The Golden Doves

The Golden Doves is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical persons appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.Copyright © 2023 by Martha Hall KellyAll rights reserved.Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.BALLANTINE is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.Hardback ISBN 9780593354889Ebook ISBN 9780593354896randomhousebooks.comTitle-page art from dreamtime and stock.adobe.comBook design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebookCover design: Laura KlynstraCover images: Ildiko Neer/Trevillion Images (women); Brzozowska/Getty Images (city)ep_prh_6.1_143148854_c0_r0 ContentsCoverTitle PageCopyrightChapter 1: JosieChapter 2: ArletteChapter 3: JosieChapter 4: ArletteChapter 5: ArletteChapter 6: JosieChapter 7: ArletteChapter 8: JosieChapter 9: JosieChapter 10: ArletteChapter 11: ArletteChapter 12: JosieChapter 13: ArletteChapter 14: JosieChapter 15: JosieChapter 16: ArletteChapter 17: JosieChapter 18: ArletteChapter 19: ArletteChapter 20: JosieChapter 21: JosieChapter 22: ArletteChapter 23: ArletteChapter 24: ArletteChapter 25: ArletteChapter 26: ArletteChapter 27: JosieChapter 28: JosieChapter 29: ArletteChapter 30: ArletteChapter 31: JosieChapter 32: JosieChapter 33: ArletteChapter 34: JosieChapter 35: JosieChapter 36: ArletteChapter 37: JosieChapter 38: ArletteChapter 39: JosieChapter 40: ArletteChapter 41: JosieChapter 42: ArletteChapter 43: JosieChapter 44: ArletteChapter 45: JosieChapter 46: JosieChapter 47: ArletteChapter 48: JosieChapter 49: ArletteChapter 50: JosieChapter 51: ArletteChapter 52: JosieChapter 53: JosieChapter 54: ArletteChapter 55: JosieChapter 56: ArletteChapter 57: JosieChapter 58: ArletteChapter 59: JosieChapter 60: ArletteChapter 61: ArletteChapter 62: JosieChapter 63: ArletteChapter 64: JosieChapter 65: JosieChapter 66: ArletteChapter 67: JosieChapter 68: ArletteChapter 69: JosieChapter 70: ArletteChapter 71: JosieChapter 72: ArletteChapter 73: JosieEpilogue: JosieAuthor’s NoteDedicationAcknowledgmentsBy Martha Hall KellyAbout the Author_143148854_ CHAPTER 1JOSIEFORT BLISS, TEXAS1952I WAKE AT DAWN, FACEDOWN ON the sofa, thinking I’m back in Block Ten. The living room window’s open a crack, and another Texas dust storm blows like hell outside, pummeling the room with more sand than dust. I swing my feet to the floor, head pounding. Sixty-five dossier photos taped above the sofa flutter in the wind, and the men look down on me.Mengele. Von Braun. Speer.I stand, head for the window, and kick over a half-full beer can. “Shit.”A gust hits my little shrine on the coffee table, the votive still flickering under my mother’s picture and the photo of Arlette and me, arms linked at liberation. The wind catches my mother’s photo and sails it into the air. I lunge to catch it before it falls, and then set it back in its spot.I shuffle to the window, sand swirling in the air outside, so thick that the Franklin Mountains in the distance are just blurry mounds. A pigeon sits outside on the sill waiting out the storm. I wave her away and thump the window closed.The kitchen wall clock reads 6:30 A.M. I’m already late.Can’t wait to get this over with. Hopefully a routine job. By my rules this time.I pull on my regulation pinkish skirt, green blouse, and drab field jacket, then slide my silver PPK into my shoulder holster. That simple act calms me, the brown grip the perfect size for my hand. It’s the Nazi police gun I confiscated from the suitcase of an incoming scientist, who swore he didn’t know how it got there.I stuff a pair of hospital gloves into one pocket, grab the welcome basket, and drive a government-issued jeep past the massive rocket at the entrance that reads WELCOME TO FORT BLISS: YOUR ARMY ANTI-AIRCRAFT AND GUIDED MISSILE CENTER.I read the latest dossier as I drive. They all had quirks from their intake forms. One bathes obsessively. One masturbates too much. Krupp’s quirk is that he’s fastidious about his clothes and insisted he and his wife, Irma, buy all new luggage for the trip, specifying the exact models of the suitcases. Each new scientist was bound by their contract to declare the contents of each bag, but he’d written a missive on the packed items, down to his ten pairs of undershorts and his wife’s cosmetic collection.I find 210 Canyon Road, on the outskirts of a Fort Bliss residential neighborhood, a basic El Paso two-bedroom ranch house trying its best to be nondescript. It’s the kind of place where military families come to forget the war and forge blindly into the 1950s with the help of bourbon and barbecue.Only this is no average family.I press the doorbell and stand in the stinging wind listening to the Westminster chimes, my palms wet on the cellophane of the basket. I survey the olive branch of a gift the Intake Group has assembled; a cheap woven bowl filled with someone’s idea of foods representing American and German cultures. A can of Spam. Some stollen one of the secretaries baked. Oreo cookies, a bottle of Riesling wine, and a six-pack of Pearl beer.I go to press the bell again and he opens the door a crack. “Jah?”Just hearing that accent, my skin tries to crawl off my body. “Open up, Mr. Krupp. It’s Lieutenant Anderson.”He swings the door wider to reveal Mrs. Krupp and two male children bathed in the yellow light of the foyer.I consider getting back in the jeep and telling Tony P. to do his own intake from now on. Not that he can ever tell if these criminals are hiding anything. He usually ends up knocking back beers with them after a cursory look in their bags.“I’m here to do your intake briefing, Mr. Krupp.”The mother holds her children closer.He beckons me in. “Guten morgen.”What would Krupp do if I took my gun and waved it in his face like the Ravensbrück guards used to do to us for fun?“English only, Mr. Krupp.”“Please enter,” he says and reaches to guide me in.I step back. “Don’t touch me, sir.”It’s the same interior all these houses