They hardly spoke in the car. She parked and went to the cafe lounge while he checked in. Had she encountered a friend, she would have needed an explanation on the spot and a story for her husband. But she had no such worry; she felt only a bittersweet excitement. What she was doing gave her not the slightest guilty feeling. She had no wrong intent. She liked Palmer Kirby. It was a long, long time since a man had seemed so attractive to her. He liked her, too. In fact, this was a genuine little wartime romance, so decorous as to be almost laughable; an unexpected flash of melancholy magic, which, would soon be over forever. It was not in the least like her aborted drunken peccadillo with Kip Tollever.
Well, I guess this is it,” Kirby said, falling in the chair opposite her in the gangling way which always struck her as boyish, for all his grizzled head and sharply lined face. They sat looking at each other until the drinks came.
“Your happiness,” he said.
“Oh, that. I’ve had that. It’s all in the past.” She sipped. “Did they give you the connection to Lisbon that you wanted?”
“Yes, but the Pan Am Clippers are jammed. I may be hung up in Lisbon for days.”
“Well, I wish I had that in prospect. I hear that’s becoming the gayest city in Europe.”
“Come along.”
“Oh, Palmer, don’t tease me. Dear me, I was supposed to call you Fred, wasn’t I? And now I find I’ve been thinking of you all along as Palmer. Fred — well, there are so many Freds. You don’t strike me as Fred.”
“That’s very strange.” He drank at his highball.
“What is?”
“Anne called me Palmer. She never would call me anything else.”
Rhoda twirled the stem of her daiquiri glass. “I wish I had known your wife.”
“You’d have become good friends.”
“Palmer, what do you think of Pug?”
“Hm. That’s a tough one.” The engineer pushed his lips out ruefully. “My first impression was that he was a misplaced and — frankly — rather narrow-minded sea dog. But I don’t know. He has a keen intellect. He’s terrifically on the ball. That was quite a job he did on that waiter. He’s a hard man to know, really.”
Rhoda laughed. How right you are. After all these years, I don’t know him too well myself. But I suspect Pug’s really something simple and almost obsolete, Palmer. He’s a patriot. He’s not the easiest person to live with. He’s so goldarned single-minded.”
“Is he a patriot, or is he a Navy career man? Those are two different things.”
Rhoda tilted her head and smiled. “I’m not actually sure.”
“Well, I’ve come to admire him, that much I know.” Kirby frowned at his big hands, clasped around the drink on the table. “See here, Rhoda, I’m really a proper fellow, all in all. Let me just say this. You’re a wonderful woman. I’ve been a sad dull man since Anne died, but you’ve made me feel very much alive again, and I’m grateful to you. Does this offend you?”
“Don’t be a fool. It pleases me very much, and you know it does.” Rhoda took a handkerchief from her purse. “However, it’s going to be a little hard on my contentment for a day or two. Oh, damn.”
“Why I should think it would add to your contentment.”
“Oh, shut up, Palmer. Thanks for the drink. You’d better go to your plane.”
“Look don’t be upset.”
She smiled at him, her eyes tearful. “Why everything’s fine, dear. You might write, just once in a while. Just a friendly little scribble, so I’ll know you’re alive and well. I’d like that.”
“Of course I will. I’ll write the day I get home.”
“Will you really! That’s fine.” She touched her eyes with her handkerchief and stood. “Good-bye.”
He said, getting to his feet, “They haven’t called my plane.”
“No? Well, my chauffeuring job is finished, and I’m leaving you here and now.” They walked out of the lounge and shook hands in the quiet terminal. War had all but shut down the airport; most of the counters were dark. Rhoda squeezed Dr. Kirby’s hand, and standing on tiptoe, kissed him once on the lips. This in a way was strangest of all, reaching up to kiss a man. She opened her mouth. After all, it was a farewell.
“Good-bye. Have a wonderful trip.” She hurried away and turned a corner without looking back. She saw enough of the Emil Jannings movie to be able to talk about it to Pug.
Byron at last wrote the report on his adventures in Poland. Victory Henry, suppressing his annoyance over the five vapid pages, spent an afternoon dictating to his yeoman everything he remembered of Byron’s tale. His son read the seventeen-page result next day with astonishment. “Ye gods, Dad, what a memory you have.”
“Take that and fix it any way you want. Just make sure it’s factually unchallengeable. Combine it with your thing and let me have it back by Friday.”
Victor Henry forwarded the patched report to the Office of Naval Intelligence, but forgot his idea of sending a copy to the President. The cool autumn days went by and Berlin began taking on an almost peacetime look and mood.” Byron lounged around the Grunewald house, knotting his forehead by the hour over one book after another from Leslie Slote’s list. Three or four times a week he played tennis with his father; he was much the better player, but Pug, a steely plodder at first, wore him down and beat him. With food, exercise, and sun, however, Byron lost his famished look, regained strength, and started winning, which pleased Pug as much as it did him.
One morning he walked into his father’s office at the embassy and saw sitting on the floor; carefully roped up and ticketed with a tag in his own handwriting, the large valise of suits, shoes, and shirts he had left behind in Warsaw. It was a shocking little clue to the efficiency of the Germans. But he was glad to have the clothes, for American styles were idolized in Germany. He blossomed out as a dandy. The German girls in the embassy looked after the slender young man whenever he walked down the hall, casually a la mode, with heavy red-glinting brown hair, a lean face, and large blue eyes that widened when he wistfully smiled. But he ignored their inviting glances. Byron pounced on the mail every morning, searching in vain for a letter from Siena.
When the Fuhrer made his Reichstag speech offering peace to England and France, early in October, the propaganda ministry set aside a large block of seats in the front Opera House for foreign diplomats, and Pug took his son along. Living through the siege of Warsaw, and then reading
Hitler spoke this time in a reasonable, pedestrian tone, like an elder politician. In this sober style, the German leader began to utter such grotesque and laughable lies that Byron kept looking around for some amused reactions. But the Germans sat listening with serious faces. Even the diplomats gave way only here and there to a mouth twitch that might have been ironic.
A powerful Poland had attacked Germany, the little man in the gray coat said, and had attempted to destroy her. The brave Wehrmacht had not been caught unawares and had justly punished this insolent aggression. A campaign strictly limited to attack of military targets had brought quick total victory. The civilian population of Poland, on his personal orders, had not been molested, and had suffered no loss or injury, except in Warsaw. There again on his orders, the German commanders had pleaded with the authorities to evacuate their civilians, offering them safe-conduct. The Poles with criminal folly had insisted on holding defenseless women and children within the city.
To Byron, the brazenness of this assertion was stupefying. All the neutral diplomats had made desperate efforts for weeks to negotiate the evacuation of Warsaw’s women and children. The Germans had never even replied. It was not so much that Hitler was lying about this — Byron knew that the German nation was following a wild liar and had been for years, since
“Surely if forty-six million Englishmen can claim to rule over forty million square kilometers of the earth, then it cannot be wrong,” Hitler said in a docile, placating tone, holding up both hands, palms outward, “for eighty-two
