Simple Faith

by Anna Schmidt

  After breakfast Mikel was able to persuade Anja to lie down next to a sleeping Daniel and get some rest. She was going to need all her strength—as they all were—to make it over the mountains. Mikel was concerned about the other two Americans who had escaped the prison camp. They were thin and nervous in the way of men who had experienced things they never expected to see in their lives. It was obvious that they had been starved and no doubt beaten. Sleep deprivation was a favorite tactic of the Nazis for trying to break a prisoner. The younger one was far too agitated while the older one barely spoke and made Mikel nervous. He worried if they would hold up for the journey, and he could not afford to have anyone lagging behind.

  He was standing at the kitchen window considering all of this when he saw Pierre heading for the barn and decided to follow him. With the others all taking Pierre’s advice to get as much sleep as possible through the day, this might be as good an opportunity as he would get to put his concerns about their new host to rest.

  As he approached the barn, he heard Pierre talking. Some shepherds and farmers talked to their animals, but this was not that kind of conversation. Pierre’s tone was tense and filled with urgency, and he was speaking German. Mikel slipped inside the barn and followed the sound to a stall at the far end. His German was not that good, and he wished Anja were with him, but he concentrated and put together enough words to understand that Pierre—if that was his real name—was on a shortwave radio and he was talking about the need to come immediately.

  “The packages have all arrived,” he said. The wireless went quiet.

  They had walked directly into a trap. But for the moment, Pierre was one man against many, and even Mikel on his own had the advantage of a surprise attack. He looked around for something he could use as a weapon. Just as he reached for a pitchfork, he was struck hard from behind, and as he rolled to his back and fought against losing consciousness, he recognized his attacker. This man’s name was not Pierre. He was staring into the eyes of the infiltrator—LeClerq.

  From outside Peter heard the bleating of sheep and assumed that Pierre was doing some routine chore to care for the flock. He wondered where Mikel had gone and had almost drifted into sleep when something startled him awake. He glanced around and saw that nothing had changed inside the house—no one else seemed to have been disturbed by whatever had jarred him to wakefulness. He moved to a crouching position so that he could look outside without being seen. The light was waning, and he realized that he must have slept after all.

  So what had awakened him?

  He wiped his eyes, bleary from too little sleep these last days, and scanned his surroundings. Everything seemed as normal outside the house as it did inside. His senses were all on alert, and he recorded the fact that there were no animal sounds coming from the barn. So neither his sense of sight or sound revealed the cause of his alarm. Then he knew why he had wakened. The scent of pipe tobacco drifted through the half inch of open window. He twisted so that he could see to the sides.

  Pierre was standing at the corner of the house, watching the crooked road that wound its way through the foothills to the farm. He was smoking a pipe, and Peter knew instantly why he had recognized the man. This was the guide who had approached him in the alley, had run when the dog came after them, and had disappeared without a trace when Peter had turned to find himself facing the Germans. Pierre was the infiltrator that Roger had told him about.

  Peter crawled across the room and gently shook Anja’s shoulder. “We have to go now,” he whispered and handed her the shoes. “Make no sound.”

  “Mikel?” she mouthed as she instantly sat up and began putting on the shoes.

  Peter shrugged and went to wake the others while she woke Daniel, urged him to be as quiet as possible, and helped him dress for the journey. He mentally reviewed what he had seen of the house. Surely there was another way out.

  “This way,” Sam whispered as he led the way down a narrow hall to a small bedroom at the back of the house. He raised a window as high as possible and helped first Peter, then Anja and Daniel through. “Go,” he urged. “We’ll follow later.”

  The other airmen nodded. “Go,” Colin urged. “We’ll do better if we go in small groups—too dangerous to all make a run for it, and they’ll be here soon.” He cocked his head toward the window.

  The sound of motor vehicles echoed off the hillside.

  Peter reached through the window and gave Sam a hug. “Don’t be a hero,” he murmured. “Get out of here.”

  His friend smiled for the first time since they had been reunited. He pulled out a pistol he had hidden in his waistband. “I found this in the breadbox when I was searching for something more to eat while the rest of you slept. Trust me, I plan to take at least one of them with me.”

  Peter hoisted Daniel onto his back and followed Anja as they ran through the gathering darkness for the shadows of the foothills. Behind them he could see the lights of the trucks. And he also saw the infiltrator calmly tap out his pipe and walk into the barn. Suddenly he knew where Mikel was. Pierre had taken him prisoner, knowing that he and he alone could guide the others safely over the mountains.

  From the cover of the trees, they watched as Pierre dragged a gagged and bound Mikel into the yard just as three military trucks and a car arrived. In seconds soldiers had spilled out of the trucks and, on orders from the Gestapo agent who exited the car, they entered the house with their guns drawn.

  A few yards away, Peter heard movement and glanced over just as two men disappeared into the forest. So two more out—only two inside the house. And Mikel helpless in the yard.

  “We can’t leave Mikel,” Anja protested.

  “We have to go,” Peter urged as he shifted Daniel’s weight so that he was secure and took hold of Anja’s elbow. “Come on.”

  “Mikel,” she said, reaching back toward the man now lying helpless on the ground as she resisted Peter’s effort to get her up and moving.

  “Anja, the soldiers are in the house, and once they realize we are gone, they are going to come looking. The others can only delay them—at the risk of their own lives. We have to move now.”

  Reluctantly, she started up the trail. As gunshots rang out from behind them, she flinched and started moving faster. “There’s a cave,” she said as she hurried forward. “It’s just a hollowed-out space. Mikel showed me a map. I know it’s somewhere around here and—” She gave a little yelp and disappeared.

  “Anja!”

  “Mama!”

  Daniel wriggled free of Peter and dropped to the ground, stumbling to the place where his mother had last been. “She’s down in this hole,” he whispered, and Peter was relieved to see that the boy had paid attention to what his mother had told him about the need to speak only in whispers and only when absolutely necessary.

  “I’m all right,” Peter heard Anja assure him. When he reached the spot between the darkness and the overgrown terrain, he could barely see her.

  “Keep talking so I can get you out of there,” he instructed as he flattened himself to the ground.

  “No. This is the place. I just didn’t understand it was a sinkhole.” She held up her arms to Daniel. “Come on. I won’t let you fall.”

  She helped Daniel down and then appeared once again at the narrow opening. “What’s happening?” she whispered.

  Peter had turned back toward the farmhouse. It was the sound of silence that had caught his attention. “They’re coming,” he told her and slid down into the hole next to her. He piled up debris and rocks he was able to free from the soft ground to block the entrance.

  “Mama, are we …?”

  “Shhh. You must be very, very quiet.”

  Daniel lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Because the bad men are coming again?”

  “Shhh,” she repeated as the three of them huddled together and waited.

  It was not long before they heard the sounds of men moving slowly through the woods around them. They had fanned out and were cov
ering the area thoroughly, step by step, closer and closer. Occasionally one of them would say something or call out for the others. Peter heard another sound—a metallic sound like a knife sliding into its case. It was repeated several times as the soldiers came closer to the place where they were hiding.

  Suddenly the sound was right by Peter’s ear, and he realized the soldiers were using their bayonets to pierce any accumulated piles of debris in case they were hiding there. He wondered if the soldiers knew about the caves—more like sinkholes here in the foothills leading up to the mountains. The next time he heard the metallic sound, he also saw the point of the blade penetrate the ground less than an inch from Anja’s ear.

  He pulled her and Daniel closer, protecting their heads and faces with his arms as he listened for the footsteps, hoping to gauge where the next probe might come. Anja pressed something into Peter’s hand—a rock that filled his hand. Did she expect him to hit the soldier with this? She took hold of his hand, guiding it toward the opening, and he understood that she was telling him to fill the space with the rock.

  It worked. The next jab of the blade struck the rock, and the soldier swore and instantly pulled the blade back. The other soldier laughed, and Peter realized that the danger was far from over when the second soldier took his turn at jabbing the ground and struck pay dirt. The point of his blade came so close and so deep that it actually nicked Peter’s shoulder. Instinctively, he felt for blood. What if the soldier saw blood on the tip of his bayonet? Peter’s heart raced. Was this it? Were they going to die here in this hole? And would he never have the chance to tell Anja what he’d wanted to tell her now for weeks? Whatever she felt—or didn’t feel for him—he was in love with her.

  Anja heard a shout in the distance, and the soldiers jabbing their bayonets into the ground around them ran to see what their fellow soldiers had found. She hoped they hadn’t trapped the other evaders. Even once they seemed safe, Anja continued to hold Daniel close as she closed her eyes against the sting of her tears. Mikel. Once again she would lose someone she cared for deeply without the opportunity to say good-bye, to tell him what his friendship—and yes, his love—had meant to her. To tell him how his belief in her had kept her going. To tell him that he would have been a wonderful father to Daniel because in so many ways he already had played that role. She squeezed her eyes tighter against the image of him being dragged from the barn—the traitor and infiltrator standing over him.

  “We have to go back,” she whispered. “I will not leave him.”

  She knew Peter had heard her when he released a long, exasperated sigh of resignation.

  “You and Daniel will stay here.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “That was not a question. Listen to me. You will stay here until either I return or it is clear that I will not return—and neither will Mikel. Then you will go. Hook up with the others if you can, but go.”

  “Yes. All right.”

  He shifted so that his face was closer to the slither of an opening to check for any sign of soldiers. She watched as he slowly began taking down rocks to expose more of the opening. Then he raised himself out of their hiding place so that his head and shoulders were above ground.

  “What do you see?” she whispered.

  He ducked back down. “There’s a light on in the house. The trucks and car are still there but no longer running. There’s no sign of anyone.”

  “Mikel?”

  “I think he’s still lying outside the barn—although it’s hard to say. With all the soldiers occupied searching the trails, hopefully the Gestapo agent and our friend Pierre have decided to go inside for the warmth.”

  She did not want to voice her next thought: Is he dead? She could feel the tension in Daniel’s small body and knew that he was listening to every word.

  “I’m going,” Peter said, and before she could say anything, he had heaved himself out of the cave and disappeared.

  Once again there was every possibility that someone she cared for more than she was willing to fully admit would not be coming back. Once again she had failed to say what was in her heart. When would she learn that there is not time—there is not always later? She closed her eyes and prayed that both Peter and Mikel would be held in the Light and brought safely back to her.

  Other than a light from the kitchen, it was pitch black when Peter stepped away from the woods and ran to the barn. He pressed himself close to the rough outside wall of the structure and eased his way along the side closest to where the military vehicles stood. He waited for any sign of activity and as a final test, tossed a stick into the shrubs next to the barn.

  Nothing moved, including Mikel, who lay on the ground with his wrists and ankles tied. Please let him be alive.

  Peter edged along the barn until he reached the open doors. There had to be something in there that he could use to cut the ropes holding Mikel prisoner. And then what?

  He felt along every surface until his fingers closed around a pair of shears. A knife would be easier, but he would take what he could find. He returned to the open door and lay flat on his stomach. Watching the house for any sign of movement, he inched his way toward Mikel.

  A man stood in front of the kitchen window, lit from behind so that he was in silhouette, but Peter knew that this was the Gestapo agent, for he was taller and heavier than Pierre. He froze and waited until he realized that the man had his back to the window and was raising a glass as in a toast to someone across the room. He got to his knees and crawled the rest of the way.

  “Mikel,” he whispered as he touched the man’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back. “It’s me. Peter.”

  A guttural moan was the only answer, but as always when Peter communicated with Mikel, it sounded like disapproval or at the very least disappointment. Well, you take what comes, he felt like saying, but instead he cut the wrist ropes. As he moved to cut the bonds at Mikel’s ankles, the Basque man pulled the gag out and threw it on the ground.

  “Where are Anja and Daniel?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper as he took the shears from Peter and freed his ankles.

  “They are safe for now. Can you walk?” Run?

  “You should never have left them.”

  “She wouldn’t go a step farther without you.”

  “You should have—”

  They both went mute as a door at the house opened and they could hear the two men talking.

  “They’re coming outside,” Peter said and grabbed Mikel, yanking him to his feet. “Put your arm around my shoulders. We have to get out of here now.” He grasped Mikel’s waist and half dragged, half performed a kind of three-legged race as they made it to the barn and slipped around the side. They had made it to the back of the barn and had about ten yards between there and the woods when they heard the men come out into the yard. It didn’t take more than half a minute for them to realize that Mikel was no longer lying there.

  In the minutes that followed, the Gestapo man started blowing a shrill whistle while Pierre apparently raced from one truck to the next, turning on the headlights and repositioning the vehicles so the lights shone on the woods. A minute after that, several soldiers came running from the hillside into the yard. While they received their orders, Peter saw his chance. “Let’s go.” He ran for cover of the trees and the darkness beyond that the headlights could not penetrate and was surprised to see Mikel pass him as they headed up an unmarked trail.

  “She’s in that hollowed-out hole you told her about,” Peter said as he pushed himself to catch up.

  Both men were breathing hard from exertion and fear.

  “Lots of those,” Mikel managed as he pressed on.

  “This one is underground.”

  “Most are.”

  Behind them they heard the soldiers coming back through the woods. They were shouting to each other and seemed confused about how best to rekindle the search.

  “This way,” Peter said, mostly because he thought he recognized the shape of a boulder block
ing the way.

  “It’s this way,” Mikel said wearily as he turned in the opposite direction.

  They both stopped in their tracks when they heard footsteps running toward them. A moment later, Anja appeared with Daniel and threw herself into Mikel’s arms, hugging him, touching his face, his hair, his chest as if to reassure herself that he was really there. Peter let the reunion play out for only a moment. “Come on,” he said. “Plenty of time for that later.” He trudged on up the way Anja had come—opposite from the boulder that he’d been so sure was a marker that would lead him to her.

  Anja had never been happier to see anyone in her life than she was to see Mikel. Her prayers had been answered. He was safe. He was here in the cave with them, reassuring Daniel that nothing bad had really happened. And it was all thanks to Peter. While Daniel and Mikel were reuniting, she turned to Peter. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she began. “I was so afraid they had—”

  “He’ll be okay,” Peter said, cutting her off as he turned to Mikel. “We have to get moving. You’re the one who knows these mountains,” he reminded him.

  He sounded annoyed, impatient—not at all like the man she had come to know and care for. “We’re going to be all right,” she told him.

  He looked at her as if she had just announced that from here they would be able to fly over the mountain. “We’re a long way from being all right, Anja. You may not have noticed, but Mikel is injured—he’s in a lot of pain. I don’t know what that guy hit him with, but he’s probably got a concussion at the very least. And my guess is that he’s also got a couple of broken ribs. The soldiers took a turn at him when they arrived, and those jackboots can deliver quite a blow.”

  Mikel edged his way between them and jerked his head toward Daniel. “The boy’s ready. Let’s go,” he said. She didn’t miss the way he grimaced as he crawled to the top of a rise and looked around. Then he signaled for them to follow him into the unknown blackness of the forest and the trail leading up into the mountains.