Simple Faith

by Anna Schmidt

  The car engine backfired in the distance. Peter shifted to his knees so that he could watch it pass. It was covered in mud and dirt and was moving faster than it had been before.

  “Are they inside?” Anja asked, her voice tense with worry.

  “They are,” Peter reported and started to get up. He was sure that he had seen the silhouettes of three passengers.

  She grasped his forearm. “All of them?”

  He knew she meant Daniel. “Yes. I think that he was on his knees looking out the rear window—I think he waved.” It was a white lie, but it was important to give her that image.

  They were on their feet then, holding hands and running to retrieve their bikes. If all continued to go well for them, in only a few hours they would reach Bilbao and the consulate there. Before this day was over, they would be under the protection of the British government. He would not allow himself to consider what they would do if the consulate refused them entry.

  To Anja’s surprise and relief, when she and Peter arrived at the consulate in Bilbao, it appeared that they were expected. As soon as they rode up to the consulate, a woman came out and ushered them inside, indicating to a young man lounging against the building that he should take care of the bicycles.

  “We were worried. We thought perhaps something had happened. Come in. Your friends are already upstairs.” She was a thin, nervous woman who spoke in short sentences as she bustled around, herding them inside and up the stairs. “The car to Madrid will be here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. The trip will take at least four hours. The boy will need to sit on someone’s lap, I’m afraid.” She frowned as if this were a matter of major inconvenience.

  “Thank you for your kindness,” Anja said. “We will manage just fine.”

  Lisbeth met them at the top of the stairs. “You’re here at last,” she said hugging each of them. “Anja, you are in here with Daniel and me. Peter, you’ll be in with Josef. It seemed best, although our hostess seems to have little concern about our identities. Somehow she seems to have been expecting all of us. She was quite upset that we did not arrive together.”

  “Is Daniel asleep?”

  Lisbeth smiled. “His head barely hit the pillow before he was out—poor dear thing.” She studied the two of them in the dim light. “Everything is all right, isn’t it? I mean with the two of you?”

  “Of course,” Anja said. “Why wouldn’t it be?” She was glad for the shadows because she knew she was blushing. And Peter was no help at all. He just stood there grinning down at her as if they shared some delicious secret.

  “Well, I expect you’ll want to say your good nights then,” Lisbeth said as she edged through a partially open door. “Sleep well, Peter.”

  “Good night, Lisbeth.”

  The door closed with a soft click, and Peter took a step closer to Anja and wrapped his arms around her. “Tomorrow,” he whispered as if the very word were a promise. “Good night, my love,” he murmured as he kissed her forehead. He stepped away then and went into the room across the hall. A single lamp burned until he closed the door, leaving Anja standing in the dimly lit hallway, her heart so filled with hope and sheer joy that she thought she would never be able to sleep. Tomorrow … and the day after that … and all the days after that …

  CHAPTER 20

  Their problems began as soon as the diplomatic car arrived the following morning.

  “My orders are for one American airman,” the driver insisted. “I will deliver this man and no one else.” He pointed to Josef whose papers had identified him as Second Lieutenant Peter Trent of the United States Army Air Forces.

  “And this woman who is also American,” the woman from the consulate insisted, though clearly she had no authority to do so. “She has been detained—she has even been imprisoned by the Nazis without cause, and she deserves to go as well. As you can see, she is with child and—”

  “Very well. The airman and the American woman but not the others.”

  Peter glanced at Anja, who was looking at Daniel, her mind obviously racing with thoughts of how she might get the man to take him as well. While the woman and the driver continued to negotiate and argue, Peter caught Anja’s attention and nodded toward the open trunk of the car. Apparently the driver had expected that they would have luggage in need of storing.

  Anja bent down and whispered instructions to Daniel, who frowned but then nodded. She walked closer to the open trunk with him, and Peter took his position between her and the driver, blocking the man’s view. “Both of you,” Peter murmured as he passed by Anja. “No argument.”

  To his relief, she did not protest or ask questions but helped Daniel into the trunk and then crawled in herself. As if making a point, Peter closed the lid. “We are wasting time,” he said as he opened the back door for Lisbeth. “You need to leave now.”

  “And just who are you, sir?”

  “He is the American equivalent of the consul-general,” the woman interjected before Peter could come up with a plausible answer. “With apologies, sir,” she continued directing her comment to him, “I will have to send for a second car to take you to Madrid. This man is obviously new and …”

  Josef had followed Lisbeth into the backseat, and both were watching the drama on the steps of the consulate play out from open windows.

  Peter shrugged.

  “I can only imagine what this young man’s superiors will say when he returns without you,” she continued, lowering her voice to add, “They are going to be enormously upset with him.”

  “All right. Get in,” the driver said with a jerk of his head toward the front seat. He strode to the driver’s side and opened the door. “If this is a trick,” he mumbled, glaring at the woman.

  “And if that is a threat, sir, perhaps it would be best if you report me now to my superiors.”

  Peter swallowed a smile. This tiny, gray-haired, bespectacled lady who had seemed so nervous the night before was a warrior standing her ground.

  “I would suggest that we get on our way,” Peter said.

  They rode with the windows open, enjoying the warm southern breezes and the blooming landscape as the driver sped toward Madrid. Peter heard Josef whispering to Lisbeth and hoped he was reassuring her that indeed they were all on board making the journey. At the same time, he worried about Anja and Daniel. The trunk had been roomy, but they would be confined there for hours yet and through the warmest part of the day.

  They had been on the road for at least a couple of hours when Lisbeth tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” she said. “I hate to be a bother, but I need to … that is, when one is pregnant, there is a greater need for …”

  The driver’s face went scarlet, and he whipped the car onto a side road and into a grove of trees near a creek. “This is the best I can offer, ma’am.”

  “We should probably all take advantage of this stop,” Peter said.

  “You cannot leave the car,” the driver told Josef, thinking he was the American airman he had been sent to rescue. “You are in danger, and if there is a patrol, I can’t protect you outside the car.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Josef replied. “I’ll go right here by the car with the door open so if someone comes …”

  The driver handed him a clean jar with a cover. “You could use this and stay inside the car,” he argued.

  “Please,” Lisbeth pleaded. “I have to go—I think I may be sick.” She bolted from the car, and the driver ran after her.

  Leaving it to Lisbeth to deal with the driver, Josef ran to the creek and washed out the jar, then filled it with water. Meanwhile Peter found the release for the trunk and opened it. Anja blinked up at him in the sudden light, but she was smiling. He thought that if he spent the next fifty years with this woman, she would never cease to surprise him.

  “Are we there?” Daniel asked.

  “Not yet, pal,” Peter told him as Josef returned with the jar of water and offered it to them. “Small sips,” Peter instructed w
hile Josef kept watch for the return of Lisbeth and the driver.

  “Mama, I have to use …”

  Peter lifted the boy from the trunk and walked around to the side so that they would be screened from the driver if he suddenly showed up. He helped Daniel open his fly so he could urinate onto the dirt road. He had a sudden image of Daniel as his son—of himself as a father.

  “All done,” Daniel announced.

  Peter helped him readjust his clothing and then lifted him back inside the trunk, where he settled contentedly against Anja’s side as if this were a perfectly normal way to travel.

  “They’re coming,” Josef warned.

  Peter blew Anja a kiss and gently closed the trunk lid, being careful not to slam it and alert the driver that it had been opened. He glanced up and saw Lisbeth and the driver emerge from the cluster of trees. Lisbeth was leaning heavily on the driver’s arm, but the way she kept casting sidelong glances toward Josef and the trunk, Peter knew that she was just doing what she could to buy them the time they had needed to care for Anja and Daniel.

  “We need to get going,” Josef announced. “It’s far too quiet here.”

  The driver helped Lisbeth into the backseat and then scowled at Josef and muttered something about Americans giving orders.

  They arrived in Madrid on schedule late that afternoon. It was no surprise that once the driver delivered them to the embassy and Peter had surprised the young man by asking him to open the trunk and then helped Anja and Daniel out that all five of them were surrounded by embassy security and ushered inside.

  “Wait here,” a man in uniform ordered. No one offered to have them sit in the lavishly furnished reception hall that Peter could see through a partially open door. Instead, they were left standing and still under guard.

  After a lengthy delay, the man in uniform reemerged, followed by another man in civilian clothes—suit with vest, pristine white shirt, and a tie. He looked directly at each of them and then down at some papers he was holding. “Well, well, well,” he said. He began handing out the papers—one to each of them except for Daniel.

  Peter heard Lisbeth gasp and immediately knew why. He was holding a wanted poster with his picture on it—as were Josef, Lisbeth, and Anja.

  The official offered Daniel a handshake. “It would appear, young man, that you are the only innocent in this group. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Vice Consul Formby. I serve at our British consulate in Seville. And you are?”

  “Daniel Steinberg. I am from Germany.”

  Peter saw Anja flinch. She had worked so hard at training Daniel to say his home was Denmark and to use her family name, not the name of his father.

  “But, Mama,” he whispered, pointing to her wanted poster, “our name is there. He already knows.”

  “I do indeed, and I’m afraid there are others who know as well. An agent of the secret state police of the Third Reich visited the ambassador earlier this week. It was he who left the papers you now hold. His men have distributed them widely throughout the area.”

  “His name?” Anja whispered.

  “Schwarz—Agent Gustav Schwarz.”

  Lisbeth clutched Josef’s arm, and Anja pulled Daniel close to her side.

  “Can you help us?” Peter asked. “Will you?”

  Formby appeared to ignore the question. “We have been expecting you for some time now—well, you, Second Lieutenant Trent. We felt certain that the rest of you would be along eventually, but we hardly expected you to arrive all at the same time. I am afraid that this has presented us with a bit of a problem.”

  “But you can protect us?” Peter pressed the point.

  “We will do our best. In the meantime, the ambassador apologizes for his absence. He is on a call with Prime Minister Churchill. He has asked that you take the time you need to refresh yourself and rest.” He nodded to the officer in charge, who gave an order, and the guards surrounding them turned and left the building. “And I will call the ambassador’s doctor to check on your wife, sir.” This he directed to Josef. “Although you are a physician as well, are you not?”

  “I am, but we would welcome any help you can offer. Thank you, sir.”

  A member of the office staff who had been waiting at the foot of the stairs now indicated that they should all follow him. Lisbeth took three steps up the impressive stairway and collapsed into Josef’s arms. The man might have been trained as a physician, but in that moment Peter saw that he was only a husband whose fear for his wife and child was all he could think about.

  “Call that doctor,” Peter ordered the staffer as he swept Lisbeth up from the stairs and carried her. Anja, Daniel, and Josef followed him up the steps, and Josef ran ahead, opening doors until he found a bedroom. “In here.”

  As soon as Peter had placed Lisbeth on the bed, Anja nodded toward where Daniel was standing in the doorway, his eyes wide with fear while Lisbeth cried out in the agony of labor. “Take him back downstairs and stay with him, Peter,” she pleaded. “He does not need to see this.”

  Reluctantly, Peter and Daniel edged back out into the hallway, and Anja shut the door, muffling Lisbeth’s cries. On their way down the stairs, a man carrying the familiar black bag of a doctor passed them. “Third door on the right,” Peter told him.

  Downstairs Peter made a survey of his surroundings. In the offices just off the stairway, he could see the vice consul speaking to another man. The second man sat behind an ornate desk, and Peter assumed that this was the ambassador. He was tempted to barge straight into the man’s office and demand to be a part of any plans that might be in the works, but Daniel was tugging on his hand.

  “Peter? Will Lisbeth die?”

  “No pal. She’s going to be fine.”

  “Am I going to die?”

  In that moment, Peter realized that he had a much more important task to attend to than arguing with the ambassador and vice consul. He lifted Daniel high off the ground and carried him into the large reception room they’d seen when they first arrived. The room was furnished with comfortable-looking chairs and sofas, and one entire wall was french doors that looked out onto a garden in full bloom.

  “No one you know is going to die today, Daniel. How about we go out to that garden and pick some of those flowers to give to your mom and Lisbeth?”

  Daniel smiled. “Mama loves flowers,” he confided. “When I was little, she always had flowers on the table—even when it was cold and snowing.”

  Peter suspected that the boy’s father had made sure of that. He knew that if they were blessed enough to get out of this war alive and if he could persuade Anja to marry him, she would never ever be without a vase filled with fresh flowers again.

  It had been months since Anja had assisted in the delivery of a baby, but as she worked alongside Dr. Alonzo, it all came back to her as if she had done it just the day before. The anxious moments followed by the sheer joy of a new life coming into the world. But what kind of world would this child—a girl—face?

  She cleaned up the infant and wrapped her in a large soft towel that the embassy staffer had brought. “Lisbeth, Josef, may I present your daughter?” She laid the child in Lisbeth’s arms and then conferred with Dr. Alonzo regarding Lisbeth’s postnatal care. But uppermost in her mind was a single question: now what would they do? It had been difficult enough moving across countries and mountains and past border patrols with Daniel. But with a new baby and a recovering mother?

  “I’ll come back to check on her later today,” Dr. Alonzo was saying. He prepared to leave the room and then turned back and lowered his voice. “In the matter that has brought all of you here, may I suggest that you seriously consider going your separate ways or at the very least dividing into smaller packages? Your possibility for success will be much greater.”

  “But …”

  “Just think on it, my dear.”

  Shortly after he left, the woman from the embassy office knocked on the door. “Dr. Alonzo asked me to sit with the parents and their child while
you refresh yourself and rest,” she said. “There is a room across the hall there.”

  “Thank you.”

  But as soon as the door closed behind her, Anja ignored the room across the hall and ran down the stairs in search of Peter. She slipped past the door where she could see secretaries typing and filing and going about the business of the embassy. Beyond them she caught a glimpse of an ornately carved door that she assumed led to the offices of the ambassador. Down the hall, she came to the large reception salon they had noticed when they first arrived. She tapped at the partially open door and then peeked around it.

  No one.

  But outside the french doors across the room, she caught a movement and saw Daniel running along a path, his face wreathed in the smile of laughter. He was holding a fistful of flowers and pointing to more. Then Peter came up behind him. He looked a little worried and was shaking his head.

  Anja opened the door. “Daniel, what are you doing?”

  “Mama, I picked you flowers,” he cried as he ran to hand her the bouquet that bore the marks of having been tightly squeezed. “I wanted one of those, but Peter said that we had enough.”

  “They are beautiful, Daniel. It’s been a long time since …” She burst into tears.

  “Mama?” Daniel’s voice wavered, and she saw the shadow of fear darken his eyes.

  “Don’t be afraid, Daniel. Nothing is wrong. These are tears of joy. I came to tell you that Lisbeth and Josef have a baby girl.”

  “Can I see her? Does she look like my sister, Rachel, did when she was a baby? Should I take some flowers?” He glanced around, already choosing the bouquet.

  “Here, take these,” Anja told him as she pulled a bright yellow flower from the cluster. “I only need this one flower, and Lisbeth will be so happy when you bring the baby the rest. Let’s ask if perhaps the people in the office have a small vase or container we can put them in.”

  The three of them returned to the embassy’s offices, where a young woman was more than happy to help Daniel find something for the flowers. “I can take him upstairs to see the baby if you like,” she offered and blushed. “I just learned that I am pregnant,” she whispered to Anja. “It would be wonderful …”