Louise's Dilemma by Sarah R Shaber

own limited experience with the FBI had been less than favorable. Hoover wouldn’t share intelligence with the OSS if he could avoid it.
    ‘We’d like you to act as OSS liaison with the FBI agent assigned to this case,’ Poole said. ‘Mr Egbert has agreed to release you from your current assignment as long as necessary.’
    I’d been around OSS long enough to know I shouldn’t be too flattered. I was just a file clerk. I’d shown I was observant, and I had some field expertise. File clerks were a dime a dozen, and they could do without me. My job would be to make sure that if the FBI found anything interesting OSS would know about it. It was clear to me that Egbert and Poole didn’t attach much importance to this matter. Still, it would get me out of the files for a while longer!
    ‘Of course,’ I said.
    Poole slid off the edge of the desk. ‘The FBI agent you’ll be working with is outside, let me introduce you.’
    Poole opened the door, and a man in his late thirties entered the room. He was dressed conservatively, in suit and tie, like all G-men, but his grey fedora sported a small yellow feather stuck in the hatband.
    ‘Mrs Pearlie,’ Poole said, ‘this is Special Agent Gray Williams.’
    I knew his name. We had met before.
    ‘Mrs Pearlie,’ Williams said, ‘it’s nice to meet you.’
    The man didn’t remember me! Thank God!
    His handshake was firm and dry. I hoped mine wasn’t damp!
    ‘Special Agent Williams,’ I responded. ‘Good morning.’
    Special Agent Williams was the FBI agent who’d paid a terrifying call on me at my OSS office last summer. He’d gotten a report from a guest at the Wardham Hotel that I had been behaving in a ‘loose fashion’ with a foreigner, a Frenchman, in the bar. And that I’d made a ‘spectacle of myself’ at the Shoreham the following Saturday evening. The FBI had investigated me! Williams had then informed me that since I appeared to have an exemplary record, he wanted to warn me that it wasn’t acceptable for a government girl with Top Secret clearance to socialize with foreign nationals.
    The Frenchman was Lionel Barbier, cultural attaché at the French embassy, and, dear God, if the FBI had discovered what we’d actually accomplished that Saturday night I might be whiling away long cold and lonely hours at the Women’s Federal Prison in West Virginia right now!
    Of course, I’d apologized for my behavior, blaming my inexperience with champagne, and promised to be more circumspect when choosing my friends.
    And now I had my very own FBI file, along with thousands of other Americans.
    What were the odds that I would ever see Agent Williams again, much less be assigned to work with him? I couldn’t work with him, I just couldn’t! What if he remembered me? If he did he’d watch my behavior, professional and otherwise, like a hawk.
    Of course, my appearance had changed since then. I wore my hair pinned up at work. I’d exchanged my harlequin eyeglass frames for new rimless round ones. And I’d lost weight. Not intentionally, but the shortage of sugar had forced me to cut down on Coca Cola, Hershey’s chocolate bars, and dessert. And I suppose that the few minutes we’d spent together in an empty conference room at OSS were not seared into his memory the way they were in mine!
    Domestic intelligence was the FBI’s job, and they did it very well. Although our assignment would be to investigate the Martins, and the postcard I now wished I’d never set eyes on, he’d be working with me daily and might still remember me.
    And then there was Joe. He was a ‘foreigner’. What if Williams found out about us?
    I needed to think of a way to refuse this assignment.
    Mentally, I reviewed excuses. I was just a woman, a research assistant. I wasn’t trained for this. Blood made me faint. I had a heart murmur. I racked my brain for a way out.
    ‘Mrs Pearlie,’ Williams said, ‘I saw the commendation in your file. It seems you’re wasted in the