A Dangerous Game

by John Wilson

  Mama cooked me two precious eggs for breakfast and I set off for the location in Bruges that I had been given for my contact in La Dame Blanche. The coded conversation we will use to recognize each other runs through my head. I am to go to the market square and sit on the steps of the statue to the great Flemish heroes Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck. My contact will approach me and say, “Do you think we’ll have a white Christmas this year?” I am to reply, “I think it will be many years until we have a white Christmas.” After that, despite all my training, I really have no idea what to expect.

  “Halt!”

  A policeman steps in front of me as I enter the outskirts of Bruges. I brake to a stop just inches from him. He’s a regular Belgian policeman and not much older than me. He’s frowning at me, but his brown eyes don’t look threatening.

  “Papers,” he demands.

  I hand over my identity papers.

  “Manon Wouters,” he says as he scans the documents. “Where are you coming from?”

  “My home in Damme,” I reply.

  “And why are you coming to Bruges?”

  “I’m a nurse. I’m coming to begin work in the hospital.”

  “Coming to begin work?” He stares hard at me and I have to struggle to quell the butterflies that are suddenly active in my stomach. “You are a nurse who lives in Damme and you have not already been working in the hospital?”

  I realize my mistake. I shouldn’t have said I was beginning work.

  “I worked here before,” I say with what I hope is a disarming smile. “I did my training in Bruges, but when the war broke out, Mama thought I should go and stay with a relative in the country. I have only just returned from there.”

  He nods and I hope I have passed the test, but he has one more question. “Why did you come back?”

  I let out a small laugh that I hope is convincing. “I was bored in the country. The most exciting thing to do was milk the cows. And being woken every morning at daybreak by the cockerels is wearing after awhile.”

  I broaden my smile, but the policeman doesn’t return it. He does, however, give me my papers back.

  “Welcome back,” he says. “But after a few weeks of city food, I think you’ll miss the cockerels and the fresh milk.”

  I cycle on, pleased that I have passed my first test as a spy. As ordered, I park my bicycle in the market square and sit on the steps at the base of the statue. Even in the sun, everything looks gray. There are not many people around—it’s early and there’s little to buy in the shops—but those who are in the square shuffle about aimlessly, nodding at those they pass. There are no clusters of people discussing local affairs or gossiping about neighbors, no gangs of children shouting gleefully as they chase hoops or play ball games. A few buildings around the square have made an attempt at putting up festive decorations, but that only emphasizes the drabness of everything else.

  THE MARKET SQUARE IN BRUGES

  Two bored-looking German soldiers stand on either side of the arch beneath the belfry tower, making me wonder if this is such a good location for a couple of spies to meet. I watch the soldiers out of the corner of my eye, but they don’t seem interested in anything going on in the square.

  A German officer strides across the square. He passes within a few feet of me, but he doesn’t even glance in my direction. The two soldiers stand straight and salute as he passes, then slump back into their previous indifference.

  As I watch the people pass across the square, I try to guess who might be a member of La Dame Blanche. I spot a couple of candidates—an old woman who wanders back and forth several times, and a younger woman who glances over at me four times—but both leave without asking me about Christmas.

  I wonder what I’ll do if no one shows up. Already, I think I’ve been here too long. If I stay much longer, even the bored soldiers will begin to notice me. Should I go to the hospital and ask about work? Should I head home? Has something gone wrong?

  “Manon Wouters, I thought you said you were going to the hospital.” I jerk upright and turn to see the young policemen who stopped me earlier. He looks very serious and I feel his eyes drilling into mine. “Yet here I find you, sitting by a statue in the square.”

  “I…I felt tired. I needed to sit.” I stumble over my words. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the German guards looking over at us. Is the policeman going to summon them? Am I to be arrested before I even begin my life as a spy? “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “And why was that?” he asks, interrogating me.

  I remember Major Macleod saying, “The best lies are the ones that stick closest to the truth.”

  “I arrived home late,” I explain. “Remember I told you that I came from my relative’s farm in the east? It was a long walk, and very few people offer lifts to travelers these days. My mama wanted to hear all my news, so I had only an hour or two of sleep. I thought I would rest here for a few minutes before going to the hospital. I must have dozed off.”

  The policeman looks long at me, as if judging my story. “I think you had better come along with me,” he says at last. My heart is racing and I’m frantically trying to think of something to say when he adds, “But first, I have another question for you: Do you think we’ll have a white Christmas this year?”

  It takes me a moment to realize what he has said. Eventually, I manage to stammer, “I think it will be many years until we have a white Christmas.”

  The policeman nods. “And now we should go, before we attract any more attention.”

  I look over and see that the soldiers are both staring in our direction.

  “Excuse me,” the policeman says as he grabs my arm firmly with his left hand. With his right, he grasps the handlebars of my bicycle and leads me across the square. I see one soldier lean toward his companion and say something. Both of them laugh.

  “It is easier to talk while we walk,” the policeman says. “Fewer people can overhear. You did well with your story, but you made a mistake saying you were just beginning work at the hospital.”

  I have trouble replying. Even though I know this is my contact, my mouth is dry with fear. Will all spying be like this? Am I facing a life of constant confusion and terror?

  “I know. It won’t happen again,” I reply, swallowing hard. “What’s your name?”

  “We don’t deal much in names, but you can call me Pieter.”

  We walk in silence for a while. Pieter has let go of my arm and we walk side by side like any young couple out for a stroll.

  “I thought La Dame Blanche was a network run by women,” I say.

  Pieter glances around. “It’s best not to use that term,” he says quietly, “but you are correct—it is mostly a group of women. However, it’s sometimes useful for us to have members in organizations that do not allow women to join.”

  “Organizations such as the police?” I suggest.

  Pieter nods, and for the first time I see him smile, but it soon fades.

  “We don’t have much time, so I must speak fast. Your main task will be to obtain information from the German sailors and soldiers being treated in the hospital.”

  “But I don’t even have my job there back yet,” I say.

  “That’s all taken care of,” Pieter explains. “You’ll be starting your first shift today. You must collect every piece of information you can, no matter how trivial. Even details like what unit a soldier is in and where and when he was wounded tell us what regiment was in the German front lines at a specific place and time. We also want you to pay particular attention to any German sailors or workers from the docks here in Bruges, in Zeebrugge or in Ostend. Every tiny piece of information, however insignificant, is a part of the larger jigsaw puzzle that will help us win this war and free our country.”

  “How do I get the information to you?”

  “You don’t. I live in Maldegem and rarely come into town. A go-between will collect the information you gather and pass it on to me. I have contacts who will ma
ke sure the information reaches the people who can make the best use of it.”

  I wonder if one of the people who can make the best use of my information is Major Macleod in London. I find it comforting to think that there might be a line of contacts stretching from me in the hospital in Bruges to Macleod in military intelligence in London. I feel less alone.

  “Who will my contact be?” I ask.

  “You won’t know. We try to keep each link in the chain as separate as possible. That way, if someone is captured he or she cannot betray others in the network. You will write down whatever you find out on a small piece of paper. Every day you will place that paper behind the cistern in the second cubicle from the end in the nurses’ washroom beside the cafeteria.”

  “What if I need to contact someone?” I ask.

  “In that case, leave a piece of paper with the words ‘Jan Breydel’ written on it behind the cistern and be at the statue first thing the following morning. If we need to contact you, you will find a note with ‘Pieter de Coninck’ written on it. That will tell you to be at the statue the following morning.”

  I nod. It sounds straightforward, if not very exciting. But then, I’m not sure excitement’s what I want.

  “You will do well,” Pieter says. He hands me my bicycle and I look up to see that we are at the hospital. “Pick up what information you can, but keep a low profile and stay out of trouble.”

  “Thank you, Pieter,” I say and head for the hospital doors.

  “Be careful,” he says to my retreating back.

  At the doors, I lean my bicycle against the wall and look back, but Pieter has disappeared.

  I am welcomed with open arms at the hospital. The wards are so overcrowded and the nurses so overworked that they need any help they can get. In fact, I’m rushed off my feet my first day and don’t get home until late.

  At first I have trouble pretending to be friendly with the soldiers. After all, if I help them get well, they’ll go back to the front and perhaps kill the young British soldiers I cared for in France. However, going back to work reminds me of my time in France, and of nursing Alec back to health. I begin to see the patients in Bruges less as the enemy and more as scared, injured boys no different from the ones on the other side of the trenches. I find it easier to be kind to them, and they respond by talking more easily to me.

  Of course, all they want to talk about is home and family, and how much they are looking forward to having some leave when they’re released from the hospital. I have to listen to everything to pick up the occasional useful nugget of information, because I can’t raise suspicion by showing too much interest in details such as where they served and what their regiment is. I write down everything that seems important and place my notes behind the cistern. I’m tempted to try to find out who my contact is, and I sometimes sit in the cafeteria watching the door to the washroom. But I can see no pattern to the movement of people in and out.

  As the days and then the weeks drag past, boredom begins to take a toll. Is the information I’m passing on really worth anything? I begin to feel useless and wonder if I have made the right choice in coming home. The work at the hospital keeps me busy, but I need to feel that I am doing something important.

  As the cold and hungry winter drags on, my mood sinks lower. The only bright spot is my friendship with Amelie, a fellow nurse who also lives in Damme. When we have the same shifts, we cycle in together and talk about the war, our families and our work. She’s the same age as me and I vaguely remember her from school, but we weren’t close. Now, thrown together in the frantic chaos of the hospital, we discover that we have much in common. She too lives with her mother, although her father, unlike mine, is still alive and working in a factory somewhere in Germany. We don’t talk about anything very serious. We discuss the meals we’ll eat when the war is over, and I tell her all about Alec and how I feel about him.

  However miserable I am, a conversation with Amelie usually raises my spirits, but I always have feelings of guilt and loneliness when we talk. I am a spy and can never drop my guard. I have secrets that I can’t tell to anyone. Amelie is my closest friend in Bruges, but I can never fully trust her. One slip, one wrong word, one confidence innocently repeated to the wrong person can mean prison—or worse. Macleod never told me how lonely the life of a spy would be.

  At least my return has helped Mama. She has become more cheerful and less worried about Florien. My small salary from the hospital helps as well, and we can afford little luxuries, even at the exorbitant prices of the black market. We managed to get hold of a whole goose for Christmas dinner. That day was almost like old times and Florien was on his best behavior.

  I see very little of Florien, but when I do, he is often sullen and cold. Between his work at the U-boat base and his evenings drinking with his cronies, he’s not home much. I try a couple of times to talk to him about the war, but all he does is spout nonsense about how powerful the Germans are and how wonderful everything will be when they give us a separate Flemish state.

  In January, Florien is transferred from Zeebrugge to the docks in Bruges, where a lot of construction is going on. I pass on the news of Florien’s move to London and get an urgent reply to try to recruit him and find out what work is being done there. I delay doing anything, though, because I think it’s pointless to approach my brother and I want to avoid a fight with him.

  In my free time, I take bicycle trips to the canal that runs from Bruges to Zeebrugge. A great deal of German navy traffic passes along this canal, but it is heavily patrolled and there are only a few places where it is possible to watch the water. I count a varied collection of craft, from fast torpedo boats to heavily armed destroyers, but the U-boats come and go at night. I have a special permit to be out during the dusk-to-dawn curfew because of the shifts I work at the hospital, but it only applies to the route from Damme to Bruges and it would be suspicious if I were discovered cycling around the countryside near military installations.

  At the beginning of February, real winter arrives with a vengeance. The temperature plummets, the canals freeze and the ground vanishes beneath inches of snow. People shuffle along the streets, bundled in every piece of clothing they own. Many have bales of sticks tied to their backs so they can feed the stove in their kitchen and keep at least one room of their house warm. At the hospital we begin to see dockyard workers with frostbitten fingers and toes.

  If it is particularly cold or snowing heavily, Amelie and I sleep at the hospital, huddled for warmth in the basement boiler room. That’s where we are early on the morning of February 3, when Bruges is bombed for the first time.

  “Listen.” Amelie shakes me awake.

  At first I can hear only a dull thumping—more a vibration through the ground than a sound. “What is it?”

  Amelie shrugs. We pull on our coats and head out to the hospital courtyard. The cold is frightful, but a number of other people are standing around, staring at the spectacle over the dockyards on the northern edge of the city.

  Powerful searchlight beams crisscross the black sky, forming cones where they intersect in their hunt for attackers. Anti-aircraft shells explode in gray puffs of smoke, and lines of startlingly green flares rise in the sky like great jade necklaces. Tiny aircraft flash in and out of the searchlight beams and dodge between the flares like dragonflies. The bombs they drop explode in a burst of red below. The crash of explosions and the distant grumble of the aircraft engines accompany this dramatic, deadly fireworks display.

  Suddenly, the planes are gone. The searchlights and explosions follow them for awhile, but then they cease as well. Peace returns to the night.

  Amelie and I go inside to the cafeteria. “I never thought they would bomb us here,” I say, wrapping my cold hands around a mug of a warm drink that’s called coffee but tastes nothing like it. “I hope Florien’s all right.”

  “I hope so too,” Amelie says. “But it wasn’t a large raid. I counted only five or six airplanes, and not many bombs were d
ropped. Most of the spectacle was from the searchlights and the anti-aircraft guns. I hope none of the bombs landed on the town.”

  Amelie’s hope is misplaced. One of the bombs landed on a house near the docks and the explosion wounded a ten-year-old boy. He arrives at the hospital soon after we begin our shift. The boy’s wound isn’t bad—a bomb fragment has cut his leg—but the sight of a wounded child reminds me of the bombing I witnessed in London. The difference is that this child has been injured by a friendly bomb. I think back to the woman screaming in the street the night of the zeppelin raid. Would she scream her anger at the British planes if she could see this wounded boy? Why is everything becoming so complicated?

  —

  There are other raids as the cold weather of February continues. They are larger and some are in daylight. The number of injured civilians we see at the hospital increases. People walk the streets grim-faced, their brows etched with worry about relatives in German work camps and the daily grind of finding enough food and fuel. It’s a dark winter. The only bright spot comes when America severs diplomatic relations with Germany. It’s a step toward declaring war, but will it be too late? The German newspapers trumpet the dramatic increase in the number of ships being sunk by U-boats and how close Britain is to starving. I feel helpless.

  One day in March, I find Florien at the kitchen table hunched over a large sheet of paper.

  “What are you working on?” I ask, still eager to find a point of connection between us, and feeling guilty that I have made no attempt to recruit him despite several orders from Major Macleod. He is desperate for information on the building going on at the Bruges docks.

  Florien stands up. “I’m charting the tonnages of British merchant ships sunk,” he says proudly. “See? In January, we sunk more than three hundred thousand tons of shipping. February was a record month—over five hundred thousand tons—and March looks as if we might top six hundred thousand tons. The British can’t last long at this rate.”