by Bonnie Toews
He stopped and approached her again.
“You hid Dr. Nielsen’s notes … his blueprints for the atomic bomb, didn’t you? I know you were sent to hide them before you were delivered to me. What did you do with them? Where did you hide them? Tell me!”
“NOOooo...”
Her cringing denial spurred him on.
“With Nielsen’s formula, Germany can rise again. It’s not too late. It’s not! We shall find his blueprints and make the atomic bomb. We will stop the Allies from taking Berlin. Our time is not yet over! We will reign one thousand years!”
Abruptly, Ketmann’s mood shifted. He calmed down. “I have sent men to dismantle Nielsen’s lab and to search his house.”
Good luck! Lee mentally mocked him. The panic tightening her chest was gradually giving way to an inner core of steel.
“We shall find his notes whether you talk or not.”
Ketmann licked his words like a lynx lapping milk. “I suggest you co-operate and make it easier for yourself. For you, the war is over.”
Over? The ghostly image of Rolf flashed in front of her. Standing strong and tall with his arms outstretched, he was reaching out to her, welcoming her. She rose up. They came together laughing, laughing hysterically at the vain Nazi.
Stripping down the doctor’s lab and house was he! Dig, you clown, dig!
She and Rolf wildly applauded him.
Ketmann’s leering face zoomed in on their private joke. The mad desire to laugh gurgled in Lee’s throat. This demon towering over her was no joke. He threatened all life, not just hers.
Ask, you fiend! Go ahead and ask. Ask! ASK! ASK!
She knew what he wanted to know, but he could not get inside her thoughts. No one could. If she did not want to tell him, he had one great big goose egg. NOTHING. She was not going to let him in on her and Rolf’s private joke.
The doctor’s papers are lost. Somewhere out on the sea, they are drifting, drifting, drifting, along to some unknown shore. Isn’t that funny, you fiend? The joke’s on you.
Her spirit soared with sudden jubilation. Silence was her finest weapon. It would pass with her into Rolf’s arms on the other side of hell.
Ketmann cursed her mute resistance and ordered Max to bring in a gurney left in the hallway. Like a whipped slave, Max did his bidding.
When he had wheeled in the stretcher, he unbound Lee from the cot, lifted her shaking body onto it, and then strapped her up. Once again, the only thing covering her was the prison smock, and her chilled skin increased her trembling.
Max wrapped a clean white sheet snugly around her. Its thin warmth enshrouded her. Hungrily, she drank in its lingering clean scent, a fresh sweetness like a fleeting reprieve from the sourness of her soiled blanket.
Ketmann instructed Max to wheel her up and down the hall outside. The gurney’s wheels squeaked and rattled, playing on the nerves of the prisoners confined in other cells on the top floor of Shell House.
At seven o’clock that night, the BBC blared over the loudspeaker through the dimly lit corridor. To Lee’s surprise, she heard Grace’s easy chatter on the air. The English woman’s voice reached out and touched her, as if she were there beside her, soothing her and stroking her with every word, carrying her away from the torment of her ceaseless nightmare.
Remembering their kidding, while they pre-recorded the ridiculous ditty now airing, Lee smiled.
From behind her, Ketmann said softly, “Amusing is it? Is it also amusing that secret codes are hidden in every DITTIES FOR DOTTIES Lady Grace broadcasts.”
Lee’s smile died.
“Someone here knows what the message in this ditty means,” he said. “By morning, I shall know too.”
Stunned, she stared ahead. She had no idea what the code meant.
As Ketmann relentlessly questioned Lee, every prisoner on the top floor could hear his interrogation in the hallway. Her silent responses drummed on their nerves. They feared for her sanity and were thankful for her resilience. Impatient with her tenacious refusal to talk, Ketmann finally took his cigarette and ground the burning butt into Lee’s cheek to punish her.
FORTY-ONE
Monday, March 19th, 1945
The street vendor barely glanced at the young German soldier standing outside the convent gate as he shuffled his cart over the cobblestones, but he was aware of every movement the Waffen-SS troops made in and out of Shell House Square. He was monitoring any unusual activity in the Gestapo block.
His deceptive apathy was the result of rigid discipline over the hate he felt for the enemy who had occupied his land and terrorized his people. The time for revenge would come. He only needed to be patient. All things come to those who wait.
Patience, the vendor reminded himself, as he continued down the old back street and out of the soldier’s view, but his tightly controlled hate electrified the distance growing between them.
The young German ignored the slow plodding Dane. Beautiful organ music drifting out between the beech trees behind the convent gate distracted him. He stood spellbound. A forgotten yearning triggered memories of a time when his parents took him to their parish church in the Saar Valley, to the heady smell of incense and aromatic altar flowers, to the glorious choral music, to the rainbow ring of light, that awesome shaft of sunlight beaming down from the stained glass window arched over the altar.
As a young boy, he believed the rainbow ring of light was a ladder dropped from heaven. For, at every service he attended, it seemed to beam down just as the priest was about to start his sermon. The warm light would wrap the priest in a cloak of gold. Like magic, it bronzed his face and expressive hands. That’s what he thought ‘to be blessed’ meant, to be bronzed by the rainbow ring of light. This wondrous effect prompted his deep down longing to see the face of God. What did He really look like?
One Sunday, when he could no longer withstand the urge to climb up the magical ladder the way Jack had climbed the beanstalk, he slipped out of the family pew and ran up the center aisle. But, when he reached the chancel steps, the rainbow ring of light disappeared. Around and around he spun, searching upwards for the heaven-sent ladder until, utterly dizzy and flustered, his little arms sprang upward and he cried, “God, are You up there?”
His father then scooped him up and rushed him out of the church.
No one ever explained to him what he had done that was so wrong. Once he knew he could not climb the magical ladder, however, the rainbow ring of light ceased to enchant him. Through his years in the Hitler Youth, he had forgotten his original fascination with God until this moment, when he heard the organ music coming from the convent chapel.
Impulsively, he slid through the unlocked iron gates of the convent and crept along the cloistered corridor leading to the chapel. He entered unnoticed and tiptoed up the side aisle, keeping well hidden within the pillars’ shadows as he went. From the steeple tower, diffused rays of sunshine spilled down on a group of schoolgirls ringed around a lovely nun playing the organ. Their clear sweet voices stirred that long ago yearning to see the face of God.
As he leaned closer to absorb the lilting music, his rifle butt clanged against the stone buttress. Instantly, the music stopped, and all eyes converged on him. The older girls, recognizing he was a soldier, stared at him, frightened, while the younger ones studied him curiously.
One cherub with bright brown eyes and fawn-colored curls piped up, “What are you doing here? This is God’s house.”
She spoke in flawless German.
Feeling foolish, he stammered, “I… I don’t mean to intrude. It’s the music. It’s beautiful.” He turned to the nun. “Please don’t stop playing, Sister.”
The nun answered him with a gentle smile. Her glowing face was filled with such sweeping love he felt warmed and cherished by it, as if she had wrapped him in the rainbow ring of light itself.
The cherub spoke out again. “Sister Angelique has taken the Vow of Silence. She cannot speak to you.”
“A Vow of Silence?
You mean she can never talk?”
He couldn’t imagine anyone not talking and stepped up closer to the circle of students who quietly tightened their ring around the nun.
The small one with tousled curls nodded solemnly.
“She can never talk because she is listening for the Voice of God. He dwells inside her. If she talks, she will not hear Him.”
“The Sister plays the organ, while you sing. Will not the sound of your music hide the Lord’s voice?”
All at once a bell shrilled.
The German soldier’s question hung unanswered in the excitement of dismissal. An impish urge to chuckle overcame him as the girls rushed to form a line and stood at attention, waiting for the nun’s nod. He could remember how he eagerly looked to the end of the school day so he could play outside with his friends. At her gracious signal, the girls filed out, leaving him alone with the nun.
Grace in her nun’s disguise gave silent thanks for the dismissal bell. A more persistent soldier would have pursued the flaw in the little girl’s story. Her heart quickened. She didn’t want anything to happen to these precious girls because they were protecting her.
She watched him move forward, up the outside aisle, across the front pew to center aisle and mount the chancel steps. He grinned sheepishly as he neared her at the organ.
“Sister Angelique … Oh!” He stopped himself.
“Sister Angelique,” he said instead, “I wish you could talk.” Despair crimped his brow. “There are so many things I need to understand.”
Fleecy fuzz, just starting to sprout over the young soldier’s upper lip, made Grace regret she wasn’t the nun he believed she was. She reached out and touched his arm. With her other hand, she pointed to the waterfall of light spilling over the altar.
He stared.
Grace saw an expression of awe wash over his face, softening his boyish features even more. Above his head, hanging on the wall, was an icon of Jesus. Glancing up at it and then at him, Grace embraced the gentle innocence reflected in the young German soldier’s face under the Lord’s picture. She carried on playing the organ and watched him as he listened to the music. He seemed lost in another time, in another world. His vulnerability touched Grace’s heart.
This soldier was not her enemy. When she looked into his eyes, she saw a boy chasing a butterfly, trying to capture it in a bottle, so he could keep it with him always. But, once trapped inside his bottle, the butterfly fluttered and died. He did not understand what was free could not be kept under glass and survive. Love is like that butterfly. It needs the freedom of an open heart to thrive.
A final silence trailed after the last lingering note died. Tears glistened in the young soldier’s eyes.
Grace gently smiled at him.
The squeak of the chancel door startled him.
The abbess emerged.
He nervously bowed his head and bolted down the center aisle.
When he left the chapel, the Mother Superior softly approached Grace.
“Is Hitler so desperate for men he must recruit boys?” she asked. “What did he want?”
“To listen to our music.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes,” Grace said. “That is all.”
“How can you be sure?”
Grace looked away, first at the altar and then above it, to the funnel of shimmering sunlight streaming down from the chancel’s stained glass window. The light was so alive with magical colors that it danced and swirled in a prism of spinning glory.
“I’m sure,” she said. “He was only a homesick boy.”
“I hope you are right.”
Sad doubt in the voice of the abbess brought Grace’s full attention back to her.
“Something is troubling you, Reverent Mother. What is it?”
The abbess stiffened. Resolution pursed her lips.
“Grace, I wasn’t planning to worry you, but that soldier’s visit today has changed my mind. The Gestapo is circulating a poster with a drawing of you. Many of the girls here know you are the British spy in the picture.”
“Oh no! Grace cried out in alarm. “My presence endangers everyone. I must leave at once. If I am caught here, who knows what terrible reprisals there may be against you and the convent.”
The abbess shook her head.
“I didn’t tell you this to make you leave. Quite the contrary. Our girls are Danes, and as Danes, they will not betray you. It’s crucial you stay here, but you must be more careful. Chance meetings like this one with the soldier are too risky. If he sees the poster, he may recognize you and turn you in.”
“I understand, Reverent Mother. I shall be most careful.”
But once again, the specter of pearly sunbeams twirling over the altar caught her eye, and she felt protected as she watched the interchanging rays, in their own celebration of life, become a divine ring of light. God was with her. She believed it with her whole heart and soul.
“Reverent Mother, do you believe God has the power to make all things work together for good?”
“Definitely, I do.”
FORTY-TWO
Wednesday, March 21st, 1945
Shortly before dawn, three flights of De Havilland Mosquitoes lifted off from Norfolk and headed out to the English coastline and further on to the North Sea. Flying these long-range fighter-bombers were twenty-one select pilots from the 2nd Tactical Air Command.
For the strike on Gestapo Headquarters at Shell House, Air Chief Palmer Emerson Winslow had chosen B.MK XVI models because of their superior versatility. At high speeds, their controls did not harden. They could dive and easily turn in evasive actions, but like royally bred racehorses, they needed the handling of highly trained, competent air jockeys to guide them through the critically timed attack on Shell House. Their two supercharged Rolls-Royce Merlin engines generated maximum speeds up to 410 miles per hour. If necessary, with their pressurized cabins, the Mosquitoes could climb up to 38,000 feet on their way home to escape Luftwaffe fighters, which Winslow expected would descend on them like angry hornets after the raid.
Over the North Sea, a half gale squalled making navigation difficult. Sea salt clung to the Mosquitoes’ windscreens, blocking their navigators’ views of the necessary visual checks to keep them on course as they flew, rocking and buffeting barely over the wave tops. Despite the frightening risk of turbulent and unpredictable winds throwing their aircraft loaded with firebombs and skipping bombs into the grasping sea, no one wanted to turn back. And so, they powered on, trusting their compasses and their adjusted calculations on the wind factor to keep them on course.
On the top floor of Shell House, in one of the smaller interrogation rooms, Ketmann badgered Lee with more questions. When he saw his repeated questions had no effect, he changed direction and snarled, “Do you know how we recognize Jews?”
The sunken hollows above her cheeks fixed on him curiously. She watched him draw out an envelope from his desk and open it. He pulled out an enlarged photograph and wordlessly handed it to her. She took it, and immediately, when she looked at it, her hands began to shake.
Shrewdly, like a fox snaring a hound, Ketmann observed her reaction and congratulated himself. He had found a weakness. He could break through her defenses.
In the picture, naked Jews stood in a pit. Though the lighting was poor, their skeletal shapes and bleak faces were distinguishable, like ghastly masks, each one cut with two black holes staring emptily into the eye of the camera, and an open canyon resembling lips contorted in soundless and endless screams.
Ketmann shook his head with contempt.
“Such pitiful disbelief caught in the midst of an execution! A sheer work of art, don’t you think?”
He gloated and, like the director he believed he was, went on to describe the scene from behind his camera.
“The wretches dig and dig … down, down, down into the bowels of the earth, until their graves are dug… I raise my camera… the rim of guards separate … and the machine guns appear o
ver the ledge. The miserable cowards look up and see them. At precisely the same instant as the machine guns fire, I click my camera and PRESTO! This moment of time is locked in history. The Great Reich’s Final Solution to its Jewish problem.”
His upper lip curled in a sneer.
Lee stared and tottered. The picture fell from her fingers onto the floor, and animal-like mews gurgled from her throat.
Satisfied he was pressing her mind to the brink, Ketmann toyed with her, savoring her delicate edge of invading madness. He steadily tapped on the top of his desk trying to drive Lee to a primal scream of pure desperation.
“Precise and meticulous timing,” he droned on in a flat tone.
His square-shaped finger tips continued their relentless drumming. With barely a break in the rhythm, he pointed to a silver-framed mirror sitting face down on his desk.
“Pick it up,” he ordered her.
She blinked at him.
“Pick it up,” he growled with more venom.
She stared ahead, passively defying him. His drumming fingers stopped. Silence stretched between them.
Grabbing up the silver frame from his desk, he leaned across to her unyielding body and jabbed it into her midriff with a force so hard it knocked the breath out of her. She grunted as he thrust it into her, and a reflex action jerked her arms upward. She grasped for the mirror before she could control her automatic response.
“Precise and meticulous timing,” he hissed.
She opened her hands.
The crash of the metallic frame hitting the marble floor and the sound of the mirror splintering exploded between them.
“Precise and meticulous timing,” Lee repeated evenly.
Rage filled him. He hadn’t broken her self-control. But he was close to breaking her. He could feel it. Rocking back on his heels, he contemplated her coldly, while he moved slowly around the desk, never taking his eyes off of her. He bent down and carefully picked up one of the largest shards from the floor.