Simple Faith

by Anna Schmidt

  “So what’s the plan?” Peter asked, nodding toward Mikel.

  Colin ignored him and turned to Ian. “Did you know that Anja—the nurse—has personally led airmen over those mountains herself?”

  “That little thing?” Ian asked.

  Colin grunted. “That’s why we’re heading back to the convent—or rather the woods that border the convent. We’re to meet up with her and her son.”

  Peter was sure he had not heard Ian correctly. “Daniel? Daniel is at the convent?”

  “If Daniel is her son, then that’s what our guide said. From there we head to a village at the foothills of the mountains. We stay at least one night in a safe house there, where we get outfitted for the crossing and possibly meet up with some other airmen. They like to take larger groups when they can, and according to Mikel the route we’ll use is rough but going over a higher part of the range avoids most checkpoints and patrols.”

  Peter couldn’t help but notice that Colin had gotten more information out of the Basque man in a twenty-minute conversation than he’d been able to get from him after weeks of knowing him. Of course he was well aware that Mikel didn’t like him much—or rather did not like the fact that he was in love with Anja and that she just might have feelings for him.

  But did she? Or was he just fooling himself? Was Colin right? Had he allowed his ego to take charge and simply assumed that he was special in her eyes? How did he know that she didn’t treat every rescued airman the way she had treated him? Come to think of it, what had there been—a few kisses? And most of those were because they were trying to dodge somebody. No, Colin was right. From the moment he met her, he had never once seen her as the rescuer. No, he had seen her as the one he needed to rescue.

  Colin was also right about something else. Peter had one thing in common with his fellow American airmen. They had all arrived in England with the attitude—reinforced by their superiors—that the Yanks would save the day. He remembered a night in the café when Lisbeth had said something about that. We all thought that once the United States joined the war, it would end quickly. She had sighed heavily and then smiled the saddest smile that Peter had ever seen. We had such hope. He had felt like such a failure.

  Instead of saving the day, he and others like him had fallen from the sky, and these brave civilians had left their farms and risked their businesses to help get them to safety. Anja, her grandparents, Josef and Lisbeth, Mikel—they had all paid a heavy price with no guarantee that saving him and the others would in any way speed the end of the conflict. They could have—probably should have—simply turned away and refused to get involved. But they hadn’t. They had shown greater courage than any enlisted man or officer Peter could think of.

  Leaving Ian and Colin to walk together, Peter fell in step with Mikel. “Tell me what you need to do to make sure that Anja and Daniel are safe,” he said.

  “Get you and the others to the safe house and on your way over the mountains.”

  “And then?”

  Mikel let out a rush of exasperated breath. “She will insist on going back to Brussels to care for her grandparents and make sure that Josef and Lisbeth are all right. She will be walking directly into a trap, because the Gestapo agent will be waiting.”

  “What if I go back with her—with you both? Turn myself in?”

  An all too familiar snort of derision in the darkness. “Why do you persist in believing that you can solve everything? He will not only have you—he will still have her. He knows that she has information about others along the line, and he will do whatever it takes to get that information.”

  “She’ll never betray the others,” Peter insisted.

  Mikel stopped and turned to face him. Even though it was too dark to read his expression, Peter could not miss the message. “No, she will never betray us, but that will not impress Schwarz. He will take great pleasure in torturing her—he will even use the boy. And if she still refuses to tell him what he wants, he will kill them both.”

  Peter shuddered. “You can’t let her do this, Mikel.”

  “If I try to stop her, she will find a way. At least if I go with her, there’s a chance that I can protect her—and Daniel. I am hoping she will agree to stay in Spain while I go back to Brussels and see what’s happening.”

  They trudged along in silence for several minutes.

  “Then you might be arrested and tortured and killed.”

  “That is always a possibility.”

  “You love her that much,” Peter observed.

  “As much as you do,” Mikel replied, and then suddenly crouched down and signaled for the rest of them to do likewise.

  Peter could see the silhouette of the convent, and then he saw what Mikel must have seen—two figures running across the open field toward the woods. His instinct was to run to meet her and Daniel—to wrap her in the protection of his arms and bring her to the safety of the dark woods. But he understood that to do such a thing would not only endanger her and the boy but also the other men. There was a time for taking risks, but this was not that time. This was a time for patience. He watched Mikel—stone still as he, too, watched them come.

  No one made a sound—not even Daniel—as Anja and Mikel exchanged a signal and she joined them, nodding to the others as she took Mikel’s hand and knelt next to him. They all stayed crouched on the edge of the woods for an hour. No one spoke. No one could be certain that Anja and Daniel had not been seen—that someone within the convent hadn’t reported them. But finally Mikel pulled Daniel onto his back and moved forward back into the woods and along an unseen path that he seemed to know well. Single file they followed him. Peter kept his eyes on Anja, marveling at the way she kept up the pace Mikel was setting for them all.

  After a while, they came to a road. Again they waited, listening for any sound that might spell discovery. Finally, Mikel raced across the road, carrying Daniel on his back, then signaled each of them in turn to follow—Anja, Ian, Colin, and finally Peter. They were in open land with no shelter from woods or even a farmer’s rock fence. In the distance loomed the mountains outlined against a night sky that was too light for their purposes.

  They slipped by one farm and then another where a dog set up a barking that made them all think they would be discovered. But no light came on, and no one came out to see why the dog was barking. They walked on past similar whitewashed houses with rough, dark wooden shutters left open to reveal the glow of lamplight from within. There were usually horse carts and farm animals like chickens and sheep roaming the yard. The fields featured unique cone-shaped haystacks. Like the towns and villages with the church as a centerpiece surrounded by a square with shops and restaurants, after a while the farms began to look the same.

  An hour later they flattened themselves in a field when they heard laughter and a man and woman talking in French as they walked up a road toward another house.

  And so the night passed, and Peter had to wonder if they would ever reach the safe house that was their destination.

  Anja had been to the small house at the foot of the trail that led up into the mountains twice before. Both times she had been leading a group of Allied airmen to freedom. This was where she had met the guides who knew the mountains better than she did. A middle-aged couple had been living in the house—the woman small and stout and the man short and muscular. The woman cooked for the evaders and their guides while her husband constantly checked the route a couple of times a week to assess the conditions and see if patrols and local ambushers were at work. Anja suspected the couple was also involved in a bit of black-market smuggling, but she had not asked and really did not want to know how else they might supplement their obviously meager earnings.

  But when she and the others arrived at the house just before dawn, she was surprised to see a different man answer the door when Mikel knocked while the rest of them hid until he signaled for them to come inside. This man was small and wiry and of an indeterminate age. He welcomed Mikel as if he’d been expect
ing him. Of course it had been some time since Anja had traveled this part of the escape line, and things did change. Perhaps the couple had been caught smuggling or simply grown weary of the constant danger. It was hardly the first time that the contact at a particular safe house was someone different.

  Mikel motioned them forward, and Anja took hold of Daniel’s hand and led her sleepy son into the house. Seated at the kitchen table—the same kitchen table she had seen there before—were two other evaders. They glanced up from their breakfast and broke into wide grins. “Peter,” one of them exclaimed as he crossed the room and grabbed Peter around the shoulders, giving him a hug. “We thought for sure you’d been captured.”

  Introductions were made, and Anja discovered that these were two of Peter’s crew from the plane. They had been captured but had managed to escape. The rest of their crew had not been so lucky, they reported. The man who was now obviously living in the house went to the stove and started frying some potatoes and onions. She didn’t like the fact that the couple was no longer there. She was so very tired of the need to be ever vigilant, of the need to question everything and everyone. How wonderful it would be to have a routine about the days—to wake up in the morning and get Daniel off to school, to live in a normal place, to have neighbors that she didn’t have to wonder whether she could trust. There had been so many moments when each of them—probably including the man at the stove—had to decide who was a true friend. She picked up a stack of plates from the table and went to help him serve the meal.

  “That smells wonderful,” she said in French.

  He winked at her. “The secret is goat cheese,” he whispered. “And the fresh scallions. My own recipe.” His French was flawless.

  “You’re a chef?”

  “Cook? Chef? What is the difference on any given day?”

  He dished up the egg concoction, and she delivered servings to Peter and the other evaders gathered round the table, all talking in English. She looked around for Daniel and saw that he had curled up on an old sofa and fallen sound asleep.

  Mikel came to stand next to her. “Let him sleep. He can eat later. You should eat something and then sleep as well. We are safe for now.”

  She looked at the table where Peter sat talking to his fellow Americans—laughing with them, listening to their stories. He looked so happy, and Anja realized that this reunion with his crew was a touch of home for him.

  Peter could not believe that he was sitting across the table from Eddie Sparks and Sam Levine. Anja’s grandmother had seen them being led off by German soldiers shortly after the plane went down. He’d been sure they would spend the rest of the war in a POW camp somewhere in Germany, and he’d prayed that the end of the war would come sooner rather than later. But here they were.

  Eddie—the Kid, as he’d been called by the others—no longer looked like a kid. In the months that had passed since they’d bailed out over Belgium, he’d grown up—a lot. And Sam, who back on base had been cocky and arrogant, now wore a haunted expression as if he’d seen and experienced things he could never quite forget. Along with Ian and Colin, they fell into easy conversation, gobbling down the food their host cooked for them as they talked over each other, trying to catch up. He supposed they should show more caution in what they said, but the only person in the room they didn’t really know was the guy cooking them eggs with cheese, and he seemed more interested in his cooking then he did in anything they were saying. Besides, none of them had any information to give—they’d spent the last three months either on the run or in a prison camp.

  Peter stretched out his legs and folded his hands behind his head as he grinned at some story Ian was telling the others. Across the room, he saw Anja and Mikel talking. They were always so serious. He wanted to see some relief in their posture, an expression of joy that they had all made it this far. All they had to do was cross the mountains, reach Spain and the embassy, and they were home free.

  Well, he and the other airmen were. But what about Anja?

  The war was not over—might never be over for her. Although he’d had little chance to speak with her since their reunion at the convent, he had no illusions about her intent to go back to Brussels and make sure that her grandparents and friends were safe. No doubt she planned to see Daniel safely to the embassy, hoping that they would protect him while she and Mikel returned to rescue the next wave of Allied airmen. And even when the end came, Anja would face so many loose ends. Like Sam she would forever be haunted by everything she’d been forced to deal with in this war—the brutal murder of her husband and daughter, the guilt she felt over the constant danger for her grandparents, the culpability she would heap on herself if something had happened to Josef or Lisbeth.

  No, the war would not end with a surrender or peace treaty—not for Anja. This war that she’d wanted no part in had damaged her life forever. And Peter could not think of a single thing he could do to change that. Sure, he’d had some rough times, but they were walks in the park compared to what she had endured, might yet have to face. He watched her talking in low murmurs with Mikel as they stood next to the couch where Daniel had fallen asleep. Mikel touched her arm and said something to her. She nodded and accepted the plate of food he handed her. Wearily she sat down on the edge of the couch next to her sleeping son.

  Peter saw that she was so exhausted that the simple act of raising the fork filled with eggs to her mouth seemed monumental. But she attacked the food as she had attacked every obstacle that Peter had seen her experience these last few months. She wore an expression that said she would not be defeated, and she forced down bite after bite—as Mikel kept watch.

  CHAPTER 16

  The day seemed endless. They were all anxious to get going but understood that waiting for darkness was part of the plan. In the early afternoon, the man who ran the safe house—Pierre—sent Mikel to the barn to retrieve sturdy walking staffs, a box of shoes, and blue coveralls like those worn by workers who traveled back and forth across the border. They would need to wear the coveralls until they reached Spain. There, Pierre explained, someone would collect them and return them for use by the next group.

  As he shrugged into the coveralls and sat down to change his shoes, Peter noticed that his American friends wore shoes that were worn through at the sole and lined with newspapers. His own shoes were the slick-bottomed wingtips that Gisele had provided. Still, the shoes Pierre pulled from the box did not look as if they could hold up to a climb through the mountains much better than what they were already wearing.

  “Alpargatas—you may be more familiar with the term espadrilles,” Pierre explained in his perfect English as he fitted each of them with a pair. “The Basque shepherds have worn them for hundreds of years. And it’s hard to argue with the success of something that has managed to get dozens of your countrymen to safety.”

  “They look pretty flimsy.” Peter examined the construction—cloth and rope. “They are definitely lightweight, so I suppose that’s good.”

  “They drain easily, which makes them perfect for maintaining your footing on the trails and when you need to cross water. They are also quiet—no one will hear you coming. And they are easily replaced—you can carry extras with you.”

  “Sold,” Peter said. He accepted the extra pair of shoes that Pierre handed him and shook off the feeling he’d had since arriving at the isolated farmhouse that he had seen this man before. There was something familiar about him, but Peter could not figure out what that might be. Pierre wore wire-rimmed glasses that gave him the look of a teacher. His hair was thin and dark and his skin pasty as if it had been a very long time since he’d spent any time outdoors.

  “How long have you lived here?” Peter asked.

  “Not long. This farm belongs to an uncle.”

  “He’s not here?”

  Pierre shook his head. “My aunt is quite ill. They had to go away.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Pierre moved on to the next man.

&nb
sp; As it turned out, the meal they had enjoyed when they arrived was all the food there would be for the rest of the day. Pierre distributed packages of crackers and a chunk of hard cheese to each of them and explained that once they were on their way, their guides would know where to find water for them to drink. He said that there were also jugs filled with cognac hidden along the trail. He suggested that they take advantage of the time they had until dark to sleep.

  Peter had hoped for a chance to speak with Anja, but she was curled onto the couch next to Daniel, her arms wrapped around him as they both slept. Once they’d been given their coveralls and shoes, Pierre had left the house, saying something about the need to tend the sheep.

  One by one, the others found a place to rest for a couple of hours. Peter settled himself on the floor near a window that was open just enough to allow some fresh air into the cramped room, rank with the smell of unwashed bodies, damp clothes in need of washing, and the lingering smell of grease and onions from the morning’s meal. He closed his eyes and counted the ticks on the clock above the mantel as the room grew quiet except for Ian’s snoring.

  Unable to sleep, Peter kept watch over Anja. Pierre had left pairs of the special shoes next to the couch for her and Daniel and a walking staff and coveralls presumably for her. She had turned so that she was facing him. Her features were relaxed in sleep, and that calm only made her more beautiful. She looked like the girl he had thought she was that first night when she and her grandfather had rescued him.

  From the minute the stranger answered the door, Mikel had the nagging feeling that something was not right. The man who introduced himself as Pierre certainly did nothing to raise suspicion. He asked all the right questions before allowing Mikel and the others to enter the farmhouse. He made them all a hearty breakfast. He questioned the wisdom of traveling with a woman and her child. Other than that, he went about the business of running the small sheep farm and at the same time making preparations for the group to start over the mountains later that evening. And yet …