Julia, page 8
Slowly, the women moved out of the room, and Peachy reported the scorpion to the hotel clerk, who promised to take care of it.
By the time a two-ton truck rumbled to a stop in front of the hotel, Gregory had joined them, and Peachy had finally calmed down enough that she was no longer perspiring.
“Always check your bed before climbing in each night,” Gregory said.
“That’s not helping, Bateson,” Peachy said with a sniff.
He chuckled. “And your shoes.” Peachy glared at him, but Gregory wasn’t deterred. “The mosquitos are noiseless, so you won’t be forewarned,” he said. “There are also tarantulas; cockroaches; snakes, such as cobras; oh, and leeches—if you walk through the underbrush after it rains.”
Peachy shuddered. “This should have been in our training.”
“Would you have still come?” Gregory asked, sounding curious.
“I don’t know, honestly.” Peachy’s tight tone had softened though. “I hope I never come across a scorpion again. I mean, I’m going to have to shake out all my clothing from now on.”
“Give it some time,” Gregory said with an easy smile. “The beauty of this place will soon outshine any pesky scorpion.”
Dillon climbed out of the truck. “Are we waiting for something? Climb in.”
“After you, girls,” Gregory said.
Julia joined everyone inside the truck. The bumpy ride was less than ten minutes, thankfully, and they trundled past terraced rice paddies, flowering trees, and a pristine lake. Soon, they were escorted past a barbed-wire perimeter surrounding the tea plantation and toward a thatched-roof building at the top of a hill. Low lounge chairs lined the porch, and Julia imagined sitting in one and watching the sunset.
“This is the mess hall,” Dillon said. “People will be arriving soon for lunch, so you’ll be first in line.” He pointed down the hill, where a spread of small thatched buildings were scattered among crisscrossing walkways. “The offices are down there, about three hundred yards. Office hours are over by 5:00 p.m., and then you’ll still have two hours of sunlight to enjoy sports or whatever you prefer. We have tennis courts and a small golf course.”
Julia perked up at that information. She’d fit right in.
They entered the mess hall to find a buffet table set up. Julia could have eaten almost anything at this moment.
Peachy was busy telling anyone who’d listen about the scorpion in her drawer when in walked a familiar face: Betty MacDonald, whom Julia knew from DC.
“Julia!” Betty cried out. They embraced, then Betty drew away, her eyes dancing. “Look at you. Fresh off the train?”
“Nearly,” Julia said. “Do I look it?”
Betty was too polite to comment further; instead she said, “You’ll adjust in no time. Now, tell me how you got assigned to Ceylon.”
Julia sat with Betty at one of the tables after loading up a plate of food. She wasn’t about to take polite portions. She was starving. Betty was a former journalist with Scripps-Howard, and she’d drawn notice from the OSS because she spoke fluent Japanese—after living with a Japanese family in Hawaii. So she’d been brought over from New Delhi to Ceylon to work with the Morale Operations Division.
“You’re so tanned,” Julia commented.
Betty grinned. “Tennis. You play, right? I’ll take you on. Or maybe we can play doubles.”
Julia grinned back. “It’s a date.”
A man sat across from them, and Betty introduced him as Colonel Richard P. Heppner, who oversaw the registry office where Julia had been assigned.
“What’s your pedigree, Colonel Heppner?” Julia asked bluntly while keeping a smile on her face.
His eyes creased at the corners. “First of all, I go by Dick, and I suppose you mean, Where did I go to school?”
“I do.”
“Princeton, then Columbia Law School,” he said. “I’m an old associate of Donovan.”
“Ah, I was a research assistant to Donovan.”
“I’ve already heard. You’ll be working with me, Ms. McWilliams.” Dick tilted his head. “You must meet the other officers. I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to give you a rundown of their Ivy League credentials.”
Julia laughed and decided that teasing broke across all academics.
Dick called over Lieutenant Colonel Paul Helliwell and another officer named Byron Martin, who Julia discovered was from Pasadena too. Then a man by the name of Fisher Howe stopped by their table. Julia had heard of him since he’d been an assistant to General Donovan—but mostly had worked in London.
“I heard you were sent overseas,” Fisher said to Julia.
They chatted for a few minutes about what it had been like working directly for General Donovan, then Fisher headed out of the mess hall.
Over the next few days, Julia discovered her job was rather mundane. Sure, she had top security clearance at her registry job, but really, it meant running the files. Organizing. Cross-referencing. Updating master cards for Secret Intelligence on the names of the secret agents, their student recruits, and their assigned code names.
Julia’s memory had always served her well, and she continued to add to her memory the identity of all the undercover agents and their locations in jungle hideouts, where they could report on troop locations and bombing targets. She reviewed and funneled through their next set of instructions, knowing that everything was timely, and if she failed, lives would be lost. She was, quite literally, a keeper of the secrets, which identified her as a senior civilian intelligence officer, but at the very core, she felt like a filing clerk.
But when Heppner walked into her office one afternoon, things took a turn. “We’re sending men and equipment into Bangkok, where they can be our eyes and ears tuned to the Japanese troop movement.”
“Do you need the locations of the jungle hideouts?” Julia asked. There was a significant resistance growing.
“That’s exactly what I need,” Heppner said. “The indigenous resistance is gaining ground, but they need more support.”
“We’ll get it to them,” Julia said. “Give me about an hour, and I’ll have the locations for you to encode.”
“Perfect.” Heppner strode out of the office.
It was afternoons like this that Julia felt the value of her work.
A few days later, Julia met Peachy in the mess hall. Lunch consisted of egg hoppers with a coconut sauce called kiri hodi and a spoonful of creamy dhal. They rarely went outside of the mess hall because they didn’t have a lot of time for lunch, and they couldn’t be sure if the meat on another restaurant’s menu was actually cat—one thing Julia refused to try.
“I’ve found a way out of my daily tedium,” Julia said.
Peachy raised a brow. “Oh? I’m intrigued.”
Julia grinned.
Peachy leaned forward. “You’re in a festive mood. Are you in love? I saw you dancing a lot at the American officers’ club last night.”
Julia laughed, a bit too loudly, and a few heads turned. Peachy was a like a kid sister—too pesky sometimes. Dancing at the officers’ club was fun—the music ended at midnight, but many stayed on, singing beneath the bright moonlight, songs like “Lili Marlene,” “I’ll be Seeing You,” and “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”
“Not exactly,” Julia said in a lowered tone. “I’ve pulled some jokes on the bureaucrats.”
Peachy’s eyes widened. “Oh, do tell.”
“Well . . .” Julia looked about the cafeteria to make sure no one was paying them any mind. “I’ve sent out a few memos. One of them states that we’re implementing a new filing system that will be organized by the first letter of the last word of each document.”
Peachy covered her mouth to stifle a laugh.
“I’ve yet to get that approved, of course. I also sent out a notice to a department in Washington, DC that is late in sending their report.” She paused for dramatic effect. “I told them that if they’re late again, I’d fill the next Washington pouch with itching powder and virulent bacteriological diseases, then change all the numbers as well as translate the material into Sinhalese. Followed up, naturally, with destroying the English version.”
Peachy couldn’t hold back her laughter this time. It burst out, and when she was able to speak again, she gasped. “You didn’t. What will they think?”
Julia shrugged. “They’ll get a good laugh, that’s all, but I’d love to be a fly on the wall to watch their initial reaction.”
Peachy was still grinning, her skin flushed from laughing so hard. “Or a cockroach on the wall.”
Julia shuddered. She could handle almost any critter, within reason, but not cockroaches. She couldn’t stand the thought of them.
“I feel like a trapped bug half the time,” Peachy admitted. “Especially when I’m on night duty for cable traffic, either sending it to and from the Arakan, or the various OSS drops, and, of course, to Detachment 101.”
“You’re definitely underpaid,” Julia quipped.
They both laughed.
“What’s so funny over here?” a male voice interrupted.
Julia looked up to see Gregory and, next to him, Jack Moore—her friend from Washington, DC.
She leaped to her feet. “Jack! I didn’t know you were transferred here.”
He pulled her into a quick hug. “When I heard about a woman named Julia being among the new arrivals, I hoped it was the one and only Julia McWilliams.”
“It will be so great to catch up with you,” Julia said. “What’s your assignment?”
“I’m still working under Paul Child in the War Room. I’ll have to introduce you to him.”
“We should all get together,” Gregory said. “What do you say we all go on a picnic this weekend?” He eyed Peachy. “There’s a clearing in the jungle that I’ve gone to quite a few times. It’s safe—mostly.”
She wrinkled her nose. “As long as you’re planning on keeping the venomous creatures away, I’ll come.”
“I’ll come too,” Julia said. “I have some wacky stories to share.”
Chapter 8
Kandy, Ceylon
May 1944
“I have a nice time with the office men—not Whee, but pleasant. There is Paul Child, an artist who, when I first saw him, I thought he was not at all nice looking. He is about 40, has light hair which is not on top, an unbecoming blond mustache and a long unbecoming nose. But he is very composed. I find him both pleasant, comfortable and very mentally get-at-able. We have dinner frequently and go to the movies.”
—Julia McWilliams
Julia had to miss the picnic fun after all because she had a landslide of reports come in. Lately, she’d been putting in six-day work weeks, plus half-day Sundays. She’d even worked a few nights, constantly recording and filing.
Her boss, Heppner, was in and out of her office on a regular basis. She liked him, for the most part, and he listened to her concerns and suggestions.
“How are we coming on that report?” he said, appearing in the office doorway.
Julia straightened the five-by-eight file cards she’d been writing on. “Nearly finished.”
Heppner came around her side of the desk to read her findings. “Those are the current bombing targets the Japanese army is going after in India?”
“With 90 percent accuracy,” Julia said, which they both knew might as well be 100 percent. She’d spent hours cross-referencing and comparing messages coming in from intercepted Axis power intelligence that had been translated and decoded by the Communications Branch and sent to her office. She handed over the stack of file cards. “They’re ready for the War Room.”
“Thanks,” Heppner said, grasping the file cards. “I’ll be back to help with the Thailand industrial plants.”
After Heppner left the office, Julia stood and stretched, taking a few moments to clear her head. She had only a few moments, though, because they had received reports only a couple of hours before about some industrial plants in Thailand that the OSS believed the Japanese military was using. Julia needed to comb through all her references to those industrial plants to determine the layouts of the buildings, their sizes and capacity, and what bomb damage had been done to those buildings. Were the buildings now being used to house an arsenal? Chemicals? Lumber? Rubber? Should these industrial plants be next on the target list?
The sheer cliff of all the tasks stacking on top of each other was mind-numbing, to say the least. She’d practically lived on rushed meals and endless cups of tea, but it had turned out that Ceylon had wonderful teas, and one of her new favorites was Cheericup Ceylon.
Despite the long work hours, she loved the social aspect of her Kandy colleagues—she found being around so many academics an exhilarating experience. The people here were adventurous, opinionated, competitive, witty, and sophisticated, and she took to calling them her “ologist friends” because there was every sort of expertise floating among them, from anthropologists to cryptologists. She enjoyed all the activities that happened at night: dancing a couple of times a week, swimming, tennis, and golf . . . She just needed more time to join in.
Her mood lifted when she received a packet of letters from her family later that day. Several letters from Dort and a couple from Pop. She read through them quickly, hungry for news from home. But her stomach coiled when she read that John had been seriously wounded by field artillery in France when he’d been on a bridge that had been blown up. Thankfully, the subsequent letter from Pop reported that John had been treated well at a field hospital, then sent back to the States, where his wife was now caring for him. Both Dort and Pop predicted he’d make a full recovery.
Her heart aching, Julia spent the next hour writing to her brother and his wife, giving them all her love and best wishes. The only bright side to all this was that John was now out of harm’s way.
Throughout the month of May, Julia frequently joined a group of friends on the veranda of the main headquarters building, languishing in the shaded humidity and sharing tea before everyone went their separate ways for the evening. Often, Julia headed back to her office and stacks of paperwork. She enjoyed the temporary break and the good company.
Jack, Gregory, Peachy, and Ellie made up the usual crowd, and sometimes more joined.
“Oh, here comes Paul now,” Jack said, glancing past Julia. “He finally broke away from the War Room before dark. He’s always double-checking everyone’s work.”
Julia couldn’t help but look over to where a man walked toward them. Jack had mentioned Paul so many times, yet she’d never actually met him, so she wondered if he were a phantom creation.
This man was blond, the setting sun glinting off his receding hairline. He had a camera strapped across his shoulder, and Julia guessed him to be about forty years old. He wasn’t particularly striking or handsome, with his blond mustache and rather long nose. Yet Julia was intrigued because of how he carried himself, walking with assurance and a sort of elegance that was hard to describe.
“I thought you were going to pull an all-nighter,” Jack said as the man neared.
“I’m getting too old for that,” Paul said in a smooth baritone as he arrived at their table and set down his camera. “What are we drinking tonight?” He nodded to Gregory, then glanced at Peachy and Ellie.
When his gaze settled on Julia, she introduced herself. “I’m Julia—the one who knows everyone’s secrets around here.”
Paul’s brows lifted slightly, as if he couldn’t decide whether she was being serious or not.
“She hasn’t stooped to letter reading just yet,” Jack chimed in. “So your love correspondence is safe for another day.”
Paul settled himself in the empty chair next to Jack, and again, Julia wondered how he sat so precisely. He was shorter than she was, that she could tell without standing. But sitting, there was no height discrepancy.
“Unless you count my letters to my brother, Charlie, as love letters,” Paul said, “I’d say Julia will be sorely disappointed.”
He’d spoken so matter-of-factly that she wasn’t sure if he was teasing her.
“Charlie’s your twin, right?” Gregory asked, lighting his second cigarette.
“Right,” Paul said. “He’s an artist, too, though he went through a lot of formal training.” He lit a cigarette for himself too. “Unlike me, who dug it out of the dirt.”
“Plus,” Jack said, “you have to do double the work in art and photography since you only have one working eye.”
Julia frowned. Both of Paul’s eyes looked the same if she were to compare them. “What’s wrong with your eye?” she blurted out before she could determine if the question was too personal. But Jack had brought it up.
Paul tapped his left temple. “My left eye only has partial sight from an accident as a child. Charlie was holding a needle when we were horsing around, and I stumbled into him.”
Ellie gasped, and Julia winced. Peachy went nearly white.
Paul flicked a hand. “Our father died when we were only six months old, so we ran our mother ragged. We were always getting into scrapes. Two brothers tied at the hip but fighting like wolves all the same.”
Jack’s smile was still in place. “You wouldn’t know by Paul’s sophisticated demeanor that he’s a black belt in jujitsu.”
Another surprising revelation. “That’s impressive,” Julia said. “Although I must admit that I have no idea what jujitsu is.”
Everyone laughed, and even Paul smiled—if only politely.
Had Julia put her big foot in her mouth?
“Give us a demonstration, Paul,” Gregory urged.
“I have my best trousers on,” Paul deadpanned, but his clear gaze moved to Julia. “If you were hoping for a demonstration out here on the veranda, you’re out of luck. If you’re familiar with martial arts, jujitsu uses few or no weapons. We focus on holds, throws, and calculated blows.”
