We shook everyone’s hand, and then Ainslie and I set off leisurely down the beach. He grabbed my hand, and I could feel his was moist. He clutched mine until it ached, but still he set a strolling pace, inviting me up the path before him with a chivalric flourish.
The second we were out of sight Ainslie spun around. “That fucking cretin just announced our strategy to the whole Third Reich. Hell, the entire Axis.”
“But it doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “The Rainbow plan? It’s like Pomegranate. It’s just a nonsense word.”
“If they know what it’s called, they can start looking for references to it in Intel,” Ainslie said. “I don’t have time to explain. I’m going up to radio it in. Hopefully Thompson will too. You have to destroy their radio. Can you do that?”
He didn’t wait for my answer. “Fuck. I’m going to court-martial that son of a bitch. I’m…Franny, run. Do it.” He took off up the path. I tried to keep up but his legs were so much longer that by the time I reached the place where our trails diverged he was far ahead of me, out of sight.
I ran as quickly as my old legs would take me. I hoped I could find the radio again. I had only been there twice, and what if they had moved it? I don’t know if it was the running or my nerves, but I felt light-headed. The path narrowed before me. And then it petered out altogether.
I stood for a second, hearing the pounding of my heart. The foliage was dense, denser than I remembered, which made sense as it had rained so much in the last month. The leaves took on menacing shapes, as they could do sometimes at night, casting pale amalgamated shadows that formed themselves into beasts that my brain told me did not live on the islands but that my heart worried about: tigers, ghosts, wolves. And a few things that did live on the islands: Germans.
I calmed my breath and thought about the day I followed the donkey. And then I let the more animal part of my brain take over. It remembered. The same mechanism that reminds a squirrel where it left its nuts, the same one that tells dogs that to the right is the veterinarian and to the left is the park. I could remember. I let my feet take me upward. Did I recognize that oddly shaped lechoso tree, the one whose branches formed an almost perfect sphere? Was that the flower that was more purple than any I’d seen on Floreana? I went around a tree and came up short. The radio was here the last time, I was sure of it. At least, I thought I was sure of it. But now it was night. I spun around several times, hoping that it would magically appear, but though there was a place where the underbrush was perhaps tamped down a bit more than the parts around it, there was no evidence of any radio, anywhere.
The clouds parted and the wan moon came out, illuminating the small clearing where I stood. I saw the glint of an animal track, hardly surprising, except that this was a dog’s three-fingered paw mark. There was a patch of mud so the prints were rendered clearly. These paw prints went around in circles. The dog was waiting for someone, excited. Why would there be paw prints and not footprints? They stopped abruptly when the mud turned back into undergrowth. I pushed my way through a fence of bushes there and glimpsed another opening to my right. Struggling through, I saw the green box of the radio’s case clearly. I had found it.
I breathed a sigh of relief until I remembered that my mission was only half done.
It’s true that when faced with danger, adrenaline pumping, you can hear the blood rushing in your ears. I examined the box, wondering if a rock would do the trick of smashing it, or if I should attempt to open it and pull out some wires. But that would be obvious sabotage. Maybe there was a way to make it look like a natural malfunction, or enough of one to create a plausible doubt. In my rucksack I had a canteen. If I poured it in the right spot, it would certainly short the battery. I had the canteen out and poised to pour through the metal casing when I heard the crash of footsteps coming quickly, not bothering to be stealthy or quiet. I let the water splash onto the metal, waited for the hiss or spark of a short that never came, and then I turned around as the bushes parted and Elke emerged, breathless and red. She carried a shotgun.
I was still holding the canteen, the last few drops dripping guiltily from its lip. There was no talking my way out of this one. We paused and looked at each other. I saw no surprise on her face, and realized that she was as certain of our role on Floreana as we were of hers. There was nothing to say and no language to say it in. With the muzzle of the gun she motioned me up against a tree. I considered running, but then she would shoot me and perhaps go after Ainslie. If she were a career spy, and not just a Johnny-come-lately like me, she’d have training, both physical and mental. I had no doubt her aim would be true. I slowly stood up and inched backward to the tree.
Though she was still breathing heavily, the blood had drained from her face. Elke put one hand on the radio, as if to check if it was still breathing. She considered, then pulled a length of cord from her belt and tossed it at me.
I might have tied the trick knot I learned in Spy 101, but this was not a film or a radio play. I did as I was told and wrapped the cord around the tree, then around my ankles, knotting it and tugging so that Elke could see that I had really tied it. She set the gun down well out of reach and came behind me to tie my hands around the back of the trunk. I could smell her there, sweat mixed with fire smoke, and the maple-syrup scent. She was still panting. My breaths fell in with hers, both quickened with the rabbit-thumping of our hearts.
Finished, she went back and picked up the gun. She leaned over the radio, feeling around it, and then she pushed a latch underneath and the front folded down to reveal its controls. I could see that the water had pooled at the bottom. Had it done its job on the way down? Elke turned a knob. Nothing happened. No lit dials, no crack of static. The radio was indeed dead, though she gave it the traditional thump up its side as corporal punishment or encouragement. She wheeled more dials but there was nothing.
Elke grunted in anger. I had succeeded. I would have been happy about this, but it lessened my chances of survival. I recognized that I might have just given my life for my country, if it even helped my country. I didn’t want Elke dead, just as I suspected she didn’t want me dead. Our friendship might not have been real but the affection was. I didn’t doubt that.
Instead of frightened or anxious, I felt sad, a dull sting in my chest. We were pawns of our governments, dying over rumors and plans with our silly little radios. We had struggled so much. For this?
I wonder if Elke was thinking the same thing. She stood and pointed the gun at me, far enough away that we didn’t share the same air, and so that the bullet had a greater chance of lodging in me instead of passing through, but also near enough that her target was unmissable. She was aiming for my heart, I saw. My head would have been a more obvious death, but the heart was a more gentlemanly choice. She was granting me dignity even as she ended my time on earth. I was surprised to find that my thoughts were so logical. I was outside my body, a dove in a tree, observing these two strange creatures with their odd customs.
She pulled back the safety and I could see that her hands were trembling. I might have been able to talk her out of shooting me, maybe even pulling out the German I’d been steadily studying, but my mouth refused to obey my brain’s suggestion. Perhaps I knew it would be for naught. It was difficult to swallow. I shrugged my shoulders to pull my head down into my torso as though I had a tortoiseshell that might protect me. I looked up at her eyes, which were red now, and wide, and then I looked at my feet. Next to my worn shoes a small bug crawled over a leaf I’d stepped on. He made his way down its main vein and then disappeared underneath it. I imagined it traveling upside down, its insect legs defying gravity, and I wondered when the shot would come. I shut my eyes tight, concentrating on screwing up my face, waiting for the report. After a moment, I looked up.
Elke had lowered the gun. Her free hand clenched. She met my eye for a brief moment, then turned and ran back through the brush in the direction of her house.
I slid down to the ground, exhausted. The tree I w
as tied to was uncomfortable; its trunk was knobby and bent. If I crossed my legs I could sit, though Elke had tied my hands too tightly and I had to move my wrists around to keep the circulation going. It was hard not to speculate what was going to happen. Was she leaving me here to die? If so, I should make some attempt to signal someone, though I had no idea how. Was she going to get Heinrich? I had no doubt that he would not suffer qualms about killing me. He had been through a war, after all. If that was the case, then I had maybe an hour before he returned. Perhaps Ainslie would find me in that time. But I doubted it. He wouldn’t think to worry for a couple of hours, and by then it would be too late.
I considered that these were likely my last hours on earth, and a peculiar calm came over me. I didn’t do anything maudlin, like review the choices I’d made in my life, or lament the things I hadn’t accomplished, or regret those I did. Instead I thought about my parents, which I hadn’t done in years. I could even conjure the smell of the apartment, the wet leaves surrounding me not unlike the wet laundry hanging from the beams. This naturally led me to think about Rosalie. I wondered where she was at that moment. Was she thinking about me too? She could go on for years, never knowing that I died.
A Darwin finch landed near me and sang once to his brethren. One finch. The finch that launched a thousand evolutionists. The specific finch that sparked the theory was lost to history, but that bird gave Darwin a theory which changed everything the world knew about science and God. I was that finch, trapped in a snare, lost to history. I hissed at it, and took pleasure in the fact that it flew away, startled. There. Let it fear humans in the future. We are a terrifying and awful species.
I don’t know how much time passed. I began to grow very thirsty. The full moon started to sink and the bush around me grew quiet as the nocturnal animals retreated. Shadows grew longer and then night fell in earnest. I waited, still, a condemned man in the gallows. My wrists were aching and my feet were asleep. I considered trying to stand back up.
Something was approaching. As it got louder, I could tell it was human, moving with a regularity and purpose that no other mammal possessed. Here, then, was my executioner.
I expected Heinrich, sent by Elke to dispatch me, but she appeared again, her hair disheveled. Instead of a gun, she held a buck knife, already unsheathed. Had she steeled herself to the task, then? Had Heinrich insisted that she do the deed, or perhaps she didn’t tell him she hadn’t done it? Maybe, after consideration, she didn’t want the troops to hear the sound of the shot, or I wasn’t worth the bullet. I’d had time to resign myself to death, but the prospect of a knife terrified me. I went cold; I began to shake. Behind the tree I fingered my wedding ring, rubbing it. What would it feel like, the serrated blade on my throat?
Elke came closer; she smelled sour now. I trembled. Despite myself, tears began to stream down my face and I coughed. Elke stood behind me, and I hoped her slash across my throat would be deep and strong.
Instead she grabbed the cord around my wrists and began to saw at it. It dropped to the ground and the relief of being set free temporarily overwhelmed any question I might have as to why she was untying me. I rubbed the feeling back in, shrugged my shoulders and elbows. Then Elke stood in front and cut the cord around my ankles. I was still seated awkwardly, and she extended a hand to help me up. My feet were asleep and I stumbled. She held out her arm and I leaned on her.
I was still crying, with relief now at my reprieve. I wasn’t even trying to figure out why I’d been set free. I was just glad I had been. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much. I don’t know how—”
Elke shook her head. “Nein. This is never happen. This we are never talking about, Franzi.”
“Never,” I said. And until this day I haven’t.
*
Ainslie was pacing the front of the house when I returned, just as the rosy fingers of dawn were creeping into our island. “Frances, oh thank God. What happened?” He grabbed me and hugged me. Then he held me at arm’s length and hugged me again, so tightly it hurt my already abused shoulders.
“I did it,” I said. “The radio is dead.”
“What took so long?” he asked. “I was terrified for you.”
“I—” I knew that Elke had said nothing to Heinrich. He would have insisted on my death. So I would say nothing to Ainslie. It was the least I could do. Secrets shared by women are sacred. They transcend the duties of country or marriage. I struggled to think of a lie. “I got lost on the way back.” There, the simplest lie is always the most plausible, thank you, Spy 101. I had used more of my training in the past twelve hours than I had in the three years I’d been stationed here.
“We’ve only bought ourselves a few days, but that might just be enough,” Ainslie said. “Frances, you might have saved thousands, hundreds of thousands of lives.”
“Just glad I saved my own,” I said.
*
A few days was all we needed. Word reached us two days later of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. We moved to our old camp on the shore where we would have military protection. Boats were coming all the time now, and the beach looked like a busy port town with all the bustle. Ainslie was as excited as I’ve ever seen him.
My life immediately got a lot easier. There were plentiful canned goods, for one, and bread. My food-preparation time dwindled. I mostly just popped open some cans, or we invited ourselves to a mess on a ship.
I went up to check on the garden every day, as much to have something to do and to get out of the hullabaloo as by necessity. I couldn’t let it go to seed just yet, not when I had spent so much time improving it, though I knew we were not likely to stay on Floreana. It was on one of these walks up that I ran into Elke. My face got hot with a surge of fear, as if she were still carrying the gun and I was still tied to the tree. She must have felt it too, because she looked at her shoes. The trail was narrow enough that our sleeves touched as we passed by. It affected me so much that once she was out of earshot I began to sob, not with sorrow but simply overwhelmed by emotion.
*
We had been living at the beach only a few days, when Ainslie followed me up to the house. “I want us to talk, and we can’t do it down on the beach.” He sat in the chair he’d carved and woven, and lit his pipe. His lighter had fluid and the pipe finally had tobacco. It reminded me of home, and I moved a bit more downwind so as to be able to absorb it fully, the sweet, civilized smell.
“I’ve my orders. They’ve decided to build the base on Baltra, you know, next to Santa Cruz.”
I breathed a sigh of relief that we wouldn’t have to endure construction. “Floreana not flat enough?” I asked.
“They want me in charge of intelligence on the base.”
“That’s terrific,” I said. I had hoped this might happen, that we would get to stay on the islands. Though I didn’t relish living on a base, I didn’t want to go back to the States where I would have to get another boring office job. I was so used to living in the outdoors, how could I possibly adapt to city life, or even suburban life? I hadn’t been in any kind of motorcar for several years. I was hyper-attuned to sounds, smells. I couldn’t sleep without a breeze. And the things that seemed so onerous when I first arrived—keeping an airtight seal on anything I wanted to consume, growing whatever I wanted to eat—were now an elemental way to live.
Furthermore, I didn’t want to get a job. I was done with teaching and fed up with being a secretary. Maybe I could get a higher job in the navy, but I doubted a desk job would suit me. I was spoiled for regular life, I realized.
“So when will we be going?” I asked.
“I leave on Wednesday,” Ainslie said. He stared at his pipe, studying it intently to see what was wrong with it.
“What’s today?”
“Friday.”
“And when do I come?” I tried to catch his eye, but he was looking everywhere except at me.
“That’s the thing…No civilians.”
For a second I couldn’t breathe
. He was leaving me behind? “I can’t stay here by myself.”
“No,” Ainslie agreed. Finally he looked at me, and I could see the squint in his eye that meant he was not enjoying what he had to tell me. “They’ll take you back.”
“What?” I asked. “What do you mean? Back to Guayaquil? That armpit?”
“Back to the States,” Ainslie said. “There’s a war on. You need to be at home.”
“No.” I stood up and shook my head. “I’m not going back there to sit the war out like a good little girl. You can’t do that to me.”
“If you’re here you’re a liability, you’re a foreign national. Ecuador doesn’t want you here. You’re trouble to them.”
“I’m the least amount of trouble of anyone on this island!” My argument wasn’t making sense. “I can’t go back there.”
Ainslie put down his pipe, a sign that he took this seriously. He took my hands in his. “I don’t want you to go, but we have orders. A base is no place for a woman.”
“The kitchen will need supervision.”
“And the messmen will do that. There’ll be hundreds of men.”
I hung my head. I knew that he was right, and that arguing further was futile. Instead I began to fling our kitchenware to the ground, all the pots and silverware and cups and plates. I threw the sliver of mirror angrily, and tried to turn over the table but wasn’t strong enough. I tried again, but it was still stuck so I sat on the bed, spent.
Ainslie watched me from his chair.
“I don’t want to leave. I love it here. I don’t want to go back to the world and get a job and take the cable car and eat sandwiches and complain about the weather.” Ainslie laughed. We’d long since ceased complaining about the weather. “And I don’t want to leave you,” I said softly.
He sat beside me on the bed, brushing my overlong bangs out of my face. “I don’t want you to go.”
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