by Bonnie Toews
Grace shivered and huddled more tightly beneath the nun’s robe the Mother Superior insisted she wear as a disguise. She found the pseudo life of a nun suited her. Day after day, when she made this sojourn to the tower alone, she was not pretending to pray and meditate in the brisk wintry air. Talking to God had become her salvation, for as much as she knew Lee had chosen to sacrifice herself, she could find no other relief from the lonely guilt and loss she suffered.
Dear Mme. Orsted was dead, and Lee was in the clutches of the Gestapo or dead. Some days Grace did not know what to pray for. If she prayed for Lee to be alive, would Lee alive be praying for death to free her from her tormentors? Lee had emphasized the duty of an agent to protect the mission, and if the situation were reversed, if the Gestapo had captured Grace, she would expect Grace to swallow the cyanide capsule lodged in her back molar. Grace’s heart could not accept what her mind knew was true. Lee must be dead.
Neither had she heard from Erich. What if he had been captured too? Dreadful thoughts gnawed at her, chipping at her faith, the fortress of her survival. She felt abandoned and bewildered. As the days passed into months, nothing made any sense, and despair crept into her soul.
The squish of tires crossing the snowy square and the hiss of brakes in front of Gestapo Headquarters snapped Grace out of her gloomy thoughts. She peered curiously at the black Mercedes pulling up to the front steps. A black-coated SS officer and a woman emerged. For a moment they paused. The woman turned trying to catch her bearings. She glanced up at the sky, and in that instant, her full face came into Grace’s view. Grace sucked in her breath.
Dear God, it can’t be!
The woman’s face held a fraction longer before the SS officer yanked her arm and steered her up the entrance steps. The woman carried herself proudly as she disappeared inside.
With joyous disbelief, Grace scrambled down the tower steps, tripping on her habit skirt as her feet flew out from under her. Racing out of the bell tower, she forgot to lock the door and had to dash back. In her hurry, she fumbled the key, losing more valuable seconds. About to run again, the memory of the Mother Superior’s instructions snipped the impulse: A nun never runs and never steps too quickly, so you must also walk like a nun as long as you wear this robe and wimple.
Resisting the urge to break the rule, she folded her hands inside her habit and rated herself at a slower pace along the cloisters into the abbey. The deliberate movement did not lessen the speed of Grace’s thoughts. She had overheard one sister call Shell House the Gestapo’s chambers of horrors. Poor Lee. If only Erich were here. He would develop a plan to rescue her.
Inside, she found Mother Superior on her way to morning chapel and signaled her urgent need to talk.
The abbess merely smiled and ignored her plea.
“Sister Angelique, I’m so glad I’ve found you. One of the Basilian brothers is in the vestry. Please go there at once. He is anxious to see the crypt.”
When the expression of Grace’s eyes voiced her objection, she added, “I will see you after morning vespers. You must learn to trust God, my dear.”
And with great dignity, the abbess proceeded down the arched corridor to the chapel.
Bowing her head in expected obedience, Grace masked her frustration and meekly followed the Mother Superior down the hall to the chapel, but instead of entering the chapel with her, slipped around the corner and headed for the vestry.
Of all times for a Basilian monk to choose to see the crypt, she fumed silently. Lee’s still alive. I have to find some way to contact the Underground. God only knows what will happen to her in Shell House.
In the vestry, a hooded monk stood in the shadows of the library shelves, waiting for her. She gestured for him to move aside and deftly reached behind the canonical books searching for a hidden lever recessed into the side of the fourth shelf. Finding it, she pressed down. A soft click released the wooden shelves. As she pulled the secret door open, it creaked—a loud crack it seemed to her—and she eased it open more slowly, until there was enough space for each of them to squeeze through. Beyond descended flagstone steps that led into an underground passageway lined with burial niches. She signaled the monk to follow her.
Dim torch lights set in cast iron wall brackets illuminated their way. Several times she paused and pointed to abandoned excavation tools. He nodded and motioned for her to keep moving.
Finally, they came to a crypt built under the chapel’s original foundation three hundred years before. Cobwebs clung inside the doorway. Grace swept them aside as they stepped into the burial chamber. When she found the small petroleum lamp stored on one of the cubbyhole shelves, she took a matchstick out of the box kept beside it, lit the lantern, and hung it from a rusty hook. Turning to speak to the monk, she found he had slipped his hood back from his face.
“Erich!” she cried. “Oh dear God, I don’t believe it! Am I dreaming? First Lee. Now you!”
“What are you talking about?”
She rambled. “Erich, Lee’s still alive! I just saw her. An SS officer took her into Shell House.”
“I told you not to go outside. Someone might recognize you.”
“I didn’t leave the convent. I was in the bell tower. I saw them from there. You…”
Mid-protest, the significance of his presence sunk in. She fell silent and succumbed to the joy of their reunion. “Oh Erich!” His name sprang from her heart, and she melted into his arms. “You’re alive. I’ve been so worried.”
He hugged her, squeezing the breath out of her. “At long last I can hold you,” he whispered and drew her even closer. They stood pressed together for a long time. When he eventually stood back and looked with longing into her radiant face, he murmured, “Let me feel your hair.”
She gazed up at him. Filled with adoration, she raised her hands and began unpinning the nun’s veil. He slid his fingers under the edge and helped it fall to the ground. Never letting her eyes leave his, she then slipped the nun’s tight wimple up over her head and let it drop to the ground.
He shook her blonde hair free and tenderly held her face between his hands. “You are more beautiful than ever,” he said, and gently brushed her lips with his.
“Oh Erich, I love you!” she cried and flung her arms around his neck.
Her impetuousness freed his constraint. He covered her face and hair with rapturous kisses. “My darling, my darling,” he repeated.
When his mouth closed over hers, the years of longing consumed them both, and they kissed deeply and longingly.
“How much time do we have?” she asked breathlessly when he released her.
“Not long. I have to take photos of Gestapo Headquarters.”
“What if Ketmann spots you?”
“I’m a master of disguise,” he smiled and tweaked her cheek.
“What about Lee?”
“A plan is already in the making,” he assured her, and wrapped her tightly in his arms again. “Let us not waste one precious moment.”
He hummed the Viennese Waltz in her ear. “May I have this dance, dear lady?” His hand slipped down her back.
“It would be my pleasure, sire.”
Softly their voices hummed the lilting dance tune together as their bodies gracefully swayed and stepped to the waltz rhythm. Like dolls on top of a music box, they swirled and swirled, and when they finally stopped, Grace looked shyly into Erich’s face.
“Is it wrong to feel this happy?” she asked.
“It’s never wrong to feel happy.”
“But something is wrong, Erich. While we’re safe, Lee is suffering God knows what horrors at the hands of the Gestapo.”
Erich sighed. “I know.”
“You say you have a plan,” she persisted.
“London has a plan,” he corrected her with heavy sadness and held her tighter.
“Are you going to tell me what it is?”
He gave in. “By the time I reached London, I had no choice. I had to report directly to Churchill because
of the betrayal of Project Amanita. It was mid-November. Churchill and Saunders …”
“Who’s Saunders?”
He paused, surprised. “You’ve never met the Chief of Allied Intelligence?”
“No. Amanita’s section head is Sir Fletcher.”
“I know. Well, after I returned, Churchill turned me over to Morgan Saunders. They had already received an urgent message by a courier from King Christian. The Gestapo has captured forty of Denmark’s secret army chiefs and is detaining them in Shell House. Now that we know Lee is there for sure, and alive, the problem is even more serious. They all know the significance of Nielsen’s documents if the Nazis should accidentally recover them. Since none of the leaders were issued suicide pills, and Lee was tricked from using hers …”
“How do you know that?” Grace interrupted.
“I tried to rescue her before I left, but I was too late. Do you remember my mentioning Ketmann?”
She nodded. “You said he was someone I didn’t want to know.”
“What I didn’t tell you was that he was at your press recital in Berlin.”
“Are you talking about that vile man who threatened Lee and the journalists?”
“Yes. That was Colonel Ketmann. At the time of Lee’s arrest, he had just been promoted to General and appointed the commander of the SS in Copenhagen. He came to her cell, while I was there, and recognized her. When she came to, she remembered him as well and tried to bite down on her L-pill, but he held her throat so she couldn’t bite it and forced her to swallow it. Ketmann knows, by replacing you, she has robbed him of his trump card over Churchill. If he’s been interrogating her since he arrested her, I don’t want to imagine what she’s been suffering or why she’s still alive. It can only mean she has not told him where you are—because she doesn’t know—or where Nielsen’s papers are hidden.”
Grace rested her head against Erich’s chest. She had long since thrown away her cyanide capsule. “Nielsen’s papers were lost at sea. They had the formulas to build an atomic bomb.”
“I know. There’s more,” he continued. “The chiefs also know the Underground’s secret plans to keep German forces in Denmark policing General Workers’ strikes and sabotage actions. Saunders has come up with a scheme to rescue the chiefs, which will include Lee. It’s very risky,” he said flatly.
His arms tightened around Grace again. “The plan is to use a low-level bombing raid to rupture the foundations of Shell House. The prisoners being held on the top floors will be able to escape, while the Gestapo files in the bottom part of the building will be entombed. If the records are not destroyed, the entire Danish Resistance may be wiped out, freeing 200,000 German troops stationed here to fight the Allied armies closing in on Germany instead. Churchill has given the project to the RAF’s Specialized Air Arm under Saunder’s command. He sent me back here to take photographs of the target from the sea. He needs them to solve the navigational problems for the air strike.”
“Won’t everybody be killed?”
“In theory, no.”
He fell quiet. “In reality … who knows?”
His jaw clenched. “The tactic is based on the same principle the Dam Busters used. The bombers will make low-level runs at high speed and skip eleven-second-delay bombs up the Nyhaven Canal to the base of Shell House. The building is made of reinforced concrete. By blasting the support pillars simultaneously, we can implode it so it will collapse like a deck of cards, from its base. The walls will break apart as the structure tumbles down. The main Gestapo garrison and their files on the ground floor will be buried under the rubble, while the prisoners on the top floor will simply walk out between the cracks in the walls.”
“It sounds so easy.”
“It’s not foolproof,” Erich admitted. “What grieves me most is we have to put you and the convent at risk. You’re too close to the target.”
“If you warn me of the attack in advance, I can evacuate the nuns and the girls to the crypt.”
He shook his head. “That won’t guarantee you safety from the bombs. You could be buried alive. No. There can be no warning. If, for any reason, the Gestapo suspects an attack, the strike will be useless. There’s too much at stake. The Germans still have time to build an atomic bomb if Nielsen’s papers are recovered, and reinforcements from Denmark along the German defense lines could turn the tide of war against us.”
“I see,” Grace said.
Inside, her excitement stilled. A serene composure took over, as she understood what God was asking of her.
“Then it must be done, Erich. Lee’s sacrifice for me must not be in vain. The lives of all those who have been sacrificed in an effort to prevent Hitler from building this terrible bomb must not be in vain. May God have mercy on us all.”
FORTY
Friday, March 16th, 1945
Lee shivered. More than one week had passed since Ketmann had returned her to Gestapo headquarters. In the chilled air of the top floor’s unheated room, her teeth chattered endlessly. With her wrists handcuffed to the head of the cot and her ankles manacled to the foot, she could barely roll or flex her muscles to keep her blood circulating. Left chained like this, she fell into trembling fits of demented consciousness. Feeling herself slipping under once more, she struggled and strained against the grinning skulls swarming, like cockroaches, all over her. They chanted and moaned with eerie howls. Between them, like a jack-in-a-box, a gargoyle’s mad grin painted on a gold mask drifted in and out. Crazy laughter followed, as a hand whisked the horrible mask away to reveal Rolf’s pleading face beneath.
“Who betrayed me, baby? Who set me up?”
Rolf’s laughing mask swung back in place. His voice jeered. “They’re losers, Lee. All losers!”
She writhed and screamed. “For God’s sake, let me go! Please let me die!”
His pleading face popped out from behind the gold distortion. “Who betrayed me, baby? Who set me up?”
“I dunno … I dunno …” She cried pitifully.
A specter of chanting death heads sailed in and out of her murky consciousness where she floundered in burning pain and sulfurous smells, which suffocated her. Sharp insistent raps broke through … a distant thumping … hammering … pecking … a woodpecker in Shell House? No, it was a woodpecker chipping at her head. Clear consciousness wavered. Her eyes flickered open.
MORSE CODE! Someone was trying to tap out a message in Morse Code. She struggled to concentrate on the staccato signals. HOLD ON… RESCUE NEAR… There was a long pause before the tapping began again.
Hope summoned her spirit, and then distrust shoved it down.
It could be a Gestapo trick, to make me feel hopeful… and safe … to get me to drop my guard… a trick… yes, it must be a trick… but if it’s true …
She resisted the urge to void. The scratchy blanket covering the mattress under her already stank of her urine and feces.
A key turned in the door lock. Her nerves screamed. Sweat squeezed out her palms. Her heart lobbed into her throat; her stomach lurched and quivered. The heavy door squeaked.
Max, her keeper, entered with her food tray and toiletries.
In relief, Lee’s pressing bladder emptied, saturating the towel under her. The sudden flood of urine soaking the rash of raw sores covering her buttocks caused her to cry out.
When Ketmann tired of torturing her, he allowed Max to attend her once a day. This guard, who resembled a brutish-looking escapee from a prehistoric zoo, was the one respite from her misery she welcomed.
He laid the tray on the floor beside her cot and sat down beside her. Surprisingly gentle, he lifted her head and spooned a mouthful of the thin potato soup into her. She gagged and spat it out. Watery gruel dribbled down her chin. Max quickly wiped it away before he broke off a piece of stale hard bread and tried to feed it to her. The rock-sharp crust ripped at the ulcerated roof of her mouth, stinging her. She clamped her mouth shut and turned her head away from the food.
Max clucked. “Essen s
ie.” He wanted her to eat.
Lee stubbornly shook her head.
“Bitte,? he begged.
She lay withdrawn.
He dunked the piece of dry hard bread into the gray gruel and repeated gently, “Bitte. Essen sie”
She turned her head back to look into the caring eyes of the big flat-headed German. He dipped the bread again and held it to her mouth. She belligerently tightened her lips. Patiently, he waited. When she tired, he gently eased the spongy bread into her sore mouth. She sucked out the juice and gratefully gulped it down. Eventually, she chewed the mushy bit of bread and swallowed it down. He gave her the rest of the soup and bread the same way.
Afterwards, Max crooned to her, while he tenderly sponged her skin and gingerly cleansed the lesions formed from the acid burns of her urine. As if she were a baby, he next changed her makeshift diaper of toweling.
Just as he finished, the key turned in the lock again, and the door flung wide open. Ketmann loomed in the doorway. Immediately, the room reeked of his garlic breath.
Lee stared at him in sick horror. Everything within her cried out. “No more… no more… no more …”
He strode over to her cot. She could see the delicate edge between sanity and insanity thinning in his eyes. He glared down on her.
“While the Third Reich fights for its life, you lie here sneering!”
She shook spastically. “Nooo … nooo …”
“You think I don’t know who sent you!”
Every day he grew more and more obsessed with who sent her to replace Grace.
“You think I don’t know why you are here!”
He smirked and began his ritualistic pacing. “That traitor in London takes me for a fool. A fool! He dangles caviar and sends me worms. You are another of his rotten worms. An impostor. Nielsen’s gone, and I am left with a Red whore!”