Frederick's American Café

Chapter 6

Wentworth woke with a throbbing head. A quick inspection of his forehead revealed a sharp pain and blood still wet.


Hemmert had not shot him after all. He had merely brought the butt of his pistol down upon Frederick's head hard enough to knock him out. The German had then ransacked the office, looking for the combination to open the safe but, as Anne had already discovered, it was a pointless exercise.


In his frustration, he had left the place a mess. It would be best to avoid Hemmert for a while, give him a chance to cool off.


Frederick supposed he should be grateful to be alive. Maybe he was but it was hard to tell with such a headache.


He picked himself up off the floor of his office and made his way to the kitchen. Harville stopped him almost immediately to exclaim over his injury, fretting over him like a mother hen.


Frederick explained that he was on his way to see Harville's wife, with a brief detour to Charlie to grab a bottle or two of whisky for medicinal purposes.


"You can't go into the café looking like that, boss!" Harville warned. "What will our customers think when they see you? Let me go to the bar while you take the back way to the kitchen."


He might be a fool with principles, but he recognized the soundness of Harville's suggestion and followed it.


His cook was surprised to see him come in through the back door in such a state. She clucked and fussed rather like her husband before she patched him up as well as she could. The stitches were not her best work but she didn't let him drink his way through it and he had squirmed more than usual.


As she wrapped a bandage around his head, he told her to pass onto Lulu the invitation to join him in the Presidential suite tonight. He had never bothered sleeping upstairs in one of the guest rooms before, but he'd had a hard day and he could use a little droit de seigneur right about now. Mrs. Harville didn't approve of Lulu, not since she had caught the French singer flirting with Mr. Harville; odds were that Lulu wouldn't get the message, but Frederick's head probably hurt too much anyway.


He took the two opened bottles of whisky sent from the bar and ducked out the back way to his room to change into a clean shirt. The laundry really was making a killing this week. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and decided to avoid mirrors over the next few days. Halfway presentable once more, he snuck in through the front door and got the key to the suite from Harville. The man wanted to chitchat about what had happened to Frederick's forehead and whether the hotel should make a report to Hemmert, but all Frederick wanted to do was go upstairs and lie down. He wasn't trying to be rude but he couldn't help it.


He started up the stairs with a spring in his step but quickly rethought it when his head started pounding. Revising his plan, he climbed each tread slowly. It took longer and he could hear the mattress calling to him, but he was silent as a cat and his head did not feel any worse.


The top of the stairs ended abruptly. People could turn left or right to reach their rooms. Two steps below the top, Frederick heard noises and stopped to listen.


The sounds were of giggling, fumbling with keys, and kissing. After taking a moment to decipher the sounds, he clearly heard a man -- Wilkes! -- whisper, "I never thought this night would come!"


Frederick mentally groaned. The last thing he needed right now was to see Anne's husband pawing at her and carrying her over the threshold for their wedding night. He leaned against the wall and shut his eyes, waiting for the happy couple to clear the hall.


While the newlyweds were still slobbering over each other, he felt a gentle tap on his arm. He propped one eye open to see what was going on and saw Anne standing on the step below, looking up at him with concern writ deeply across her face.


He blinked and stared at her with both eyes as he tried to figure out who was with Wilkes, and what kind of man cheated on his wedding night.


Then came a quiet snicker that sounded like Russell Elliot. Had Frederick only imagined he had been listening to Mr. and Mrs. Wilkes when he had, in fact, overheard Russell instead? And who was with Russell? The only logical answer was Lulu, which would have ended Frederick's hope for the evening had he been serious about it.


However, it removed any squeamishness he had about looking upon the pair.


He poked his head into the hall to confirm his hypothesis. He was completely unprepared for what he saw.


It was indeed Russell Elliot, and it was also Guillaume Wilkes. They were grasping each other, embracing tightly, like lovers.


Frederick immediately pulled his head back into the stairway in a panic, nearly dropping the bottles he carried. Anne's hand covered his mouth before he could make a sound. Her face betrayed none of the surprise he felt. He started to speak but she merely increased the pressure from her hand.


Time passed, maybe a minute. The men in the hall finally unlocked a door and disappeared into their hotel room.


Anne released her hold on him. "What the devil is going on here?" he hissed angrily.


"We can talk in private," she replied, her eyes promising a full accounting.


As he had been on his way to a room, and as going down and up the stairs one more time tonight seemed like one time too many, he took her to the Presidential suite on the opposite end of the hall from the room now occupied by Wilkes and Elliot.


Anne's answers were not immediately forthcoming. She began by locking the door and walking through the suite, shutting the curtains, looking under the bed and peeking in the wardrobe and small en-suite bath.


When she was confident of their privacy, she faced him once more. "What would you like to know?"


"You're a spy." It was the only thing that made his day make any sense at all.


Anne blinked, momentarily taken aback. "I was not expecting you to lead with that."


Her calm lack of a disavowal angered him. "How about, did you realize your husband was having an affair with your brother when you married him?"


“Of course. I wouldn’t have married him otherwise.” She was matter-of-fact as she began pacing the room. “I’ve always known Russell was special. It's just that I never thought he’d find someone to make him truly happy. And then he met Guillaume, and it was an immediate and profound change for him. But then Russell got scared it wasn't going to work: they would get caught, or Guillaume wouldn't be able to tolerate the danger or suspense. Russell was going to give him up, you know.


“It reminded me so much of you and Rome; he was about to make the same mistake I did. I couldn’t let him do it,” she said, slowing her steps and thinking too much of her own past. “It was Guillaume who came up with the idea of immigrating to England but England refused to admit him. We were unable to use our contacts to cut through the red tape, and Guillaume’s position in Alexandria was becoming more and more precarious.”


She shook her head at the difficulties they had faced. “In the end, it made everything so much simpler if I just married him. Being my husband guarantees him citizenship. He can move to England and live at Kellynch for the duration of the war, and no one will suspect a thing. And when it’s over, really over, they’ll have each other.”


“And you’re okay with this... arrangement?”


Her smile now was sad, wistful. "It's not like I had hopes for my own marital bliss. I walked away from love once; I’m not supposed to get a second chance."


That last line was meant as an apology for him but he still felt too bitter to swallow it. “This is the kind of man you marry? Guillaume Wilkes is a --”


"Keep your voice down," she cautioned him. "If anyone finds out--"


"The Gestapo already believe that Russell is a spy and Wilkes is a Jew. There's not much room for worse."


She betrayed the first flicker of panic. "How do you know that?"


"Hemmert confided in me just before he tried to cave in my skull for not opening the safe to him."


Every line of his appearance confirmed this as truth. She stepped forward and reached out a hand to his forehead but stopped herself. She had already hurt him enough. "I'm so very sorry. I meant to spare you pain all those years ago. Seeing you suffer now makes all that sacrifice seem meaningless."


Frederick's mouth twisted in a frown. "Don't tell me you did anything for me. Don't tell me I meant anything more to you than a convenient prop. You used me, Anne; you and Russell both. And when you were done with me you sent me on my way without a backward glance."


"Freddy, that's not true, not a word of it. I had to cut out my heart to give you up. That's the only way I could keep going, that's the only choice I had."


He did not bother to speak his disbelief but she read it in his looks all the same.


"Freddy, please understand me," pleaded Anne. "When you proposed, I didn't think about my answer. I didn't need to. I wanted to marry you more than anything else I had ever wanted."


"But you changed your mind quick enough."


"That's not what happened," she disagreed. "Russell told... Well, names don't matter. Suffice it to say that there was a man living in Rome whom we could call upon for aid if we needed it in the course of our activities. He was well-connected with members of the Italian government but his loyalties were completely with England. Russell told him that you and I had decided to get married and this man called me into his office, such as it was, for a long chat. He wanted to know how well I knew you, whether I could trust you, whether I had already confided any secrets. When I told him I planned on quitting and moving to America with you, he disabused me of the notion. Espionage is not a career from which one can easily retire. I wasn't allowed to walk away.”


“So he’s the one who decided for you?” asked Frederick. “The one who ordered you to ditch me?” It made it no better to know that it was not Russell Elliot but some faceless Englishman.


Anne was quiet. Her face was stony and vulnerable by turns. "It wasn't that simple. I don't think I can explain it satisfactorily. In the end, I made the decision. I thought it was for the best. I made the sacrifice for Russell, and England, and you too."


This made him angry. "Don't tell me you did it for me!"


"I couldn't walk away; they made that clear to me,” Anne pleaded with him, taking a step or two closer to him. “Which meant I'd continue as before: long periods of tedium interspersed with moments of danger, and all of it covered by the pall of secrecy. Going to America, even briefly, was out of the question. Imagine it, Freddy: friends I'd never let you meet, whole swaths of my life I'd never discuss. Out of nowhere, I'd disappear for a couple days or weeks and then return with nothing to say for myself, like it never happened. How would you have stood it?”


He saw it from her perspective and felt his anger softening. “I would’ve figured it out eventually.”


"Yes, but what if you weren’t the only one?” she asked quietly. “This is a brutish business, and there’s all sorts of stories of family and friends being hurt or killed. Sometimes it’s just an accident, just the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time, the sort of thing that can happen to anybody in a war. But at other times, it is well-planned, almost surgical. I was forbidden from telling you the whole truth. You would have been defenseless. If anything had happened to you, I don’t think I’d ever forgive myself.”


She reached up and loosely fingered the bandage wrapped around his head. “And that’s the grand irony of it,” she admitted. “Had I realized it wouldn’t have made a difference, I would never have given you up.”


Anne was giving him a look that Frederick recognized from the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi. One afternoon, they had stood before the fountain and emptied their pockets, tossing coins into the water to wish for a kiss.


Finally he spoke. “Nineteen, four, twenty-six.”


As romantic gestures went, it didn’t appear to go very far. Anne knit her brows and looked at him with concern. “Freddy, are you concussed?”


“Nineteen, four, twenty-six is the combination to the safe,” he explained. “Mrs. Wilkes, you need to leave. Hemmert will surely be here first thing in the morning to take you all into custody until his warrants arrive on Thursday. If you don’t leave now, you may not get another chance.”


“I can’t abandon the others, and I can’t take them with me," reasoned Anne. "Russell is hardly in any condition to wander in the desert right now; he's not fully recovered from the last time. And Elizabeth would turn us in before she’d ever consent to such a thing."


"And your husband?" Frederick prompted. He felt the need to stress Anne's relationship with the man. Little as it meant, it was too easy to forget just now. Opportunity had crept up on him and he was practically holding her in his arms as it was.


"You expect me to march down the hall and inform him that he needs to cut short his wedding night?" She lifted an eyebrow mischievously as Frederick tried not to look uncomfortable with the question.


Before he could come up with a reply, she continued, "Besides, you said it yourself the other day: you're the only one who knows the combination. When Hemmert forces you to open the safe tomorrow, he'll know you helped us if I empty it tonight. Don't provoke him. You're in enough trouble as it is with him and I don’t want you hurt any more."


"Am I supposed to hand you over to him instead?" asked he. "No, Anne, that's not happening. You need to go. Get your things from the safe. I'll have to involve Mrs. Harville, but we can hide you in the cellar until we can smuggle you back on the train to Cairo."


“Don’t involve Mrs. Harville, and don’t worry about us. We've been in tight places before; we know how to handle ourselves. It's yourself you should be worried about. If Hemmert suspects you of helping us, even if you're innocent, you could get in big trouble, Freddy. Stay safe. Now that I know where to find you I plan on coming back here one day, all by myself, just to make sure you're staying out of trouble.”


"Just you?" he asked, noticing that detail.


"I couldn't possibly bring my sister; after this trip, I doubt she'll go abroad ever again. And as a known spy, it isn't smart for Russell to wander far from home. And I'm afraid that after all the pains we've taken to get Guillaume into England, it would be ungrateful for him to leave it. No, I shall be quite alone next time. Promise me you'll take care until we see each other again?"


“I promise.” He kissed her, and six long years came rushing back.