All Is Fair

by Dee Garretson

  “Go on,” he said. “It sounds like something out of a book. It’s so different from my life. I’d like to see someone ask my grandfather’s housekeeper to bring them a warmed blanket. She’d slap them on the side of the head as an answer.”

  “So tell me about the ranch,” I said. “My mother grew up traveling around the western territories, but I’ve never been. She says it’s very beautiful, but so unlike England, it’s hard to even imagine without being there.”

  Lucas talked and I listened, concentrating on trying to picture his life. It was so very different from my own. It sounded as if he worked long hours, but the way he described the ranch hands and the land and the animals, I could tell he loved it.

  When the barge finally stopped, I found I had forgotten to think about the small space, immersed as I had been in listening to Lucas and thinking that I didn’t want him to take his arms away.

  After the captain whistled and the boat fell silent, I climbed up out of the compartment as quickly as I could, taking deep breaths of fresh air. I wished we could just stay on the boat, sailing up and down the canal.

  It was dusk and the dock was deserted. We jumped off onto the jetty, Lucas motioning to some barrels stacked nearby. There was just enough space behind for the two of us to sit.

  “I wish we had some water,” I said.

  “I should have thought of that. I’ll get back on the barge and find us some.”

  “No, it’s too dangerous. We don’t know when someone is going to come along. Let’s figure out what we do next.”

  Lucas opened the envelope and took out a very creased piece of paper. A photograph fell out of it. “It’s a letter in either a code or some language I can’t read.” He handed it to me and then bent down to pick up the photograph.

  The paper had a faint scent of roses, and it was written in a tiny hand, so small I had to hold it close to see. It was addressed to someone named Gunther:

  Gunther drug serdechnyi,

  Keamc uroyx aywf tom hetv etertsl athtc nsurw htgira wnode tob hetr orbrahi, heta uerz esdq rsehcuobw, ah etertss ndiheba hetp irottabav. Dsneirfj ofl hetn teihwz dyaly itawaa ouyn ati erbmunk enethgiec. Owhse emhtb hetu phargotohpd soz eyhtl lliwi ownkv ouyw.

  Maria Eton Duoversa

  “Can you read it?” Lucas asked.

  “Only a few words. The names ‘Maria’ and ‘Gunther’ and the two words after ‘Gunther.’ They’re Russian, meaning ‘my heart’s friend,’ which is the Russian equivalent of ‘my love,’ but it’s not a phrase people use much in real life. It’s more like something you would read in a book. But the rest of the message isn’t in Russian.” I scanned it again just to make sure. “One of the words in the signature could be two Latin words together. ‘Duo’ means ‘two,’ and ‘versa’ means ‘reverse,’ but nothing else is in Latin. The rest of it doesn’t look like any language I know.” I paused. “Actually, I don’t think it is an actual language. This is a code.”

  “It’s not the code you came aboard to teach us how to decipher?”

  “No. It’s different.”

  He sighed. “We’ve got a problem. When you were up on deck, the lieutenant said he’d been taught a simple code after he’d agreed to come on the mission. You came back down then, and it didn’t occur to me to ask him to teach it to me. I thought he’d be with me.” He tapped the photograph. “Whatever it says, since it came with the picture, maybe it means we’re supposed to meet this girl.”

  I took the photograph from him. It was of a young, pretty woman who wore something like the elaborate traditional dresses I had seen peasant girls wear in Russia on festival days. The headdress that topped the girl’s head was nothing like anything I had ever seen, though. The intricate white pleated construction resembled a giant fan. If she was going to meet us, she wouldn’t be wearing what she had on in the picture. No one dressed like that on an average day.

  I handed it back to him and studied the letter again. Thinking it might be a variation of my father’s code in the telegram, I tried every one I could think of. Nothing worked.

  “Do you really think it’s a code? Wouldn’t the Germans have code experts to figure it out if we were caught?” Lucas asked.

  “Yes, but it may be that it’s not a common code, so it would take them some time to decipher it. Or it’s not a difficult code and the people using it know it will eventually be deciphered, but they don’t care, especially if it’s for a meeting that is about to happen, because they count on the fact that it takes some time to break a code. They hope by the time someone figures it out, it no longer matters, because their meeting has already occurred.”

  I studied it again, trying to find common words. The lieutenant had said it was a simple code. It felt like English, as if I could almost read it. The frequency of the letter combination “het” had to be a clue, because it looked like “the” scrambled, with an extra letter added. That was the problem with a lot of simple codes: Words frequently used in English were difficult to disguise.

  Gunther drug serdechnyi,

  Keamc uroyx aywf tom hetv etertsl athtc nsurw htgira wnode tob hetr orbrahi, heta uerz esdq rsehcuobw, ah etertss ndiheba hetp irottabav. Dsneirfj ofl hetn teihwz dyaly itawaa ouyn ati erbmunk enethgiec. Owhse emhtb hetu phargotohpd soz eyhtl lliwi ownkv ouyw.

  Maria Eton Duoversa

  The third time through, I nearly laughed out loud. “I know this.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It’s one of the codes Crispin thought up when he was at Eton. Crispin and Andrew used it to write messages to each other. They did it at home too, thinking they could fool me, and they were so angry when I figured it out. That’s why it says ‘Eton Duoversa.’ Crispin had so many codes, he named them to keep track of them. The ‘duoversa’ is the key. You take the last two letters of a word and move them to the front of the word, then you write the rest of the word in reverse. For the final step, you add a random letter to the end of each word so it doesn’t just look like scrambled English. This first word, ‘keamc,’ is ‘make.’”

  I deciphered it word by word, reading it to Lucas because we didn’t have a pencil.

  “Make your way to the street that runs right down to the harbor, the rue des Bouchers, a street behind the abattoir. Friends of the White Lady await you at number eighteen. Show them the photograph so they will know you.”

  “Andrew must have explained it to someone in the Foreign Office,” I said, “though I don’t know why they used this instead of some other code.”

  Lucas didn’t respond. He was already peering around the side of one of the barrels. “Let’s go,” he said. “I guess we look for the abattoir. I suppose it will be obvious. Slaughterhouses always are.”

  It was obvious. A huge building dominated the area right by the docks. I shuddered at the thought of it. The area around it was empty of people. I thought that with the food shortages, the building would be empty too, until I heard the lowing of a single cow inside. I kept my gaze away from it and walked as fast as I could.

  As we moved up the street, the area looked more like a shopping district. I looked around, trying not to let shock show on my face. The Belgium I knew from before the war had been nothing like this. Then, the streets had been spotless and every shop front looked as if it had been freshly painted. Now everything was faded, overlaid with grime and neglect. Everyone walked with their eyes on the ground, their shoulders hunched. Their clothing was so threadbare that my own stood out as far too fine, even stiff with salt water and coated with coal dust from the boat. We passed a bootblack putting away his brushes, and his stare made me feel as if I might as well be wearing a sign that read English.

  Number eighteen was a big, rambling old house, slightly less shabby than the houses around it, with a tiny front garden. Someone had set out flowerpots that looked as if they were waiting to be planted, and the front walk had recently been swept. I knocked, and when the front door opened, I held out the photograph. A man motioned us inside.

  “Our guest
s are here,” he called out. “Come into the kitchen,” he said to us. Leading us down a cold, dark hallway past several closed doors, he took us to the back of the house and into the kitchen. The kitchen held far more warmth and it was crowded with furniture, as if they had moved their entire parlor in as well. An old woman with fluffy white hair sat in a rocking chair, mending a shirt, while a younger woman stirred a pot of soup on the stove. The younger one frowned when we came in, but the older one put down her sewing and examined us curiously. The man went to one end of the table and sat down, pulling out a newspaper that had been folded into a small square. He unfolded it and began to read as if we weren’t even there.

  “Sit down,” the younger woman said. “I expect you are hungry. We have some onion soup. That’s all I can offer you.” She banged two spoons down on the table.

  I translated, a little shaken by the woman’s obvious belligerence.

  Lucas felt it too, even if he didn’t understand the words. “Please tell her, ‘Thank you, ma’am,’” he said. “But tell her we don’t want to put them out.”

  The older woman raised her head at Lucas’s words. “Are you American, boy?” she asked in heavily accented English.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “You won’t be putting us out. The only reason we haven’t starved is because of the food the Americans have sent. There wouldn’t be anything left of the Belgian people otherwise. You’d do well to remember that,” she said to the woman at the stove, switching languages. The younger woman ducked her head at the rebuke, but didn’t reply.

  The old woman set her rocking chair in motion, still watching us. “When you get back to America, you will have to tell everyone we appreciate the food.” She chortled and pointed at an armchair by the stove. “We use everything they send us.”

  I saw a cushion on the chair and went over to pick it up. It was made from an old flour sack. The words on it read Belgian Flour Relief, The Moody and Thomas Milling Co., Peninsula, Ohio. It had been embellished with elaborate embroidery in red and yellow and black. The embroidery was exquisite. Red, yellow, and black. “These are the colors of the Belgian flag, aren’t they?” I asked.

  “That they are,” the woman replied, rocking faster. “We are not allowed to fly the flag or wear ribbons of that color. That’s why we wear green instead.” She nodded at the ribbon in Lucas’s buttonhole. “They can’t stop us from using what we have to clothe ourselves. They’ve taken all our cloth for themselves. But we are smarter than they think.”

  She stopped rocking long enough to reach down into a leather bag that sat beside the chair. She pulled out another ribbon and a scarf with the same beautiful colored embroidery enhancing the letters. “Little girls wear them as dresses and women use them as scarves. Every day we remind the Germans that we have friends in other places. So we welcome friends to our home. Sit down and eat,” she said, handing me the ribbon and resuming her rocking. “Put this through your buttonhole. You’ll fit in better.”

  The younger woman set two bowls of soup down on the table. “It’s not much, but we eat what we have, when we have it.” Her voice had softened.

  “That’s fine,” I assured the woman. “It smells good.” It tasted good too. The warmth spread through me and I felt some of the tension drain away. It would be nice to stay for a while in a safe place. I took a drink from the mug she offered and nearly gagged.

  “It’s coffee made from strawberry leaves,” the older woman said. “We’ve gotten used to it. It is terrible, isn’t it?” She smiled.

  “At least it’s hot,” Lucas said, drinking all of his down. I couldn’t manage another sip.

  Lucas finished his soup and then pushed his bowl away. “Thank you. That was very good.”

  “Yes, thank you,” I said, hoping they wouldn’t mind that I hadn’t finished the drink. I took the last spoonful of soup, wishing I could stretch out the moment. Having a meal, even if it was just soup, felt normal and reminded me of being at home.

  “We weren’t told the details of the next step of the journey,” Lucas said. “The White Lady is supposed to tell us how we can get into Germany.”

  The woman stopped rocking. “You’re going by train. We planned it because it has worked before, but I don’t know how you, young lady, will make it,” she said, meeting my eyes. “The boy, he looks strong, but you—it will go hard on you.”

  “Why do I have to be strong to ride on a train?”

  The woman shook her head. “You’re not riding inside like a passenger. You’re riding outside on a ladder. You’re to take a freight train full of coal. They stop for water at an unmanned tower and it’s there that you are to climb up the ladders between the cars. It’s about a three-hour ride, which is a long time for a young girl to hold on to a ladder. Especially a young girl like you. You don’t look like you’ve seen much hard work.”

  I ducked my head, feeling ashamed that yet another person saw me as useless.

  “Grandpapa!” A young girl ran into the kitchen, her blond braids tied with green ribbons flying behind her. “I saw Monsieur Janssens outside watching the house when the strangers came. He left and I followed him and he went straight to the secret police. You were right. He is a stool pigeon! They’ll be coming!”

  I bolted out of the chair, fear running through me. I’d thought the house was safe.

  Lucas stood up too. “What did she say? What’s happened?”

  “The secret police have been told about us,” I said to Lucas. “We have to leave.”

  The older man patted the girl on the head. “Good girl. Now you go off to visit your aunt. We’ll fetch you later.” The girl gave one quick look at us, ran over and hugged the younger woman, then dashed back out the door.

  The old woman stood up, picking up a leather bag. “At least we have confirmation now about Janssens. There’s no more time, my young friends. Come out the back door with me.”

  Someone pounded on the front door and shouted for us to open it.

  “They are quick tonight,” the old woman said. “We hurry now.”

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  LUCAS GRABBED HIS rucksack and we followed the old woman out into a walled garden and then through a door at the back of it and out into an alley. The woman led us through several backstreets until I could tell we were heading out into the country.

  “Won’t the police want to know about the strangers the man reported?” I asked. I didn’t want the family to be put in danger.

  “Yes, they’ll ask. My husband will make up a story. He is good at it,” she said. “They haven’t caught us yet.” The pride came through clearly. “Now, we are going to have to go down a street that is more populated. Walk behind me, as if you don’t know me.”

  She hurried off and we went after her, trying to keep several paces back. When the woman turned a corner, we quickened our pace to make sure we didn’t lose her. Right before we turned the corner, a gruff voice rang out just around it. “What are you doing out this time of night? Your papers, please,” a man ordered in German.

  I saw that Lucas had the same thought I did. Both of us dived for a nearby doorway that was set back enough into the building to provide some shadows.

  “I don’t understand,” the old woman grumbled in French.

  “Papers!” the man shouted, first in German and then in French.

  “Papers. Ah. Why didn’t you say so? Yes, yes, here they are.” The old woman sounded annoyed. “Please hurry, young man. I’m a midwife and there is a woman whose time has come. They waited too long to send for me, and I’m afraid this one is going to have a difficult time. So unless you have some skill in birthing babies, I suggest you let me go on my way.”

  The soldier didn’t respond to that. There was silence and then the faint sound of paper being unfolded.

  “All right. Go along,” the man barked. “I’ll be checking up on you at headquarters.” He walked back toward us.

  Lucas took my hand and squeezed it. He leaned in and
pulled me close to him. I heard the man’s footsteps coming closer, his boots clicking on the cobblestones. Lucas was so close to me I could feel his breath. My own breath stopped.

  I wished I could look out to see where the soldier was, but I was afraid he’d spot me. The footsteps came closer. I felt Lucas’s arms tighten around me. I could tell the soldier was only a few feet away.

  The footsteps clicked on by us. We stayed still until they faded away. I took a big breath of air and looked up into Lucas’s eyes.

  He kissed me. I felt warmth spread all over my body as I kissed him back. I tightened my arms around his neck, wishing I never had to let go. All I could think of was how I wanted him closer to me. I leaned back against the door, pulling him with me.

  Lucas stopped kissing me and with a shock I remembered where we were. “We should go find our guide,” he said, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

  “Yes, right.” I tried to act as if I regularly kissed people and that my knees weren’t wobbling.

  The old woman was waiting for us. The fear I’d felt came back to me. “Did you understand what the soldier said?” I asked the woman. “He claimed he was going to check your name.”

  “I understood him just fine. He understood me too. We all pretend we don’t speak each other’s language, and the Germans have been told not to trust any Belgians who are too cooperative. He won’t check on me. My papers say I have a right to be out after the curfew because of my profession. Not even the Germans can make women have their babies on schedule.”

  We walked at least another mile until we were on the very outskirts of town, by some railway tracks. “This is where you go on alone,” the woman said. “Follow the tracks until you come to a water tower. It’s a good number of miles from here, so keep walking until you see it. Once you are there, wait until a freight train stops for water. With luck it will be tonight. Don’t get on one that stops after 2:00 A.M. That would get you into Aachen too close to daylight. If a train doesn’t come at the right time tonight, you’ll have to find yourselves a place to wait until tomorrow night.”