Ordinary Heroes (10 page)

Yesterday, at the i8th, I had reviewed a clip from Stars and Stripes in Martin's file, detailing how the Operational Groups had been formed. Colonel Donovan, the founder of the Office of Strategic Services, had corralled swashbucklers from everywhere, Russian emigres, Spanish Civil War veterans like Martin, and a number of Italian speakers from New York, Boston, and Chicago. All of them had been trained at the Congressional Country Club outside D
. C
., where they had done conditioning runs on the famous golf course and received instruction in the black arts of silent assassination, demolition, secret radio broadcast, judo, cryptography, lock picking, safecracking, and installing listening devices. Martin's efficiency reports from that period were often marked out, but made clear he had been a star, except with Morse code, where he never succeeded in getting above twelve words a minute.

Following his training, according to Lieutenant Colonel Brunson, Teedle's G-1 who'd briefed me, Martin and two comrades, as well as eight supply chutes carrying radios, weapons, and necessities like currency, were dropped over France by a low-flying bomber in October 1942. Each man had a fake ID, a work card, and a cyanide capsule. Somehow, the Nazis had seen the drop. The Englishman with them was shot, while Martin and a French sergeant, who I believed was the Gypsy Antonio now at the end of the table, spent two days in the woods barely avoiding the Germans.

Over time, however, the OG was established. Because of his union activities before the war, Martin was able to build an active network among the rail workers, many of whom he had known for years. Together they sabotaged 37o trains in the succeeding months, destroying railheads and tracks, setting locomotives afire, igniting fuel dumps, and attacking German convoys on the run. After D-Day, as the Third Army advanced north, Stemwinder monitored German troop movements and brought dow
n b
ridges along the Loire. In the file, there were several laudatory communications from grateful commanders. Leaving aside Teedle.

"And before Spain?" I said to him. "May I ask what you asked me, Major? Where is the home war has taken you from?"

He laughed, but the wine gave him a wistful look.

"Good for you, Dubin. That's the sixty-four-dollar question. But I left all that behind long ago." His smile had faded, when he added, "The answer is as lost to history as the ruins of ancient Greece."

After coffee--Nescafe, about which the Comtesse permitted herself one rueful remark over the lost pleasures of former days--I asked Martin to help me find evidence that would show that OSS had directed him to remain here. Very drunk now, he took a second to marshal himself, and in his confused expression I could see he was peeved by my determination. But in the end he laughed and patted my back.

"What a serious fellow you are, Dubin. Yes, of course.''

The first thought was to show me the shortwave radio through which they received London's orders, but I needed something better than that. Martin frowned again at my doggedness but put the question in French to his Stemwinder colleagues who remained at the table.

"Londres?" asked Bettjer. "Les documents des cons, non?"

Martin laughed. "How wonderful. Yes." 'The papers of the idiots' referred to the Finance Officers in OSS, who were the same relentless penny-pinchers in that outfit they were everywhere else, demanding that Martin keep exact accounts of the funds advanced for the Operational Group. If I had not been in the Army, I might not have believed that Martin's orders to mount commando attacks were never reduced to writing, but that nickels and dimes required precise records. Mademoiselle Lodz said she kept the papers with the radio, and I followed her outside to find them. At 3:
00
p
. M
. the daylight was still bright, and leaving the dim house, especially after the wine, I needed to shield my eyes.

"Cela vous derange si je fume?" she asked. Does it bother you if I smoke? It was a meaningless courtesy since she already had the flame of her lighter, an American Zippo, to the tip. She had not lit up at the table in deference to the Comtesse, who did not approve of women with cigarettes. Otherwise, Mademoiselle Lodz had barely been without a Lucky Strike between her fingers. I took smoking as the source of her appealing cough-drop voice, like
June Allyson's. I declined when she offered me one, telling her I'd never picked up the habit.

"The C rations are terrible," she said. "But the cigarettes? This is the best thing the American Army brought with them." She actually hugged her green pack of Luckys to her breast. "In Vichy, the women were banned from buying cigarettes altogether. Martin says that is why I had no choice but to join the resistance." She laughed at herself.

At supper, Martin had recounted several of Gita's adventures. On D-Day, for example, she had calmly turned the road signs at an intersection ninety degrees and stood there long enough to direct an entire Nazi tank battalion south rather than west. Later that afternoon, according to Martin, they had destroyed a large part of the same unit, when Gita and he herded dozens of sheep onto a bridgehead the Nazis were hoping to cross. While the German soldiers were shooing the livestock, Antonio slipped beneath the bridge and set detonators and dynamite, which they blew when the tanks moved forward.

"Martin's stories of your exploits are remarkable."

She smiled. "And even better if they were true."

I lost a step, which evoked another spirited laugh from her.

"Those of us with Martin," she told me, "have watched our lives grow larger when he describes our activities. But he is so good at it, we all believe him. That is Martin's way. At times, there's not a perso
n h
ere who knows whether he's speaking the truth. I am not even certain that his name is Martin. With the OSS, they all take noms de guerre. But it does not matter. Who are we, Dubin, but the stories we tell about ourselves, particularly if we accept them? My mother said that always."

I had never heard anyone declare such a notion aloud, that we somehow had the power to make ourselves up on the go. Yet it was an idea that attracted me, and I reflected a moment, trying to determine whether life allowed that kind of latitude and how far it might extend.

"Withou
t d
isrespec
t to y
ou
r m
other
,
Mademoiselle, it is better, is it not, if those stories are also true?"

"But who is to tell the truth, Doo-bean? In my town, they said my mother was a tramp. She was a seamstress, but she had lovers among the well-to-do, and took their money. In her view, she was a nonconformist, an artiste at heart. She chose to believe that, and I did as well."

"I am sure that is so," I said, deferring to the reflective softness that had come over Mademoiselle Lodz as she spoke about her mother. "Her loss must have been terrible for you," I said quietly.

"Quite terrible. She remains with me every moment. If not for those assassins, she would have lived to be one hundred. In my family, all the women do. My mother said that was our problem, she and I.

There is too much life in us. It makes us wild in youth. And for her that made enduring burdens." She smiled sadly as she touched her own blouse.

"And when she died and you ran from Poland, where did you go first?"

"I landed in Marseilles. I was seventeen. I envisioned myself as the new Bernhardt. Bold, eh? I could barely speak a word of French. I did what needed doing. My mother had taught me to sew, and I found a job mending sheets in a hospital laundry. Soon I was promoted and allowed to empty bedpans." Again, she permitted a husky laugh about herself. "I found my way. Come," she said, "I will show you the items you wish to see."

Walking briskly, she reached the cowshed at the far end of the courtyard, which, like all the connected buildings, had been built of thick stones clad in a coating of cement and sand. On the second floor were quarters for a staff. Judging from the line of curtained windows that surrounded us, the Comtesse once must have employed dozens more workers than now.

Inside the old barn, the air was dense with the ripe smells of animals and moldy hay. Entering a cow stall, Mademoiselle Lodz took hold of a weathered milking stool. With a screwdriver, she removed a metal plate from the bottom of the seat, revealing the radio and its battery.

"Peter says only a few years ago the radios were enormous. Ten, twelve kilos. But now." She withdrew the sleek transmitter and placed it in my hand. It was about six inches long and did not weigh even a pound. Before D-Day, she said, their orders came over the BBC in code with the 9:
00
p
. M
. news. These days, messages were relayed back and forth once a week, when an OSS plane carrying a radio relay to London passed overhead. I nodded, but it was the papers that interested me and I mentioned them again.

"Voila." Mademoiselle Lodz drew a wad from inside the stool. Included was the yellow duplicate of Standard Form limn, Martin's travel voucher, signed and stamped by the paymaster at Central Base Station in London, and containing the details of Martin's trip there and back between September 26 and 30. There were also receipts for two meals Martin had consumed on the way, and French war scrip. Martin's itinerary was exactly as he claimed: OSS had redispatched him here a little more than three weeks ago. When I asked to take the papers, Mademoiselle Lodz was reluctant, but I promised to have them back within a week. In return, she wanted to know what this was all about. I gave her the bare details of Teedle's complaint.

"London just sent Martin back," she said. "You can see yourself." The records didn't seem to leav
e m
uch doubt of that. All in all, it had the look of a typical Army SNAFU. "Teedle would be eager to believe the worst," she said. "Bon sang. Teedle, Martin--that is a bad match. They have been unpleasant with each other from the start."

"Teedle is the superior."

"II a une dent contre lui." He has a grudge against him. "It is true Martin does not like to receive orders in the field," she said. "He prefers to reach concord with his commanders. Teedle wants only to be obeyed."

"There must be order in war. A chain of command."

"In war, order is no more than a good intention. Order is for generals. Not soldiers. Tu to mets le doigt dans l'oeil." You are putting your finger in your eye, meaning I was fooling myself.

"I am a lawyer, nonetheless. I must defend the rules.

"Lawyers are functionaries. Little men. Are you a little man, Dubin? It does not seem so."

"I don't regard the law as little rules. I regard it as an attempt to impart reason and dignity to life."

"Justice imparts reason and dignity, Dubin. Not rules. Little rules and large wrongs are a bad mix. I don't know your rules. But I know what is wrong. As does Martin. The Nazis are wrong. Fight them. That is the only rule that should matter. Not whether Martin does Teedle's bidding."

"You argue well," I said to her. "If Martin has need of a lawyer, he should 0 you."

At the idea, she laughed loudly, until giving way to a hacking smoker's cough. I was impressed by Mademoiselle Lodz's raucousness, which seemed bold compared to Grace, who literally raised her hand to her mouth when she was amused. We had reached the sun again. Mademoiselle Lodz flattened her small hand above her eyes as she regarded me.

You interest me, Doo-bean."

"I am flattered, Mademoiselle. Is that because I am a lawyer, or an American, or a Jew?"

"ca ne rime a rien." That doesn't rhyme with anything, meaning there was no point. "Who you are, you are, no?"

"I suppose. And who, Mademoiselle Lodz, may I ask, are you?"

"Who do you take me for, Dubin?"

You seem to be a soldier and a philosopher."

She laughed robustly again. "No," she said, "I am too young to be a philosopher. I spout, but you should pay no attention. Besides, I don't trust intellectuals. They place too much faith in ideas."

"I am probably guilty of that."

It seems so."

"But principles matter, do they not?"

"Mais oui. But do they come before anything else?"

"I hope so. Certainly that is desirable, is it not, to care first about principles?"

"C'est impossible," she said.

I expressed my doubts, and she told me I was being naive.

"Perhaps," I said, "but if I was being a lawyer--or a philosopher--I would tell you that a convincing argument requires proof."

" 'Proof' ?" She smirked. "Proving is too easy." "How so?"

"Eh, Doo-bean. You are an innocent at heart. I will show you, if I must. Un moment." She disappeared into the barn again, but promptly called out, "Come.

I stepped back into the humid scents and darkness. At first, I saw no one.

"Here," she said behind me. When I turned, Gita Lodz had lifted her skirt to her waist, revealing her slim legs and her undergarment, a kind of cotton bloomer. It fit snugly, revealing her narrow shape and, with another instant's attention, the indentation of her female cleft and the shadow of the dar
k i t
riangle around it.

"Is it principle you feel first, Dubin?"