Face of the Enemy Read online

  Cabby jumped to her feet, finally roused. “We don’t need prayers, Ruthie. We need information. Try the radio again.” Astonishingly, no further news had followed the report of the attack, only the usual Sunday afternoon programs.

  Ruthie turned the dial, squealing through all the New York stations. With a frustrated sigh, she paused at the Philharmonic broadcast.

  “Just leave it there,” Cabby ordered. “That’s CBS. They’ll run the news as soon as they can. How’s that coffee coming, Helda?”

  As the German woman mechanically transferred cups and saucers from the cabinet to a tray, she seemed to have retreated to her own world once again. Over the lush music, Cabby was able to pick up a few agitated whispers: “…trouble for Ernst…trouble for all of us…knew this would come….”

  Cabby could only imagine the landlady’s state of mind—a German immigrant, alone in this alien country, war with her homeland inevitable. She shook her head. She’d always liked Helda, a comfortably built woman who was willing to let the rent slide a day or two in an emergency. Was there a Mr. Schroeder? Helda had never mentioned Howie’s father, and there were no photos of a man anywhere about the house. Was he the Ernst she was muttering about?

  Worried, Cabby tried to catch Louise’s eye. If Helda collapsed, at least the nurse would know what to do. But her roommate was wringing her dainty handkerchief, lost in thought, chin on chest.

  What a charming little heartbroken Southern pose! From the moment Louise moved in, Cabby had read tragic love affair all over her. She’d followed some sweet-talking charmer to New York, and the jerk had left her flat. Try as she might, though, Cabby hadn’t been able to wangle any particularly juicy details.

  The back door slammed open, and Howie burst in, sans cream bottle. “A plane! Flying low. Betcha it’s German…a Heinkel bomber!”

  Helda slammed the loaded tray on the counter. Everybody jumped. “Is that why you dawdle around on the porch? I need your help and you look for airplanes?”

  “Maaa!” Howie protested.

  “German airplanes? For god’s sake!” Through the butler’s pantry, a woman in a swooping hat made a grand entrance, her voice jumping a dramatic octave. “First Japs? Now Krauts? The bastards are attacking us from all sides!”

  A minor commotion broke out around the table. Alicia jumped to her feet. “Marion—” she warned.

  Cabby was closer. She grabbed the newcomer’s arm. “Can it, Marion. Howie’s just overexcited. Show some sense, for cripe’s sake.” She finished with a small jerk of her head toward Helda.

  “Ooohh.” The way Marion Sutherland said it, that wordless articulation ran to three syllables. As she pulled off her gloves, she crossed the faded red linoleum. “So sorry, Helda. I didn’t mean you, of course. You’re almost like a real American.”

  “Jah.” The German was back, through gritted teeth. Helda’s usually good-natured expression was a mask of anxiety, the round, rosy cheeks now pale and drawn, the generous lips pressed together in apprehension.

  “I mean, you’ve been in our country how long? Fifteen years? Well, there you see,” Marion said airily. “Might as well be forever. You’re a good German. Father would never have let me move in here, otherwise.”

  Father was old money from Cleveland and Marion, his stage-struck daughter, an exotic creature with a reed-thin figure, exquisitely tailored suits, and sculpted raven bob, who’d come to Gotham, as she insisted on calling the city, to study thea-tuh.

  The Mouse spoke up in a quavering voice. “But what if the Germans really are coming? The Japs did.” Her wide-eyed gaze was on Helda.

  The bubbling coffee pot filled the kitchen with a homey sound and aroma, but it couldn’t calm the rising tension. Ruthie, too, glanced suspiciously in Helda’s direction.

  “Now wait a minute,” Cabby said. “Let’s not panic. No bomber exists that could make it all the way across the Atlantic. We ran an article about it just last week,” she intoned as if citing Holy Writ. She might have a running feud with the editor who refused to take her seriously, but the Times was still the best damn paper in New York, and she was proud to be on their payroll.

  “Maybe not planes, darlings, but what about U-boats?” Marion retrieved a cup and saucer, turned off the heat under the bubbling pot, and helped herself to coffee. “Submarines can go anywhere there’s water.” She looked extremely knowing. “There might be a whole fleet of them right off Long Island this very minute, just waiting for the signal to launch a Nazi invasion.” She blew on her steaming cup and assumed a Noble Expression. “We must all be vigilant.”

  Howie smacked his fist in his palm. “The Coast Guard! That’s it! I’ll join the Coast Guard. I’ll get those Krauts, every last one of ’em.”

  Cabby shook her head. Howie was an all-American boy wrapped up in comic books, the Dodgers, and model airplanes. But given his last name and his mother’s native land, many Americans would consider Howie to be one of the very Krauts he wanted to exterminate.

  “Krauts?” Helda bustled over, grabbed her son’s ear, and pulled him toward the big, walk-in pantry. “Krauts? You don’t know what you say, and no son of mine is joining any…”

  The sounds of a palm smacking flesh and blubbery cries of “Quit it, Ma” came from the pantry.

  The women traded uncomfortable looks. Cabby brought the coffee pot to the table and began to pour.

  “So, Louise, you’ll enlist, won’t you?” Alicia Rosen asked, poking at her unruly bun of thick, dark hair. Alicia, Cabby knew, considered beauty parlors a waste of time and lipstick a frivolous indulgence.

  Louise tensed visibly. She stared at Alicia with a guarded expression. “Enlist?”

  Cabby stifled a snort. She couldn’t imagine the dainty Louise tending shot-up, bloody men in some makeshift battlefield hospital.

  “You know, join up.” Alicia’s eyes glinted behind silver-rimmed glasses. “The military will need nurses—that’s for sure. If I were a nurse, I’d go.”

  Ruthie had draped herself over the white-tiled counter. “Yeah, you gotta join up, Louise. To take care of our boys. It’s your patriotic duty.”

  “My mother would kill me,” Louise stammered. She gave a dry laugh. “I expect my brothers will go ahead and enlist…they’ll lose their student classification. Mom won’t be able to stop them, but she’ll want me home for sure.” She sighed and ran a hand through her sleek hair.

  “There’s a lot more going on than enlisting, girls.” Marion had been silent for the past few minutes, sipping at her coffee, but now she plowed on. “When they announced the bombings, I was at the theater with my gentleman friend. The management stopped the show and told the audience to get home as quickly as possible. My friend does something important down at Foley Square.” She paused. Everyone leaned forward, holding their breath. “You know? Where the federal offices are?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “G-men?”

  Oh, she’s good, thought Cabby. The money Daddy’s forked over for drama lessons hasn’t been wasted one bit.

  Marion bent toward her audience. “So, he’s very knowledgeable. Don’t repeat this to a soul, but my friend told me that they’re going to start rounding up Japs any minute, just as soon as war is formally declared.”

  Louise threw her handkerchief down, suddenly pink-cheeked. “They can’t arrest people without cause, can they?”

  “Oh, yes they can,” Alicia answered grimly. “And they will. In wartime, civil liberties are suspended.”

  Marion nodded and put a finger to her carmined lips. “It’s been in the works for months. All very hush-hush. Next they’ll come after the Italians and Germans.”

  Helda, just returning to the kitchen, stumbled, and caught herself against the Frigidaire. “They come after Germans?”

  Alicia, who studied at Brooklyn Law School daytimes and worked at a Jewish legal-aid organization i
n the evenings, continued, “Professor Pritzker says they can do anything they want with enemy aliens.”

  “As well they should,” Marion shot back. “We can’t have people with divided loyalties running around loose. Not at a time like this.”

  Helda’s cheeks flushed bright red. Her back bowed, and she pressed a hand on the counter for support. Cabby expected an outburst, but just then the phone rang in the front hallway, casting the group into uneasy silence.

  The Times, Cabby thought.

  She sprinted through the butler’s pantry. Not the Times. She plodded back into the kitchen. “For you, Marion. Some guy.”

  Louise and Marion both rose.

  “Where you off to?” Cabby asked Louise sourly. “Catching the night train for Louisville?”

  Louise drew herself up. “If you must know, I’m on duty tonight. I have to iron my uniform.”

  “Scooting off home tomorrow, then, are—” The music from the radio abruptly changed to an announcer’s baritone.

  Ruthie turned up the volume and froze like a department store mannequin, elbow crooked, hand raised to the knob.

  A foreboding voice filled the white-tiled kitchen: “—from Japanese Imperial headquarters, by proclamation of Emperor Hirohito, Japan has formally declared war on the United States of America. A declaration from the government of Germany is expected at any hour.”

  Chapter Four

  Masako Oakley peered around the edge of the apartment door, her dark eyes wide with an expression Louise couldn’t quite decipher. She had stretched the security chain to its limit.

  “Mrs. Oakley?” Louise asked. “Are you all right?”

  The brass chain rattled and fell with a clunk. Louise’s employer pulled the door wide. “Oh, Nurse Hunter, you cannot know how happy I am to see you. Such a horrendous day—and this he-bear I am married to, he is trying to kill himself.”

  Professor Oakley’s wife was a lovely woman, whose tilted eyes seemed to find a charming absurdity in much of what the world had to offer. Until tonight. Now Louise was alarmed to see dark circles smudging those eyes and stoop-shouldered weariness altering her graceful bearing. Usually so elegant in dress and grooming, Mrs. Oakley had scraped her hair into a limp, disheveled ponytail, and the poppy-flower-print hostess pajamas she’d worn the day before were now crushed and stained.

  “Nurse Hunter—thank god!” The he-bear staggered through the oak-paneled foyer dressed in a wrinkled plaid robe and leather slippers. His cheeks were flushed, lips tinged with blue.

  “You see,” the professor’s wife whispered, quick to relieve Louise of coat and uniform bag.

  “Professor! You’re supposed to be in bed.” The nurse grabbed his thick wrist; the pulse pounded under her touch. She felt his forehead: burning up. “Let me get you to your room.”

  Brown eyes hectic, he pushed her arm away. “Never mind me. Masako’s the one in danger. Tell her she must leave this city and leave it right away.” Robert Oakley coughed and then winced in pain. “After that…unconscionable air attack in Hawaii no…Japanese person will be safe in this country.” More rapid, wheezing breaths. “The radio said a man from Kyoto was…beaten on Forty-sixth Street…an engineer—it will only get worse.”

  Mrs. Oakley spread her arms helplessly. She seemed as near collapse as her husband.

  The nurse slipped an insistent arm around Professor Oakley’s waist and steered her patient down the long hall toward the bedrooms. Mrs. Oakley preceded them in a fluster. The professor veered suddenly, knocking a large celery-green vase off its pedestal table. The elegant object crashed in shards on the parquet floor. Louise winced. It looked ancient, but neither of the Oakleys seemed to notice the damage.

  The tiny woman grasped her husband’s other arm to help Louise support him. The professor rambled on, “If she won’t listen to me, maybe she’ll listen to you. Masako must leave New York…find a safe place…hunker down until saner heads prevail.”

  “Shush. Shush,” Louise said, as if she were speaking to a child. “Nothing will happen to Mrs. Oakley. This is a civilized country.” Alicia’s dire words concerning enemy aliens she pushed firmly to the back of her mind. “Now, calm down, Professor. If you keep this up, you’ll be no good to your wife at all.”

  He shook his head weakly. “Nurse Hunter, tell her—she’ll listen to you. She says you have a profundity—what did she call it? Oh, yes—a heart wisdom unlike any she’s seen in American women.”

  Heart wisdom? Given the excruciating blunders she’d made with men, Louise could hardly call herself wise in the heart department. Puzzled, she glanced over at the Japanese woman shouldering her husband’s bulky arm. Her face was pale, eyes expressionless.

  The sickroom at the end of the corridor smelled of stale sweat and fever. The only light came from a torchiere illuminating the ceiling and encouraging ominous shadows to clump in the corners of the large chamber. The exquisite hanging scrolls that gave the room a distinctly Asian beauty had retreated into darkness. Louise eased Professor Oakley across the room and onto the bed, where he collapsed against the feather pillows. His wife knelt to remove his slippers.

  “Cool water, Mrs. Oakley, quick.” Louise handed over the enamel basin from the bedside table and stripped off the professor’s robe and pajama top.

  “Yes. Yes. Whatever I can do.” The smaller woman scurried into the attached bathroom.

  “And a washcloth,” Louise called. After donning a protective gown, she began to mop her patient’s face. Then she gave him the first of several sponge baths. After a half-hour’s ministrations, the professor was cooler—and finally asleep.

  The Japanese woman, curled up on a slipper chair at the foot of the bed, breathed a relieved sigh. “He’s too much for me, Nurse Hunter. I must accept it—the attack in Hawaii has him all…bouleversé, and then, the final straw, a mob of boys stormed down the street chanting…hateful things…and he got like…like he was when you came.”

  Her English was fluid and precise, with an occasional charming inconsistency. Her accent, when Louise detected it at all, was more French than anything else, with only an intermittent clip in the intonation that must be the influence of her native Japanese.

  Louise removed her soaked gauze gown, folded it, and bagged it for the wash. Finally she could change into her uniform. “What were the boys yelling?”

  “Kill the Japs! Get Tojo! Young boys—some of them not yet in their teens—screaming Bombs over Tokyo! It was nightmarish, like those dreams where even the most innocent—babies, kittens—turn into demons. That’s when I ran to put the chain on the door.”

  “Have you been alone all day?”

  “I might as well have been. Lillian Bridges, one of Robert’s friends from the university, stopped by with flowers after the attacks were announced.” She fluttered her hand to her chest. “What good are chrysanthemums at a time like this? And then my maid called and, how you say, fired me? Now, the super, he won’t answer my calls. I was so frightened that you would not come.”

  “I would never abandon a patient.” Louise was indignant. “And as for the others, well…I don’t know about the maid, but…” Louise recalled the name engraved on a brass plate in the building’s lobby. “The super’s name is Kaiser, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I know. He’s German…he’s terrified, too. But…tell me the truth, now, Nurse Hunter…have these horrendous bombings turned me into a monster?”

  “You’re not a monster to me,” Louise assured her, as they moved toward the kitchen. The previous four nights, while the professor slept, the two women had talked over cups of steaming tea unlike any Louise had ever tasted. Green tea. Jasmine tea. The flavors of earth and of blossoms.

  Mrs. Oakley, a true citizen of the world, was the most sophisticated person Louise had ever met. She’d been born in Tokyo, but, as the daughter of a senior Japanese diplomat, had grow
n up in the embassies of Moscow and Paris. Her manners, speech, and dress seemed more European than Oriental. After studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, she’d alienated her rigidly traditional family by refusing to accept the marriage they’d arranged for her. She’d remained in Paris when her father was recalled to Japan, and she’d heard nothing from them—even after her whirlwind courtship and marriage to Professor Oakley.

  Imagine, Louise thought. Just imagine such a life—sounds like something from a book.

  And Mrs. Oakley’s recollection of meeting her future husband at a Montparnasse gallery had seemed like the height of romance. “Seeing him now, so ill,” the Japanese woman had told her. “You wouldn’t believe what Robert was like when he first complimented one of my canvases. The vitality of him. That gleam in his eye. I was galvanized. I felt exactly what they call un coup de foudre.”

  Yes, Louise thought, remembering.

  Tonight, the two women again settled in at the scrubbed-wood kitchen table, and Mrs. Oakley said, “Robert insists that I leave the country—but I don’t want to. In every way but on paper, I am an American. I bless the fate that brought me here—to freedom.”

  “Not an American?”

  “No. The leaders in Washington ban Asians from citizenship by law. You didn’t know that?”

  Louise felt her jaw drop. “No…even if you marry an American citizen?”

  Mrs. Oakley nodded slowly. “Asian exclusion, they call it.”

  Louise shook her head. “Is there no way to get around it?”

  “Well…Robert could petition his Congressman to seek a special exception. It would have to go before the full Congress, and they don’t always vote yes. We’ve been slow to start that process. You must have a great deal of influence, and we’re not certain…And I’ve been consumed with my paintings…Robert with his work…Now…” She gazed into space, biting her lip.

  “What if you do have to leave the country?” The kettle whistled, and Louise rose to pour hot water into a squat cast-iron pot.