Authors: Alan Glenn
Hanson lifted his hand from Sam’s back. “No, no, the FBI man in charge said I would get a full report later. I need to run along. Tell you what, you finish what you have to do and then go home, Okay?”
Sam wondered what in hell Groebke had on LaCouture, dirt that kept the FBI agent silent about the city’s only police inspector breaking his nose. “No, I don’t think so. I really want to get a jump on my work. I’ll probably spend the night here.”
Hanson said, “All right, but you won’t be sleeping in the basement. Use the couch in my office. There are a couple of blankets in the closet.”
“That’s very generous of you, sir. And if I may talk about—”
Hanson swayed. “Yes, yes. Your wife and son. Not now, Sam. There’s too much going on now. But I promise, once it settles down, we’ll see what we can do. It’s a federal beef, but I’ll see if I can help.” He rubbed his eyes wearily. “Sleep well! We’re going to need you tomorrow, when this whole thing wraps up.”
“It’s done? So soon?”
“The summit’s a success. Ended a day ahead of schedule. Agreement reached on a number of issues, so on and so forth, but bottom line, Hitler is going to get his arms, the Kingfish is going to get his full employment. Both of
them are going to be safe in their jobs for a long time to come.”
“And the Jews?” Sam knew he was pushing it, but he had to know. “Will they continue to come over here?”
Hanson looked about, ensuring they were alone. “Oh, yes. Hitler is eager to get rid of them, and Long is eager to put them to work. But Sam, no more talk of that, all right?”
“All right,” he agreed. “So that’s it, then.”
“Yep,” his boss said. “Hitler and Long, both heading home tomorrow, and Long is going to visit Berlin next week to seal the deal. There you go. History made again in our little Portsmouth.”
Sam thought of Tony. His spirit must be furious. Not only to die in vain, but Sam was certain LaCouture had been right: Tony’s death had made the summit a bigger success.
“Yeah,” he told Hanson. “Our little Portsmouth.”
It was a sign of his profound exhaustion that Sam slept deeply on Hanson’s leather couch. After getting up, he went down to the basement, getting a bowl of oatmeal and some bacon for breakfast, again served by the American Legion’s women’s auxiliary members. He ate at a long table full of talkative and gossipy cops and feds, and he tuned them all out. He wanted to get through this day,
do his work, and let the summit circus leave. Newspapers were passed around, with loud screaming headlines about the success of the summit, and buried in them were brief stories about Tony. If anyone said anything about his brother, he was certain he would punch out the first one, but no one did. They seemed to know enough to leave him alone.
If he was fortunate, in the next day or so, his family would be freed, through either Hanson or Groebke. If not, then the hell with what Groebke had said, he’d go to Camp Carpenter and demand to see the commandant and get his family out of there. Whatever it took, he would get them out.
At his desk again, he tossed aside the old message from Mrs. Walton to contact the medical examiner. As he dove through a pile of burglary reports, trying to find some pattern, some new angle of attack, a woman’s voice said: “Inspector? Inspector Miller?”
He swiveled in his chair.
“Yes?” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“The desk sergeant. He told me to come see you.”
He got up and dragged over an empty chair, trying to hide his displeasure. He hated these refugee matters. “Please, do sit down.”
“Thanks,” she said carefully. The women had blond hair cut in a bob, and her worn light blue cotton dress spoke of careful mending. She sat down and gripped a battered black purse in her lap. Her accent was British.
“So,” he said, picking up a fountain pen and a notepad. “What can I do for you?”
“My name is Alicia Hale,” she told him. “I’m looking for my husband. Your Red Cross helped locate him, so I know
he’s in your city, and I know who he’s been seen with. Some kind of writer. This is the third time I’ve come here looking for help, and I hope you can do something.”
From her purse, she took out a black-and-white snapshot of a smiling man wearing a British military uniform. Sam studied the photo and said, “Is it Reginald Hale?”
She smiled in astonishment. “You know my Reggie?”
He handed the photo back to her. “I’ve run into him a couple of times. We have a mutual acquaintance. Your husband’s missing a leg, correct?”
She placed the photo carefully into her purse, as if afraid someone might steal it. “Yes, he lost that during the invasion. We were separated soon afterward; Reggie was evacuated with some of the wounded, and I stayed behind. We’ve only managed to exchange a few letters over the years.”
“Oh. And if I may ask, how did you get here?”
She frowned. “Through bribes, what else? The new government has been issuing travel visas for humanitarian reasons. Just a drop in the bucket, but it makes for nice propaganda. If you pay enough for them, the government grants them. The visas work only in North America. Mothers and wives aren’t allowed to see the POWs in Germany, now, are they?”
“Prisoners are still being kept? I remember reading a story a couple of months ago saying the last of the POWs had been sent home.”
“Ha,” she said, and he noted how rigidly her hands were holding the purse. “A load of cod swollop, that is. Most of our boys are working in arms factories in France and Germany. Half starved and overworked, that’s what they are.”
He wondered what she would say if she knew what he had done yesterday to save Hitler’s life and prolong the POWs’ misery. He said, “So. You can’t find your husband, is that it?”
“Not in this soddin’ mess, can I? But I found out he spends time with this writer—”
“Walter Tucker,” Sam supplied. Alicia Hale nodded and continued.
“I had to pay a taxi man a hefty fare to bring me to the man’s flat, but he wasn’t there, and the desk sergeant, he said maybe you could help me.”
Sam asked, “Mrs. Hale, is it possible your husband’s papers are no longer in order?”
“Who the hell knows? Does that make any difference?”
“Not to me, but it may explain why he’s hiding out—with all the hoopla over this summit.”
She seemed to shiver. “To think you Yanks are treating that bloody bastard like royalty! Should ’ave sunk his boat when it got here, you should ’ave.”
“Maybe so,” he said, not wanting to think any more of the summit, “but if we can find Walter, I’m sure we can find your husband.”
“That would be brilliant.”
He put his pen down, “Are you here to take him back to England?”
A violent shake of her head. “Not bloody likely. No, I’ve got a cousin who has a farm up in Manitoba. Once I get my Reggie, we’re going there and never going back. Not ever.”
“Good for you,” Sam said. “Look. Let’s go see if we can find your husband. I have an idea of where to start.”
He took her to his Packard, dented and scratched from the previous day’s desperate drive. A part of him was still mourning his brother and aching at the thought of Sarah and Toby behind barbed wire, but he forced his focus to the job, and he closed the passenger door after she slid in.
When he started the car, he asked, “What part of England are you from, Mrs. Hale?”
“London.”
“Oh. What’s London like nowadays?”
He headed toward the center of the city. The checkpoints had all come down. With the summit over and a success, it looked as though security had dissolved, although there were still armed National Guardsmen at each corner.
“Horrible, the city is, simply horrible.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She sat properly and primly, purse again in her lap. “Parts haven’t been rebuilt since the bombing and street fighting. Food, petrol, clothing, they’re still rationed, but if you know your way around the black market, almost anything can be had. In reichsmarks—the pound is worthless. People have to make the most awful decisions every day. Taking a government job or cooperating with the officials … are you being a collaborator? Or are you just a realist? Do you show allegiance to King Edward, even though he’s only on the throne thanks to Herr
Hitler. Or allegiance to the queen and her daughters marooned in Canada? The resistance—are they truly fighting for freedom? Or are they just terrorists and criminals? The interior zones, the unoccupied zones—some say that’s the worst. At least in the occupied areas, the Jerries keep some sort of order … the miserable bastards.”
He turned in to a bank parking lot and found an empty space. As he switched off the engine, she said, “Is it true, what I heard? That Churchill’s been arrested in New York?”
“Yeah, it’s true. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I hope the Jerries hang the fat bastard and then shoot him, make sure he’s dead. It’s all his fault this happened.”
She opened the passenger door but remained motionless. Sam, too, sat still and listened. “In ’40, after France fell, there were rumors Hitler wanted an armistice, wanted a peace treaty,” she continued. “It wouldn’t have been all milk and honey, but we would have been left alone, for the most part. Drunk Winnie wouldn’t sit still for it. That belligerent old bastard, fight them on the landing fields, on the beaches, blah bloody blah. Spurned old Hitler, he did. And after the invasion, the government collapsed and tried to make peace, but it was too late then. Too late for me and my Reggie.”
As they walked, he grasped her elbow and leaned in to her and said, “Like I said, the trick is to find Walter. After that, we can find your husband.”
* * *
Alicia looked around at the swelling crowds. “Going to take some luck, isn’t it, then?”
“Walter is a regular when it comes to his writing. Once a week he produces a short story for one of the magazines, and every day he goes to the post office, always at about noon. And that’s where we’re going.”
People swept by, some carrying small American flags, and from the bits of overheard conversation, he learned what was happening: President Long was motoring back from the shipyard after yesterday’s triumph, and the local Party, doing a good job of grassroots efforts, had turned out this crowd to cheer him on. The Party … He shuddered at what would be waiting for him when the summit was over. Throwing his lot in with the marshal and the Nats, he thought.
The National Guardsmen had moved into the streets, rifles held up in a long, flowing honor guard. He found his fingers tightening on Alicia Hale’s arm. “That’s the post office,” he explained. “Walter should be either entering or leaving in the next few minutes.”
Sirens wailed and Sam said, “We’ll wait for the motorcade to come by and then cross the street. We do it now, we might get run down.”
She just smiled, and he felt a flash of envy for the wounded British vet, to have such a woman find the means and strength to cross the ocean and come to a strange city, to find her mate.
There. Could it be?
He leaned in to her and said over the approaching sirens, “Jackpot. There he is, going inside.”
Sure enough, there was Walter trundling up the wide
granite steps, worn leather valise in one hand. He disappeared into the building. The wail of the sirens grew louder.
Alicia had her hands up over her ears, squeezing them, her purse hanging off her wrist. “I hate sirens. Ever since the air raids.”
Sam tried to give her a reassuring smile. The sirens yowled louder as the motorcade became visible, people waving their flags, cheers and applause. Three cars came up the road, Secret Service agents perched on the running boards, President Long in the rear seat of the last vehicle, waving his straw boater. Some of the crowd started chanting,
“Long, Long, Long!,”
but Sam heard another chant rise up at the same time:
“Jobs, jobs, jobs!”
Hearing those voices, looking at his poorly dressed neighbors, bad skin and bad teeth, poor shoes, patched suits and dresses, he felt the power in their cries. They had hope again, hope after so many years. He had a trembling thought that they would be betrayed again, that it was all a lie. Oh, for some there would be jobs, but those jobs would come with a price tag: devotion and blind adherence to the Kingfish. And for those on relief, the relief funded in part by the Jewish slave labor, they would pay the same price. These people would be asked to sign over their vote and freedom in exchange for a steady paycheck, and who could blame them if they did?
After the cars went by in a cloud of exhaust and dust, Walter came out of the post office, joined by a man who was walking with some difficulty.
Sam turned to Alicia. “Your husband, does he have a fake leg? A prosthetic?”
She raised her voice over the crowd. “Yes. He wrote
me about it … an American charity group presented it to him last year. He doesn’t need his crutches anymore.”
They were blocked in by the crowd, still clapping, still chanting
“Jobs, jobs, jobs!”
He watched Walter and Reginald talking and then the crowd shifted and he lost view. When he gained the view again, the British airman was gone.
Walter was still there.
Reginald was gone.
On two legs. Not a set of crutches like before.
People were jostling and bumping them. He pulled her to a nearby utility pole, pushed her against it, and said, “You stay here. I’ll make my way across the street, talk to Walter, find out where your husband went.”
“You’re quite kind. It’s been so very long since I’ve seen him.”
Something in her voice touched him. “You must still be proud of him, a hero pilot and all that.”
Tears were in her eyes, but her face was puzzled. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Your husband. Reginald. A pilot in the RAF. You must be quite proud.”
She said, “You’re quite wrong, Inspector. Reggie was never a flier. Not ever.”
Now it seemed as though the crowd had vanished, that it was now just the two of them, staring at each other in disbelief. “You showed me his photo,” Sam said incredulously. “In uniform. He told me he was a pilot. And so did Walter.”
A firm shake of the head. “I think I bloody well know what my husband did in the service. He was not a pilot.”