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Pieces of Silver

By Maureen Lang

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Washington, D.C.: February 28, 1917
With the telephone ringing amid the machine-gun staccato of a dozen typewriters, Liesel Bonner didn't hear her name. But when she saw the frown creasing Mr. Hodges's brow as he headed her way, she knew he must have called her more than once. Beyond him, Henry Miller, the senior clerk of the large law office, sent Liesel an anxious glance from behind round spectacles resting on his nose.
“Please join me in my office in five minutes, Miss Bonner.” Mr. Hodges was typically polite despite the annoyance on his fair-skinned, jowly face.
“Yes, Mr. Hodges,” Liesel replied. “I'm sorry I didn't hear you.”
“Quite all right.” He left Liesel's typing table to go with Mr. Miller to the clerk's rolltop desk at the end of a row of similar workstations in the center of the office.
Hurriedly, Liesel proofread the letter still rolled in her Remington typewriter. She had just five minutes to finish; the letter was due back to Senator Burle in ten. Reading forward first for content, then backward for misspellings, Liesel found the letter without error and pulled it from the carriage. With familiar ease, she quickly typed an envelope and slipped it along with the letter into a larger packet and sealed it. Standing, she retrieved her pencil and pad from its slot on her rolltop desk and headed to Mr. Hodges's office, stopping only once to ask the mail boy to deliver the letter immediately to the senator on the floor above.
The senior partner's office was an island of calm compared to the hubbub of the stenographic pool. Liesel waited just inside the door, fully expecting Mr. Hodges to enter behind her, but a breeze from a barely opened window stole her attention. For the last day of February, it was uncommonly warm, and she welcomed the hint of spring. She heard the honk of a motorcar from several stories below, followed quickly by the neigh of a horse. The two ways of transportation seemed at odds sometimes. With the popularity of motors growing, she wondered if the old hay burners were beginning to feel unnecessary. She certainly would if she no longer had good, hard work to keep her busy.
Mr. Hodges entered the office, and Liesel took her seat opposite the oblong mahogany desk. Sitting at attention, pencil poised, gaze on the pad, Liesel waited. She heard Mr. Hodges close the door and walk across the carpeted floor to his desk and sit in his cushioned leather chair.
At last she looked up. It was unusual for Mr. Hodges to hesitate. By the time he was ready to dictate, he normally had the entire letter formatted in his mind.
“Were you adopted, Miss Bonner?”
Had he asked if she might consider testing the law of gravity by jumping out the window, she could not have been more shocked. Never in the two years of her employment had Mr. Hodges—or any man except perhaps the elderly janitor Mr. Brindley—spoken on a subject remotely personal. And to ask such a question without preamble made her gape, too surprised to answer.
“Well?”
Shaking her head, she said, “No, Mr. Hodges.”
He frowned, mumbling words barely loud enough to hear. “I doubt it would make a difference.” Then he shifted in his seat, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his desk, and letting his fingertips meet just below his soft chin. “How long have you worked here?”
She told him, growing more curious by the moment.
“Were you born in Washington, Miss Bonner?”
“No, sir. Annapolis.” The collar on her starched white blouse began to prickle.
“And your parents? Were they born there, too?”
“No . . . they were not.”
“Germany?” He asked reluctantly it seemed, and the sense of foreboding that had begun at her collar spread.
Nodding, she put down her pencil.
“Everyone says you're the fastest and most accurate stenographer here, Miss Bonner, and of course I agree.”
“Thank you.” In spite of the compliment, Liesel did not relax. Mr. Hodges never engaged in personal conversation.
“You understand the sensitive nature of our work here, Miss Bonner. Undoubtedly you've seen any number of confidential reports pass between this office and the senators and embassy personnel with whom we work.”
She felt no need to reply.
He cleared his throat. “Recently a decision has been made that affects this office.” His voice became gruff. He picked up, then replaced a pencil on his tidy desk; folded his hands, then unfolded them; picked up the pencil once more. Liesel watched the unusual fidgeting with growing unease. “I see no reason to hide the truth when you're no doubt smart enough to figure it out yourself. There are those here who feel—justified or not—that it is poor form for us as an agency so closely connected to the direct government of the people to keep in our employ anyone not . . . shall we say, of Allied blood.”
His rambling sentence sounded like no more than campaign speech rhetoric. But when she was sure, without doubt, of what he was saying, she met his scrutiny stare for stare. To his credit, he did not flinch, though in the end he was the first to look away, clearing his throat again.
“There are those who feel,” he went on, “that though our two countries are not yet at war—”
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, barely aware she was interrupting a senior partner, something she'd never done before. “But we both represent only one country, you and I. My blood is as American as any other born here.”
“Miss Bonner . . .” She had tested his patience, or perhaps he was embarrassed because her words were true. Perhaps he simply didn't agree with her. Liesel had no way to tell. “Believe me,” he continued, “I shall be sorry to see you go. I do believe you are the best stenographer we have and this firm is losing an excellent worker. But there is nothing I can do.” He sighed deeply and leaned forward. “The news is not good today. It's been released for tomorrow's paper that the German ambassador to Mexico received a telegram from the German war secretary promising to give Texas to Mexico if they join the war against us. Imagine that! Texas—our own Texas—given to Mexico as spoils of war! Incredible as it sounds, Miss Bonner, we are headed for war. War. It's unavoidable now. In a matter of weeks, we may be mobilizing the biggest united army this country has ever seen.”
War. The word reverberated in her brain. Mr. Hodges said the word again, as if he couldn't believe it himself. Yet another thought battled for attention in Liesel's mind: she was without a job. What was she to do? Wait out the war in hiding until it ended? Ludicrous.
Didn't she believe, like her parents waiting for her at home, that everything happened for a reason? That life—and everything in it—was no mindless accident, it was part of a scheme, a plan. A plan within the full knowledge and sovereignty of no less than God Himself. But what about things that made no possible sense, like this? In the absence of logic, of reason, what was she to think?
Just now, nothing made sense.
But she did understand this session, like her job, was at an end. Mr. Hodges stood, reaching to take her hand. Standing, she found her knees surprisingly steady, though barely a moment ago she wondered if they would support her leaden weight. Liesel accepted his hand, amazed that her own did not tremble when inside she felt like the branch of a willow in a storm. She heard him say something about how she would be missed. She even thought she heard him mention she was not the only one leaving. Could that be true? Were all German-blooded Americans involved in government work being fired? She couldn't believe that.
The walk back to her desk from Mr. Hodges's office had never been so long. Once there, she stopped. What was she to do now? She couldn't very well sit down as if nothing had happened. This was, in fact, no longer her desk. No longer her spot to claim, a spot at which to become so immersed in hard work that she forgot everything else in the world. . . . This was where she was needed. Until now.
She took her purse from the bottom drawer of her desk. Glancing around, conscious it was her last view of an office that had at least offered duty and challenge if not identity, she turned. The others she'd worked with for the past two years were busy with their work. How normal they all seemed, how oblivious that her world had suddenly turned upside down. What was she to do?
She eyed the door. That familiar door. Would she leave, just like that? Couldn't she fight for her job, raise the obvious objection that she'd been nothing but a loyal employee, a loyal citizen? They had no real reason to fire her.
But Liesel knew she wouldn't fight. Suddenly she scorned the life she'd enjoyed for twenty-three years, a life of such comfort that it hadn't taught her how to properly fight for anything.
She left her desk, heading to that door. Just as she neared her destination, she heard footsteps close behind. “Miss Bonner . . .”
Liesel turned to Henry Miller, the senior clerk who had hired her two years ago and had never since looked her in the eye.
“Yes, Mr. Miller?” Liesel said, prepared to defend her departure an hour before quitting time.
As soon as she looked into his eyes behind those round glasses of his, his gaze left her face in favor of the floor. “I . . . just wanted to say I'm sorry things have gone this way. I, of course, had no vote in what happened.”
Instantly surprised, she said, “You knew . . . before today?”
Mr. Miller flushed a splotchy red. “I—I'm sorry, Miss Bonner. There was nothing I could do.”
Shaking her head at her own confusion and anger, she knew any sensible conversation was outside her grasp. She mumbled a brief, “Thank you,” to the fretful clerk, then looked once more at the door waiting for her ahead. On the other side, she would no longer be Liesel Bonner, stenographer. She would be Liesel Bonner . . . what?

Baltimore
He ran a hand down the tattered lapel of his tweed jacket. He knew the item his fingertips sought was still there; he felt it against his chest as if it had a life of its own, pressing into him with warmth and weight. He smiled. Some people wouldn't like to carry such a thing so close, but to him, it was like riding a roller coaster at the World's Fair. Controlled danger, safe yet daring.
A breeze from the harbor made a stray strand of blond hair tickle his forehead, and he pushed it back out of his line of vision. He needed a haircut but had little time for mundane things anymore. He had to make two more drop-offs like this one at different docks along the East Coast.
A sailor approached. They knew enough to trust each other, even though neither knew the other's real name. He himself had chosen to be called Patria, a Latin word that connected him to the Fatherland. Under normal circumstances, there would have been almost no chance of his path crossing an Irish sailor's, but this man hated England almost as much as Patria loved Germany. Their two passions had been intricately enmeshed ever since the outbreak of the European war back in '14.
The sailor he knew as Caffer took a look around before approaching, but between the darkness and the closed seaside shops lining the shore, there was little chance they were being observed. Patria had made sure of that already.
He handed Caffer the cigar-shaped object from his pocket. It had neither protection nor camouflage; he simply handed it over in its open and deadly state. Not that anyone with an untrained eye would recognize it for what it was.
Caffer shook his head and gave an off-center smile. He was a strapping young sailor, with his Gaelic black hair and fair skin, and Patria knew he was anything but a coward. Yet Patria also knew Caffer had hated these little cigars since the day one started to burn in his pocket. The Irishman liked it better when they were handed to him in a cargo box.
“Don't worry,” Patria whispered, a tease in his tone. “I checked the copper myself, and it's thick enough to last ten days. Plenty of time for you to place it aboard ship and get back home tonight.”
The small lead cigar was the clever invention of a German chemist now serving time in an American prison. But it hadn't taken Patria long to find another chemist, one who had taken up where the imprisoned German left off. Into a hollow pipe was placed a copper disc to divide the cylinder in two. Each end was filled with acid, one picric, the other sulfuric . . . or any inflammable liquid if sulfuric acid was in short supply. The ends were plugged with wax to make the pipe airtight. Variable thickness of the copper disc decided the timing of the fire, acid eating through a thin disc more quickly than a thick one. And once those acids mixed, fire shot out from both ends like a firecracker before it exploded.
Though Caffer said nothing, his gaze went to the docks as he placed the object beneath his jacket. Patria followed the line of the other man's stare.
“It's the Olimpiada, Caffer,” Patria whispered softly. “Not that one.”
Caffer nodded, then scowled. “Those Russian ships . . . I get tired of goin' after them, is all. Now let me at that one . . .”
“It's a passenger liner, Caff.”
“And you'll not convince me it carries only passengers, so don't even try.”
Patria joined Caffer's morose stare at the English vessel scheduled to sail the following day. Everyone knew what lay hidden underneath boxes marked “flour” and other such innocuous labels. Munitions bound for English guns. English guns that killed Germans and subdued Irish.
“No matter,” Patria said, pulling his gaze from the vessel. “The Olimpiada carries far more cargo than that one, and a fire aboard it will stop more bullets from reaching Allied guns than any other ship down there.”
“Give me one of these for an English ship, and you'll see where I place it.” Caffer turned on his heel and walked back toward the dock.
Patria watched him go. The plan was to place the incendiaries in the cargo holds of ships carrying munitions to the Allies. They weren't placed with the ammunition; that would cause too much harm to the ship too quickly. Their aim was to cause the captain to flood the holds in order to put out the flames, giving the crew enough time to evacuate if necessary. The final goal: render the ammunition either soaked or sunk and therefore useless.
But Caffer, he was a bold one, and Patria knew the man didn't care about the measures they took to do their job without loss of life. That was precisely why Caffer wouldn't be trusted aboard an English vessel. They weren't doing this to take lives; they were doing it to save lives—German ones.

Washington, D.C.
Mrs. Lindsey walked to the end of the row of plain, identical wooden desks with a cup of coffee in one hand and a new file in the other. David de Serre, one of the young agents for whom she worked, stood at the window of the office, studying another file in his hand. The natural light probably made the reports easy to read, despite the fact it was past five o'clock. The row of desks, casually referred to as the bullpen, was nearly empty. Most of their co-workers were gone for the day, replaced by the skeleton night crew.
“No more hot coffee after this,” she said as she placed it on the single bit of free space left on David's desk. That corner was always left free; around it could grow a jungle of paperwork, boxes of files from both past and present cases, an assortment of books and maps. Both David and Mrs. Lindsey could find the corner with their eyes occupied elsewhere, as Mrs. Lindsey did just now. She studied David's handsome, young profile. As usual, he was absorbed in the work before him and didn't acknowledge her. He probably knew she had neared and he'd eventually get around to the coffee—perhaps even before it grew cold. But David never acknowledged the obvious. His words were as sparse as dew in the desert.
“Weber brought in his latest on Luedke,” said Mrs. Lindsey.
David eyed her. Without being asked, she told him what he wanted to know. “The German he's been seen with so many times—Roch—sailed yesterday from New York on a ship headed to Switzerland. Weber's addendum makes it clear he thinks Luedke is taking over for Roch. Weber added a list of names of possible candidates as Luedke's new ‘staff.' Known agitators mostly.”
David took the file she offered, setting aside the one he'd been studying from another case. David went straight to the list of names. He was the case agent on Friedrich Luedke, a German alien suspected of “seditious behavior.” While Weber didn't exactly report to David, it was David who coordinated all the information gathered from every possible direction—from other agents running leads as well as from zealous civilian groups like the American Protective League.
“Tell Weber to keep his distance with Luedke more than ever now. If he's moving up the ranks, he's not alone anymore. And remind Weber not to let the APL know too much. They have all the subtlety of a teenage boy judging a beauty pageant at the county fair.”
“You can tell him yourself tomorrow,” Mrs. Lindsey reminded David. “You have a meeting with him at ten o'clock.”
“Cancel it. I have what I need right here. What I've just told you is all I have to say about it. You can forward that to him.”
“That's fine,” Mrs. Lindsey said, pleased. “Now you're free for brunch at Senator Cardulla's.”
One look from David, and Mrs. Lindsey knew the jest had been caught. Of course David would not attend a senator's brunch or anyone else's social event. Even though he was one of the most dedicated investigation agents in Washington, David was not accessible to someone with a social agenda.
“Better be careful, David,” said Mrs. Lindsey with her after-hours maternal tone. “This agency hasn't been around long enough to assume it's permanent. They may very well switch you to VIP protection in the Secret Service. President Wilson has three daughters and a new wife. You may have to escort them to every tea party in Washington.”
David went to his desk, reviewing the list again as he retrieved his coffee. “That will be the day I resign, Helen.”
Mrs. Lindsey smiled at the young man affectionately, although he didn't notice the look. She certainly hoped David would never be moved from the spot he filled so well. When the European war began back in '14, David had been reassigned to his present position in the Bureau of Investigation, tracking down possible espionage within U.S. borders. Before that, he had been a field agent pursuing bankruptcy fraud with his systematic, methodical investigative style.
He was no different with this assignment, except Mrs. Lindsey noticed something she'd taken for granted when he was just chasing bamboozlers. She wouldn't have thought it possible, but he became even more meticulous. While others at various levels of government police scurried about arresting Germans or German sympathizers nearly every day of the week, David went about his job carefully—more slowly, without doubt, but with assurance and determination and something a bit harder to find these days: restraint. As concerned and eager citizens leaped into the American Protective League to help equally eager agents, convinced they'd find a spy on every corner, David tempered his investigations with objectivity and caution. As a result, David's cases were wrapped tight at delivery and remained strong all the way through to conviction.
“Well, I'm not sure some of the other agents around Washington enjoy these social engagements any better than you would, but they haven't the boldness to refuse as often as you do.”
That made David look up, though he did not seem offended. “Often, Helen? Often suggests I've accepted at least once. I like to think I'm consistent.”
“You really ought to start considering some of them, David,” Mrs. Lindsey said, making her way back to her desk at the opposite end of the room. “You'll be thirty years old next week, and soon you'll be too old to think about marriage.”
“I'm only twenty-eight, Helen,” he called after her, and she turned around to look at him, shaking her head.
“David de Serre, you fit this job as if you were born for it. But you can't even remember your own age. This is 1917. You're going to be thirty.”
If he had a retort, he held back. David de Serre was never one to defend a lost point.
“Just when did you stop keeping track of the years?” Helen wondered, although she didn't expect an answer. David rarely engaged in conversation that didn't serve an obvious or immediate purpose. So with her question unanswered, Helen left the office, saying good night on the way.
David watched Helen leave. Her words conjured up unexpected memories. He may not have been born for this job, but he'd wanted it since his tenth birthday. Not detecting frauds—although he'd found that more interesting than he'd expected—but this, what he did every day now that international tension was at yet another peak. This was what he was meant to do.
He looked again at the file in his hand, not really seeing it. What he saw instead was a boy who'd just turned ten, a boy who ran so hard he felt a stitch in his side.
He kept going in spite of the pain. He ran until he came to the rows of tiny houses that led to the sleepy fishing village nestled at the foot of what most people called his family's “castle.” He'd heard the jokes plenty of times about the Potomac being the moat to the famous de Serre seaside mansion. His father was the shipping king who married the fancy Belgian heiress with ties to Belgian royalty. It was only fitting they should have a moat.
David crept up silently to one of the cottages, stopping below an open window. Sea air pulled the curtain's hem beyond the ledge.
And then he heard it. A deep, erratic breathing, choked by a sob now and then. David came around to the porch, where he found Emilio, ten years old like himself, but crying like a little baby.
Emilio didn't even wipe his eyes when he saw David. “They took him. Just . . . just took him.”
David scooted toward Emilio and sat next to him. “It's why I came. I overheard your mother tell my dad what happened. Don't worry, Mio. My dad'll get him out.” He made the promise even though he didn't really know. David's dad could be powerful when he chose to be, but it was the choosing part David couldn't depend on. His dad only did what he wanted, nothing more.
Emilio shook his head. “It doesn't matter. Papa will die if they lock him up. He doesn't like closed-in places, especially since he's been sick. It'll kill him. I heard my madre say so.”
“They can't hold him there. They can't just make up lies about somebody. This is a free country—my dad says so all the time.”
Emilio shook his head again. “Free for some. For you.”
Then they saw her. Rosa Ramirez was a small woman. Sometimes when she laughed she looked more like Mio's sister than his mother. But just then, walking in the moonlight with a dark scarf over her black hair and a strange look on her small, triangular face, she looked far older. She didn't seem to see the two boys run from the porch to meet her. She stared ahead as if blindly finding her way home.
“Madre!” Emilio said quietly but desperately. He took her hand in his and squeezed, and at last she looked down at him. Tears burst from her like from a broken vessel of water, pouring from great pools in her eyes.
“He'll be home, Madre,” Emilio promised, sounding braver than he had in front of David. “David's papa will make sure. He'll not let his very best gardener be gone for long. Just wait and see, Madre. David says—”
“No, Mio,” she said as she wept. David could not understand her after that, for she wept fiercely and spoke so quickly in Spanish that he could not keep up. He made out only a few words, “Padre . . . muerte . . . coraz—n . . .”
When Mio turned to him at last, the tears on his face were dry, and he looked somber, different all of a sudden. Supporting his mother, Mio led her up the stairs to their house. “Adios, David.” He spoke in a voice that sounded courageous and tremulously timid all at once, “I take care of Madre. I have no Padre now.”
David's feet stopped. He wasn't conscious of stopping; he just did because he didn't know what else to do. He watched his friend nearly carry his mother up the stairs, wanting to help but afraid he'd be rejected, as if just by being an American, he was somehow partly to blame. David let his feet take him away, knowing he had no place to go but home.
How was it, he wondered, that a man could be arrested for being Spanish?
David now knew how that had happened. At ten, he'd been confused and frightened, but he'd learned later on that very day exactly what went on during the war with Spain.
That was nearly twenty years ago. David looked around the empty bullpen. That night had led him here, and now another war raged. As in '98, the country was ripe for people to act on fears and prejudices.
Although he hadn't known how God would use that terrible night, David now knew it had spawned in Mio a deep and lasting faith, one he'd introduced to David.
And that faith had put David exactly where he was today.

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