The Aeronaut

by Bryan Young

  Back in occupied France, sitting there with tears of longing in my eyes having read the letter a third, fourth, and fifth time, I sighed.

  With renewed purpose, I went back to my inventory work, hoping for some extra clue I may have missed to end the whole job sooner.

  Going through the attaché case, I found nothing unexpected. More clothes, more money, but I noticed one more letter on the now-made bed that hadn’t been there when I left.

  The name on the envelope, tapped out in the ink-block letters of a typewriter, was “Hester.” My nom de guerre. Ripping the top from the envelope, I withdrew the single sheet of paper to find a sketched map and vague instructions.

  At the top, there was a day and time written: Tomorrow. Two o’clock. Post-meridian. Below the writing was a roughly sketched map of the surrounding streets and two spots in red ink circled. The first was my hotel, to help me get my bearings, I suppose, and the second was presumably a café.

  I supposed I’d make contact then and we’d see whether or not the endless training and briefings they’d given me were worth a damn.

  22

  Two o’clock came and I found myself outside a musty café that must have been in business a long time. It was out of the way, off the main road and covered in a layer of dust. Most likely the result of the building across the alley way, which was nothing more than a bombed out pile of rubble.

  The tables were unfinished wood covered in white tablecloths and the chairs were lacquered to a reflective black sheen, dulled by the dust.

  Taking a seat at a chair that would put my back against the building and my gaze upon the street, I could see over the fallen building across the way. Beyond was an edge of the city, and through the brown haze I could make out the vague details of a work line on the other side.

  I’d heard rumours of forced labor on the part of the Germans, but seeing it was true was no less nauseating. What they were doing was a mystery to me, though I’d later find out they were cutting a new trench through Cambrai to shorten their defensive lines and maximize the use of their soldiers.

  I suppose that’s why the city seemed so deserted.

  This time, I’d ordered the espresso watered down, just the way I liked it. There were no German soldiers there to intimidate me or rattle me into making a mistake or feeling self-conscious. I was in control. The situation the day prior had been a lesson I needed to learn.

  I’m grateful the lesson wasn’t harder.

  The particles in the air were so thick, I kept a hand over my espresso to keep them from invading my beverage.

  After my second drink I was feeling it. The Germans wouldn’t shake me, but the effects of the coffee certainly could. My heart pounded and my pulse quickened. Anxiety filled me up the longer I sat, like water dripping into a sink.

  Fishing my watch from my pocket, I checked the time, which told me that I still had a few minutes to two o’clock left. There wasn’t cause for worry but for the caffeine pulsing through my system.

  I laid my pocket watch on the table in front of me, foolishly sipping my drink and watching each second tick by, circling the face. Once, twice, three times it went around, capturing every shred of my attention. It wasn’t broken until I heard the noise of one of the metal chairs scraping against the patio. Looking up, I could see a humble man in a modest suit, frayed at the edges, and with a goatee grown to a point on his chin. It looked as though his facial hair had been well kept up until the last few days. It was overgrown in only a few stray spots and the rest of his cheeks were gray with fuzz.

  I was confident this tired man was Dr. Jamert.

  He sat down at the table and unfolded a French language newspaper he had tucked carefully beneath his arm. Pulling the paper up over his face, he obscured his features from prying eyes.

  A newspaper was as reliable a disguise as any, I suppose. Better, since it obscured features and emotions more opaquely than anything a spirit-gummed mustache or a cheap hat could provide.

  The paper was more than a few days old. Perhaps it was something he picked up before being whisked across the border into occupied territory.

  My gaze kept coming back to small details about him, and my mind kept pulling out notes from the files they’d shown me. Nothing jumped out at me as a dead giveaway. For all I knew, he could be any number of Belgian scientists the Germans had wooed to their side.

  It wasn’t until I spied him trying to sneak glances from the side of the paper, pulling it in with two of his fingers, trying desperately to size me up in return, that I felt strong enough in my suspicion to believe it really was the traitorous Dr. Jamert. I scratched at the scar on the side of my face, to emphasize my assumed identity.

  This man didn’t look like a traitor, to be honest. He looked more hapless and beleaguered than anything. Tired and unkempt. Not what I’d expect of someone hell bent on destroying the freedom of the French and then the world. I expected someone who looked more like the Kaiser, with an aggressive mustache and fire in his eyes, someone quick to anger and beyond confident.

  The man before me was mousy, unsure of himself, and clearly terrified.

  The dissonance of his appearance and what I knew his plan to be made me wonder if my job was going to be harder than I thought. If he was unsure of himself and willing to surrender the cards, that would be good for me. No longer would he be a traitor but a patriot, but I’d still have to get the sensitive information from him, by force or otherwise.

  The waiter, a doddering old man with an apron spread across his belly and a stained dish towel in one hand, came over to Jamert, flicked the dust from the table’s surface with his rag and asked for his order in French. The doctor ordered his drink quietly, so quiet that I couldn’t even hear what he’d said.

  The waiter left and returned quickly with the remains of a bottle of wine and a glass to drink it, pouring the first glass for him. He took a hearty draught from the glass and went back to his newspaper.

  I so wished I could have allowed myself a bottle of wine to slake my own thirst. It was too risky, though. Wine forced me to leave just enough of my senses and wits that it wouldn’t do for the mission.

  But it was no use lamenting. I’d have to begin my distasteful work at some point, so I cleared my throat and said, “Hello. Or bonjour. Is that what you say here still? Or would it be guten tag?”

  Reluctantly, the man I believed to be Dr. Jamert lowered his newspaper, meeting me with his gaze through his small, round bifocals. “Bonjour.”

  “It’s a lovely day today...”

  “...but it might be nicer in Munich.”

  Had that been a code? “Munich is quite nice this time of year, but I’d prefer Paris before long.”

  His face puckered and I wasn’t sure if it was surprise at the idea that the Germans could have Paris or that he was still pursuing a course of action that would help make it possible.

  “Paris is nice,” he said before taking another measure of wine from his glass. “But I think Antwerp is more to my taste.”

  “I would have guessed you were more of a Brussels man.”

  His eyes narrowed. We were dancing verbally, but I didn’t know the steps.

  “I am from Brussels, you know, so it’s no surprise that I would seem more a Brussels man.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Of course,” he repeated, draining the rest of his glass of wine and folding his newspaper.

  Quite abruptly, he stood, placing the paper back under his arm and making himself ready to leave.

  “And we were having such a pleasant time. Where to next for you?” I asked.

  “Perhaps I will be here. Tomorrow. Round the same time. Perhaps there will be some business we can discuss.” He tipped his hat and walked away with his back to me, disappearing down a side street.

  The thought of chasing after him came to me, but I dismissed it quickly. Hounding him would be no way to gain his confidence. If he wanted to be slowly coaxed, that’s how we’d have to play it.

>   As far as I could tell, my duty for the day was complete, so I had that bottle of wine after all. It became two bottles before I made it back to my room. There, I was rewarded once more with a note on my bed.

  Once more it bore the name Hester.

  I was disappointed that it didn’t contain a letter from Sara, but how would she have gotten a message through?

  The note was more instructions and another small helping of German scrip. The instructions included a note about the weather in Munich. Nothing specific.

  I crumpled the pages into my fist and tried ignoring the knot turning over in my stomach. I needed to get the cards from Jamert before I could get back to Sara and ensure nothing went wrong. I imagine Lorick and his men had done everything they could to give me the tools I need to complete the mission, but it came as no consolation.

  I had two cinder bricks tied to each side of me, one labeled frustration, the other fear. Both weighed me down. I was frustrated by my lack of competence and the lack of instruction. Orders are easy to follow when they’re clear. Even jumping across a trench was easy when I knew how the jump pack worked. Here, I was blind.

  Espionage is a constant burn, a fuse smoldering along its winding path until it reaches an explosion.

  And that’s where I was heading, right for the powder keg, ready to explode.

  Not wanting to risk being caught on the outside and feeling tipsy from the wine, I left only to find dinner. The best I could do close by was a good hunk of cheese and bread. I risked a stop in one more shop for a cask of modest wine to tide me over till morning. After I had my provisions accounted for, I cloistered myself in my room, spending the rest of the day uneventfully dreaming about Sara.

  The wine brought with it a fitful sleep.

  Morning came and I forced myself to sleep through as much of it as I could. If I stayed sleeping, then I wouldn’t be under so much stress about the mission and worrying about being caught. That was the plan, anyway, but I had dreams of my own.

  It began easy enough, with Sara talking to me.

  Seeing her there in my mind, It was impossible to tell the specter of Sara apart from the real thing.

  She spoke to me, her voice clear and bright, but the words that tumbled from her were grim.

  “I dreamt you were hurt, shipped back to me. I bandaged your eyes as you’d been blinded.” When she said that, my vision clouded through the fibered pattern of gauze.

  She narrated the next part of my dream, the part where things are that never were seem as though they have been. I could see through the bandages. Somehow, they were translucent. “Our love transcended your blindness and we bathed in each other’s light. I could feel you against me, but it was at the cost of your sight and body.”

  She was gone and so was her voice. I was in Cambrai, in a version of my room, but the walls were much closer together and the bed was much larger, large enough for Sara to have fit beside me. I was on my back, reading a letter she’d written. Her words were written in red ink.

  “It’s horrible to think, but I want you to be wounded. Then they’ll bring you back to me. Then I grow angry when I know that’s how I feel truly, not just in my dreams. But LeBeau is here, and he will bring me comfort.”

  I remember turning the page over and seeing a different letter, but the text ended on the back of the page, suddenly and cryptically with the words, “I hope you regain your sight.”

  A knock on the door in the too small room startled me and I transformed into the street, where I was being chased by Germans. The one that had stopped me before on the street to give me my change continued stopping me in my dreams. But he kept handing me the oddest things. A paring knife and an apple. Keys to a door I’d lost. A blindfold. Finally, he delivered a letter from Sara, but it came in a parchment envelope with a red wax seal that I struggled to open until I woke.

  Her final message never came to me. The call of nature and the mission ahead took me from the Sara in my dreams and her secret missive.

  I woke with a foul, sour taste inside.

  I washed my mouth out with the rest of the wine, cheese, and bread and set out for the day. There wasn’t much wine left, so I didn’t feel bad drinking.

  I’d wasted away the morning and early afternoon already, so the only thing left before me when I set out was my illicit rendezvous with the traitorous Jamert. The café was easier to find the second time, and I didn’t even pull out the map to show me the way.

  Like an actor on a stage before the show has started, I took my place, sitting down on the same chair as the day before and ordered a warm drink. Watching the outline of prisoners continuing their forced labor through the destroyed building like a disenchanted audience, all I had left was to wait for Jamert to enter upon the curtain’s rise.

  23

  Only a few seconds passed between the moment I took my place and Dr. Jamert arrived at two o’clock, hitting his cue with remarkable accuracy. He took a seat, ordered his wine, and left his newspaper folded beside his glass.

  There was no way to know if he was waiting for me to make the first move, or if he waited for some innocuous secret code to begin the proceedings. As far as their preparation got me, it only took me to a certain point.

  “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Doctor. Where did we leave things yesterday,” I recited my lines. I’d rehearsed them in my head from the moment I sat down. “Oh, yes. Munich. Or Berlin. I think you’d quite enjoy the weather there. It’s nice this time of year.”

  Jamert gulped at his wine. His cheeks and nose were already rosy and I wondered if he’d been drinking before he came to our meeting. “I hear they are. Tell me about them. Tell me about Berlin.”

  “Berlin is a beautiful old city. And it’s so far away from all this,” I waved my hand at the work being done a street away on the other side of the toppled building. “But it’s very much like any other city of old Europe. All the modern conveniences, lovely homes and apartments to be had. I’m sure if ever you found yourself there, a man like you would have no trouble fitting in.”

  I had no idea what I was saying. I made it my goal to promise everything and nothing in the most vague terms. That’s how all this intelligence business was anyhow, right?

  “I don’t think I’d fancy Berlin,” he said, taking another drink of his wine.

  “Perhaps Munich, then.”

  “I’m not sure either place is for me.”

  I raised my eyebrows and pursed my lips. “Perhaps you’d prefer Paris?”

  There was no more dishonorable thing I could imagine doing. Things were going to end badly for this poor fellow one way or the other. If, somehow, I convinced him to turn back and end his thoughts of treachery, it would be good for his soul all the way up until the time I’d still have to kill him and take the cards. If he sold himself to me, under the assumption I was working with the Germans, then he would be selling his soul as well, and the rate at which he was drinking convinced me he knew how high a price that was.

  The flashing vision of having to kill this man forced a lurch from my stomach.

  “I do like Paris,” he said. “But I grow tired of it.”

  “Why is that, do you think?”

  “The people there. Those I worked with. I never found the respect there I expected. It’s why I left Brussels.” He lost himself in his contemplation, staring into his wine. “What of you, Monsieur Américain?”

  “What of me?”

  “Why leave your home in America?”

  I folded my hands in front of my face, hoping it would conceal the tells in my acting. “Why does anyone? I felt there were things I could do here that I couldn’t do elsewhere. There was opportunity here for me. And it was easy to leave everything behind.”

  A sadness came to Jamert’s eyes as he listened and I knew that I’d tapped into much more genuine emotion than I’d intended. Then, he spoke softly, knowingly. “You sound as though you left after having your heart broken.”

  I smirked. “It’s an old story.�
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  “And that’s why you went to Berlin? Because of a woman? It seems to me a drastic swing. There must have been another reason.”

  “Berlin called to me. I didn’t choose it as much as it chose me. We’re aimed where we’re supposed to go, like a gun firing a bullet. Does the bullet have a choice where it lands? Though I still can’t decide if I was the target or the bullet.” I’d never been to Berlin, but I could talk about Paris with love and affection and just change the name. Perhaps that would be enough for my ruse.

  Jamert said nothing, lost still in his spirits.

  “I came before all this trouble,” I indicated the war effort beyond once more, not wanting to actually use the word war. “It was easy to find myself there, in Berlin, in love with the people–”

  “–in love with a woman?”

  “There is a girl, yes.” I didn’t want him to ask any further about my situation, so I shrugged and changed the subject. “Is there someone your mind is on?”

  He said nothing.

  His dossier made no mention of love in the doctor’s life. He was single and kept to himself, married to his work. But he didn’t seem like a man alone; he seemed afflicted with the burden of a relationship. Unless we were speaking code for something else, I could only assume there was more at play here than the brass in intelligence had realized.

  “Because if there is,” I continued, “perhaps a place could be found in Berlin or Munich large enough for the both of you. And wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “Nice, yes. But impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible.”

  “I’m afraid this is something that is impossible.”

  “Did she...?” I wondered aloud, dangling the conjecture blankly at the end of the question, hoping he might fill in those blanks for me.

  His eyes closed and he finished off his glass of wine. “To me she did.”

  “Was there another?” I wondered with a sad and personal fascination.