Message For Hitler

by Cate M. Ruane

  Ellis shuffles the letter to the bottom of a short stack. “I suppose you’d like me to do the same with the others, sir?”

  Hacker coughs into his hand, the sort of cough that signals the end of a conference. Ellis doesn’t seem to get the hint. “You’ll be pleased to know, sir, that we’ve solved the mystery of the suspicious foreigners, overheard speaking German in a pub over in Chelsea. If you recall, it was a barmaid who made the report. I decided to take the initiative on that one, sir. Did the surveillance myself. I wouldn’t mention it but for the bar tab, sir. I have it here along with a reimbursement form, number 3674. If you could just initial it, sir.” Ellis steps forward and lays a form on Hacker’s desk.

  Hacker glances at the receipt, paperclipped to the form. He says, “£10.5! Are you mad?”

  “It was a long few nights until the suspects returned, sir.”

  “Did you at least round up a ring of Nazi spies, Ellis?”

  “No, sir. It appears that the suspects were pilots of the RAF, wearing civvies. From Czech Fighter Squadron 310, to be exact.”

  Hacker waves a hand toward the door. “Close it when you leave, Ellis,” he says.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  WHEN WE PULLED UP to the hospital, Jack said, “Holy tomato.” Only he said it like an Englishman—toe-mat-oh—no “ay” in sight. I could see why our ma wanted him transferred back to the States.

  I heard stories about London during the Blitz: houses knocked to the ground, people trapped under piles of crumbled bricks, folks searching through rubble hoping to find their pets—and treasures, let’s not forget about treasure: ladies crying over their broken pottery and burnt up music boxes, clawing through debris looking for their cameo pins and diamond tiaras. Men crying over shattered radio sets, with no way to hear the cricket matches except to go to a pub. 18-karat wristwatches and emerald-studded tie pins deep under the ruins of what once was their castle.

  Seemed like heaven for a treasure hunter, if you stuck to the upper-crust neighborhoods like Mayfair, where my guardians for the duration—the Sopwiths—once had a townhouse. In that neighborhood, a fella could find jewels once belonging to Maharajas, candelabras lit by Marie Antoinette, chairs sat on by Mr. Chippendale himself. And don’t forget about strongboxes filled with pound sterling notes and rare stamps. Almost made you hope for another good attack on London. Not that I wanted anyone killed, of course not—good heavens, no.

  But then Lord Sopwith had to go and squash my enthusiasm by telling me that the Home Guard had the power to arrest treasure hunters—looters, he called them. In fact, a couple of looters got plugged by an irate homeowner, driven to violence at the sight of them looters making off with the monogramed family silver.

  The base hospital looked like how I imagined London during the Blitz. Everyone had been evacuated. Army tents were being set up on the lawn. Nurses rummaged through the rubble, salvaging anything of value before a big rainstorm came along and turned the Band-Aids to pulp. We spotted the head nurse in one of the tents, sorting through boxes of medicine and bandages—the same nurse who’d chased us out of the hospital earlier. Jack asked her where they’d taken Daphne. Then he raced out of the tent, leaving me behind. “Make him stay here,” he yelled back, ordering the nurse to be my jailer. The roar of the motorbike grew faint before I even thought to protest.

  The nurse looked down at me. She was over six-feet tall and wore white stockings and matching wood-heeled clogs that could wound anyone who got in their way. “What a night,” she said, taking me into her confidence. “While we’ve succeeded in evacuating the patients to a near-by hospital, we must be prepared to receive new patients—should one of our RAF or naval crew return from duty wounded. It does happen, my dear.”

  “Burns, right?” This was my greatest fear. I knew my ma lost plenty of sleep after she read about the American flyer, Billy Fiske was his name. His hands were too burnt to slide the canopy open and jump out. This was the stuff of nightmares.

  The nurse waved her hand around the tent. “This reminds me of the Great War. I was a field nurse in Northern France, very near to the front. The Somme—oh, it gives me the willies to think about it.”

  “A lot of blood and guts, huh?”

  “We operated from a tent not unlike this one. I was only recently out of training—merely a girl. Well, let’s pray we shan’t have to operate in here. That was ghastly. We had to amputate men’s legs with only a kerosene lamp for illumination. And once when we ran out of anesthesia…oh my, I shouldn’t be telling a boy this…but—” She paused.

  “The screams,” I said. “It must’ve been terrible for you.” My voice was shaky, and my stomach was doing the jitterbug again, but I wanted the gory details and she was willing to give them.

  “Some nights there would be a pile of limbs stacked outside the tent door, no one available to take them to the incinerator.” She put my wounded foot in her lap and peeled back the bloody sock. “Perhaps some of those legs and arms might have stayed attached to a body, if we’d had a proper facility. Makes me shiver just thinking about it.” She made her whole body wiggle; she had some extra poundage and it reminded me of a bowl of jelly. “God forbid it should come to that again.”

  “Are you a nun?” I asked, getting ready to run. I’d had my fair share of run-ins with Sister Bridget at Saint Brendan’s Catholic School back in New York. The thought of her still made the hair stand up on my head.

  “No, no. What ever gave you that idea?”

  “You said, let’s pray, for one thing. And God forbid. And earlier I heard you call one of the other nurses sister.”

  “I suppose that term is left over from the days when all nurses were nuns—in the Middle-Ages. But not me, luv. I’m widowed with three grown children, and a grandchild on the way. I’m a Methodist to boot. Between you and me, I’m on the look-out for husband number two. Now, that brother of yours is right handso—”

  I had to stop her. “Jack’s 20 years old, for crying out loud! He’s about to get hitched to Daphne. Remember her—your patient?”

  “Oh, well. So be it.” She dabbed her lips with a handkerchief: one of the ways ladies cover their embarrassment. Since they were short of patients at the moment, I asked if she was willing to look at Ringo.

  “I’m a dog lover, bring him in,” she said. But as I limped out of the tent to retrieve Ringo from the basket, she cried out, “Come back and let me see to your foot first. Boys before dogs, that’s my motto.”

  “Oh, I’ll hold,” I said, continuing on my way. Ringo was in critical condition.

  The nurse took me by the shoulders, turned me around and led me back into the tent. “Prop your foot up on this chair, and I’ll fetch your dog. He doesn’t bite, does he?” Opening the tent flap, she cried out, “The pitiful little puppy!” She’d been a nasty piece of work earlier in the day, when all we wanted to do was visit Daphne, but now she was bending-over-backwards nice. That’s what a near death experience does to people. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it happen.

  I sat in the chair, raising my foot so it rested on a cot, glad to be off of it. The nurse returned carrying Ringo and wagging an un-lacquered fingernail at me. “You oughtn’t to have brought a dog into hospital, you know. Had you obeyed the rules and tied her up outside, she wouldn’t have been hurt in the bombing.”

  “That dog was tortured by a real live Nazi,” I said.

  “Get out!” She put a hand to her heart.

  “He bailed from his fighter plane and is loose on the base, probably torturing women and children as we speak.”

  “No! How dreadful.” She was terrified, shooting a look around the tent and thinking the Luftwaffe pilot would jump out and murder us. “This is exacly like France!” she said. “We shan’t be safe in our beds tonight.”

  I forced her to fix up Ringo first: I was that brave. Or maybe it was that I knew what was coming, and wanted to put it off. While we talked, she injected Ringo with a sedative, then reset a broken leg, putting a couple of st
itches to a cut above Ringo’s pointy nose. Ringo laid out on her back with her tongue hanging out, with a splinted leg shooting straight up in the air.

  “Are you aware of the fact that your dog has fleas?” asked the nurse. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for it—I’ve never had a patient with fleas before tonight. Worms, yes, but never fleas.”

  “I had worms just last week. The cook where I’m staying said they probably came with the lettuce.”

  “We’ve all had them, luv, and that’s the truth. Although some are too proud to admit it in polite company.”

  “That’s not us, though!” I said.

  The nurse laughed her head off. I did too…until she uncapped a bottle of alcohol, poured it over my foot, threaded a needle, and began stitching.

  Once I recovered from the shock of the operation, the nurse introduced herself. “I’m Sister Hopkins. Lieutenant Hopkins, that is. Only senior officers may call me Hopkins. You may call me Auntie, if you like.”

  “Why would I do that? You’re not my aunt.”

  “Now you rest back on this cot I’ve just made up and take a wee rest. I can’t release you until your charming brother returns.” She fluffed a pillow and placed it behind my head, then found a blanket and threw it over me, tucking in the ends just like my ma would’ve done.

  I was so tired by then, I dropped right off. The next time I opened my eyes, Sister Hopkins was gone. In her place was a younger version, a carbon copy of the actress Carole Lombard. She was asleep in a chair with a magazine on her lap, and paying no attention to me. Ringo slept in the laundry basket next to my cot. Someone had put a pillow under the dog. When my bed creaked, Ringo opened her drippy eyes and yawned. I knew then she’d live and that I’d get the credit for it.

  But I had no intention of being cooped up in the tent all night—not while everyone else hunted for a Nazi. My bandaged foot screamed as I jammed it into the blood stained sneaker. My ma sent those sneakers to me in a package addressed to Jack, so I wasn’t about to leave one behind. Boys in England wore stiff leather lace-ups, the kind kids in America were forced to wear to Sunday Mass. I leaned over and whispered in Ringo’s ear, “Stay here, girl.” She gave a pathetic whine, but was so bandaged up she had to obey. To be on the safe side, I put her collar back on and knotted the leash to the cot frame.

  All I had to do was duck under the tent flap and hobble away.

  My luck was holding: standing out on the grass was one of Jack’s pilot friends, a fella named Ciesielski. He’d once been an airmail pilot based Warsaw, but when he seen which way the wind was blowing he let it take him to England. That was the same day the Germans invaded his country, a day before they confiscated the airmail planes. Now there were plenty other Polish pilots in the Royal Air Force, fellas who’d first gone to France. They ended up forming their own squadrons—two bomber squadrons and two fighter squadrons—but Ciesielski decided to stick it out with the Brits.

  Right then he was flirting with a nurse.

  “You recovered from food-poisoning?” I asked, because the day before I’d seen him throwing up into a flowerpot.

  “Stuff yourself with hay,” he said, strangely, with an accent that made him sound like Bella Lugosi in Dracula. It didn’t seem to be scaring the nurse off. She ran her fingertips over her neck like she was wanting to be bit.

  “You remember me, right—Jack Mooney’s brother? We ran into you in London once, at Piccadilly Square to be exact. Then Jack and you and me went for bangers together, only you called it kielbasa. So I was wondering if you could help me out with a ride. As you can see, I can’t walk very far.” I pointed to my bandaged foot.

  “Little lamb,” said the nurse, kissing my cheek.

  Ciesielski gave me the evil eye. “As you Americans say—scram kid.”

  “The thing is, sir, there’s a Luftwaffe pilot who’s getting away as we stand here doing fat nothing.”

  “Vat?!” he yelled. Anger flashed in his eyes. He was remembering his vow to liberate Poland. He bowed to the nurse, “You will please excuse me, my dear.”

  “You have a car?” I asked.

  “I have a Spitfire!” he said, scanning the sky.

  I explained that the Luftwaffe pilot was on foot. Ciesielski jutted out his lower jaw, moving it left to right and back again—his way of coming up with an idea. Then his eyes settled on a Morris Minor parked across the street and left unattended with the windows rolled down.

  “You can’t nick a car!” said the nurse. “In England it’s against the law.”

  “We will borrow the car, then,” said Ciesielski. “—under the circumstances.” He was my kind of guy. He jumped into the driver’s seat and I slid in next to him. Ciesielski reached down under the steering wheel, pulling down a few wires. Within a minute he had the engine going.

  “I hope this car does not belong to a wing commander,” he said.

  “It’s called commandeering,” I told him.

  “This word I never hear,” he said, as we pulled away.

  The nurse must’ve been keen on him. She ran after the car, waving her arms and shouting, “Wait for me! Wait for me!” Ciesielski brought the car to a screeching halt and she jumped into the back seat.

  “You think I’d miss all the fun, did you?” she said, winking at him.

  I directed us back to Jack’s mess, figuring we start from the last place the Luftwaffe pilot was seen. Ciesielski had to keep the headlights off because no one had masked them and it was against the blackout rules to turn them on. He drove ten miles an hour saying he was worried about hitting a cow, which was a possibility seeing that most of them were the black angus variety.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” I said. “He’s wearing a black uniform, perfect camouflage for a blackout.”

  “This is thrilling!” said the nurse, shaking all over. “I’ve never chased a real Nazi before. What will we do if we find him?”

  “We shoot him,” said Ciesielski with a growl. “Just as they do to my people.”

  “We will do no such thing,” said the nurse.

  “Then we strangle him.”

  “Why, Andrzej, that’s barbaric! You’re in England now. We must find him a job as a farmhand. I hear that that’s what we’re doing with prisoners.”

  “You Englishers,” said Ciesielski, spitting out the window. “You have no notion of whom you deal with. So naïve—like little children.”

  “That’s what I say,” I said. But I’d had enough bloodshed for one night. “How about we tie him up good and bring him to the MPs?”

  Ciesielski answered by patting his service revolver.

  We drove at a snail’s pace down a road wide enough for one car. Dried out cornstalks lined both sides, with not so much as an inch of shoulder. The stalks blocked our view every time we took a bend. Luckily, my night vision surpassed a panther’s. As we came around a hairpin turn I caught sight of a fleece-topped flight boot as it disappeared into the cornstalks. “Holy Toledo! There he is!” I shouted. “Stop the car.”

  Ciesielski had seen him too. He leaped out the door and into a wall of corn.

  “Mercy me!” cried the nurse, cowering in the backseat.

  I flew after Ciesielski, ignoring the pain that shot up my foot. Before long, I was lost in a sea of corn. I stood still, hoping to catch a sound. But it was dead quiet. Then I heard rustling stalks. Someone shouted, Helfen! It meant help in German.

  The crack of gunshot rang out just then and I froze in place, everything but my shaking knees. Close by, I heard someone moan, yug. I couldn’t tell if it was a German or Polish yug. The stalks rustled again: someone running in my direction. Any second he would crash smack into me. I braced myself for impact.

  Next thing I knew, I was flat out on the ground with the nurse bent over me, slapping my face. “Are you all right?” she said, her voice all choked up.

  I sat up, more embarrassed than anything. “Who got shot?” I asked.

  “Ruhig,” said a voice I was already acquainted with
.

  “We must do as he says,” said the nurse.

  “Ciesielski?” I whispered, as she helped me to my feet. The nurse didn’t answer. Instead, she grabbed my hand and squeezed. It wasn’t a good sign. Plus, her face was wet from crying.

  “Let me attend to my friend. Please, I’m begging you,” she said to the Luftwaffe pilot. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see he was holding a revolver. German pilots were issued a gun for just such an event.

  “I don’t think he speaks English,” I whispered. I racked my brain for the right German words. I’d gotten a bit rusty with no one to practice with. But once a week, I cracked open the German dictionary in the Sopwith’s library at Warfield Hall. So my vocabulary was around about 1800 words: A-F, mostly. Slowly, I translated her request. “Bitte,” I said. “Freund.” I tried something else and then another thing—either he didn’t understand or he was ignoring me. He waved the gun in a downward spiral, signaling for us to turn around. The nurse—who’s name I still didn’t know—began gulping cries. We both knew what was about to happen: cold blooded murder, you call it. I began praying under my breath. I’m not what you’d call the religious type but I had nothing to lose. I tried to remember my sins, asking for forgiveness. Forgive me for detesting my sister Mary, I said under my breath. Forgive me for causing the death of the goldfish. It’s true what they say—your whole life passes before your eyes: I seen myself as a baby, being tickled under the chin by my ma; I pictured my da tossing me a softball; Mary stabbing me with a pin; Jack waving goodbye as he left for Canada and flight training; me sitting in a confession booth and lying through my teeth. When I felt the muzzle press into my back, I said, “Hail Mary, full of grace!” out loud. Then I waited for the bullet to pierce my heart.

  “Take pity on us, I beg you.” The nurse’s voice cracked.