Chapter 2

Dear Anne,

It's Tuesday, which means in an hour I shall leave my office behind for the pleasant company of the legation wives. I wrote you about the group I've organized for the Red Cross. We meet in the residence's drawing room twice a week to knit sweaters, mittens, gloves, anything a skein of yarn and our needles can create. I can hear you chuckling now, imagining me at the head of a battalion of knitters when I should be doing something important like sorting out international crises or imploring Roosevelt to step in and bring this madness to a halt (as if he were Santa Claus with a bag of gifts). There are plenty of doubters here too, but not all diplomacy is done in high-powered meetings. My knitting engenders more warmth and fellow feeling among the locals than any amount of cocktail receptions would.

T here was a platter of sandwiches and another of cake. An urn of coffee had been set up on a sideboard. Someone had snapped on the radio. The deputy chief of mission's wife, Margaret Cox, stood in a corner conferring with a group of ladies over a box of completed clothing ready to be sent on to the Norwegian Red Cross for distribution while others clustered on chairs near the windows to catch the light. Their needles flashed in their capable hands, their voices a high chatter that Daisy leaned into like a plant reaching for the sun.

"Mrs. Harriman, I really must insist." Vice Consul Whitney chased after her with a sheaf of papers. "We need those letters as soon as possible, and Herr Brauer has been most anxious to meet with you. I would think the German minister is more important than these women and their needlecraft."

"I'm sure you think so. And I shall phone the Germans the moment I'm done here."

Mr. Whitney gave the impression of softness with a loose, jowly face and thinning brown hair combed over to hide a bald spot. But there was nothing soft about his expression, furry brows drawn low over ice chips for eyes, or his voice, which was a bearlike growl. "Mrs. Harriman, please..."

"Even prisoners are allowed an hour of exercise once a day."

Creases bit into his stern features, and she stifled a smile. She really shouldn't bait the poor man, but he made it so easy with his constant chiding. "I'll take Miss Kristiansen along. I can dictate and knit at the same time. Will that suffice?"

He huffed his concession.

Battle won, but their war at a standoff.

Strauss gave way to a radio announcer, and the conversation died back as everyone strained to listen, whether they were fluent in Norwegian or not. Daisy could stumble her way through a conversation, but she didn't need to know her v?r s? god from her v?r s? snill , sitting, as she was, so close to Miss Kristiansen. The girl's face gave all away. It smoothed like glass, the smile tipping the corners of her eyes fading, her pen dangling thoughtlessly from her fingers. Across the room, Mrs. Mejlaender, the American wife of a Norwegian, translated for those who needed it.

Finland's lopsided peace treaty with Russia. The loss of three more merchant ships to German subs. The British mining the waters off Norway's coast. Conversation faltered, then grew louder as the news ended and the soothing strains of Chopin took over.

"This phony war is all well and good for those taking their ease behind the Maginot Line, but what about us?" someone commented. "That's our good men dying out there."

"You think the Russians will stop with Finland?" said another. "What they want is an ice-free port. Norway should take care. They'll be attacking in the north before long."

"Who says they'll stop in the north?" came the tart reply.

The response to this remark was a loud and firm repudiation, though Daisy felt a thread of unease ripple through the women. A few glanced in her direction as if seeking reassurance, a clue to the true state of affairs in the tilt of her head or a vague facial expression. She gave them her best poker face. "Petra dear, will you..."

The girl was white as the snow lying thick on the lawn. No doubt she was thinking of her family living in the northern port city of Narvik. Daisy recalled there was a brother working as a fisherman, a sister employed as a doctor. She touched Petra's arm, and the girl startled with a visible shudder. "Are you all right, child?"

"Fine, ma'am," she replied, giving nothing away.

The door opened, bringing a gust of cool air from the hall along with Clementine. No, she must start thinking of her as Cleo, a name as direct and unadorned as the woman who now bore it. She was bundled in a borrowed coat and a pair of overlarge winter boots that slopped when she walked, but her sapphire-blue beret was tilted at a rakish angle and there was color in her cheeks, filled out after a week of solid feeding. Cleo had yet to speak of her time spent in Poland and Daisy hadn't pushed. It was obvious by the shadows in her agate-green gaze and the way she startled like a deer that the girl had been through an ordeal. But there were limits to Daisy's patience and her resources. Cleo stretched them both on a daily basis.

"Aunt Daisy, I was hoping to—"

"Shush." She waved her to sit down, one of the wives making room beside her on the couch.

Cleo smiled her thanks but otherwise ignored the invitation. "I really have to speak with you. I was chatting with a gentleman I met at a bar off Arbins Gate near the palace. He's just arrived from Copenhagen on business and swears he—"

"Spotted young Mr. Kominski getting into a taxi," Aunt Daisy finished the sentence for her.

Cleo frowned. "No."

"Across a hotel lobby," Aunt Daisy continued. "Eating supper at a restaurant. I'm sorry to be harsh, my dear, but sooner or later you'll have to face up to the fact that Mr. Kominski died in that café bombing."

"But that doesn't explain his letter."

That infernal letter. The start of Cleo's quest that had sent her to Oslo in hopes Daisy could solve the mystery. She appreciated her goddaughter's faith in her abilities but finding one missing man in the middle of a war was like finding a needle in a haystack—one that was burning as you searched.

"The letter asking me to meet him under the clock at the train station in Kassa arrived three days after the bombing."

Daisy needed to tread carefully lest Cleo take it into her head to leave on the next train to carry on the hunt alone. Now that she'd laid her hands on her erstwhile goddaughter, she wasn't about to let Cleo out of her sight again.

"Please, Aunt Daisy. Just one phone call. You promised to help."

Had she? As far as she could recall, she'd warned Cleo of the impossibility of learning anything at all, but that hadn't stopped her from pestering, badgering, and otherwise irritating everyone around her until they gave in just to shut her up. A dubious but effective strategy.

"Miss Kristiansen, escort Miss Jaffray to the chancery offices. Tell Lieutenant Bayard I'd like him to make inquiries about a Mr. Michal Kominski formerly of New York City and lately of Zakopane, Poland. Last possible sighting in Copenhagen."

"Of course, ma'am."

"Do you mean it?" Cleo's face brightened with hope. After months of seeing that desperate eager light in the gaunt faces of those arriving at the chancery, exhausted and frightened, Daisy recognized it immediately, and her heart went out to the girl.

"This is the last time. Whatever we find out, you leave for New York afterward. No more arguments. No more delays. Your mother needs you at home. You're all she has left."

Cleo's gaze dropped submissively to the floor, but Daisy sensed no surrender in the set of her shoulders. "It needn't have been that way, you know," she muttered. "There were gentlemen buzzing round, even as recently as five years ago. She always sent them packing."

This was news to Daisy, though unsurprising. Letitia Jaffray had been a beautiful bride. Widowhood had only honed her elegant features to a fragile brilliance men couldn't resist. "I didn't know that."

"She kept it quiet. Afraid she'd be cornered into a marriage she'd regret." Cleo looked up, her gaze meeting Daisy's in an obvious challenge, which she chose to ignore.

Daisy could have warned Cleo from the outset that George Cliveden wasn't her type, but the girl had been a stove-toucher since the beginning. Had to find things out for herself, no matter the consequences.

"Your parents loved each other very much, Cleo. Maybe more than they should have."

"My mother loved. I doubt my father did, or else he wouldn't have run away the first chance he got."

Daisy wouldn't argue the point; there was just enough truth in the accusations to make her uncomfortable. "So we have an agreement? You'll go as soon as I can book passage?"

"I'll tuck my tail between my legs and endure a feast of crow from Mother and all of New York if I must. Just find out what happened to Micky."

Miss Kristiansen led Cleo away to the chancery to make the call. As they walked together, it was hard not to make comparisons between the two young women. Cleo's short dark curls beside Petra's shimmering blond crown. Petra tall and willowy with a dancer's gait and a quiet dreaminess. Cleo bearing the Jaffray shoulders and enough brash confidence to power a city.

They passed Mr. Whitney coming back for a second round, the vice consul's face bearing its usual sour, disgruntled frown. "I apologize for interrupting your little tea party, ma'am, but Ambassador Sterling's on the phone for you from the embassy in Stockholm. There's a reporter from Life magazine asking for your comment on the ‘City of Flint' article in last week's issue, and the German foreign minister has sent around an invitation for an evening next week."

She and Mrs. Cox exchanged a look, the other woman deftly taking over the room.

Daisy's hour of freedom was over.

N o one in the city of Copenhagen had ever heard of Michal Kominski.

Cleo was back to square one.

She turned up the collar of her coat and angled herself out of the wind as she set a match to her very last cigarette. She'd rationed them the past week, doling them out to herself sparingly, one a day, no matter how much her body cried out for nicotine. She'd hoped Aunt Daisy would take pity and loan her a few dollars, kroner... whatever they used for money in Norway. But Daisy, while generous in allowing Cleo to replenish her wardrobe on her godmother's shop accounts, hadn't seen fit to extend that generosity to cold, hard cash. Probably afraid Cleo would take it and run.

Maybe she would, though running implied there was somewhere to go. A destination. Answers to the questions that kept her up at night, clutching her costume diamond like a nun might clutch her cross or rubbing the pad of her thumb back and forth over the constellation of smaller glass stones that decorated the setting, like a child might derive comfort from the edge of a favorite blanket.

Cleo flinched at the sudden roar of a bus heading up Nobels Gate and instinctively tucked herself farther back against the corner of the residence. She told herself it was to keep out of the wind, but her hands shook, and her heart beat rapid as a jazz snare.

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She was safe.

The panic slowly subsided, leaving her slightly ill and guilty as hell.

She was safe, but what about her friends and neighbors still in Zakopane who hadn't had the benefit of the Stars and Stripes sewn onto their collars?

"Isn't that your job? To help Americans in trouble?" Cleo had pleaded with her godmother, but Daisy remained immovable. Information coming out of Poland was sparse and often unreliable. If Micky had not died outright in the bombing as the Germans claimed, there was no telling where he might be. It would be best if Cleo returned to New York as soon as possible. The situation in Europe was too unstable to linger.

" You're staying."

"I have a job to do."

"So do I" was Cleo's blunt response. That ended the conversation, but she was under no illusions that Aunt Daisy would leave things as they were.

Cleo stamped her feet against the cold. Smoke and breath mingled when she exhaled. Across the way, those at the chancery worked late. Lamplight gleamed over a crust of snow while above, the moon slid in and out of thin streamers of cloud.

A taxi drew up to the gate. Cleo moved to the far side of the building, out of the spear of headlights, only to find herself intruding on an intimate moment. At least that's what it looked like at first glance. Two figures locked together in the darkness. Then the wind died, and the voices, soft and insistent, carried.

"I don't know what to do. Every ship is booked." Cleo immediately recognized the precise English of Petra Kristiansen. "There are endless lines at the ticket offices. Some people are paying twice, three times the going price. The trains are no better. And the journey east through Russia is long with so many complications and dangers. It's impossible."

"Trust me," Bayard responded. "We'll find a way."

A scuff of her shoes or perhaps the glow of her cigarette betrayed Cleo. The two of them sprang apart, Petra hurrying to the waiting taxi while Lieutenant Bayard stood watching until the car backed out and disappeared up the street.

"I'm surprised to see you out here, Miss Jaffray." Unruffled by her intrusion, Bayard lit his own cigarette.

"Aunt Daisy's entertaining and Mrs. Nilsen chased me out of her kitchen, telling me I was underfoot," she answered, throwing him a sideways glance. "Speaking of which, I didn't interrupt an elopement, did I?"

The tip of his cigarette glowed red, the rest of his face in shadow except for the pinprick gleam of his eyes. "Petra's American grandmother has been staying with the family. They're trying to get her back home, but the Finnish war has made booking passage nearly impossible. I told her I'd see what I could do to help."

"Why doesn't she ask my aunt for assistance?"

"Petra doesn't want to bother Mrs. Harriman when she's already so busy with others seeking the same escape. We've had families turning up all fall and winter, some with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Madam Minister has worked hard to help as many as she can."

"Is this your way of telling me to stop pestering her?"

"It's my way of telling you the truth. If anyone in the White House or the State Department back in thirty-seven had thought war was on the horizon, they'd never have appointed Mrs. Harriman to a ministerial post to start with. Now that it's come, the only reason she hasn't been recalled is that Norway's a small country, out of the path of the fighting. But that doesn't mean she has an easy job. Or that there aren't those here and in Washington who would love to see her fail."

"You care about her."

"Of course I do. She's the US minister and my superior."

"No, I mean you care care about her."

"She reminds me of my—"

"Dear old granny?" Cleo interrupted, unaccountably irritated on her godmother's behalf.

"I was going to say my father. He served as a noncom in the last war. Tough as old boots. Never demanded anything of his men he wasn't willing to do himself. They'd have walked into the cannon's mouth for him."

"And did they?"

"Yes. Far too many of them. He wasn't the same man when he came home."

"But he came home." She couldn't help the twinge of envy. What had allowed one soldier to survive and another to die? It was a question she still asked. The answer still eluded her.

"Most of him did," Bayard replied. "I sometimes think he left the best parts of himself on the battlefield. And here we are right back again for a second go-round."

"Surely it won't come to that. Not here in Norway."

"Maybe. Maybe not. You were in Poland. You saw how quickly it all went south."

"I was there," she replied with a long shaky draw on her cigarette. "The invasion happened so fast they passed us by in the first few days with barely a scratch to show for it. The worst of the fighting was miles away, so you could almost forget there was a war on."

A bang of trash bins around the back of the chancery made her jump. Fear knifed through her, every nerve firing until she wanted to be sick. Her cigarette fell from trembling fingers to hiss in an icy puddle.

"Almost," she added quietly.

C leo told herself no news was good news, but the days dragged and Aunt Daisy's updates came less frequently as she spent more time in staff meetings or away at the Norwegian Foreign Office. To combat her growing frustration and ease the pressure that closed like a vise around her chest, Cleo took long walks, meandering through neighborhoods around the legation before venturing down into the city's center, where she explored every narrow street and winding, dogleg alley.

This afternoon, she'd taken advantage of a spring thaw to wander her way up and down the main avenue of Karl Johans Gate, glancing into the cathedral's close, poking her way around the university's buildings, circling the royal palace that stood solid and uncompromising at the top of its hill before finding herself at the entrance to Frogner Park.

Oslo's largest park didn't have the same scrappy hustle as Central Park back home. As a girl, she would escape the stifling museum atmosphere of the big house on East Fifty-Seventh to lose herself among the park's paths and grottos. She'd buy a hot dog from a vendor's cart or toss a coin into the upturned caps of the hopeful buskers. Sun herself on the lounges by the boathouse in the summer or skate on the pond in the winter. It became a refuge from her mother's more strident melodramatics.

Paul Jaffray had been dead for nearly a quarter century, but his wife mourned him as if she'd received the telegram yesterday. The memories of him choked off any hope of life for his daughter, or so it seemed. A bud nipped at birth.

Cleo had met George Cliveden in Central Park.

She was feeding the pigeons on a bench overlooking the tennis courts. He'd asked her for the time as he waited impatiently for his doubles partner.

It turned out his mother knew her mother. The two women played bridge together and attended the same charitable committees. He was a good dancer. Athletic. He played golf when he wasn't working in his father's law offices. He knew the right people, was of the right class, attended the right schools. Was, by any measure, a "good catch."

He'd taken her out to nightclubs. To dinner. To the theater.

And that would have been the extent of their relationship, if not for a fight with her mother.

Letitia Jaffray gave the impression of softness from her round cheeks to her curvy body to her high, girlish voice. Cleo knew better. If anything her mother's pillowy quality cushioned every attempted blow. Arguing with her mother was like punching a feather bolster. Exhausting. Pointless. Impossible.

The fight had started out in the usual fashion. Her mother had scolded Cleo for some minor infraction, calling upon her late husband to back up her argument.

Your father would never have . . .

Your father always . . .

If your father was here . . .

Cleo had heard the incessant complaints over her shortcomings all her life. But this time, she'd had enough of never measuring up. When she slammed out of the house, she'd no idea where she was headed until she stood outside George's apartment building.

The next thing she knew she was engaged.

An extreme attempt to finally impress her mother that backfired in spectacular fashion.

"Se opp!" The bicycle nearly clipped Cleo as it whizzed past, handlebar bell jangling, the man pumping the pedals as if he was late to a fire.

It seemed like half of Oslo was wandering the gravel paths patchy with melting snow, taking in the spring sunshine after one of the coldest winters ever. Along with the occasional mad-dash bicyclist, the park was awash in dog walkers and pram-pushing mothers, men in somber suits, and smartly turned-out secretaries enjoying chilly alfresco lunches before returning to their offices for the afternoon.

Cleo headed north past a small lake where a few ducks paddled. The trees, still bare after months of snow and ice, arched overhead. Fumbling in her handbag, she found a lonesome bronze ?re coin amid her lipstick, compact mirror, and cigarette lighter. Squeezing the coin tight in one hand, she closed her eyes and made her wish before tossing it into the water. The same wish she'd made since that horrible morning outside the shattered, burned-out café in Zakopane. It hadn't worked yet, but Aunt Daisy aside, she wasn't giving up.

"Kim, kom tilbake. Dumme hund! Stop! Bad dog!"

The dog, rather than heeding the commands, snuffled Cleo's legs, its head nearly at the height of her waist. Cleo smiled and dug her fingers into the grizzled fur, scratching its head, which was nearly buried in her coat pocket. "Hello, Kim old boy. Are you misbehaving for Miss Kristiansen?"

The first few days after her arrival, Cleo had thought about befriending Aunt Daisy's secretary in hopes she might be another useful ally, but it hadn't taken long for whispers about Cleo to begin to circulate among the chancery staff.

Spoiled. Easy. Brat. Tramp.

She was used to being snubbed by the rule followers and the straight arrows of the world so she wasn't surprised by Petra Kristiansen's frosty attitude, only a little disappointed.

"I am sorry for bothering you. He is usually very well-behaved," Petra said as she snapped the leash back on the dog's collar.

"It's all right. Kim and I go way back. Aunt Daisy's had him since he was a puppy; the two are practically inseparable."

The woman's features flattened as if she was still unable to compute how Cleo and the American minister could possibly be related. Cleo oftentimes wondered the same thing. "He's usually docile as a lamb on a walk. What happened?"

"There was a work van. He pulled loose to chase it."

"Of course. Old Kim's never met anything with wheels he didn't want to catch. The herder in him, I guess. He'd never pull a stunt like that with Aunt Daisy. With her, he's good as gold."

"Madam Minister is in a conference on mineral imports. I'm glad he recognized you or I might still be chasing him."

"Not me exactly." Cleo shoved her hand in a pocket, pulling out a dried bit of beef and tossing it to the dog, who gulped it down with greedy smile. "He must have smelled Aunt Daisy. The coat was on a rack by the door."

The two fell in step together as Kim seemed to want to go wherever Cleo led and Petra was forced to follow the strong pull of the shepherd. "I hear your mother's family is from Chicago," Cleo ventured as an icebreaker.

"That's right," Petra replied.

It was like pulling teeth, but Cleo had been raised in a world where small talk was considered more necessary to a woman's education than math or reading. Right up there with flower arranging and how to hire staff. The more Petra resisted, the more Cleo was determined to get her to talk. She loved a good challenge. "Chicago's fantastic. Not as fantastic as New York, of course, but it has its charms."

Petra paused for a traffic light, and now those assessing blue eyes that had stared through Cleo since she'd arrived regarded her closely. "If you love America so much, why did you leave? And why do you not go back when you have the chance?"

Ouch. She should have seen that one coming. "It's a long story."

"They say you ran away from your wedding."

Cleo wished she could find those elusive "they." She'd teach them to mind their own business. "It sounds worse than it was."

"You didn't love your fiancé?"

Did Petra not know how small talk worked? What happened to discussing the weather or the shocking price of a pair of stockings? She'd bypassed that and gone straight for the jugular.

Cleo decided to parry with the unvarnished truth. "I thought I did. Turns out not enough to marry him." Petra didn't seem to know what to say to that, thank heavens. Cleo took the opportunity to follow up with some nosy questions of her own. "What about you and Lieutenant Bayard? Are you two setting a date yet?"

"It's not like that. He is a friend. Nothing more." If Petra was disappointed, she kept it well hidden. "He is merely helping me find passage for my grandmother."

"Is she here in Oslo?"

"She is in Bergen with my mother while they try to make travel arrangements."

"I'm sure she'll be fine," Cleo said, trying her best to sound confidently reassuring. "She's a US citizen, right?"

Petra's smile was polite, but she clearly did not share Cleo's optimism. She tightened her hand around Kim's leash, yanking him from a particularly interesting tree. "So was your Mr. Kominski, was he not?" Some of Cleo's shock must have shown on her face. Petra flushed with embarrassment. "I am very sorry. I should not have said that. It was cruel and unkind."

"It was. But you're not wrong."