by Tracy Groot
“Hide your Jews,” Michel agreed.
“Did I not tell you, Brother?” François said sweetly, his face upturned in a comical, supremely satisfied smile. He blinked twice. It was an old face from boyhood, one that never failed to make Michel chuckle.
“You did indeed. And did Rafael tell you his idea?”
François waved his hand airily. “Yes, yes. Make him a Dutch conscript.” He gave a courteous nod to Rafael. “But of course, it is perfect. Formidable.” He patted Tom’s arm. “My poor Lohengrin, to have Dutch blood in those magnificent veins. The Führer weeps at this moment, and knows not why. Now tell me, Michel. Have you come up with his . . . What do you call it? . . . His—”
“Occupation?”
“Surely there is another word,” he said, appealing to all the room. “A far more apropos spy word.”
“Occupation will do. Yes, we have, and it doesn’t concern you.”
François’s rapture deflated. “But he is my greatest triumph.”
Michel came around the desk and put his arm about his brother. “And you are amazing. Your plan will contribute greatly to the war effort. I will see to it myself you are commended by de Gaulle. For now, my brave brother, we—”
Wilkie’s very white face suddenly appeared at the door. “The hauptmann!” he whispered, then vanished.
François put a hand on Michel’s arm and said quietly, “Quickly, as rehearsed. I will detain him.”
Michel stared at the pilot. “François, he will never fit.”
“He will have to.” François hurried to the door, closing it behind. They soon heard his voice raised in greeting.
Rafael moaned, clasping his head. “He will not fit! What about the window?”
“He will be seen. Come.” He took Tom’s arm and pulled him to his father’s side of the room, to the bank of bookshelves along the right wall.
The shelves were built on cupboards fitted with the same library panels that lined the rest of the room. He went to the last cupboard nearest the fireplace and pulled it open. It had long since been cleared of Father’s things, during the early months of the Occupation when the need for such a hiding place had been foreseen. They had taken out a dividing insert. It had never been used, and had not been planned for someone almost two meters tall.
“In, in!”
The pilot dove into the small space, shifted about inside, but could not pull in his knees. Michel shoved against the door, but it was no good.
“Mon Dieu,” Rafael groaned.
Michel swiftly pulled over a wingback chair to block the jutting door, just as the office door swung open.
As Michel had expected him to, Hauptmann Braun first surveyed the business end of the room. When he turned to look for Michel, Michel was innocently examining a patch of the oval rug with the Cimenterie courier, André Besson.
Michel rose, hands on hips, shaking his head. He looked up at Braun. “Good afternoon, Hauptmann.” He looked down at the carpet, flung his hand. “Regardez. I long told my father to put down protection discs. What a pity he did not listen.”
Braun walked over, hat in one hand, briefcase in the other.
“Quel dommage, n’est-ce pas? The claw feet clutch brass balls. You see they have tarnished my rug.”
Braun shook his head. “Too bad, Rousseau. I share your regret. The rug must be an heirloom; I notice you mix your French with your German when you are upset.” He lifted his briefcase, clearly eager to get to the point of his visit. “New ideas, Rousseau! I have not been this excited for a project in a long while. Come, amaze me with what you have done so far.”
He went to the desk, put down his briefcase and hat, and to Michel’s dismay, he took off his suit coat, folded it, and draped it over the back of the chair. He unfastened his cuff links and began to roll up his white sleeves. He noticed Michel’s drawings, and went around the desk to examine them.
Michel turned to Rafael. “André, see if Monsieur Cohen on avenue de la Rochelle is still in business. I do not think this can be cleaned. Perhaps he can find matching inserts.”
Braun glanced up, rolling his sleeve. “A name like that, do not hold your breath.”
“He had beautiful carpets,” Michel said quietly.
Braun tapped one of the drawings. “You are thinking along my lines, Rousseau. Yes, I want a different ventilation system than Richter, but it is more than that. In fact—” He looked at Rafael. “Run along, please.”
When Rafael had gone, Braun’s gray eyes kindled and his voice gained intensity. “I have an idea, Rousseau. I’m sure all the theoretical strategists have had the same, but I really think it is plausible—after all, this is what I do.” He took a map of France out of his briefcase, unfolded it, and laid it on the desk.
Michel strolled over, painfully alert for any sound from behind.
Braun put his finger on the place he had planned for the new subterranean command post, at Fontaine-la-Mallet. “What if, instead of an underground post for command here—” he slid his finger along the coast to Calais—“we begin an underground tunnel here . . . and dig toward England?”
Michel stared where the German’s finger rested. At one time he would have called such a notion preposterous. But Hitler had shown the world that nothing was impossible.
“We can give it a working code name: the Trojan Tunnel. Prosaic, yes; but is it not perfect? Oh, I suppose we’ll have to change it—perhaps Project Zippy—but can you not imagine? Another way to take England? Not by sea, not by air . . . but by earth? Come in through her underbelly? She is not such an island after all.”
On the other side of the room, in a cruelly cramped cupboard where a pig farmer’s clothing began to sadistically itch, producing a trickling sweat that also itched, Tom heard himself recounting the story to the guys.
So I crawl into a cupboard the size of a coffin, where I can’t move or even breathe because it might move the door, and then I hear German, guys—German. It rattles me good, worse than floating down to the middle of a firefight.
Yeah, yeah, yeah—and den what happened?
And then, Oswald, everything Clemmie said became real. Capture, interrogation, torture . . . and I thought, What if I am caught, what if they torture me—will I say anything? You think, Of course not, I’m tough, I won’t say a word. But Rafael said you never know. The toughest talk. The toughest are broken.
And den what happened?
I don’t know yet, Ozzie. That German hears a sound and it’s all over—for me, for this Frenchman, for Rafael, maybe even for Clemmie. It’s real, and I’m not a spy, I’m a fighter pilot. Who am I kidding. I feel like a FOOL and want nothing more than to be in the sky where I belong. I can’t breathe, I can’t move, and this tiny space will drive me NUTS—I can take a COCKPIT because a COCKPIT has SKY!
Think about Clemmie, Captain Fitz said calmly, and you’ll be all right. Not an inch. Not a sound. Win it in your head, Cabby. Win it in your head.
An unprecedented four and a half hours later, during which Charlotte sent for food and wine, Braun finally left.
Michel waited a few moments, then went to the office door. He pried it open and listened. Charlotte was gone; she’d left hours earlier. He at last heard Braun’s driver start the automobile and rev the engine. He waited until he heard the car drive off, then flew to his father’s end of the room.
He shoved aside the chair and yanked open the cupboard door. The pilot’s knees fell out. They lay motionless.
“Monsieur! Are you all right?”
Complete silence.
“Well . . . that was fun,” came a hoarse croak.
Not an ounce of strength left, Michel sank to the floor. He began to laugh. Soon the pilot was laughing, too, with a hoarse dry chuckle, still in the cupboard with his knees sticking out.
Michel laughed until tears came. He was very much afraid he was going to like this man.
Over a week passed before Rousseau was sure Tom could play his part—and play it flawlessly. It took nearly
that long for Wilkie’s contacts to track down the hydroquinone needed to develop the film.
Tom looked at the picture in the little green booklet with Deutsches Reich stamped on the cover, above a spread-winged eagle sitting atop a laurel wreath with a swastika in the center. Below the Nazi symbol were the words Arbeitsbuch für Ausländer. It was a labor record book for foreigners and aliens, issued on July 7, 1940.
The green booklet was only part of his identification packet. It told of a civilian employed as a day laborer on a tulip farm, with many rubber stamps and signatures on the pages.
The next booklet, red, with a gold-embossed swastika in the center of a cog, told of the same man now employed at a German munitions factory. There were paper stamps pasted in. No photo for this one; it was some kind of record book. “The German Workforce,” Rousseau translated from the first page. On the inside flyleaf was a quote from Hitler. Rousseau translated some of it for him: “You are not allowed to forget that the nation only lives through the work of everyone. Work is creation. Work is discipline.”
The third and final piece of identification was a beige booklet with a beige slipcover, the word Soldbuch stamped in black, under the eagle clutching the swastika wreath.
He’d had two photos taken. One in civilian clothes for the green booklet, and for that they slicked his hair back, and managed to shadow the wound so that it would not show. He looked younger, as intended. For the Soldbuch booklet, he was in a German uniform. He stared at the photo, hardly believing it was him. Proud, unsmiling, maybe a little anxious.
“Your name,” Michel said.
Tom put the booklets down. “Kees Nieuwenhuis.”
“Where are you from?”
“Andijk, a small town in the northern province.”
“Where was your mother born?”
“Apeldoorn.”
“Your father?”
“Andijk.”
“What were you doing the day your country fell to the Reich?”
“I worked at my uncle’s flower farm in Andijk. Good thing, too; we had tulip bulbs to eat when things got rough.” That was new, and Michel raised an eyebrow. It was true; it was what his aunt told Mother in a letter.
“When did you go to work for the Reich?”
“When I was rounded up with other men from my village. In the razzia, with the other onderduikers.”
It was another addition with which Tom thought he might be impressed, but Michel frowned. “What date?”
“I am not sure of the date. I know it was September 1941.”
“How long did you work in the factory?”
“Six months at the first one. Because I had an exemplary record, I soon rose to leader of my section. I was transferred to another factory.”
“Where were the factories located?”
Tom hesitated for only a second. “The first, in Berndorf—”
“Unblinking, unhesitating. From the top.”
Tom’s face flushed. “I can do this.”
Michel ran through the questions from the beginning, his tone never varying from that of a probing interrogator.
“Where were the factories located?”
“The first in Berndorf, Austria. The second was a factory called Berthawerk, near Auschwitz.”
“What did you make?”
“Artillery fuses.”
“At what point were you approached to join the German army?”
“When they saw my talents were wasted on fuses.”
“Prior to this, how long were you a member of the Dutch Nazi Party?”
“I signed up in ’38, with several friends.”
“How do you feel about joining the army that conquered your nation?”
“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
Michel wearily rubbed his eyebrows.
“I thought that was a good improvise. It felt natural.”
“For an American,” Michel said, exasperated. “That has an American sound to it. You do not respect how good these people are. They will smell American on you. My job, Tom, is to make you odor free. From the top. Unblinking, unhesitating, unimprovising. Do the drill as you are trained, soldier.”
That did it. Soon a little anger and shame produced an interrogation that put even Michel at ease. After Tom had flawlessly completed the first, Michel started the next.
“What business do you have at the Rousseau Cimenterie?”
“I was transferred here by orders of Rommel himself to survey the Dutch conscripts posted to the Atlantic Wall in the Normandy sector—”
“Put a little more swagger into it. Rommel is a demigod to the Germans.”
“I was transferred here by order of Rommel himself. I am to survey the Dutch conscripts—”
“Good.”
“—assigned to Normandy construction sites.”
“What is Rommel’s designation?”
“Marshal Erwin Rommel, inspector of coastal defenses, commander of Army Group B. He has reunited the Seventh and the Fifteenth Armies north of the Loire. I have been assigned as his emissary to the Rousseau Cimenterie to observe and report any signs of subversion within the Dutch conscripted labor. It is suspected that information has been passing from and to the Netherlands through Normandy. Since I speak English and Dutch as well as a little German, I am well suited to secret observance.”
“Good. Except I asked you one question. Did I ask about your orders?”
“No.”
“Did I ask if you spoke English and Dutch as well as German?”
Tom flushed. “No.”
“Did I ask if you are well suited to secret observance?”
“No.”
“I speak Dutch, Cabby. I’ve never volunteered that, and why? Because you never asked. You just volunteered information I never asked; because of this they will suspect you. They will be unsure of what they suspect, and they will come after you.” Michel rubbed his temples. “From the top. Unblinking. Unhesitating. Unimprovising. And terse. What business do you have at the Rousseau Cimenterie?”
“I was transferred here by Rommel himself . . .”
Make Rousseau believe you can pull it off. Make him believe, and he’ll be okay. Nothing Tom had seen in two weeks made him think this Frenchman was anything other than capable and committed. He didn’t know what Rafael was talking about, that the man had shown weariness, that he didn’t believe anymore; all Tom had seen was relentless pursuit of perfection, like Pavretti, his drill sergeant back home.
Tom liked Michel’s determination. The repetition could very well save his life. If Michel seemed tired, he had a lot to do; if his eyes had dark, puffy smudges beneath them, it was no different than the other Rousseau, probably a family trait. And if at times he seemed sad or depressed . . . well, if you were French, these were depressing times.
Rousseau asked the final question, Tom answered, and the older man eased back in his chair to study the younger. Then he smiled a very small smile, and Tom felt a silly wave of pride. Well, it wasn’t easy to please this man.
“Very good. You know who you are, and you made me believe it. All I have left is this: stay alert at all times. The moment you let your guard down is the moment something will happen, and trust me, it will. Here in France, we are under a cloud of darkness. Anything that has hope in it, anything that moves toward freedom will attract darkness. In a very dark place, a little light stands out all the more. Do not shine.”
“I will do my best.”
“You misunderstand me. I do not want your best. I want perfection.”
It was hard to assent to perfection, but Tom thought of Rafael and nodded.
They sat in the study of Rousseau’s apartment, the nicely furnished room of a man with money and taste. Tom had never been in a more elegant setting, actually. Mother kept the home neat and tidy, and there was always the smell of something cooking, which to Tom meant a different kind of wealth; here, the place smelled of tobacco and wood polish and papers and books. It smelled important. Clemmie’s plac
e had a feeling closer to home; this place felt wise, and troubled, and on the brink. Maybe because of the meetings that constantly took place here; maybe because Gestapo headquarters was two city blocks over.
In the first days here, Tom had wanted to help out in some way. He wanted action so desperately that one evening he thought he’d surprise Rousseau and cook supper. He scoured the icebox and found a small package of bacon, a little milk, some eggs, and cheese. He found a few potatoes in the cupboard, and an onion. He pulled out a black cast-iron pan and went to work.
That evening Monsieur Rousseau came home to a table set for two, with the splendid black skillet placed in the middle of the table, steaming with Tom’s labor, a casserole-hash type of meal that, to Tom’s satisfaction, wasn’t far from what his own mother could have done.
Rousseau was quiet during the meal. Tom attributed his stiff manner to the fact that Rousseau usually made the suppers, and maybe felt awkward at Tom putzing around the kitchen on his turf. Tom might have felt the same way, if the roles were reversed.
Later, while Rousseau spoke with Wilkie, Tom mentioned the meal he had prepared to Rafael.
Rafael got a funny look. “You used all the bacon Monsieur Rousseau had? How much?”
Tom shrugged. “Not much. Maybe a quarter pound.”
Rafael made a very small sound. “And how many eggs did you use?”
“Four.”
Rafael coughed, cleared his throat. “Tell me. Please. How much of the cheese did you use?”
“All of it. There wasn’t much.”
The next question sounded strangled. “How many . . . please, how many potatoes?”
“Four.”
Rafael whimpered as he clapped a hand alongside his face, a man caught between admiration and another very strong emotion. He finally managed to say, “My dear Cabby—you just used two weeks’ ration of eggs and potatoes, and an entire month’s ration of bacon and cheese.”
Oh no. “On one meal.”
“On one meal,” Rafael squeaked. “Why didn’t you invite me?”