Men react to combat in different ways. Some slowly disintegrate under the pressure and horrors, develop a telltale twitch or weird behavior, and with luck are rescued before they totally break down or are killed. Others, like Zack, go steadily along at a normal pace, seemingly unaffected by it all. They can survive if they can get out before their inner emotional reservoirs are swamped with the shocks and horrors of war. But Zack was not to be that fortunate. He had reached his limits and was engulfed in a tidal wave of emotional despair. He had seen too much death and destruction and could no longer contain it all. For one desperate moment he doubted his own humanity.
Ruffy’s voice touched him. “It’s time to get on with it,” he urged.
Automatically, Zack placed one foot in front of the other and followed his friend. The movement helped. “I don’t know why this should hit me so hard,” he said. “For a moment, I thought I’d lost it. I wasn’t sure if I could make my body or mind work again.”
“You need a good booze-up,” Ruffy told him. “Or a roll in the hay with some popsie. Preferably both.”
The air in the radio hut at Manston was filled with blue smoke as Willi’s superior puffed on his pipe. He heaved his rotund body into a standing position and walked to the door. “There’s not going to be any more transmissions,” he told the three women clustered around the radio. “The Gestapo has us in a bog in northern France. Our networks are being wiped out in areas we can least afford to lose. We need to unstick things. I don’t think I have to tell you that we’re in danger of a complete collapse and what that means to our invasion plans.” He disappeared out the door into the early-morning dark.
Anna Fredericks looked to the radio operator who served as Chantal’s “godmother” and arched an eyebrow. The radio operator only shook her head. The pattern spoke for itself and the conclusion was inescapable—they had lost another “pianist” to the Gestapo. “I think we need to talk,” Fredericks said to Willi. The two women walked outside. “We cannot be positive what’s happened to her at this time,” Fredericks said. She did not see Willi’s right hand slowly clench and relax, only to ball into a fist again. “But we must continue. I have another team ready for insertion. I want you to handle them from here.”
“More sheep for the slaughter?” Willi asked.
Fredericks gave her a hard look. “Yes, if need be.” She turned and walked away, leaving Willi alone.
Anger and misery tore at Willi as she walked toward the Nissen hut where she was quartered with the rest of the SOE team at Manston. She almost bumped into a shadowy figure crossing her path. It was Andrew Ruffum. “Sorry,” she said.
“You’re up early,” Ruffy ventured. “Or is it late?”
“And you,” Willi said. She needed human company, someone to talk to.
“I needed a breath of fresh air,” Ruffy said. “We had a difficult mission yesterday and Zack took the news of the duke very badly. I’ve been seeing to him. This is one of those times when the bottle helps.”
“I wish it were always that easy,” Willi said.
Ruffy heard the hurt in her voice and sensed she needed company. “Shall we get some breakfast?” He led her into the officers mess.
The empty bottle of Scotch that Ruffy had produced from some mysterious source lay on the floor beside Zack’s bunk. He stumbled over it in his hurry to reach the latrine and fell on his face, retching and heaving until his stomach was empty. Then he passed out. The young batwoman who looked after the officers in that room heard the noise and found him facedown in his own mess. She had seen it before and dragged him back into the bed. Then she went about the business of cleaning up him and the room. When he awoke, a glass of water and four aspirins were on the stand waiting for him. An hour later, he managed to get out of bed and stagger downstairs, looking for food to quell his churning stomach.
Ruffy and Willi were alone in the lounge, sitting and talking quietly in a corner. Ruffy’s voice had a warm and comforting tone. “Nothing is certain,” he was saying. “We can only keep muddling on, hoping this nightmare will end.” Willi looked up and saw Zack standing in the doorway. Her eyes were bloodshot and tears streaked her face. She stood and, for an instant, was on the verge of saying something. Instead, she clasped her arms in front of her and walked briskly from the room.
“What was that all about?” Zack asked.
“She couldn’t tell me…but her operations have gone terribly wrong…. She’s devastated. The game can be brutal.”
“It’s no game, Ruffy,” Zack muttered.
After lunch, Zack walked briskly around the base, enjoying the bright, cool day and a chance for some exercise. The one good thing about waking up with a hangover, he thought, is that you know you’ll feel better before the day is over. Since he was on the base, he didn’t pay attention to the sentry standing guard near a set of Nissen huts with a canopy of aerials. He turned down a side path that led into a thick clump of trees behind the huts. Another guard emerged out of the bushes and halted him, demanding to see his pass. “Sorry, I don’t have one.” Zack explained how he had made an emergency landing the day before and was waiting for his plane to be repaired. The SOE had trained the guard to be suspicious of anything unusual and he thought it very strange that an individual with an American accent was wearing an RAF uniform. He placed Zack under arrest and called his superior. A few minutes later, Willi emerged on a bicycle from behind the huts and pedaled toward them.
She came to a halt beside the guard and explained that she would take custody of the miscreant. The guard gave Zack a hard look and disappeared back into the bushes. She motioned him to come with her and pushed the bike back down the path, away from the huts. “You were fortunate,” she explained, “that I was just coming off duty. What were you doing in this sector, anyway?”
“Walking. I needed some exercise. That’s all.” He eyed her bike. “If I could get my hands on one of those and a pass, I wouldn’t even be on the base.”
“Then you’d like to see the countryside?”
“Sure. What I’ve seen from the air, it looks gorgeous.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said.
“Please don’t put yourself out.”
Willi stopped and looked at him. “Ruffy told me about your last mission. An outing will do you wonders.”
“And he told me about you. Can you find another bike? A break would do us both some good.”
She gave him a thoughtful look. “Yes it would. I’ll see what I can arrange.” Twenty minutes later, they pedaled through the main gate and into the quiet countryside. “Well,” she said, “what would you like to see?”
“The coastline,” he answered. “I saw a lighthouse when we landed.”
“You like lighthouses?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never met one before.”
She smiled at the thought of meeting a lighthouse. “I can introduce you. You’ll like the keeper, Tory Chester.” She treated him to a delightful laugh. “I’ve done some exploring on my own. Come on, then. It’s farther than it looks.” They set off down a narrow lane, the fragile peace that eluded them back in place.
The scenery delighted Zack and he would stop frequently, pointing out whatever caught his attention. At one point she laughingly called him the “mad geographer” and discovered, much to her amazement, that the gloom and stress that bound her life had eased its shackles. They had stopped on top of a small hump-back bridge that crossed a rail line and watched a train barrel past, the steam and smoke engulfing them for a moment. She pushed off, heading down the bridge but lost her balance and landed with a hard thump on her rear end. The pout on her face told Zack that she wasn’t hurt.
“Right on the old tosh,” he laughed.
“It’s ‘tush,’ you fool,” she said, getting back on the bike.
“I like ‘tosh’ better.”
Willi laughed. “So do I.”
Twenty minutes later, they reached the lighthouse that stood on a small point of land that jutted out in
to the Strait of Dover. Zack stood silent, transfixed by the view while Willi knocked on the door. The old man who answered could have been straight from the pages of a Somerset Maugham novel: craggy face, bright blue eyes, a wispy gray beard, slightly hunch-shouldered. He wore a thick Aran sweater that had seen better days and smelled of stale cigarette smoke. “Hello, lass,” he said, obviously pleased to see her. She introduced Zack to Tory Chester and produced two packs of Players cigarettes. He held them for a moment, one in each shaking hand, weighing them. “You shouldn’t waste these on an old geezer like me. Filthy habit, but thank you.” He ripped open a pack, offered his guests one, which they declined, and lit one for himself, inhaling deeply. He was an addicted chain smoker and had suffered greatly due to rationing.
Zack was intrigued by the relationship between Tory and Willi; he had always thought of her as too snobbish to establish a friendship with someone like a lighthouse keeper. But they were clearly good friends. Tory took Zack on a tour of the lighthouse. The living quarters consisted of two rooms: a combination kitchen-living room and one small bedroom. A door off the kitchen opened onto the tower stairs, which they climbed to the top. Tory paused on the landing below the beacon. It was neatly stocked with an old morris chair and a set of shelves loaded with rags, tools, and a radio. Tory let Zack go up the ladder first onto the platform that surrounded the big lens. He waited for a reaction. Silence. Finally, Zack whispered a single word, “Magnificent.” Zack found the word inadequate to describe the seascape stretched out below him. Satisfied that he had not misjudged the young American, Tory climbed through the hatch and joined him.
“It’s a first-order Fresnel lens,” he explained, pointing out the 666 hand-ground glass lenses that focused the light into a powerful beam. The glass parts and brass framework sparkled like crystal in the sunlight, spotlessly clean and free of dust. “It’s about six feet in diameter, weighs over two tons,” he explained, “and with those two electric lamps”—he pointed to the pair of huge one-thousand-watt electric lamps in the center—“it can be seen for twenty miles.”
“When do you turn it on?” Zack asked.
“When this bloody war is over,” Tory growled. There was a deep hurt or bitterness in his voice; Zack couldn’t tell which. “I still clean it every day so it will be ready.” He stared out to sea. “We’ve reached an unspoken agreement with Jerry—we don’t turn our beacons on and he doesn’t turn his on.”
“What happens if you do?”
“Then we can expect a visit from the bloody Germans…Sometimes a bomber but most likely an E-boat would shell us.” Zack almost interrupted to tell him that that was much less likely now, but he said nothing. “We do the same to them,” Tory continued. “At least, the lighthouses will all be in a piece when this is over, ready to go again.” He stared out to sea, seeing something that wasn’t there for Zack. “I’ve tended a beacon most of me life. It’s all I know. Now I sit up at night and listen on the wireless as you blokes come home. I hear it…the SOS calls, the Mayday calls, some pilot hopelessly lost…and I can’t do a bloody thing except listen. That’s not what a Fresnel is for. It should be turned on and sweeping the sky when souls are in distress. All I want is for this damn war to end so I can light the beacon and do what I’ve always done.” The old man climbed down the ladder to the landing and led the way down the stairs. “The fishing was good today and I’ve got plenty if you’d like to keep an old ’un company for dinner.”
“I think we have to get back to the base before it gets dark,” Zack told him.
“Rain’s on the way. You’ll be soaked through before you do that. It’ll clear out before morning.”
They found Willi in the small kitchen cleaning the fish and Zack repeated Tory’s offer and his weather forecast. “Tory’s an infallible weather prophet,” she allowed. “If he says it’s going to rain, it will be a monsoon.” Tory settled the matter by telling them that they could spend the night and Willi could sleep in his bed. “You”—he pointed to a big chair by the small fireplace—“can doss there.”
“Where will you sleep?” Zack asked.
“I don’t sleep at night,” Tory told him. “Too old to change me habits. I’ll be up on the landing.”
“He listens to the radio there,” Willi said.
It was all agreed on and Tory proved that he could cook fish. Before they had finished eating, the rain was pelting down, driving against the small windows. They could hear the gusting wind pound at the door. “I don’t think there’ll be much flying tonight,” Zack observed.
“You never know,” Tory said and made his way up the tower steps.
Zack and Willi talked for a while and could hear the radio echo down the tower as Tory changed from one frequency to another. Zack closed the door to the stairs but Willi said to leave it open so they could hear. Finally, they heard music. “You were right,” Willi said, “not much flying. But he’ll keep a listening watch and scan the emergency frequencies from time to time.” She thought for a moment. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to bed. I could use a good night’s sleep.” She found him some blankets and a pillow and disappeared into the tiny bedroom, closing the door behind her. Zack poked the coals in the hearth to life, tested the big overstuffed chair, and stretched out under a blanket.
He wasn’t sure what woke him and he listened. The rain had stopped and he could see moonlight streaming through the windows. A faint melody echoed down from the tower. Then he saw her standing next to the kitchen window, looking into the night. She was wearing an old duffel coat and was barefoot. “Are you okay?” he asked. He could see her head nod.
“They’ll fly now, won’t they?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
He joined her at the window. “Yeah.” There was a finality in his voice. It was a bomber’s moon. “They’re out there right now.” Tears filled her eyes and Zack knew that a deep hurt was hovering just below the surface, ready to make its presence known.
An old English music hall melody drifted down from above. “‘After the Ball Is Over,’” she said, naming the song. A bitter irony in her voice. “Just like this war.”
“This will be over,” he told her. “These are the wasted years.”
Willi stared at him, her mouth slightly open. “The wasted years,” she repeated, her voice barely audible. He did understand. “We’ve been at this for over four years now. Four wasted years. Our youth gone. How many more years? We won’t be young anymore. These years should have been filled with parties, pretty dresses, picnics, boys lined up in a row and dances…. I was so looking forward to the dances when I was seventeen. Because of this war, this damnable, bloody war, we’ve lost all that…the years…the dances…our youth. We won’t get them back. And there’s no end in sight.”
“It will end,” he said and folded her into his arms. She held on to him and wept. Now the gentle and haunting voice of Vera Lynn singing “I’ll Be Seeing You” echoed down from the tower. “Miss Crafton,” he said, “may I have the honor of this dance?” She held on to him and he could feel her shake. Then her mouth was on his, her lips full and trembling. Her hands were on his neck, holding his head, not letting him go as her tongue searched for his.
“Oh, damn you,” she moaned and pulled away. He wanted to protest that he hadn’t done anything. “You don’t know what you are,” she said. “Damn you.” Then she was back in his arms.
“Who would have believed?” Zack said as he felt Willi’s arms reach over him and her warm body cuddle against his back. Then her tongue brushed his neck and sent tingles down to the lower regions of his body. But he wanted to talk. “I can hardly credit this,” he said and rolled over so he could see her face. The blankets pulled away and cold air washed over his bare skin. He tugged the blankets back into place. She wrapped a leg around his and pulled herself to him. Her arms snaked around his neck and she buried her face against his neck.
“Talk later,” she commanded and rubbed her breasts against his chest. Her hand worked between their
stomachs and inched lower. She stroked him until he was hard. “Yes, we’ll talk later,” she whispered.
“You were always so angry,” Zack said. He was propped up on an elbow, still in bed. “And so hostile. It was almost as if you were mad at me for breathing English air.”
Willi stroked his cheek. “It wasn’t you—personally. Well, maybe it was. You are so much like your countrymen: an unbounded free spirit. I sometimes wonder how you Americans ever agree on anything. You assault life, determined to win. You never accept anything the way it is. If you don’t like something, then you change it, as if the changing will make it better. And you”—she was now talking about him personally—“never seem to bloody your head. That is what happens to normal people, you know.” She gave his chest a little thump with her fist. “You Yanks play at this war. Look at what you bring with you. I’m surprised your musette bag isn’t stuffed with chocolates, cigarettes, and nylons.”
“I am in the RAF,” Zack reminded her.
“Yes, you are,” she conceded.
Zack said, “I suppose this war extracts a different price from each of us.”
She rolled out of bed and searched for her clothes. He watched her as she dressed, captivated by her graceful movement. He hadn’t noticed that before. “I suppose it’s time to get back to the real world and continue paying the price,” she said. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, not touching him. “I’m not sure when it happened, but I love you, Zack Pontowski.” She stood and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her. He lay there, still propped on one elbow, trying to understand what he was feeling.
Then it came to him. He was in love with two women.
ELEVEN
The Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C.
The situation went critical when Mazie’s contact with Bill Carroll at the Air Force’s Special Activities Center hand-delivered the latest report to her. “Tell General Carroll,” she told the handsome black woman, “that I appreciate him keeping me in the loop.” Mazie had been told that Carroll’s operatives were now working with the CIA, and reporting through Willowbranch. But it took the CIA at least twenty-four hours to process any message and pass it on.
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