by Anna Schmidt
“You will stay in the truck,” he instructed.
“I—”
At a nod from the officer, the guard aimed his rifle at Peter’s head.
“Okay. Just be sure my friend here is well taken care of.”
Mikel went every day to the small but still dangerous river near the convent that they would need to ford to reach the mountains. He was anxious to get Anja and Daniel as far away from Schwarz as possible. He had grown up in those mountains, and he had many friends in the area. They would all be safe there for the duration of the war.
But Daniel was still too weak to travel, and it hardly mattered since the river was swollen with the beginnings of a spring thaw. For now they were safe behind the cloistered walls of the convent. Still he worried. As he regained his strength, Daniel slept late and went to bed early, and Anja had begun to look for ways that she might be useful to the nuns. At first Sister Marie had suggested that perhaps she could just visit the ward, perhaps read to a patient or write letters for them, and that had satisfied Anja. Sister Marie had suggested that Anja dress as a novice—a girl hoping to become a nun. That disguise would raise fewer questions than her usual garb of homespun pants and a ragged sweater.
That morning as Mikel returned from his walk, he saw a German military truck pull up to the gates. A low-ranking officer strode to the entrance and impatiently rang the bell. When one of the nuns finally appeared, he barked out a series of commands, and when she opened the gate, he brushed past her and ordered the driver and another soldier accompanying him to carry in a man on a stretcher.
Mikel hung back, watching the action from the shadows provided by one of the archways of the convent. When he saw the officer follow the men inside, he hurried to a side entrance the nuns had shown him. Inside he made his way along the narrow corridor to the room that Anja shared with Daniel. He knocked lightly and then opened the door.
Daniel was sitting up in bed with Sister Marie seated next to him in the room’s only chair. She laid aside the book she’d evidently been reading to Daniel and smiled. “It seems you have a visitor, Daniel,” she said and got up, clearly prepared to leave Mikel with the boy.
“I need to speak with Anja,” Mikel said.
“She’s visiting the patients,” Daniel announced. “She said that soon I could go with her and that it would cheer them up to see me.”
“She’s right,” Mikel assured him, ruffling Daniel’s hair as he looked at the nun. “How long ago did she leave?”
“Quarter of an hour at least,” Sister Marie replied. “Is something wrong?”
Daniel glanced up, his brow furrowed by a frown. “Something has happened to Mama?”
“Not at all,” Mikel said with a heartiness he hoped sounded genuine. “I just need to tell her something. I’ll go to the ward and wait for her there.”
He left the room and heard the nun resume her reading as he closed the door behind him. The corridor was deserted, but he moved with the caution born of dozens of crossings over the Great Pyrenees Mountains, leading downed Allied airmen like Peter Trent to safety. He wondered where Peter was now. He hoped he was safe—perhaps on his way back to England and from there home to America. He didn’t like the guy—mostly because he suspected that Anja was in love with him—but he did not wish him harm.
Anja was sitting at the bedside of a German soldier. The man was dictating a letter to her, and she smiled at him and laughed at something he said. Mikel knew she wasn’t just pretending to be enjoying her time with the man. He might be Mikel’s enemy, but Anja’s Quaker faith had no room for labeling people and certainly not for lumping them into some group simply because they were of one nationality or another. No, to Anja this man had every bit as much possibility of connecting with the so-called Inner Light that Anja and those of her faith believed existed in every human as Mikel or even the sisters in the convent did.
He had once asked her if she could honestly believe that Hitler had even a flicker of that light inside him. She had smiled and said, “Of course he does. For the time being it appears he prefers to live in darkness.”
Mikel thought he would never understand this woman, and that was why he loved her to the very core of his being. He was about to call out to her and motion for her to join him in the corridor when he saw the two soldiers carry the stretcher into the ward. The only empty bed was the one next to where Anja was sitting. Reverend Mother glided down the way between the two rows of beds until she came to a halt next to Anja. Mikel noticed how she stood in such a way that she was shielding Anja from the view of the officer who had followed his men. Anja did not look up but continued to write. She was dressed in a pale blue dress with a white bibbed apron, and with her hair covered by a triangular scarf, she looked little different from the other nuns on the ward. Mikel retreated back down the corridor before the officer could spot him. Any man in the convent who was not a patient would arouse immediate suspicion. Anja was safe, and that was all that mattered.
CHAPTER 13
Sometimes Anja amazed herself with how calm she could be in the face of danger. Certainly the unexpected arrival of the German officer in charge of the village could be considered a threatening if not dangerous situation for her and Mikel and Daniel. Yet as the officer followed Reverend Mother down the aisle between the rows of beds, Anja remained focused on the letter she was writing for the German soldier. He’d been badly burned in a battle, and his hands and face were heavily bandaged. He was also under a good deal of sedation for the pain, and the medicine made him a little silly, causing Anja to smile at what he told her to write in the letter to his parents.
“You there,” the officer said in a voice meant for someone at the far end of the ward. “You, writing the letter,” he added.
He pushed rudely past Reverend Mother and stood over Anja, glaring down at her. He grabbed the paper from her hands and scanned it. “You are German?”
“I speak several languages,” she replied.
“English?”
She nodded.
He turned to Reverend Mother. “This woman will sit with the prisoner at all times. She will eat and sleep here, is that understood? If the prisoner speaks while she is asleep or … otherwise occupied, someone will immediately call for her.”
“As you wish.”
He turned his attention back to Anja. “In the days to come, I will permit visits by other prisoners—his peers. You are to show no interest in these men. Rather, you must appear to them to be going about your nursing duties. Above all, do not reveal your knowledge of English. We want them to feel free to speak openly, and they will only do that if they assume no one speaks their language. They will never suspect a mere girl—a novice like you …” He chuckled, clearly proud of his cleverness.
“Will that be all?” Reverend Mother had not moved a muscle, and yet dismissal was clear in every syllable.
“For now.” He turned to the two soldiers and gave one of them orders to stand guard, then led the way as he and the other soldier left the ward.
Anja had not considered that a guard would be stationed to watch not only the prisoner but her as well. She had hoped to question the Englishman to see if perhaps he had any knowledge of Peter. It was unlikely, but sometimes on the escape line, people heard things about other evaders. “His name?” she asked the soldier, speaking in German.
The soldier shrugged and then slouched against the wall. He was no more than seventeen and looked bone weary. “Here,” she said, offering the chair she’d pulled next to the German soldier’s bed. “You will be here for some time, and we will have ample warning when your superior is returning.”
Gratefully the soldier accepted her offer. He even smiled at her and murmured his thanks. Anja nodded then turned her attention to the man in the bed. He was covered in sweat, and the only sound he made was a series of low moans. She wondered if she was expected to record those murmurs of distress for the officer. She wondered if he would ever come out of his delirium enough to answer her questions a
bout Peter.
Days passed with no news of Roger and no sign of the Gestapo agents supposedly on their way to take charge of Peter and the others, confirming Peter’s belief that the officer had never sent for them. It rained every day, and if they got any exercise or fresh air at all, they came back to their cells soaked and chilled for the effort. Instead of being suspicious of Peter and his special relationship with the officer, the others made it clear that the longer Peter could keep up the lessons, the better it would be for all of them.
But Peter didn’t trust the German officer despite the man’s insistence that he wanted to learn to speak American English so that he could escape Germany under a new identity and find haven in the United States after the war. His loyalty to the Reich had not wavered in spite of his obvious belief that the war was lost. He did not blame Hitler or the other leaders. On the contrary, he still held them up as heroes and often told Peter during their language lessons that one day the world would recognize what had been lost if Hitler was defeated. Although the officer had kept his end of their bargain and gotten Roger to some semblance of medical help, Peter understood that he did this only because he saw the possibility for gaining information that would get him noticed by his superiors. This wasn’t about getting to America and setting up a new life. This man wanted a promotion.
So after a week when the officer called Peter to his office and announced that he had decided to allow the men to visit Roger at the convent, Peter was not fooled. “What’s in it for you?” he asked, noting that a page on the large wall calendar had been ripped off and now showed the month of March.
The officer smiled. “Can I not be magnanimous in the treatment of my prisoners?”
“You could be, but you really aren’t that sort of guy, are you?”
The officer laughed. “Peter, my friend,” he replied in English, taking to heart Peter’s instruction that once introduced, Americans often called each other by their given names, “you know me too well. Yes, I have my reasons, but of course you can refuse and never know what becomes of your friend Roger.” He studied his fingernails as if they contained some fascinating information. “Perhaps his health has improved in these days since we delivered him to the sisters. Or perhaps he has taken a turn for the worse.” He shrugged.
“All right. I’ll speak with the others and get back to you.”
“No. You will decide now or not at all.”
Something had happened. Peter was sure of that. Whether Roger had taken a turn for the worse or had perhaps gotten better, he could not tell from the officer’s actions and tone, but something was up. “How do I know my friend is even alive? Perhaps your superiors have lost interest in us, for surely—even with the rain—they would have been here by now.”
As he had expected, the German bristled at the very idea that he might not have something of value that the Gestapo would want. “They have given me certain leeway and will arrive as soon as I have given the word.”
“Really?” The idea that the Gestapo would take orders from this little Napoleon was ludicrous, and Peter had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing.
“Yes, really. Now do you wish to see your friend or not?”
“All right, yes.”
“Excellent.” He pressed a buzzer, and the soldier on duty outside the office stepped inside. In German the officer ordered the man to take Peter immediately to the convent and to stay there until Peter was ready to return.
Peter watched both men, carefully alert for any hidden order that might have passed between them with a look, a nod, a hand signal. He saw nothing. “I’ll just go get my—”
“You will go now or not at all,” the officer said coldly.
Peter had wanted the opportunity to let the others know about this sudden turn of events, but clearly that was not possible. “Now is good,” he said and followed the soldier outside. To his surprise, the soldier opened the passenger door for him, indicating that he should ride up front and not in the rear of the truck as he always had before. When he glanced back at the officer, he realized that this was part of the plan. No doubt he would be driven past the barracks where either Colin or Ian was always at the window or standing in a doorway killing time. The idea was for them to see him riding up front like an equal with the soldier. The idea was for them to think that he had made some bargain for himself that did not include them.
Divide and conquer was one of the oldest rules of war on the books.
Anja thought the war might indeed be over before the Germans got information from the British airman. The man drifted in and out of a fever-induced sleep, and when he did say something, it made little sense. At one point, he recited a nursery rhyme over and over in a singsong voice. After several days and nights of tossing and turning and moaning in misery, he finally settled into a deep and peaceful sleep. His breathing was still labored, but it was steadier than it had been and a sign that he might be improving. If she and the nuns could control his blood pressure and keep his lungs as clear as possible, he might just make it.
As ordered, she slept and took her meals from her position next to his bed. The other men on the ward would call out to her, but one of the nuns would explain that she was only following orders as they had done on the battlefield. And although Daniel was only down the hall from where she was stationed, they could not risk having him come to the ward, so they devised a correspondence of letters and drawings that Mikel—posing as a deliveryman—or one of the nuns carried back and forth for them. Sister Marie assured Anja that Daniel’s health had improved so much that he was no longer confined to bed, and Reverend Mother had suggested that he be schooled in the subjects he would have studied had his life been normal.
Normal. It was a word that Anja could no longer define. It had been so long since anything about her life or Daniel’s had been routine. Oh, how she longed for the simple pleasures of an ordinary existence. How her husband had teased her about her silly worries in those years when they were first married. She would change clothes two or three times, fretting that she looked like a girl rather than a grown woman with two children. She would study her face and figure in the mirror, wondering what Benjamin saw to love in her when there were so many beautiful women. She worried that he would one day regret marrying outside his Jewish faith.
She had been so stupid to use valuable time for such absurdity. Given the chance, she would not make that mistake again. And to that end, she had begun to consider how she and Mikel and Daniel might build a life together. The only problem was that when she permitted herself such thoughts, it was Peter, not Mikel that she saw in the role of husband and father.
Peter. She told herself that it was the uncertainty of his fate that kept him popping into her thoughts and dreams. If she knew that he had made it safely over the mountains and on to the British embassy in Madrid, if she knew that he was even now on a ship headed for England, then perhaps she could turn her thoughts to the reality of a future with Mikel.
The English patient muttered something. As Anja leaned closer to catch the words, she saw that his eyes were open and darting around as if trying to make sense of his surroundings. Her instinct was to reassure him in his own language, but she remembered that her job was to appear not to understand English so that he might reveal something to one of the other captured airmen that the German officer planned to start bringing for visits as soon as Anja sent word that the patient had improved.
She soaked a cloth in cold water and leaned in to wipe his forehead. “Hospital. Convent. Limoges. France.” She spoke in French and used single words designed to relieve his confusion.
“How long have I been here?” he asked in English. His voice was barely a croak, and she handed him a glass of water and pretended not to understand his question. He tried again—this time in a schoolboy’s rudimentary French. The guard straightened in his chair and listened intently.
“Five days,” she replied, holding up her hand to show him. She nodded to the soldier signaling him that he should repo
rt to his superior at once as they had been ordered to do. The minute he left the ward, she leaned in close on the pretense of straightening the Englishman’s pillows and spoke in English. “Close your eyes, pretend sleep, and listen carefully.”
He did as she instructed.
“My name is Anja. I am with the escape line, but I am also trying to escape with my son. You are too weak to travel yet, but you are in no danger for now.” She told him why she could not openly converse with him in English and warned him to be very careful about what he said to the other airmen who would come to visit. “But you must give the Germans something so that they believe you and the others are useful to them.”
He rolled to his side, pretending to sink deeper into sleep, and murmured, “I understand.”
She so wanted to ask him if he had heard any news of Peter—if the name Peter Trent even meant anything to him. But the guard was returning, and she couldn’t risk it.
“Your sweetheart is outside in the courtyard,” he told her with a broad smile. “Why don’t you go see him? Our prisoner is sleeping, and soon the others will come.”
“What sweetheart?”
The soldier grinned. He really was no more than a lad, and in the days Anja had spent with him on duty, she had gotten to know him—how his girlfriend had abandoned him for his best friend, how his parents had taken such pride in his service to the Reich, how he longed for the war to end so he could pursue his true passion—a career in music. While the soldier who took the night duty was sullen and suspicious of every move she made, this boy had confided in her as if she were his older sister. He had even looked the other way when Mikel passed her a note or drawing from Daniel. She realized now that he had assumed those were love letters from Mikel.
“Go,” he urged.
In the courtyard Mikel was unloading supplies for the convent. He glanced up, and because he was surprised, his smile came without warning. He was always so serious. Of course that was to be expected for his life had been hard well before the war came. She watched as he continued unloading the truck. He had rolled back his sleeves, and she realized that there was a hint of spring in the breeze that came from the south. His forearms were roped with the strength of his muscles. He was so solidly built.