“Do you know when you’ll be in Kentucky?” he said slowly. She definitely heard a smile in his voice this time.
“Not exactly. But you might want to keep an eye out for a woman in stockings.”
SEEBOHM’S CAP by Peter Schweighofer
Major Prentice Vance of St. Louis, Missouri, peered across the table at the supposed German spy. Headquarters claimed the man could betray Operation Overlord, but Vance couldn’t tell how an ordinary army rifleman might have useful strategic knowledge about the impending invasion of Europe or how he could have transmitted it to Germany without detection.
And why would the man be foolish enough to carry around any evidence betraying his allegiance to Nazi Germany like that cap?
Vance gazed at the cap in fascination. It sat limp on the vast table between him and the spy-nothing more than a crumpled piece of faded tan fabric with a bent visor and worn patches halfway down the top seams, and marks that seemed to indicate its former owner wore wireless headphones over it. A spattering of blood dried brown in the harsh desert sun dotted one side. Such a worn, mundane cap seemed out of place sitting on the highly polished massive table, centerpiece of the palatial dining room in the countryside mansion the Office of Strategic Services had requisitioned from its British cousins.
Private Benedict Kelly of Culbertson, Nebraska, army infantryman and alleged German spy, stared at the cap as if it were some kind of malevolent demon waiting to pounce on him and consume his very soul. He craned his head as far back as the tall dining room chair would allow, his white-knuckled hands gripping the armrests. Vance couldn’t tell whether the sleepless, bloodshot eyes and the sallow skin came from several days of imprisonment and questioning or from sheer dread of that cap.
Vance’s assistant, Lieutenant Laura Jackson from Peekskill, New York, didn’t take any notice of the cap and didn’t display any discernible emotion at all. She sat in a chair pushed well away from the table, one leg draped over another just enough to show off her nicely turned ankle. Someone had pushed back the heavy curtains to allow light from the tall French doors nearby to filter through the sheers, casting a diffused light throughout the dining room and giving Jackson a deceptively angelic aura. She might only serve in the Women’s Army Corps, but Jackson possessed an uncanny knack for disappearing on errands and returning at the right moment with exactly what Vance required (a baffling trait Vance secretly intended to investigate someday.) Jackson maintained her focus on the steno pad balanced on her leg, occasionally glancing up from her notes to size up Private Kelly and his reactions to Vance’s polite queries-questions phrased more as conversation starters than demands.
“It says here you bought the hat from Private Sewell. Where did he get it?” Vance removed his steady stare from fidgety Kelly and casually perused the file set before him. His lithe fingers nonchalantly turned the pages as he gazed down his nose at the reports. Vance spoke with even tones, measuring his speech more as if they were having a relaxed tea than a military interrogation.
Kelly blinked a few times, shrugged his skinny shoulders, and stuttered. “I… I dunno. Uh, Africa, I guess.”
Vance’s fingers touched the pencil-thin mustache over his lips, drawing attention to the faint but friendly smile. “Surely Private Sewell mentioned something about the hat’s provenance.” He noted Kelly’s perplexed expression-he wasn’t much more than a gawky farm boy who more than likely dropped out of school-and corrected himself. “Where the cap came from. Didn’t Sewell weave some fanciful tale bragging how he acquired the cap?”
Kelly made that exasperating shrug of his shoulders again.
“We could always send for Sergeant Mullen to refresh your memory.” Vance’s grin took a slightly menacing curve. Sergeant John Mullen of Moose Lake, Minnesota, took care of the heavy work during Kelly’s earlier interrogations with the Military Police. “But I don’t think Lieutenant Jackson would like that.” Vance’s assistant looked up, batted her eye lashes with a doleful look, and pouted her ruby red lips in a possibly mock frown, right on cue. Vance expected she’d reprimand him later for involving her in his mind games.
“No, ma’am,” Kelly drawled. He allowed himself a glance from the cap to Lieutenant Jackson with a bashful smile, then glared at Vance. “I told them before, more than once, dammit, that Sewell got the cap in a battle in North Africa.”
Vance’s lips maintained their sinister curve. He smoothed his mustache before reaching across and closing Kelly’s file. “Fine. Perhaps, then, you’d like to give us a firsthand demonstration of what happens when you wear that cap.”
All color drained from Kelly’s face. His hands gripped the chair, and his army uniform visibly trembled on his lanky frame. Vance thought a bit of drool leaked from Kelly’s quivering lips. He recalled the reports in the folder. Kelly’s unit occupied one of the sealed training camps in the south of England where troops waited to embark on the imminent invasion. Kelly’s friends found him twitching on the ground near his tent, eyes rolled into the back of his head, his mouth spitting foam and frenzied words that sounded like German… all while wearing the Afrika Korps cap.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” Vance asked in fluent German. “ Sind Sie Deutscher?”
Kelly controlled his tremors and shot Vance a befuddled look.
“Obviously not,” Vance answered. “Do you have any knowledge of the imminent invasion of Europe?”
“Huh?” Kelly shrugged. “Sure, everyone’s getting all ready for something big, but nobody knows exactly what or when. Come on, anyone looking around here knows something’s about to happen. Why else would American troops swarm all over southern England, doing invasion exercises and practice drills?”
“Well, then, I think we’re done for now. Sergeant!” Vance called. An army sergeant-not the bruiser from Kelly’s earlier interrogations-entered the dining room through one of the tall, double doors and stood at attention. “Escort Private Kelly to the room we’ve prepared-not a cell, Kelly, but a real room-and make sure he gets something decent to eat. As I recall, the kitchens here are as well-stocked as a Chicago steakhouse.”
Kelly didn’t budge. “When can I go back to my unit?”
“Oh, I doubt you’ll be returning to combat, though that should prove a relief,” Vance said with an understanding grin. “Not after all you’ve gone through. I’m sure they’ll put you on the next ship home. Oh, don’t worry about your patriotic duty. You’ve done your part, soldier, that’s for certain, and there’s no disgrace in what’s happened. If I’m right, you might have delivered to us a valuable weapon in the fight against fascism.”
Kelly pulled himself out of the chair and stumbled over to meet the sergeant, never taking his terrified eyes off Vance and the cap.
Vance knew Kelly wouldn’t really go home to Nebraska. He’d most likely enjoy a lengthy stay at St. Elizabeth’s, the hospital in Washington where the OSS and other government agencies sent “mentally ill” psychiatric patients-devoid of any right to habeas corpus-to languish in guarded isolation for the duration.
With all he’d seen, and would see, Vance wondered if he’d end up there himself before war’s end.
“Should I tell Colonel Donovan we have a spy on our hands?” Jackson asked, looking up from her notes.
“Of course not,” Vance replied. The head of OSS wanted straight answers, not conjecture, before he made any report to General Eisenhower. “Kelly’s just some country bumpkin from Nebraska. Doesn’t know a damn thing. Looking over his file, there’s no possible way the Germans could have recruited him either in America or during his service in Italy, and he seems to have no means of communicating any intelligence to them, certainly not from a sealed camp with rigorous security restrictions. Besides, Kelly wouldn’t know good intelligence if it came up and kicked him in the pants.