by Dana Sherman
Victor usually ate lunch alone at his desk and today was no exception. He had been invited several times, through his translator, to join the rest of the gang at the restaurant where they always ate just down the block from the small short wave radio station in Berlin where he worked. He had turned down the offers enough times that finally they only occasionally bothered to ask him anymore. The staff tried to be nice to him, but he had gone out of his way to be bitter and standoffish. He figured it was best in the long run.
He would get no company at lunch, but it would help him preserve his role as a friendless, hateful man willing to sell out his country. Not that the people he worked with weren't friendly. They were almost too friendly for Victor's tastes. They laughed and joked, had their little romances and rivalries. He had to keep reminding himself that these people were Nazis.
They were the enemy.
He remembered how he felt when he first came. The pretty receptionist Karla who kept a photograph of her soldier boyfriend on her desk had infuriated him. It seemed almost indecent for her to claim to love anyone. She was working for a government bent on ruling the world and making slaves of all humanity. But over the weeks and months he had begun to realize that Karla was no different from millions of American and British receptionists who worried about their boyfriends overseas. She didn't know what she was doing was wrong. She simply believed what her government told her. She always listened to the official government news reports on the radio. Her face shone with joy when she heard of a German victory and she cried when she heard of a defeat. It wasn't her fault she happened to be German. Victor had grown to feel sorry for her.
Victor had never spoken to Karla. He had never spoken directly to anyone. His German was no better than most Americans, although as the weeks and months went by, he had picked up some words, and could order in a restaurant and ask where the men's room was in a bar by now. All communication went through his interpreter, a pleasant young lieutenant in the German army. He would try to translate whatever went on in the station. To make "Herr Arnold feel at home" he said. But sometimes the jokes and banter came too fast around the station and the staff would be left in helpless laughter, Victor feeling left out and alone.
No one called him Victor anymore, of course. He was Herr Arnold to everyone there. He had never become close enough to anyone even to warrant the use of Jonathan. He never heard a word of English except from his translator. He hadn't heard from the British government in months. He had known that it would be a long time between contacts, but no one had ever told him how a contact would come through. He had no idea what to wait for, what to listen to. Just keep doing the Jonathan Arnold routine, they had told him, until you are contacted and told to stop. That had been nearly six months ago and he had not heard a word from them since.
He had decided to do Jonathan Arnold on the radio with a strident Western voice because it was the only voice he could do. He'd had an extremely unpopular high school teacher from Texas with a strong western accent and he was not above making his classmates laugh at recess with exaggerated impersonations of the way this unfortunate teacher spoke. He laughed to think of himself at 16, doing schoolyard impressions, and now doing the same voice as a double agent in Germany decades later.
He sat at the desk, eating his sandwich and drinking his coffee. He welcomed the time alone. He had one hour per day to be Victor Comstock instead of Jonathan Arnold, even if no one else could know it. He looked longingly at the object in his hand. It was the only thing he had left from his old life.
Allied intelligence had ordered him not to take any photographs with him, no letters with his real name on them, no keepsakes, no souvenirs. Nothing that could allow the Nazis to trace his true identity. He had obeyed the instructions to the letter. Except for this one item. It was a silver hair comb inscribed with the initials B.R. It had wound up in his hand after he had kissed Betty Roberts in the hall that day. That last day he had seen her.
Most likely the last time he ever would see her. He had heard the strange voice coming down the hall calling her name and he had bolted. He hadn't noticed her hair comb had fallen out of her hair and was clutched in his palm until he was waiting for his contact to show up and give him further instructions. Then he had been unable to part with it. He hid it in the bottom of a box of paper clips on his desk, only taking it out to look at it when he knew he was alone.
Who is Scott Sherwood? he wondered. Betty had said he was the man whom Victor had sent to replace him in his absence. Victor racked his brain trying to recall the name. No, nothing. He had never known anyone with that name. Was the problem with him? Was the amnesia from the bomb in London still strong enough to block the name of a genuine acquaintance, or was this Scott Sherwood something more sinister than that? Was he an Allied agent perhaps, sent to spy on the station and make sure Victor had no contact with them. If he was, had he gotten any information out of Betty? Was he a German agent perhaps? Had the Germans found out his identity? Were they watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake. What did they say in their rapid German just before he walked into the room? Was this Scott Sherwood watching Betty, waiting for her to slip? Who was this man? Victor felt himself beginning to panic. No, this won't do. If I become paranoid, if I start seeing sabotage everywhere, I will fall apart. I am here to do a job. The allied cause is worth whatever I have to go through. I need have no fear that Betty will ever tell. She has the nerves of an iceberg when she puts her mind to it.
The face of Betty Roberts came unbidden to his mind. He hadn't seen her in months now. He had expected her face to grow dimmer with time. He would adapt, he would adjust. But it hadn't worked out that way. Every day her countenance was as clear as that late night at WENN. He would see her in every girl he passed on the streets of Berlin as he walked to work. Every waitress, every cash register girl took on her appearance. Her quiet loveliness had gotten him through days of Jonathan Arnold, through hundreds of lonely nights in his room with nothing but German radio to break the silence. He now understood why soldiers carried pin-ups with them into battle. Betty Roberts face in his imagination was his Betty Grable or Rita Hayworth. A symbol of innocence, of decency, of Americanism, of all that was good and pure and noble. She was what he was fighting for.
If he ever got back he would tell her what she meant to him. He only regretted never telling her before he left for London. But before he left for London he had no idea how important she really was. He thought he was just going to do some broadcasts over the BBC. He would be back in a few months and things would get back to normal. It hadn't turned out that way.
He found out how much Betty meant to him the hard way, and now there was nothing he could do about it.
He tried to remember life when life was normal. When the big worries of the day were getting new sponsors or paying the electric bill or keeping Hilary and Jeff from taking their personal squabbles on the air. He vaguely remembered a time when struggling to survive meant adapting a modern Hamlet, putting on a call-in show, or writing the Loonyville sketch.
Through it all he had watched Betty grow. She had come to him so green, such a cornfed little thing. Yet, not really what he had always imagined a girl from the Midwest to be. When Mr. Gianetti had told him he had selected a Miss Betty Roberts from some godforsaken place called Moosehead to be the winner of the writing contest, Victor had rolled his eyes. She would probably come in here with a gingham dress and a big smile. Her every other word would be Gosh or Golly. It would be enough to make him sick. He dreaded her arrival. Betty had surprised him. No, Betty had shocked him. She was more intelligent, more professional, more creative than any girl he had ever worked with. And unlike most girls he had worked with in the theatrical profession, she seemed more interested in doing her job than in using the office as a place to catch a husband or break into show business. Betty was interested in writing, nothing else. By the end of the day, Mr. Gianetti was gone to the hospital to dry out from the alcohol problem he'd had for years, and Betty had been hired as a full time writer.
The people at WENN were his family. Had been for years. He had no living relatives. That was one of the reasons why the allied intelligence forces had asked him to go on this assignment. His parents were both gone. He'd had a brother once. Gerald had been killed in the Great War at the age of 19.
Victor had only been 12 then. He didn't have strong memories of Gerald anymore. He had been miserable at first, but over the years, he began to miss the idea of an older brother more than the person himself. No other relations of any kind. No family at all, just a conglomerate of people working in a radio station in Pittsburgh who made up the best family anyone could hope for.
He had enjoyed his time in New York. Being connected to the bright lights of Broadway. The glamour of the Manhattan stage scene, lunch at Sardi's, mentions of his name in the theatre columns of the New York newpapers, the occasional meeting with a Broadway star.
He remembered the first time he had seen Hilary Booth. She was appearing in The Rivals, a new play which had gotten some decent reviews. He was eating dinner at one of the swankier nightclubs with his party and across the club Miss Booth and her co-stars were laughing boisterously, filled with joy at the good reviews, the good food, and most of all, the good liquor. She was beautiful and regal. Floating on a cloud on fame and champagne. He had left New York soon after. Took over management at WENN. He had grown weary of Broadway, of producers afraid of anything more innovative than another romantic musical. Of prima donnas and starlets, gold diggers and angels. He wanted something small where he could make his presence known.
When, a year later, Hilary Booth and her husband Jeff Singer had appeared in his office, magnanimously "agreeing" to appear on his little station, he had grabbed their services. It was 1935, the New Deal had started, but it had not yet hit the theatre business, and the Depression was still very bad. Hilary had fallen on hard times. She had lost her role in The Rivals to Grace Cavendish and was reduced to touring company work.
But Victor knew that behind the still glamorous face, the impeccable taste in clothing, and the affected manner, Hilary Booth was also a genuine talent. Broadway politics had kicked her out of New York, just as it had done to him.
Jeff was a charming and talented leading man. It would be worth paying salaries that were above average for a small Pittsburgh station to keep two performers like that on his station. Victor had never told Hilary he had seen her that night at the nightclub, laughing and dancing and looking every inch the true star. It would be too humiliating for her. He knew she was sensitive about how far she felt she'd fallen.
The silence was deafening. Victor wished he had joined the others at lunch.
Anything was better than this silence, this loneliness. He opened the window. The November air was chilly, but fresh and welcome. A child played on the street below, bouncing a ball to a German rhyme. He watched the little girls golden curls bounce in rhythm with the ball. Would he ever get out of here, he wondered. Would anyone ever come back for him, or had they forgotten him? Had it been decided in some high level military office that he was expendable or that retrieving him would be too risky. He had no relatives after all. Its not like anyone would miss him. Well, no one the government knew about anyway.
He heard the sound of his coworkers coming up the stairs, and shut the window again. The little girl had grown tired of the ball and was now running up her front stoop and jumping down over and over again. Victor tossed the papers from his sandwich and the glass bottle from his soda in the trash bin. He slipped the hair comb quickly under the paper clips as the sound of the staff ascending the stairs grew louder.
"Good afternoon, Herr Arnold" the translator smiled broadly. "The café has a new special lunch. Won't you join us tomorrow". He seemed genuinely interested in being friendly. What a tragedy, Victor thought, for not the first time, that he is on the wrong side.
It did him no good, Victor thought, to isolate himself. Perhaps joining these people for lunch would give him opportunity to find out something of value he could pass on to British Intelligence. If the British Intelligence ever came back. As long as he did not reveal anything of himself, he would be fine.
He smiled back. He had not smiled in many days. It was nice to do it again.
It would be good to have something to look forward to tomorrow.
"Sure, why not."
The End
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