The Librarian Spy(2)
“Confidentiality agreements.”
“I won’t sign anything I haven’t read fully.” She lifted the pile.
The text was drier than the content of some of the more lackluster rare books at the Library of Congress. Regardless, she scoured every word while Mr. Edmunds glared irritably at her, as if he could will her to sign with his eyes. He couldn’t, of course. She waited ten minutes for his arrival; he could wait while she saw what she was getting herself into.
Everything indicated she would not share what was discussed in the room about her potential job opportunity. It was nothing all too damning and so she signed, much to the great, exhaling impatience of Mr. Edmunds.
“You speak German and French.” He peered at her over a pair of black-rimmed glasses, his brown eyes probing.
“My father was something of a linguist. I couldn’t help but pick them up.” A visceral ache stabbed at her chest as a memory surfaced from years ago—her father switching to German in his excitement for an upcoming trip with her mother for their twenty-year anniversary. That trip. The one from which her parents had never returned.
“And you’ve worked with photographing microfilm.” Mr. Edmunds lifted his brows.
A frown of uncertainty tugged at her lips. When she first started at the Library of Congress, her duties had been more in the area of archival than a typical librarian role as she microfilmed a series of old newspapers that time was slowly eroding. “I have, yes.”
“Your government needs you,” he stated in a matter-of-fact manner that brooked no argument. “You are invited to join the Office of Strategic Services—the OSS—under the information gathering program called the Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications.”
Her mind spun around to make sense of what he’d just said, but her lips flew open to offer her knee-jerk opinion. “That’s quite the mouthful.”
“IDC for short,” he replied without hesitation or humor. “It’s a covert operation obtaining information from newspapers and texts in neutral territories to help us gather intel on the Nazis.”
“Would I require training?” she asked, unsure how knowing German equipped her to spy on them.
“You have all the training you need as I understand it.” He began to reassemble the file in front of him. “You would go to Lisbon.”
“In Portugal?”
He paused. “It is the only Lisbon of which I am aware, yes.”
No doubt she would have to get there by plane. A shiver threatened to squeeze down her spine, but she repressed it. “Why am I being recommended for this?”
“Your ability to speak French and German.” Mr. Edmunds held up his forefinger. “You know how to use microfilm.” He ticked off another finger. “Fred Kilgour recommends your keen intellect.” There went another finger.
That was a name she recognized.
She aided Fred the prior year when he was microfilming foreign publications for the Harvard University Library. After the months she’d spent doing as much for the Library of Congress, the process had been easy to share, and he had been a quick learner.
“And you’re pretty.” Mr. Edmunds sat back in his chair, the final point made.
The compliment was as unwarranted in such a setting as it was unwelcome. “What does my appearance have to do with any of this?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Beauties like yourself can get what they want when they want it. Except when you scowl like that.” He nodded his chin up. “You should smile more, Dollface.”
That was about enough.
“I did not graduate top of my class from Pratt and obtain a much sought-after position at the Library of Congress to be called ‘Dollface.’” She pushed up to standing.
“And you’ve got steel in that spine, Miss Harper.” Mr. Edmunds ticked the last finger.
She opened her mouth to retort, but he continued. “We need this information so we best know how to fight the Krauts. The sooner we have these details, the sooner this war can be over.”
She remained where she stood to listen a little longer. No doubt he knew she would.
“You have a brother,” he went on. “Daniel Harper, staff sergeant of C Company in Second Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, in the 101st Airborne Division.”
The Airborne Division. Her brother had run toward the fear of airplanes despite her swearing off them.
“That’s correct,” she said tightly. Daniel would never have been in the Army were it not for her. He would be an engineer, the way he’d always wanted.
Mr. Edmunds took off his glasses and met her gaze with his small, naked eyes. “Don’t you want him to come home sooner?”
It was a dirty question meant to slice deep.
And it worked.
The longer the war continued, the greater Daniel’s risk of being killed or wounded.
She’d done everything she could to offer aid. When the ration was only voluntary, she had complied long before it became law. She gave blood every few months, as soon as she was cleared to do so again. Rather than dance and drink at the Elk Club like her roommates, Ava spent all her spare time in the Production Corps with the Red Cross, repairing uniforms, rolling bandages, and doing whatever was asked of her to help their men abroad.
She even wore red lipstick on a regular basis, springing for the costly tube of Elizabeth Arden’s Victory Red, the civilian counterpart to the Montezuma Red servicewomen were issued. Ruby lips were a derisive biting of the thumb at Hitler’s war on made-up women. And she would do anything to bite her thumb at that tyrant.