The girl seated at the sadly worn desk looked up. Her expression was as bureaucratically indifferent as the chipped finish on the piece of aging furniture. “Yes?”
“I have a ten-o’clock appointment with the reference department.”
“Name?”
“Ritter.”
The girl ran her fingers along a list. “Fill this out, please.” Any cooler and she’d be a candidate for frostbite, Ritter thought. The official-looking slip of paper wanted his name, address, and the purpose of his visit. To answer the last point, he wrote simply “research.” He handed the sheet back to the girl. Help keep a file clerk productively employed. In a frayed logbook she noted his arrival time.
“Roberts,” she called. A small man in a poorly fitting blue uniform ambled over, one of several guards lounging in the lobby. “This gentleman to documents and books.”
“Follow me, sir,” Roberts said in a soft institutional way. He didn’t look at the girl. He didn’t like her either.
Ritter trailed him up a brief flight of steps out of the main entrance hall into a long corridor and turned. The left side was lined with display cases crammed with memorabilia of the Battle of Britain: uniforms, autographed pictures of boyish daredevils who had saved the nation, and pictures of their flimsy aircraft.
They turned again and entered an antique elevator, its insides freshly painted blue. It creaked upward to the second floor, where Ritter followed the guard up two more flights of stairs.
A whispery library atmosphere covered the circular room of the documents reference section, with its pastel green walls and dark green carpet accented by fresh gold-and-white trim. Ritter gazed up at the nineteenth century dome overhead, an expensive crystal chandelier suspended from it, evidence of more prosperous days of the empire. Four long curved tables hugged the edge of the room, with a large round reading table in the middle. On one edge of the wall, in artistic gold letters, were inscribed the Ten Commandments, credited to the twentieth chapter of Exodus. Directly opposite, a rack of contemporary magazines offered Military Affairs, Deutsche Waffen Journal, Aerospace Historian and NATO Review. A sign over a desk to one side said, “Head of Readers’ Services.”
“May I help you, sir?” said a young woman with receptive brown eyes, a freckled nose, and deep dimples.
“Uhh, my name is Ritter. I called yesterday about some research regarding the 1941 campaign in northern Greece.”
“Yes?”
“Well, I’m interested in the period, and, uh, I’d like to get an idea of what sort of material is available.”
“Certainly, Mr. Ritter. I suggest you go through the card cataloge.”
“Fine.” He let her sample the Ritter grin.
She flushed slightly. “Why don’t you sit down here? I’ll bring out the drawer with the Greece cards. You can thumb through them and see what interests you.”
He sat down obediently. The girl disappeared next door into a room with wall-to-wall drawers. In a minute, she returned.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ritter. You’ll have to wait. Someone else is going through that drawer at the moment. Is there some other subject you would be interested in checking?”
“No, I’ll wait.”
“It shouldn’t be long.” She wanted to reassure him.
He looked around. A Chinese who could have been a diplomat was deeply absorbed in a thick, tattered volume. A scholarly gentleman with a German accent was discussing Libya with a member of the library staff. Others appeared to be students or academics. Except one, a particularly good-looking young blond woman with pearl earrings. She was not beautiful in a classical sense. Her nose was not entirely straight and her face was slightly too thin. But still, she was extremely attractive and smartly dressed, in a dark blue suit and cream blouse. There was something distinctly erotic about her despite the conservative clothing. Her breasts were not large, but they couldn’t be called inadequate, either. She seemed deeply absorbed as she fingered her way through a drawer of cards. Her polished manner was vaguely European, but Ritter didn’t think she was British.
She raised her head and signaled one of the staff, who took a number of yellow cards and the drawer from her.
In a minute the girl who had been helping Ritter appeared with the drawer he had asked for.
“If you need any help, Mr. Ritter, I’ll be in that room. These yellow cards are requisition forms. When you locate something you want to see, just fill out a card giving the name and reference number. In a few minutes one of us will bring it to you.”
From the top of the drawer, the tabs ran from Gatling guns through Hanoi. In the middle was one that said “512.142 Greece WWII.”
He began leafing through the material. Several cards offered promising titles, mostly articles or books about the 1941 campaign in Greece. But they were very general, not likely to have the detail he sought. Near the end of the Greece offerings, one in particular caught his eye, an article in the Journal of the Royal Artillery, Volume LXXII, 1945, “With the First Armoured Brigade in Greece,” written by an officer who had served with the unit. Jimmy Waddell’s old unit. A good starting point.
Ritter spent the rest of the morning studying the article and several others. It was quickly apparent that the basic facts of Jimmy’s story were true. The First Armoured Brigade had been the main unit charged with defending northern Greece when the Germans rolled over the border from Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. Overwhelmed by German firepower and numbers, the general pullback had begun almost immediately. The unit retreated down the Ptolemais-Kozani road a few days after Jimmy claimed he and the two officers put the gold in the ground. It was hard to believe but this seemed like the same gold Ritter had searched for in ’43.
Around one p.m. Ritter’s stomach informed him he was hungry. He looked up. The number of persons in the room had thinned out.
The girl with the pearl earrings was still deep in concentration, writing in a red notebook. He watched her for a few moments. She obviously was engrossed in whatever she was doing. He stood up and found the librarian with the dimples who had helped him earlier.
“I want to leave my books and notes here while I get a quick bite for lunch.”
“Yes, I’ll take you downstairs. When you want to come back up, just check in with the reception desk and get one of the guards to bring you.”
“Tight security for a museum, even a war museum.”
“Bomb danger mainly,” she said. “The Irish, you know. Also, we just can’t have people wandering around unchecked. A lot of the documents and books are irreplaceable.”
“Suppose so. Know a good place to eat around here?”
“You might try the Ole Bill Café in the basement in the public gallery.”
“Who was old Bill?”
She smiled. “Lots of foreigners ask that. Ole Bill wasn’t anybody. That’s what they called the buses that carried the boys to the front in France in the First World War. Brought’ em over from London. The buses, I mean.”
“What do you tell the foreigners about the food?”
“It’s convenient.”
They reached the ground floor. The girl started to return upstairs. “By the way …” Ritter stopped her. “That woman with the pearl earrings and blue suit.”
. “You mean the American?”
“American?”
“Yes, the woman seated next to the Head of Readers’ Services desk?”
“That’s the one.”
“What about her?”
“Do you know what she is studying?”
“She’s been in the library several times in the past week. Someone said she is doing research on Greece.”
The Public Records Office in London’s Chancery Lane is one of the great document repositories in the world. Its dusty shelves are laden with deaths and births, land purchases, probate records, legal decisions, ships’ logs, war diaries, and other bureaucratic and historical accumulations dating back nearly a thousand years. There undoubtedly would be even more but for the great London fire of 1666 that destroyed many of the city’s records.
In traditional British practice, anyone wishing access to the records must produce a letter of introduction. For any British subject, this can be from a member of Parliament, a leading personality from the academic world, a recognized member of the legal profession, or someone else well placed in the establishment. For an American citizen, such letters addressed to the Keeper of the Records are routinely issued by the American embassy in Grosvenor Square upon presentation of a passport at the Special Consular Affairs section.
In a scruffy office at the entrance to the records compound, Ritter handed over his letter to a formal man, his balding head supported by a bow tie.
“What are you interested in seeing, Mr. Ritter?” The voice was middle-class Knightsbridge.
“War diaries of the First Armoured Brigade for 1941.”
“As you may know, war diaries are technically classified for one hundred years. However, if you are willing to sign this waiver pledging not to make public use of any of the names you come across, we can forgo that restriction.”
Ritter signed. Within a few minutes he found himself in the aptly named Long Room facing the officer-in-charge, a grim-faced girl with dark smooth skin and a Twiggy-esque figure. In terse, businesslike fashion she explained how to fill out the requisition cards after locating in the master index the diaries he wanted. The index covered every recognizable unit in the British armed forces during the Second World War, from brigade to army-corps level. After a thirty-minute search Ritter located references for the First Armoured Brigade, filled in a requisition slip, and settled down to wait. Perhaps he would go out for a cup of coffee on Fleet Street and come back.
He gazed out over the rectangular room. There were four main reading tables, each crowded with serious-looking researchers taking notes and, on the back table, pecking away at typewriters. Shelves of books and records covered one long side and the back wall of the room, partially lit by sunlight filtering through hazy windows on the outside wall.
Most of the readers were poring over old journals and logs. They appeared to be the usual collection of students, hobbyists, historians, writers—and the blond girl with the pearl earrings. There she was, sitting at the third table back, in the corner, as he had seen her before, taking notes from some papers. A bad time for coffee. He didn’t want to miss her this time. But it probably wasn’t a good idea to interrupt her. He watched her for several minutes. She really was lovely. As though she sensed he had been watching her, she suddenly looked up, staring right at him. Their eyes caught. She held the gaze for a moment, then looked away, out the window, then back down at her notes. Lovely, no question about it
“Mr. Ritter?” One of the librarians calling.
He stood up and went to the desk. “Yes?”
“The war diaries you requested are out at the moment.”
“Oh. Can you tell me which of the readers has them?”
“I’m afraid we couldn’t do that, sir.”
“No, of course not.” He already knew. It was too much of a coincidence. The building held millions of documents. The odds of another person having a call on the same obscure document at the same time were about the same as finding a sunken galleon on the first dive. It just didn’t happen.
He walked back to the third table until he was standing over her. “You wouldn’t by any chance have the war diaries of the First Armoured Brigade, would you?”
She raised her head and her eyes to meet his. Up close she was even more appealing than at a distance. Her eyes were lit with a bright glimmer and her lips parted slightly into a cautious smile. “How would you know?”
“My fairy godmother told me.”
“Well, Cinderella, aren’t you the lucky one? Did she also tell you it’s rude to bother a stranger in a public reading room?”
“Funny. She never mentioned that.”
“I’ll bet there’s a lot she hasn’t told you.” Her smooth voice was not unfriendly. She spoke American English, as expected—with a slight trace of a French accent, which wasn’t expected.
“As a matter of fact, there are one or two minor things she failed to mention, such as why it’s taken me so long to meet you.”
“You obviously don’t frequent the right reading rooms.”
“You left the last one before I had a chance.”
“Ah.” She sighed in recognition. “The Imperial War Museum. I thought I had seen you somewhere before.”
“An unforgettable face.”
She leaned back in her chair, studying him, showing no haste in breaking off the conversation. “You interested in Greece?”
He wasn’t quite ready for the question, “I’m, uh, writing a book. Don’t tell anybody. It’s a secret. What’s your excuse?”
“Working on my doctorate. It’s not a secret. You can tell anyone.”
“About the First Armoured Brigade?”
“About the 1941 campaign in general. That is just one small aspect.”
“I like your timing.”
She smiled, not replying. The smile said everything.
‘‘You live here in London?” he asked.
“Just here for a while as part of my research.”
“Seeing as we’re both working on similar subjects, perhaps we should get together and compare notes. Which leads me to ask an overwhelming question. When are you going to be finished with those diaries?”
“By the end of the day. If you request them now, they’ll have them ready for you first thing in the morning.”
“How about dinner tonight, then? You can review for me some of the more dramatic highlights.”
“Well, I… Sure, why not?”
* * *
Few women in Brian Ritter’s life stirred him as thoroughly as Michelle Bennett Simonet.
On his way to the Chelsea wine bar to meet her, he found himself inexplicably skittish. Women never made him nervous. Those days were long past. But he was feeling as uncertain of himself as a kid on a first date. Strange. Strange.
She was seated at the bar, a glass of white wine in front of her.
“Muscadet or German Moselle?” he asked.
“Oh, hello. Didn’t see you come in,” she said, looking up. “It’s a Mâcon Blanc ’73. A very nice vintage. You should try it.”
“Sounds like you did your master’s in wine-tasting.”
“Not exactly. Where I come from there are certain things as natural as you might find knowing O. J. Simpson’s rushing average.”
“Yes, I was wondering. You’re the only American I ever met with a French accent,” he said, raising a glass of wine the bartender had poured. “Cheers.”
“A la votre.’’ She raised her glass. “Actually, I’m only half American. I have both an American passport and a French one.”
“How does one manage that?”
“Easy, really. Just be born in France to a French mother and an American father.”
“I see. Nothing to it. All carefully arranged in advance.”
“Ha.” A marvelous girlish laugh gushed out of her slender throat like freshly uncorked champagne.
“Your father was an American tourist with a rich tongue and fat wallet who just swept your mother off her feet.”
“My father was not exactly a tourist. I was born in Vierville sur Mer, a village you have never heard of, although it is on one of the most famous beaches in the world.”
“The Riviera?”
“Vierville is one of the coastal villages of Omaha Beach. My father was an officer with the U.S. Twenty-ninth Division that stormed ashore on D Day. He was wounded during the day and spent the next three weeks recuperating in a field hospital in Vierville. During his recovery he met my mother, who was working as a volunteer nurse. He spoke very good French for an American, and within a month and a half they were married. I never saw him. He was killed a few months later in the Battle of the Bulge. I was born about six months after he died.”
“So that’s where the Bennett comes from.”
“An old-line Philadelphia family. My American aunts and uncles have been very good to me. I was born Michelle Bennett, of course. But when my mother remarried, I was adopted by her new husband and thus acquired his family name.”
“Why the interest in 1941? Seems ’44 would be more likely.”
“I’ve already done that. For my master’s degree at Cornell, I spun out a long study on France in 1944, the return of De Gaulle, the shattered social and political fabric and the implications of that year on the nation’s life for the next twenty years. It’s what they call instant history. When I looked around for a similar idea for a doctorate, I thought 1941 would be a good idea. It was in some ways the most interesting year of the war. It was the first full year of occupation in France, and the pressure and consequences of that are still being felt.”
“What’s the Greek campaign got to do with that?”
“Not much, really. But the weak showing put up by the British in Greece shows that a year and a half into the war, England was in an extremely vulnerable position. Lend Lease began only in March, and that kept them afloat, but financially and in terms of morale, it still looked like the end to many Europeans. People thought the Germans couldn’t be beat, that they would have to find a way to coexist with them.”
“And what do you plan to do with all this history?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Teach, probably. I might try to find a job with some unsuspecting university in the States or maybe even in France. I haven’t faced up to it yet. It’s one of those things one puts off as long as possible, like going to the dentist or sending out Christmas cards.”
“Or deciding whether to have dinner or another glass of wine?”
She looked at her watch. “Alors. I have been talking too much. I haven’t even had a chance to ask you about your book.”
“First things first. This is good wine.”
She flashed him a partners-in-crime look. “I thought you’d like it.”
“Another glass, then we’ll find something to eat.”
She took the last sip from her glass and nodded as he signaled the bartender to pour another glass for them.
Ritter wasn’t anxious to talk too much about his fictitious book. But he had to face up to it. Better now when he still hadn’t had too much wine.
“It’s, uh, a thriller,” he said.
“Spies and all that?”
“Not exactly. It’s about a treasure hunt.”
“How exciting. Have you written many books?”
“Uh, this is my first one.”
“What do you normally do?”
“I hunt for treasure.”
“You mean gold?”
“Actually, I’m a diver. I spend most of my time in the Caribbean and West Indies salvaging Spanish galleons and two- and three-hundred-year-old merchant ships.”
“What in the world brings you here?”
“I needed a change. I wanted to do something different.”
“So you’re going to reveal the secrets of successful treasure hunting?”
“No, the book’s about a treasure left behind in World War II.”
Her alert eyes burrowed into him. “Left behind by the British?”
“Yeah. I thought it might make a good story.”
“Sounds fascinating. How in the world did you ever get the idea?”
“From a television show.”
“British army treasure. Gold, I assume?”
“Well, I haven’t gotten that far. Still doing what I guess you’d call basic research.” He had the unpleasant feeling the conversation was getting out of control. It needed a definite change in direction. He looked at his watch. “You must be starved. If we’re going to get something before the reputable kitchens close down, we’d better move on.”
“Yes, I suppose we’d better. As a professional treasure hunter, I expect you to find something good.”
“Not exactly my specialty, you understand. But there are certain basic procedures in any hunt. The first, of course, is research. What kind of food do you like?”