through it and say she didn’t have time. Or worse. She would remind her mother of that nagging little truth; Andy’s career was fast coming to a close, and it was not Lil’s job to rescue her from the inevitable. A sudden burst of laughter from the two cooks drew Andy’s conniving mind back to the girls, who were now each admitting they could see the value in those reprehensible ‘kiddie leashes.’ Andy decided to wait for a more opportune moment.