Grace
Washington, 1946
“Come,” Mark said, leading her from The Willard when her meeting with Annie was over. Outside, Grace inhaled the fresh air, trying to clear the cigarette smoke from her lungs.
Mark started for the taxi line, but Grace reached out and touched his arm. “Wait,” she said, pulling back. “Do you mind if we walk for a bit?” It was a habit she had formed in New York, strolling great swaths of the city, block after block, when she was sad or wanted to think things through.
He smiled. “I’d love to. Have you ever seen the monuments at night?” She shook her head. “You must.” She wanted to protest—it seemed too far, too late. More than she had intended. But the air was crisp and lovely and the Washington Monument beckoned in the distance. “I did this all the time in law school,” he added, as they walked past the darkened government buildings. “But then with the blackout and curfew, I wasn’t able to for years.” He led her south on Fifteenth Street along the edge of the Ellipse. “So, was talking to Annie helpful?”
“In a sense. She confirmed what we thought from the archives—Eleanor ran the women’s unit for SOE. But there was something else.” Grace stopped, turning to Mark. “She said that someone betrayed the girls.”
“Betrayed how?”
“She didn’t know.”
“That seems fairly incredible,” Mark replied.
“Maybe, but she seemed quite sure about it. And she said Eleanor came to see her sister, asking questions because she was convinced of the same thing. You don’t believe it?”
Mark shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, right? For those who lost loved ones, like Annie’s sister or even Eleanor, it might be easier to accept than the truth.”
“The girls disappeared during the war,” Grace mused, a picture beginning to form in her mind. “And Eleanor, who had recruited them, went looking for answers.” She had surely found, as they had, that the girls had died in Nacht und Nebel. But she had learned something else, too, that made her suspect a betrayal. That was the piece they were missing.
“In New York?” Mark asked, with more than a note of doubt in his voice. They skirted the edge of the temporary government buildings erected on the West Mall to accommodate the influx of workers during the war. Mark took her elbow to help her around a broken curb. “It doesn’t seem terribly likely that she’d find what she was looking for in New York.”
“It’s as likely as us finding what we are looking for in Washington.” Nothing, it seemed, was where it should be anymore. “Anyway, it might have not been her first stop.”
They were on the edge of the Mall now. Mark held out his arm and she took it, the scratchy wool of his overcoat brushing against the back of her hand. He led her to the right, toward the Lincoln Memorial.
“You don’t want to leave it alone, do you?” he asked.
Grace shook her head. “I can’t.” Somewhere along the way it had gone from curiosity to quest. It had become personal.
“What is it exactly that you want to know? The girls died. Isn’t that enough?”
“That’s the thing. Eleanor knew that, too, and it wasn’t enough for her. She kept searching. She wasn’t just looking for what happened to them. She was looking for why.”
“Does the ‘why’ matter?”
“Those girls never came home to their families, Mark,” Grace said, her voice rising. She pulled her arm from his. “Of course it matters. Maybe there’s more to the story, something important or even heroic. If we could tell even one of these families what led to their daughter’s death or that her life was not lost in vain, well, then, that would be something, wouldn’t it?”
“You wish that about Tom, don’t you?” Mark asked. “That someone could tell you his death wasn’t for nothing.” Mark’s words cut through her like a knife.
Frustrated, Grace turned and started away from him, up the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial. She reached the massive statue of the president seated at the top, seeming to watch sentry over the capital and the nation. Her lungs burned from the climb.
A moment later Mark caught up with her. Grace turned away, taking in the panorama of the Mall below, the long stretch of the Reflecting Pool leading to the Washington Monument, the Jefferson smaller but visible just to the south. Neither of them spoke. Mark stepped close behind her, his coat brushing hers, and put his arms around her lightly. Grace shivered. But didn’t step away. She liked him, she admitted to herself—more than she should for the short time they had spent together and more than she wanted. There was a calmness about him that seemed to center her. But there wasn’t space in her life for that now.
“I was still in school during the war,” he said finally, his breath warm on her hair. “But I lost two brothers at Normandy.”
“Oh, Mark.” She pulled away and turned to face him. “I’m so sorry.”
“So I have some idea of how you are hurting,” he added.
“I suppose,” she replied. But the truth was when it came to grief, each person was an island, alone. She’d learned that the hard way. She had tried to join a war widows group in New York shortly after she had arrived. She’d hoped she would find some connection that would help her break through the wall that seemed to have formed around her heart, but as she sat among those sorry women who had supposedly known what she had gone through, she had never felt more alone.
But she did not want the conversation to turn to her. “I’m exhausted,” she said finally.
“It’s been a long day,” he agreed. “And it’s late. Let’s go.”
Half an hour later the taxi they had hailed at the edge of the Mall dropped them back at Mark’s house in Georgetown. Inside, he made a fire in the grate and poured them each a brandy, just as she’d had at the restaurant the night they met. “Wait here,” he said, leaving her to sit and think. She sat in the oversize leather chair and took a large sip of her drink, welcoming the burn.
He returned a few minutes later with two plates, each holding a ham-and-cheese sandwich. “That looks delicious,” she remarked, suddenly realizing how hungry she actually was.
“It’s nothing fancy,” he said, passing her a napkin. “But I’ve learned to make due with what’s in the icebox, being on my own and all.”
“Has it always been that way?” she asked. “Just you, I mean.” The question was too personal.
He shrugged. “More or less. I dated a few girls in college and law school, but I never got stuck on one girl the way Tom did on you.” Grace felt flattered and sad at the same time. “After graduation, I went right to the War Crimes Office and then here. Life just seems to carry me too quickly to settle down, and I haven’t found a girl who can keep up—at least not yet. Really it’s just me and my work all the time.” He smiled. “At least until now,” he added bluntly.
Grace looked away, caught off guard by the admission. She had sensed, of course, that Mark had feelings for her. There was something between them that went well beyond the night they had spent together, or even their shared connection with Tom. But it was that connection that made it so very hard to contemplate.
Why now? she wondered. A year was a respectable time for a widow to wait before dating. Tom would have wanted her to move on and be happy, or at least she thought so; he had died so young and so suddenly, they never had the chance to discuss such things. And he thought the world of Mark. No, it wasn’t Tom’s memory that held her up. She had built her own little world in New York, a kind of fortress where she only depended on herself. She wasn’t ready to let anyone else in.
“And you? What did you do during the war?” he asked.
Grace relaxed slightly, blotting at her mouth with the napkin. “I was a postal censor near Westport, where my parents live. Just something to keep me busy while Tom was off fighting. We were supposed to move to Boston and buy a house when he came back.” Those dreams seemed so distant, like tissue paper crumpled and thrown away without a second thought. She cleared her throat.
“And now you’re living in New York.”
“I am.” She could not have imagined that the city would suit her so.
“Does your family mind?”
“They don’t know I’m there,” she confessed. “They think I’m with my girlfriend Marcia at her family’s place in the Hamptons, recovering.” Because that is what a good widow would do—and Grace had always been the good girl.
“So you ran away?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t as if she had done anything wrong. She was an adult, no children to care for and no husband. She simply picked up and left. “And I don’t want to go back.”
“Were things so very bad at home?”
“No.” That was the thing of it. They hadn’t been bad at all, really. “Just not right for me. I went right from my parents’ home to Tom without ever thinking about what I wanted for me.” And when Tom died, she realized guiltily, it felt like a fresh start.
Suddenly it was all too much. “I’m rather tired. I’m going to turn in,” Grace said, heading for the guest room down the hall he’d pointed out earlier.
Grace closed the door and lay down in the unfamiliar bed, still dressed, the sheets cool and crisp. The headlights from passing cars caused patterns to dance on the ceiling. She heard water running, the sounds of Mark washing. A creak as he lay down in his own bed.
Grace closed her eyes and tried to rest. She saw Eleanor and the girls then in her mind, seeming to call to her, wanting to tell her something. A betrayal, Annie had said. Someone had given up the girls to the Germans. It might have been another agent in the field. But the girls who had been caught were not all operating near Paris as part of the Vesper circuit, or even the adjacent networks. They had been scattered all over France. To have information on all of them, one would have to have been very high up—or even in charge of it all.
Grace sat up with a jolt. She leaped from bed and raced from the room, feeling propelled by something other than herself. A moment later, she found herself standing in the doorway to Mark’s bedroom. She knocked. Turn away, she thought, panicking. But it was too late. He had opened the door and stood before her, shirt half unbuttoned. “Is everything all right? Did you need something?”
“Eleanor,” she said, jumping right in. “We’ve been assuming all the time that she was looking for answers about the girls. What if she had already found out the truth?” She took a deep breath. “Or what if she already knew because she was the one who betrayed them?”
He hesitated for several seconds, considering the idea. “Do you want to come in?” Grace nodded.
His bedroom was cluttered. Clothes covered the sofa and overflowed from the dresser. He cleared a spot for her on the lone chair, moving his briefcase to the ottoman in front of it.
“So you think Eleanor betrayed the girls?” he asked as she sat.
“I don’t know. But if she did, she might have been trying to hide the truth, rather than find it.”
“It’s a theory, isn’t it? Annie said that Eleanor had a mysterious past and no friends. She was from Eastern Europe. What if she was working for the Germans?”
Grace’s mind spun. She didn’t want to consider the idea, but she couldn’t look away.
“It’s mind-boggling,” she said. “What if Eleanor from the start had been a traitor, sent to infiltrate SOE? She would have used the girls as chess pieces to help the Germans get information. Instead of their protector, she had sent them to their deaths.” She paused, trying to fit the pieces together. “But Annie said Eleanor came to her sister after the war, asking questions. If she was the one who betrayed the girls, why would she have done that?”
“Who knows? Maybe she wanted to make sure no one suspected her.” Suddenly, nothing was as it had appeared to be. Even Eleanor’s death, a simple car accident, seemed shrouded in mystery. Could Eleanor, guilt stricken about what she had done, have deliberately stepped out to be killed?
“I just can’t believe Eleanor would have betrayed the girls,” Grace said. The woman was a stranger, though; anything was possible. “I can’t think about it anymore tonight. I should go,” she said wearily. But she remained seated.
A look of understanding crossed his face. “Sometimes,” he said, “you just don’t want to be alone.” He crossed the room and sat down beside her, too close. Their faces turned toward one another. She closed her eyes, certain that he would try to kiss her and almost wanting him to. He did not. Instead, he ran a thumb along her cheekbone, catching a tear that she had not known had fallen.
A moment later he stood and went to the dresser. He returned with a flannel shirt, which he handed to her. She went into the bathroom to change, smelling him in the fabric even through the fresh scent of the laundry detergent.
When she came out of the bathroom, swimming in the oversize nightshirt, he was arranging sheets on the chair and ottoman, and she assumed that he meant for her to sleep there. But he stretched out on the chair, adjusting his lanky frame to the cramped space.
“I couldn’t possibly take your bed,” she protested.
“I insist. I can sleep anywhere.” She sat on the edge of the bed, overwhelmed by the impropriety of the situation and yet not caring at all. Part of her wished he would join her.
She leaned back against the headboard. “What I said earlier about my life before the war… I loved Tom.” It felt odd to be talking about her husband here, in his best friend’s bedroom, but she felt as though she had to explain. “I still do. It was just the life, you know, married, in the suburbs. I never quite fit in.”
“I understand,” Mark replied. “It was like me, at Yale.” Grace was surprised; she had always thought of Mark as one of the guys. “I was there on scholarship. I don’t suppose Tom ever mentioned it.” Grace shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t have, of course. I was always working, waiting tables in the dining hall, doing whatever I needed to earn extra money and make ends meet. Tom never minded, but some of the fellas made sure I knew I would never be one of them. It doesn’t matter in the end. I’ve done fine for myself,” he added, gesturing around the room. “The ink on my diploma is the same as theirs. But I’ll never forget that feeling.”
Grace shook her head. “It was more than just the not fitting in. When Tom was finishing officers’ school, he wanted me to come down to Georgia for the graduation and have a few days together before he shipped out. But I didn’t. I made some excuses about needing to be in Westport for work. But really it just seemed too much, the trip down there. And being among all of those officers and their wives, it was everything I hated about married life, only more so. When I said I couldn’t go, Tom arranged to come to New York and see me before he left. That’s why he was in the jeep. That’s why he was killed.” Not going to Georgia had been the worst mistake of her life.
Mark sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. “You didn’t know, Gracie. We just never know.” They sat together without speaking for several minutes. Finally, he stretched out beside her on the bed. They didn’t touch but he held her hand firmly in his.
Neither of them spoke further. Several minutes passed, broken by the quiet ticking of a clock on his nightstand. She turned to look at him. He lay just inches from her, legs flung over the edge. His eyes were closed and his breathing had grown long and even, signaling sleep. Longing rose up in her. She reached out her hand, wanting to wake him.
Then she stopped herself. What had happened in New York had been bad enough, but this…this longing, was a whole other thing entirely. It had to stop.
She was suddenly racked with guilt and doubt. What was she doing here? She had come to find out what she could about Eleanor and the girls, and now she knew. There was nothing more to be learned here. There was no reason to stay. It was time to get back to New York and her work with Frankie and figuring out the life that awaited her.
Grace quietly sat up and stepped out of the bed. She moved closer to Mark in spite of herself. Her hand lingered close to his neck. Sensing her there, he shifted in his sleep. She was seized once more with the urge to wake him for all the wrong reasons. No, she had to leave now.
Still wearing his flannel shirt, Grace picked up her clothes and tiptoed from the room. She changed in the bathroom, then went to the office to phone a cab. Her purse was there, the papers she had taken from the Pentagon just beneath them. She should leave those here, for Mark to return to the archive. But she picked up the file and opened it.
The documents, wireless transmissions and interoffice memos were the same ones she and Mark had looked at earlier in the taxi back from the Pentagon. But now she viewed them with a fresh eye. Could there be evidence among them that Eleanor had betrayed her girls?
There was an incoming telegram. “Thank you for your collaboration and for the weapons you sent us. SD.” Grace felt a tightening in her chest. SD stood for Sicherheitsdienst, the German intelligence service. The message was clear confirmation that the Germans had been operating one of the wireless radios, and that they had brazenly, foolishly perhaps, let London know.
There was a second sheet attached, from the desk of E. Trigg. “Message not authenticated,” it said. “Continue transmissions.” The memo was dated May 8, 1944—right around the time the arrests of Eleanor’s girls had begun.
There it was in black-and-white—proof that Eleanor had known the radios were compromised and she continued to transmit critical information that enabled the Germans to arrest the girls. Grace stared at the paper. It was Eleanor’s own confession, as surely as if it had been signed.
“No…” Grace whispered under her breath. Just minutes earlier, the notion that Eleanor had betrayed the girls had seemed impossible. Now, undeniable proof was right before her.
She thought of waking Mark, telling him the truth about Eleanor. But there was no point. Her worst suspicions about Eleanor, the ones she’d shared with him earlier, were in fact correct. She wished then that she had never come to Washington at all, that she had left it all alone and never found out the awful truth. Overwhelmed by it all, Grace tucked the folder underneath her arm.
Then, without looking back, she left.