Roz Fox - A Secret To Tell You

“Gram, tell me what that Trent woman said to upset you. I passed her headed out. My gut said I should stop her—that she was up to no good.” Quinn jerked up the white phone that matched the room’s decor. “This time I will press charges. It was those damned letters, wasn’t it? Did she come to shake you down for more money? I won’t allow her to barge in here and make you cry.”

“Quinn, hush. She brought me the letters and wouldn’t take a cent. Please, calm down and sit with me. Joseph and Ethel have taken Hayley to her gymnastics class, so you and I have time to talk.”

“About what? Those letters?” He saw them now and eyed her with a scowl.

“In a way.” Her fingers plucked idly at the faded red ribbon. “I have a secret to tell you, Quinn. One that’s burdened my heart for much too long.”

“A secret? That sounds ominous, Gram.” Quinn slumped down on the chintz love seat and draped one arm over the padded armrest, his eyes still on his grandmother.

“I wouldn’t say ominous, exactly.” All the same Norma shuffled the letters nervously. “Your grandfather extracted a promise from me that we’d carry this secret to our graves. He did. But since these letters went missing, a lot has changed. There are things you don’t know that you should.”

Quinn sat forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “You’d better tell me, then. Especially if there’s stuff that could turn up in the campaign…”

Her eyes shifted to the envelopes fluttering in her hands. Without fanfare, Norma dove into her story at the same point where she’d begun reminiscing at April’s. Reaching the spot she’d halted before, Norma hesitated only a few seconds before plunging on. “I never viewed anything I did overseas as a lark, Quinn, even though a significant part of our jobs involved mingling with the patrons at popular night spots. We were expected to keep our ears open and pick up what we could in the way of usable information. By usable I mean anything with the potential to help our fighting forces. Whatever we gathered was coded the next morning and sent via teletype or by hand delivery to male agents in the field. Messages came back the same way. Often we were asked to see a particular man again, usually an officer. Or we were dispatched to dig up more information somewhere else.”

“I can’t believe it—yesterday I was joking you’d been a spy, like Dietrich and Child,” Quinn stammered. “And now I find out you were.”

“I’m sure it sounds preposterous.” Norma paused when he got up suddenly and poured them each a bracing shot of brandy. He swirled it in the two snifters, then handed her one. She took a sip, letting him return to his seat before she went on.

“One day there was a change in my routine that disrupted the entire focus of my mission. Tony, your grandfather, whom I knew only as Kestrel, a man I hadn’t laid eyes on since my training days, awakened me in my apartment late one night. With him was a four-star general whose name I recognized and actually recalled seeing at one of my father’s weekend gatherings. Kestrel and the general gave me official orders to travel by train from Marseilles to the town of Colmar, near the German border. My task—cozy up to a German officer who’d flirted with me twice at a local café. I had, of course, reported those encounters and our conversations. My first reaction was that I must be dreaming, but no, I wasn’t, and those two were quite serious. They wanted me to…seduce military secrets out of an enemy.”

Norma heard Quinn choke on his brandy. Her head shot up and she backtracked a bit. “Understand, Quinn, that I was young and reasonably attractive. And the officer they’d singled out was very handsome and charming. So I didn’t consider this a hardship. Nor was their request out of the ordinary. I knew female agents who’d been asked to do more.”

“But…you must’ve known how dangerous it was to openly spy on an enemy.”

She brushed his comment aside. “At the time, Quinn, every third person in France was spying for one country or another. My cover was that of a clerk working for an American-owned shipping company in Marseilles. Our business was legitimate, but like so many others, it served as a front for gathering intelligence, which we passed to field agents, who in turn got the information into Allied hands. We were told daily that what we did saved lives. So, except for being handed back my passport which I needed to travel to and from Colmar, my new orders weren’t much different from what I’d been doing in Marseilles. And Heinz von Weisenbach, the young officer I was to shadow, had never frightened me like many of his comrades did.”

Norma wasn’t aware that the tenor of her voice changed and her features softened as she spoke about Heinz. “He was witty, cultured and soft-spoken.” But Quinn noticed. He glanced sharply at this woman he no longer knew, and felt himself tense at what was to come.

“I had no trouble establishing contact with Heinz in Colmar. He was delighted to see me. I shouldn’t have been surprised that there were more men in German uniforms, since we were near the border, but I was nervous and he could tell. I’ve never doubted that we both entered the relationship for the purpose of obtaining secrets from each other. What I didn’t expect was that Heinz would denounce the war so sincerely. But he did. Around me, he revealed himself as a man who enjoyed sitting quietly, listening to Bach, Beethoven and other classical composers. I soon learned he’d attended way more concerts than I ever had. We fell into the habit of taking long walks together. Once he asked a total stranger on the street to take a picture of us. Every day, he brought me a rose from some bushes that grew in pots along the balcony where he lived. I’d never seen his quarters. Couples were more circumspect in my day—at least at the beginning of a courtship.”

“You had a courtship with a German when we were at war with them?” Quinn appeared thunderstruck.

Sitting up straight, Norma said sternly, “Love doesn’t differentiate between uniforms.”

“Love? You fell in love? With an enemy?”

She bit her lip hard for a minute, then her voice dropped, sounding slightly ragged. “Yes, or so I thought.” She blinked back tears. “I was a willing participant the night Heinz seduced me with roses, wine and music. It was a momentous experience for me, Quinn. Other female agents had been ordered to submit for the purpose of gathering information through pillow talk, but that wasn’t what I’d been charged to do. In fact, Kestrel, er, Anthony, had been quite adamant at the outset of my mission that it did not include me going to bed with the colonel.”

“Colonel. Oh, great. Now I suppose you’ll tell me he was Hitler’s fair-haired boy.” Vaulting off the love seat, Quinn strode to the fireplace. The fire had burned down and he threw on two logs, stabbing at them with the poker. When flames shot up, he jammed the poker back in place, with the rest of the tools on the hearth. He stood, keeping his back to his grandmother, hands braced on the mantel. “I think I’ve heard enough,” he said. “If those so-called love letters are from him, burn them all.” Quinn clenched his back teeth.

Norma didn’t move, but her voice grew steely. “Hiding them won’t alter the facts, Quinn. Nor will turning them into ashes.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, his eyes a cold blue and his face a harsh mask. “Finish your story, then. We’ll put your guilt to rest and then forget this ever came up.”

“I can’t forget,” Norma said simply. “That night with Heinz was my first. It was terrifying, but also beautiful. Heinz swore he’d grown to love me with all his heart. He promised he’d find a way for us to be together openly. I believed him. I had no reason not to. Especially since he sent the first of these letters the very next day.” Norma picked up the top one.