A Special Relationship

"Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organisation will be gained without... a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States."

Winston Churchill

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A Special Relationship

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April 1944

"Madame, I can offer you some coffee," Oberstleutnant Peter Baumann said in a casual, hospitable tone. He emphasized can in such a way that it meant he really would rather she not accept. "I know you French love your coffee.... Which is why I beg you to accept some tea. You see, what we are calling coffee in these times would not be served to the worst criminals in a Berlin prison. My tea, however...," he smiled. Quite and convincingly sincere. He lowered his voice, as though any one would be insane enough to eavesdrop here in an Abwehr headquarters. "My tea comes straight from Harrods."

Baumann's French was without cracks - and distinctly Parisian. To anyone with an ear, it was clear he had spent considerable time in the capital before the war.

He stood and pulled open the top drawer of a grey file cabinet from which he extracted a tin of Twinings. This he placed on the desk between them.

"When I say straight," he continued, "I mean of course by way of... well, you would not be interested in the details."

His guest, Madame Sylvie Gouix, perched on a wooden stool. I knew she would have been clutching her handbag if she had been allowed to keep it. She was nervous. Appropriately nervous, I thought. But not too. After all, this France was Vichy France. She and Peter were ostensibly now allies, but no sane Frenchwoman truly trusted their occupiers. Mme Gouix displayed exactly the correct amount of deference one would be expected to show in the presence of an Abwehr officer.

She did not appear to be afraid. Through the small oval glassed opening which appeared a mirror on her side, I watched her carefully. I could not see her legs or feet, which she might have been shifting or flexing.

She should have been afraid.

This modest building, which the local German Army district had commandeered in 1940, sat in the insignificant commune of Saint-Vran, which lay in the insignificant department of Côtes-d'Armor, which was located in the not insignificant French administrative region of Brittany. The interrogation -- and it was that, for all the politeness -- took place in what must have been a solicitor's office. The walls were lined with ancient wooden bookcases crammed with thick leather books of French law. These cases had been pushed aside to make room for an efficiently drab row of file cabinets. The contrast between the beautiful polished amber of the wood and the coldness of the metal said something to me about the two cultures which had briefly clashed.

Sylvie Gouix was a seamstress from Dreux, a modest community some 40 kilometers west of Paris and 300 kilometers from where she was sitting. This was what her travel documents stated. The documents taken from her when she had been detained that morning.

Her explanation for being so far from home was that she was searching for her brother. Gabriel Gouix lived in Brest, when last he had communicated with his family four months ago. Now his mother lay dying, and Sylvie determined to find him and bring him home. She had made the trip by train and by truck. The last few miles she had ridden a bicycle, which she did admit she borrowed without permission from in front of a café in Médréac.

The guilt over a small forgivable unauthorized use of a nonmotorized vehicle could be stretched to believably camouflage other trespasses. I thought Mme Gouix clever to shield herself that way. Less experienced questioners would probably be taken in by it.

She was dressed in travelling clothes. A cloak, sturdy shoes, a cloth covering her head.

Oberstleutnant Peter Baumann busied himself as promised preparing two cups of tea using a kettle standing on top of one of the filing cabinets. He whistled something, I think it was Wagner, as he placed the cups on the desk. With indifference, he brought out from one of the desk drawers a large covered bowl and a spoon, as though having sugar for your tea, let alone tea, was the most normal thing in these times.

She had been trained that trying very hard not to give yourself away often gave you away.

Mme did not blink.

She might have blinked. Any citizen of France would balk at the sight of so much sweetness in these times. One should excuse her; Peter's smooth distraction of a tea ceremony had mesmerized her. He was very good at drawing information from his subjects. Even when they were not aware that they were divulging any, or even that they were being asked.

As they sipped their tea, Baumann looked out the large window that showed the late afternoon sun and the empty main street of the small community.

"A most pleasant day," he said amicably.

She nodded.

"I apologize for having you stopped. This is ideal weather to be cycling."

I saw. She noted the phrase 'having you stopped'. The teacup paused ever so slightly on its path back to the table.

"I examined your documents."

She drank without letting a drop go astray. I had to admire her dedication to the role.

"And I have good news," he continued. "Your brother has been detained nearby, by the local authorities. Just for questioning. I am sure there is some error which we may clear up with your cooperation."

She slowly inclined her head in cautious agreement.

"Sergeant!"

The bark startled her, but it would have done an innocent, authentic Frenchwoman anyway.

I stepped into the room. The true test.

Her eyes froze for an instant on my face, then slid away. Unconcerned about a mere Frenchman, even one who wore the Vichy colors. Unconcerned that she knew I was not a Frenchman. Unconcerned that I should have been hundreds of miles away.

Unconcerned that her husband had just materialized.

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My name is David Voight. I was until recently a Captain in the United States Army. Perhaps I still am -- the whole of the circumstances which brought me to where I am today are still mostly unknown to me. I felt in my bones the Machiavellian manipulations and backroom dealings, but I was never officially informed of why. Only how and when. So I will employ a parallel story for illustration:

In 1939 the Luftwaffe began to drop iron cylinders filled with high explosives onto English soil. Most of these exploded, as was their purpose, but some percentage of them sullied the reputation of German engineering by failing to detonate. The crushingly heavy cylinders were manufactured with stabilizing fins which caused the bombs to fall conical-nose first at high speed and sometimes penetrate the ground to an amazing depth.

As destabilizing as an explosion might be, the damage can be repaired, the debris removed. But when the bomb does not explode, then all normal life within a hundred meters or more stops dead. Barriers are thrown up. DANGER UXB signs warn all off. If this is near a transportation center or an important government or military building or some other vital place, it puts a damper on the war effort.

The Home Office's response was to send for the Royal Engineers, the fellows with the experience in sinking shafts and such, to dig down and expose the bomb. I imagine that there was a moment when some grey-suited civilian said casually to his Royal Engineer guest, "And as long as you are down there anyway, old boy, why don't you just go on ahead and, oh I don't know -- disarm the bloody thing?'

Thus was added to the growing list of wartime points where the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong tools and the wrong training were ordered to do a job. And do it right.

Wait. I am going to correct myself on the 'wrong people' crack. That is unfair. I lazily seized the opportunity for an easy alliteration. In reality, the balls on those Engineers were huge and brass. I have no doubt, having closed down my share of pubs with a few of them, that they bitched and moaned in the obscure literate yet obscene way that the English do, then went out and started disarming live fucking bombs with one hand while holding a cuppa in the other.

Me, sort of likewise. Substitute wooden boats for bombs.

I had been in London for two months before Dunkirk. I came over as one of the aides to the military attaché in our embassy, which to me meant I did a lot of nothing when I could have been getting ready a rifle company. The draft was on the way back home, meaning that there would very soon be a flood of farm boys and city slickers coming into my Army. As a Captain, I would be in charge of training up a couple hundred of these cocky idiots into a cohesive unit so they could survive under fire for more than ten minutes and not shoot themselves or each other. Scuttlebutt was, the volume of new men would be such that I would be promoted rapidly to major, maybe then to lieutenant colonel, and I would suddenly have a battalion to lose sleep over. I was excited at the possibilities.

I loved London. I loved the pubs, the old buildings, the Royal This and That. And I loved the hell out of the birds. The shapely young lovelies who had seen Hollywood movies and adored my accent as much as I adored theirs. But I was still eager to get back to my regular duties -- leading young men with guns.

Good thing I didn't go out and buy oak leaves. That would have been bad luck, as opposed to what did happen, which was worse luck.

**********

August 1940

The day was bright, hot, and humid. Rare weather here, I was told. I sweated rivulets down my back, but I still felt a chill when I stepped into the room. I immediately stood to attention.

Colonel Lee, my immediate superior, was sitting behind his desk. He had opened all the windows wide to try and catch whatever breeze would volunteer to enter. He was showing some glossy photograph to the man standing behind him peering over his shoulder, a white-haired plug of a man. Ruddy jowls. Nose that had been broken once or twice. The guy was dressed in civvies, but it was clear from the way that the Colonel spoke to him as they ignored me that the stranger was in charge of this county fair.

Colonel Lee finally looked up and greeted me, but he did not introduce his guest. That was when I realized this old man was really high up in the chain.

"Captain Voight," Lee said. "At ease. Please remain."

With that, they both walked by me to the door. Colonel Lee paused as he passed me and said softly, "Follow your conscience, David." And they were gone.

Before I had the chance to wonder what the hell was going on and if the oppressive heat had made either them or me hallucinate, the door opened again and one of Lee's secretaries strode in.

Only it wasn't. I was a functioning male and therefore I had taken careful note of all the women who worked in the whole damn building. She was not one. She had long shining black hair that had been carefully curled, wide dark eyes, rather too-flat nose, and lips red as strawberries. She was cute as a bug, but looked about sixteen years old, like somebody who actually worked here had let their kid sister tag along. She wore a blue plaid dress made from a light linen which looked so cool I wanted to switch clothes with her. She filled the hell out of that dress. I tried to not fixate on her assets, in case she did turn out to be the kid sister of somebody who outranked me.

I waited for her to realize she had maybe stumbled into an office looking for the cafeteria when she addressed me.

"Captain David Voight." It wasn't a question. She spoke with an accent I could not place, and I am good at identifying accents. I reckoned that if she had learned Polish -- maybe Hungarian - and then come to England as a child and learned English in Liverpool or thereabouts, that would be close.

"You grew up in Brooklin, Maine." Her voice said this petite beauty was used to being listened to and taken seriously.

"That's right," I said, even though it had again not been a question.

"Your father... your family builds ships."

"Yes, Ma'am," I agreed. She made it sound like the Voight Boat Yard was churning out battleships instead of skiffs, powered launches, and the occasional motor yacht.

Why was I being questioned by a complete stranger? Why was I answering them? I knew why. Both Colonel Lee and the mook who was way above our grade must have stepped aside to let this girl in. Woman. Whatever. I still could not pin an age on her.

She finally smiled. It was a treat. Ice in your beer on a summer day.

"You are an expert in building and operating small boats on the ocean."

Not the way I would have phrased it, but I nodded.

"Yet you attended West Point, an Army college, instead of a naval institution."

"I did." Was there a question in there? She used English like she had just pried it from its wrapper.

She did not speak for a long moment. I got the feeling that she expected me to ask her any of my ten thousand questions, but that would not have been polite. And ma mère had trained me to use politeness as a weapon.

"Tell me a joke in French," she demanded. "Make it crude."

The faint movement of air in the windows was long dead. The heat was oppressive, closing in around me like I was standing next to a brush fire. This odd meeting had morphed into an endurance contest. One I was not going to lose. Okay, maybe I would not win, not against an opponent in a skirt, who, if she was asking for a dirty joke, might not be wearing knickers. I would settle for a tie.

I told her the one about the Scottish fellow who fell asleep on the way home from a piss-up. A young lassie comes along and spies the man's erect cock as the wind blows his kilt up. The opportunistic young woman mounts his hard member and rides it to her satisfaction. She dismounts, takes a blue ribbon out of her hair, and ties it around the softening tool which had so pleasured her. When the man wakes up alone, he looks down and delivers the punchline: I dinna know where ya bin, laddie, but I'm glad ya won furst prize!

I heard that one on the playground when I was too young to understand it.

It was still funny in French.

My inquisitor did not laugh. I resisted the urge to remind her what exactly a kilt was and act the joke out.

Then she asked me in German to explain what a kilt was.

Perfect German.

How did I know? My father is German. He came over from Kiel when he was a teen. Grandpa and Grandma Voight had seven children and eventually dozens of grandchildren. When I was at their house, everyone spoke German, all the time. If a young Voight wanted to stay alive and not die of starvation, he or she asked for wurst, spätzle, or kirschtorte - not sausage, noodles, or a slice of Oma's chocolate cake. Mit Milch.

I have been in Hamburg several times over the years, and they cannot distinguish my German from the nativest native.

The French? The other half of my family, my mother's half, is from Quebec. The Gagnon clan is still mostly there, but they travel. Man, do they travel. They treat the Maine coast like an exotic South Seas destination and descend upon Grandma Gagnon's farm periodically, turning it into a festival. Where again, the wise grandchild learns to come on the run when they recognize the cries of the adults: Poutine! Or tourtières, pâté chinois, fèves au lard....

A few adjustments of the odd colloquialism and my French passes for a Briton... and then the nickel dropped. Fuck.

I am slow but not stupid.

Boats, French, German.

This woman didn't want me to read last year's report on aircraft production and draft a ten-page memo.

Nope. Blind pig me, I sniffed out the acorn.

Over the next hour or so, she redrew my future. In summary, if I wanted to start fighting now, her offer was the ticket. If not, she would disappear and this meeting never happened.

Six hours later, I was sitting at my desk in Room 561 of the Cumberland Hotel typing out a letter of resignation. I was giving up my commission as an Army officer. The goal I had chased almost all my life. Now that I had it, I was tossing it in the bin.

All because of a short conversation with a mysterious woman who promised me dangerous work instead of paper work. I didn't even know her name.

I was probably insane to do this, but I knew it was the right thing to do. And I had to do it.

As I was sealing my farewell to the United States Army into an envelope, there was a knock on my door.

She breezed in like it was her name on the ledger. The Cumberland did not allow unaccompanied females above the lobby, but of course that was no obstacle at all to one who drove Colonels from their lair.

She did not even acknowledge me. She walked directly to the bed, undid her dress buttons, and slipped it off.

I had been on the mark. She was keeping cool underneath that dress the way women have for thousands of years. She faced me full on, not one iota of shame or concern on her lovely round face. My eyes caressed her breasts, which were conical, topped with puffy pink nipples.

In my peripheral vision I saw the black briar patch of her hair down... then I saw the scars.

Under and around her navel -- an ugly ocean of wavy scars. Organ flesh pink and cadaver white; unnatural colors, frightening colors. The patch had droplets of disfigurement splashed out as far as her wide prominent hip bones.

I returned to her face, realizing I had been holding my breath. Those were fatal. Those would have bled all her fluids, let all her organs hang out exposed. No body survived that level of insult.

She just stood calmly, letting me examine her for as long as I wanted.

In a twinkling I crossed the space between us and took her in my arms. As we kissed, my hands explored her firm breasts. She gasped when I rolled her nipples between my fingers.

Our eyes locked, and I got permission there. I let my fingertips trace her belly down. Down to where some hideous force had sullied her perfection, then as if to convey to her that I did not give one hoot for her scars, my hand continued on until I cupped her bush.

Still with eyes together, I pushed a finger into her.

She was slippery. Warm. Flowing. She gave out a long "Ahhhhhh...."

I worked another finger inside her as she vocalized her appreciation. When I withdrew my hand, she sighed in frustration. It was the same in all languages.

I pushed her gently onto the bed and peeled off my uniform. She stared at my engorged cock, which stood out proud and angry and beat like a metronome in time with my heart.

She said something in a tongue I did not recognize, a word of surprise and possibly alarm at my next action. Seeing this cool commanding creature slip her laces made me growl with anticipation. I took a calf in each hand and spread them apart. Her mouth opened in a wide O.

I kissed the inside of her knees, then her thighs. I wanted to make it slow, to drive her insane as compensation for what she had done to my life. She had appeared and my career was now slaughtered and hanging from a flaying hook.

But hell, I did not have that much control over my balls right at that moment. I covered her cunt with my mouth and pressed my tongue into her hole, my lips onto her labia. She tasted like the sea. Freshly opened oysters, sweet and salty.

It occurred to me that no man had ever done this to her before.

A successful intelligence operation depends on preparation, information, and training. One summer in Quebec, Simone, a third or perhaps fourth cousin, took care of all three. I went home to Maine that fall with a thorough grounding in where, how, and when to touch a woman with my fingers, my lips, and my tongue.

This one, whose name I didn't even know, fought me. It took all my deep muscle memories of high school wrestling countermoves to keep her strong little body under my control, and I kept her pinned down for ten times as long as the most unobservant referee would have taken to declare my victory.