Keeping Secrets (27 page)

Claude had little to say to me outside the subject of work, and even my training consisted mostly of digging out information for myself. I believe the most he ever told me in one conversation was, “All you have to do to please Mr. Tetzel is center his letters on the page, avoid all errors in typing, spelling, grammar, and punctuation, never misfile anything, and be sure he has his daily banking reports on his desk first thing in the morning.

“Oh yes, and always keep his inkwell full. He gets furious if he starts to use his pen and finds it empty.”

“Is that all?” I asked nervously.

“He's fairly self-sufficient in keeping his own appointments straight … oh, but he's absent-minded about his homburg. He's always leaving it on the shelf above his coat hook.”

“Thanks for the pointers.”

“The job is easy … I'm certain you can handle it,” he said snidely.

I was really happy at the bank over the first few weeks. Claude was more and more often slipping out early as I became capable, and there was no denying the fact Mr. Tetzel was pleased with the situation. Once he realized I was a sharp secretary, able to anticipate his needs and carry them out accurately, he became more and more friendly toward me. I sensed he considered me attractive—I'm no Lillie Langtry, but after five years with a male secretary it must have been refreshing to have a young woman attending him. What seemed to impress him the most was my energy. “I told my wife, Sophie, about you, and she asked me if you were a German girl,” he said one day.

Who knows how long I would have continued, never guessing the things going on right under my nose, had my mother not come for a visit when she did?

2

Mother had been active in the woman's suffrage movement since my father died in 1909. Before then she worked on various women's committees and in clubs wherever we lived, but she had remained overshadowed by other women more deeply involved. My brothers and I were all astounded as she began to speak before groups, to travel, and serve on important commissions all over the place. What shocked us most was the fact she had grumbled and groaned every time my father's change in military orders caused an uproot. After his death she hardly ever stopped long enough to unpack her suitcases.

Following many long talks with her, however, I finally decided my father's career was the cause of her involvement. Although she never let us know because she wanted her children to have a high opinion of their father, she resented having her life manipulated constantly. Her work in the suffrage movement was a strike back for personal freedom. Her gripes about moving us kids from pillar to post expressed only the surface of her feelings. What really disturbed her was her own sense of violation carried on the print of military decrees.

Once all of her children were educated, and my three older brothers were married and building their own lives, she dedicated herself to the movement for the rights of all women, giving up once again her own personal freedom and forcing me gently from her nest.

My mother is a very serious-minded individual, but she does have a great sense of humor and a certain amount of mischief in her eyes. She also has an amazing talent for stirring up what she calls “constructive activity,” and what my brothers and I have long since referred to as “trouble.”

She is short and plump, with steel-gray wavy hair and the clearest skin I have ever seen on a woman in her fifties. She always wears a small watch in a filigree case, hanging from a long chain around her neck—a wedding gift from my father—and when she reads she wears a small pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. I thought of her motherly looks when I picked up the telegram awaiting me at the Y, saying she was coming for a visit. I'd written her all about my new job, and couldn't wait to tell her in person that my salary was to be raised another five dollars per month in December.

I hadn't seen her in months. Before the war in Europe began, she had been in London, working with the antimilitant faction of suffragettes. She was among those trying to reason Sylvia Pankhurst out of her hunger strikes and violent protests, and her displays on the steps of Premier Asquith's residence on Downing Street. She was in agreement with the higher-ups in the suffrage movement in this country who believed women who continued to react to rebuffs from any government dramatically and violently hurt the cause for all women, and she was mobile and thus able to represent them in England. Over there she had seen windows crashed in by rocks, churches burned, bombs set off, and all sorts of destructive and terrorist acts by the militants, “putting their cause back by hundreds of years,” she wrote.

Now back in the United States since the war began, she had been touring the country, speaking on the changes that had occurred since the first of July in the whole suffrage movement. Formerly unreasonable women were now showing men they could do their fair share of man's work in his absence, and in the process showing in any number of constructive ways that they were equally capable of casting ballots in elections. The thrust of Mother's speeches was that American women were once again proven correct in their nonmilitant, more patient approach to suffrage. Whereas over in England they were only now getting the attention they wanted and deserved from the government, women in the United States had already managed to swing many state legislatures to their side. Yet, there was much left to be done.…

Her letter about that speech ran sixteen pages, and I could tell by the more and more indecipherable scrawl as the letter continued that she was thoroughly wound up on her subject. I was proud of her for having the ability to communicate her enthusiasm to others, and I believed in what she was doing, but regardless of her prodding I was not yet ready to take up the flag and follow her. Neither was I reluctant to tell her so.

The last time she left for Europe I had told her I was thinking of moving to San Antonio after I finished my course in business school, and when she seemed surprised I said, “You're never at home anyway, and I don't want to live with any of the boys and their families. San Antonio is the closest thing I've ever had to home. Also, Dad's buried there … it just seems like a good idea.”

That argument satisfied her, and she wished me well and left in a flurry of kisses and hugs, and with instructions that I was to go to church regularly and behave myself. One thing both of us knew: the years of living in so many different places had taught me self-reliance. She didn't have to worry much about my welfare. Even if I were her only daughter and the youngest of her brood by several years, I could look after myself.

She arrived in early December of 1914, checked in at the Gunter, where her conference was to take place, and left a message at the Y that she'd be in touch the following day, in between a tight schedule of meetings. I told myself I didn't mind that she put her meetings before me. She had important matters to tend to.…

Up to then, everything was normal.

She called on Saturday afternoon to say she wanted me to meet some people in her room at the Gunter, and since they all had to attend a banquet that night—would I like to come?—to please stop by as soon as I could. I'd just gotten off work, and told her I'd be over after I changed clothes. I didn't hurry, though. I had counted on a private visit, and was irritated by her inviting guests. That was thoughtless, and unlike her.

Mother looked well, and after going through the usual maternal routine of looking at me aghast, and declaring I was getting too thin, and turning me around to give me a cursory inspection, she introduced me to a small man with black wavy hair and a neat mustache beneath a large nose. His name was Michael Stobalt. Their companion was a tall, stately woman named Frieda Miles. What occurred in that queer little meeting soon had me sitting forward, eyes wide.

Mother had met Frieda at a women's club meeting a couple of days earlier, and they had talked over coffee. The woman, of Czech origin, seemed especially interested when Mother mentioned the name of the bank where I worked. By that evening she'd contacted Mother again and brought along Stobalt. He dominated our meeting in Mother's room.

He began in slightly broken English, “We of the Bohemian National Alliance feel a kinship with the women involved in the suffrage movement both here and in Europe … basically our goals are the same—personal and national freedom. Miss Devera, there are many important women of your mother's organization working in ours as well.

“The provinces of Bohemia, Slovakia, and Moravia have been working for independence for some time, and our work becomes especially crucial now that Europe is at war and the German empire threatens to aggrandize in the Austro-Hungarian empire—in the process robbing us of our last hope for an independent republic. Here is our scheme. The BNA, along with several fellow organizations, is working on the side of the Allies in the hope that, should they win the war, they will in turn help us in getting our independence. The best we have to offer the English is in the field of espionage.”

“Spies?”

“Over the past few months we've learned of an extremely powerful underground movement by the German espionage service to undermine the Allies in various ways, through this country.”

“For example,” I said.

He glanced at Frieda, then Mother, before continuing, “Sabotaging shipments of arms from the United States to Britain; stirring up labor strikes; spreading propaganda through the buying of newspapers here in the United States to sway sentiment away from the Allied cause.”

“I'm sure the Allies do their share of dirty work, too,” I told him. I could see Mother smiling from the corner of my eye. She loved a good debate. “What about the crummy British blockade? Seems to me if the English are cutting off the guns and food on its way to Germany, they'd be pretty desperate to counter somehow. Don't you agree?”

“Let me assure you, miss, we of the BNA branches in the United States consider ourselves first, last, and always American citizens. While we are secretly organizing our forces to help the Allied cause, we will stop short of committing any deed whatsoever that will endanger the position of our country or risk one human life. We are simply in the frightening position of having our families in the fatherland completely at the mercy of German aggrandizement, and only those of us who have had the privilege of freedom are able to help those of us who have not.

“We're like sailors in a ship, throwing life buoys to drowning victims. It is because those of your mother's group work for the cause for equal rights for women that we find ourselves so greatly in sympathy. Freedom has many different faces, but only one meaning in the end.”

I recognized his powerful rhetoric, but failed to understand what this had to do with me. “You want me to hand out circulars or something?” I asked.

“No, no. We enlist your help in something far more serious in consequence, demanding absolute secrecy. It is only by virtue of your mother's vocation and your own unique position—as well as what we trust to be your irreproachable morals—that we consider asking your help.”

“How?”

“You have recently taken a job in the bank owned by Adolph Heinrich Tetzel?”

“Yes …”

“We have information which indicates Tetzel is involved in the underground activity of the German espionage system through the buying of certain newspapers in this area, the purchase of arms for Mexican revolutionaries, the granting of certain loans in Mexico, and the buying and transshipment of copper from Mexican mines. We do not know to what extent he is involved. However, we do know of plans under way for sabotaging munitions factories and blowing up munitions ships in United States harbors destined for Allied countries, and we have strong reason to suspect Tetzel is an active participant.”

I sat back. “Well, you're mistaken, that's all. Where did you get those ideas, anyway?”

“We have definite proof regarding several of his associates.”

“But none against him.”

“Not as yet.”

“And you want me to snoop around and look for some? Well, you're asking the wrong person. I won't do it. Besides, I happen to have easy access to his personal papers, and I've never run across anything incriminating in the least.”

“Hm … I wonder, does he keep a safe in his office?”

I thought for a moment about that implication, then said, “Yes … but that doesn't prove anything.”

“Have you ever taken a careful look at the interior of that safe? There is likely to be a small inner compartment in the upper left-hand corner, with a special lock.”

“No … I haven't had any reason to get into that yet, and we've been too busy. I've never really looked, but I'm sure—”

“Do you have the combination to the outer lock?”

“No. I suppose I'll get it when his present secretary leaves.”

“Well, then you could check inside for the small compartment.”

“Something tells me your activities might be illegal.”

“Our organization does nothing more than channel evidence to the proper officials for their perusal, and we are within our rights as long as the United States remains neutral.”

I looked at the three faces across from me. It irritated me that they presumed to choose sides on my behalf in a war that meant nothing to me. “You certainly take a risk—how do you know my sympathies might not lie with the Centrals?” I asked.

“My good woman, surely you would not be in favor of either side setting off explosions here in your own country, killing and injuring innocent people.

“Let me hasten to explain that most German people in our country have but one allegiance—to the United States—only a small percentage have loyalties elsewhere. The discovery that Adolph Tetzel may be involved in espionage does not in any way discredit the multitude of naturalized citizens from Germany or the Austro-Hungarian empire.

“Further, we would not have considered imposing upon your personal feelings regarding the war under ordinary circumstances. But in this instance we are facing plots that may well endanger the lives of hundreds of your own innocent countrymen.”