The Couple

Even the footlights were out. The film had unceremoniously been cut off at the height of the climax. Had they been followed? Around them, the theater chattered. Men slapped hats against their legs while women rung their gloves.

The couple sat in stony silence.

His grip tightened on the armrest as sweat dripped down his temple.

The darkness pressed against her eyes. She strained to see anything. Red nails tapped against her skirt. She believed she could make out the head sitting in front of her. She thought of their small apartment, probably in shambles, everything they’d worked for strewn across the floor. Of course, they’d known the risks. That knowledge is what kept the dark air of the theater hitching in her throat.

He knew the risks too. He didn’t mind them, but he’d never wanted her to be involved. Why had she returned so early that day? Why had she insisted on see the papers he had acquired at the meeting she stumbled into? She couldn’t lie if her life depended on it, and in espionage, it often did.

~

“I’ll be discreet, Harry,” she insisted, folding the telegram and tucking it back into the yellow envelope.

“I have no doubt you’ll try, darling,” Harry puffed at his cigarette, looking down at the flashing city below him.

“Truly, I’ll forget about it completely. I promise, Harry.”

“How could you?” He pulled the drapes closed and turned to face his wife. “Doris, every report I hear of this war sticks in my mind. It grows and grows until a more terrible report comes along to replace it. My head is almost bursting. How can you say you’ll forget?”

Her watery eyes searched his. “Then I guess I’ll have to join you.”

A few steps and he was across the room, shaking hands grasping her arms. “I can’t ask you to do that. I’ll arrange for a trip. You can go out to see your family, far away from here.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.” She cradled his arms in her hands, a nervous smile played at her red lips. “I’m ready to do whatever I can.”

~

An angry viewer rose from his chair and tapped his cane on the ground.

“It’s been long enough. I won’t sit by for this for another minute. I paid to see a movie, and I’m going to!” Unseen, his stomping echoed around the now silent hall, through the seats, down the aisle, up a couple of stairs, to the doors. An empty thud. A few sharp rattles.

Their hearts froze and melted in their chests.

“It’s locked!” the angry man shouted.

Harry found Doris’s had. Fingers intertwined, they clung to each other as the theater-goers erupted around them.

~

The fated telegram had left their apartment in the pocket of a rather sneaky man. That was all they knew. Their lives had carried on as normal, to anyone on the outside. Inside was a tapestry of tangled secrets. Their curtains were always drawn, fire always stoked, and bags always packed. They were ready for anything. For three months they successfully guided a dozen pieces of intelligence all over the world, praying the efforts were assisting the Allies in some way.

Then it came. A telegram. “Desist. Immediately.”

The fire roared that night as slips of paper, ciphers, names, and secrets were turned to ash.

“This is it,” Doris look at her husband as the telegram slipped from her fingers into the flames.

~

The crowd surged against the locked doors. The couple had been forced into the aisle by the stamped.

Cries of, “Let us out!” and, “Open these doors or I’ll…” rose to an invisible ceiling.

~

“We haven’t seen a film in a while,” Harry said, staring at the watery soup in his spoon. Glancing up, he saw Doris beaming at him from across the table.

“Oh, Harry! Can we? I can wear my new skirt! I’ve been dying to wear it out!”

“Of course!” Harry grinned as she leaped up from the table.

“Oh, I’ll start getting ready now!”

“Lay out a suit for me, will you, dear?”

~

She felt so silly in her new skirt now. She wished they’d never come to the theater. The images of war that had played before the movie floated across her vision. When would this terror end? “When we are victorious,” she decided to herself. “If they win, this terror will last forever.”

The screen lit up. All heads turned and silence fell at the sight of the light. The image was obstructed by the shadows of three men, one being drug mercilessly across the screen. One of the shadows grunted, and the darkness descended again.

The grunt had been unintelligible to most of the people in the room. Harry and Doris had recognized it immediately as a German command.

“Harry,” her barely audible whisper broke the silence between them.

“It could be anyone, Doris. Why would they burst in here and cause a scene? They would be fools—”

The doors burst open and two men entered. The lights snapped on revealing the carnage left behind by the crazed crowd.

“We are here,” one of the men began in an American accent, “looking for a Mr. and Mrs. Williams. We have been asked to escort you.”

The other man, wearing round glasses, nodded curtly.

Whispers carried around the room.

“Who are they, Harry?” Doris hugged herself to his side.

“Our rescue, darling. Just be glad they got here first,” he smiled down at her, looping her arm through his.

Her eyes glanced from the men back to Harry. “You know them?”

“The voice, my love. From the phone.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

Warmth flowed back into Doris’s limbs. On legs wobbly with relief, she was barely able to keep up with her husband who was trotting towards the men.

“Hello, sirs. I am Harry Williams, this is my wife. If we might?” He motioned towards the exit.

“Of course, sir. Ma’am.” The first man lead the way as the spectacled man brought up the rear.

The streets outside were dark as the couple climbed into the back of a black car. The engine turned over, and they pulled away from the curb.

“If I may,” Doris spoke up as they rolled out of the city. “But, where are you escorting us to?”

“That is secret information, I am afraid,” the man in glasses replied with a tinge of German at the edges of his American accent.

To Doris’s trained ear, the remark felt stiff, rehearsed. Not a lie that the destination was a secret, but a shroud for a deeper intent.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. The headlights lead them down a bumpy, deserted road in the New York countryside.

Doris’s stomach flipped at each bounce. Where were they going? A safe house, perhaps a meet-up point?

The car crunched to a stop.

“We will give you a moment,” the first man stated, his locking eyes full of meaning on Harry, who gave a nod.

They were alone.

“Harry, what is going on!” she turned from staring out into the blank night to her husband.

“I want you to know, my love,” a stifled sob escaped his throat. He swallowed several times. Far off lightning illuminated the clouds. “I want you to know I have only misled you twice throughout the past three months.”

“Harry, I don’t—”

“Please, please. I have to tell you this. The second time, I lead you to believe I had spoken to the man we are with on the phone. I have heard his voice, but never on a call meant for me. I’ve only intercepted his calls to Germany.”

Doris gasped as warmth stung her eyelids.

“The first lie was much more blatant. Dear, these men aren’t here to rescue us. We’ve been found out. Oh, darling, forgive me. I didn’t want you to worry. Anticipating the end and experiencing it are so completely different. I was protecting you from that torture the only way I could think of.” His voice shook in the dark.

Smoothing her new skirt, Doris peered back out the window. So this was it? “Shouldn’t I have been given that choice?” Her voice shook as she looked back into Harry’s eyes.

“If only you could have. Once the choice is known, it’s already made. Doris, please, forgive me. I won’t be able to bear these last few moments if I know, know you’re against me.”

“Against you? Oh, Harry, what you’d have to do to turn me against you! Of course I forgive you! Just don’t let it happen again,” She grinned and threw herself into his arms.

Rain pelted against the glass as they clung to each other.

The door was pulled open. The Williams were pushed out into the darkness where they disappeared as two more flashes joined the dark storm above.