Free Hold Tight by Christopher Bram

you out to me. She will join you, after I leave.” A sigh. “Sad when a father and daughter cannot be seen together too frequently.”
    “Anna speaks very highly of you. I respect that in a woman.”
    The man ignored the compliment. “I want to discover what you can do for us. You were at Yale?”
    “Class of Forty,” said Blair.
    “And you were in—What club? Skull and Crossbones?”
    “Skull and Bones ,” Blair corrected him. “And not a club, a society.”
    “Then you are close friends with some very prestigious people?”
    “Close, no. I haven’t stayed in touch with anyone from school. They were too naive, too ignorant.” So ignorant they never accepted him in Skull and Bones, but Anna and her father didn’t need to know that.
    “Surely you kept one friend from then?”
    “No. Everyone I knew were Popular Front dupes or worse. None of them understood how Hitler had saved Germany from Bolshevism, or how—”
    “Admirable principles,” the voice said sharply. “But we must keep them to ourselves. People get ideas.”
    Blair was sorry. He had looked forward to talking politics with a real Nazi.
    Anna’s father wanted to talk about Blair. “Friends? Family? Surely you know someone highly placed in the government.”
    “No. My family, God bless them, has never dirtied its hands in politics. Cousin John’s in the Navy, but we stopped speaking to each other a year ago.”
    “Hmmm. And what line of work are you in?”
    “None at present. I was in advertising briefly, but I couldn’t bear the dishonesty.”
    “What a difficult young man you are.”
    Blair laughed. “Not difficult. Just principled.”
    “You’re not what I expected.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Nevertheless, I think you can help us. People above suspicion are rare, and a man of your class? I understand you belong to several exclusive clubs?”
    Blair proudly listed them.
    “You are attracted to my daughter?”
    The question took Blair by surprise. “Yes. Yes, I admit I find Anna attractive, sir.”
    “Would you say you are in love with her?”
    Blair opened his mouth, but couldn’t say anything. He cleared his throat. “I like your daughter, yes. Uh, isn’t this awfully personal?”
    “I want only to understand your feelings for her. But you do care about her?”
    “Yes. Of course.”
    “Then you must be very careful in your talk. Not just for your sake, but for Anna’s. We do not want anything happening to her. A little loose talk and—”
    “You can trust me with Anna,” Blair said. “I’m very careful about what I say. And my feelings for her are of the highest—”
    Before Blair could finish, the chatter around them broke into shouts of “Look!” “Out there!”
    Out on the horizon, faint sparks of color flashed, red and yellow scratches of light at the line where the sky met the ocean. A ship had been torpedoed outside the Narrows.
    Silence passed over the room as everyone looked out in wonder. There was only a trumpet solo on the jukebox, then a faint rumble like thunder. All at once, people started talking again, questioning, guessing, laughing nervously.
    Blair turned back to Anna’s father. “Uh, some of your work?”
    No answer.
    Blair realized he no longer smelled sen-sen. He cautiously reached into the darkness and—felt the ribs of an empty chair.
    “A light, my love?”
    A woman’s voice on his left! Anna’s?
    Blair fumbled with his matches and finally struck one. Anna’s face flared up beside him, black-lashed blue eyes and white skin. She was comfortingly beautiful.
    “Thank God,” he said. “You startled me.”
    She smiled as she steered his hand over and lit her cigarette on his match. “Thank you.” She blew the match out, but her small hand held on to his in the dark. “Did you have a good talk with Papa?”
    “Very much. I wish we could’ve spoken longer. But he never gave me an assignment.”
    “There’ll be plenty of time for that. I hope.”
    “Oh, yes. I think the three of us