The Saboteurs (Men at War 5)

She put the armpit of the sweater to her nose, sniffed with more than a little apprehension, grunted Ugh—then threw it to the couch.

When she next adjusted her skirt, pulling it up at the waistband and twisting it slightly, the wool caused her buttocks to itch and she found herself vigorously scratching her fanny with the fingernails of both hands.

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Those unfortunate events now handled, Ann arranged the candles to her satisfaction, then examined herself in the mirror and fixed her hair mussed by the sweater.

Looking at herself, she could not help but think of Sara Spenser and the profile of her that she had spent the day writing.

For most of the last week, Ann had followed the nineteen-year-old, spunky, petite brunette as she’d served with the Light Rescue Section of London’s Civil Defence.

Under a 1914 tin hat, draped in baggy woolen men’s pants and heavy overcoat and clunking around in “Wellies”—men’s rubber Wellington boots—three sizes too big, Sara worked twenty-four-hour shifts, carefully but quickly digging through rubble to uncover victims whose homes or businesses had been bombed and then carrying them by canvas stretcher to the buses converted into ambulances that waited nearby.

It had taken a couple of days—and one long, teary night over pints of stout at the Prince’s Bangers & Mash Pub—to get Sara to open up, really open up, but Ann had, and she learned that Sara was all that was left of her immediate Spenser family.

Her brothers had died in battle, and her parents and grandparents were killed during a blitz when a series of bombs leveled their neighborhood. There were somewhere some second cousins twice or thrice removed, but for all the contact between the families, she said, “They may as well be bloody Aborigines. Could be dead, too. Who knows? That’s how close we are.”

Ann was not sure if it was Sara’s matter-of-fact delivery, or the realization that Sara was about Ann’s age and given some tragic turn Sara’s story could be Ann’s story, or all the beer they had consumed—or a combination thereof—but Ann was terribly saddened for Sara.

Sara, however, would have none of it. She would not accept pity, she said. “Others have lost everything, yet here I am alive and well and with my life ahead of me. I can—I must—carry on.”

Ann had found strength in Sara Spenser. She was impressed with her brave front, and perhaps even more so with her ability to find humor in some of the most difficult of times.

Sara had turned heads with her laughter that night in the noisy pub as she told Ann about the time her Light Rescue Section had been removing rubble of another bombed-out building, first evacuating victim after victim still alive to the ambulances, then dealing with the dead, then uncovering an older gentlemen, looking a bit bewildered but clearly alive, pants around his ankles and surrounded by debris one would expect to find in a water closet.

Sara had taken a deep swallow of her stout, then recalled, “As I helped him pull up his trousers, I asked if he was all right. He nodded and said, ‘It’s just that it’s rather odd that one moment, here I am sitting on the loo, and the next, when I pull the chain, down comes the bloody house!’”

Ann had spent exhausting days running around London’s bomb-debris-filled streets to track down stories and interview people, then often-sleepless nights awaiting the haunting sounds of the air-raid sirens.

More than once she had wondered why she didn’t just go home to Atlanta…or even back to Bryn Mawr. Return to the safety and sanity of the States. But then she realized that she might not meet a person such as Sara otherwise, and she knew there was no way she could not be here. Writing about the war had become her duty.

In the glow of the candles in the mirror, Ann smiled at herself.

And I didn’t really come here for the work. I came here for Dick.

And then her throat caught.

Where the hell is he? It’s been almost two weeks since he left and not a word. For all I know he could be lost or captured or… She tried to force herself not to think it…dead.

Although Major Richard M. Canidy wore the uniform of the United States Army Air Forces, Ann Chambers knew that the dark-haired aviator worked for an outfit called the Office of Strategic Services. More than worked for it—was pretty high up in it.

It was more or less known that the OSS was a military intelligence operation, a secretive collection of spies, analysts, and such from various branches of the military and the government and corporate America, some very highly connected, reflecting in part the fact that its head, Colonel William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, enjoyed the confidence and close friendship of President Franklin D. Roosevelt going back to their days in law school at Columbia.

But that was all she knew—despite her sniffing around on the side—and it was more than Canidy was willing to tell her. Even this current mission of his was one he had said not one word about.

Except to say good-bye here at the flat in a very special, very personal way.

Which was why, she thought, and made a mischievous grin in the mirror, the flat would always be kept only for her. Her and Dick.

If he ever comes back.

Dick, with the warmth and smell of Ann on her coat and sweater, thought that he had nearly died and gone to heaven. He moved under their weight and caused a spring in the couch seat to creak.

He looked toward Ann and saw her eyes dart in the mirror, searching.

After a moment, she turned toward the couch.

What the hell. Now or never.