“I understand,” Jake said quietly.
“Whatever you need,” Father Mikus said. “Whatever I can do. Now go and see to the needs of your friend.”
* * *
It was not a peaceful night. Jake lay awake in the dark and listened to Pierre toss and turn and heave deep sighs. Finally he asked, “You want to talk about it?”
The silence lasted so long that Jake took it for the answer. But then Pierre said, “I feel as though my mind and my heart are being torn in two.”
Jake searched the dark before his eyes, waiting for the sense of being guided toward a response. He sat up, feeling as though something was coming, something greater than either of them, greater than the problem, greater than the very night.
“One side of me yearns to hold her,” Pierre moaned. “I feel the need in my very bones. And yet I cannot.”
A silent herald called to Jake’s heart. All he said was, “You’re trapped.”
“It is an impossible life. Everywhere I turn I am faced with the daggers of an enigma for which there is no answer. No matter what I do, I am pierced to my very soul.” Pierre beat the mattress with a feeble fist. “I cannot go on. This much I know. I cannot live with this. I cannot. I lie in the darkness and know a thousand deaths.”
A flame ignited in Jake’s heart. A power so vast it filled his being with strength that could not be denied. The instant of its coming lasted less than the span of a heartbeat, yet in that immeasurable moment he saw his own life linked to Infinity. The flame was a gift, one somehow granted through his meager faith and his love for a friend, given so that it might be shared.
“There is an answer,” Jake said softly, and in the moment of speaking felt the light of his heart illuminate every shadow.
Pierre responded with a groan of defeat. “Impossible.”
“Listen to me, Pierre. The answer is yours for the asking. I know this. All you have to do is turn and ask.”
The mattress next to his grew still. “What are you saying?”
“You are lost because you insist on going through this alone. But God has an answer for you. There is someone there, waiting for you to open your heart and your mind to Him. I feel this with every fragment of my being, Pierre. He knows your distress and wants to offer you peace. Healing. He waits to offer you hope.”
The stillness lengthened, then, “You truly believe this?”
“With all my heart.”
There was a shifting in the darkness. Then the broken voice of his friend asked, “What must I do?”
“Pray,” Jake said. “Ask for His help and guidance. Confess to your own failings. Turn to the Son and ask Him into your life.”
A time passed, measured in waiting breaths, before Jake heard shaky murmurs in French. A love so strong it could not be contained filled his heart. A love meant not for him, but for his friend. Jake sat and added his own silent words to those of his friend and felt the freedom of hope fill the night.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning Jake clattered down the stairs to find Father Mikus seated at the rough-hewn table. He sipped from a glass of tea and asked, “How is your friend?”
“Still asleep.”
“A good sign. Sit, sit. Do you take tea?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“All life is trouble in troubled times.” The priest rose to his feet, moved to the coal-fired stove, grasped a singed towel, set the blackened pot in place. “You come from Gibraltar, did I understand that much?”
“Yesterday. Then the night train from Tangiers.”
“And you found no sign of Patrique?”
“Nothing except the hunters.”
“Then I fear the worst.” He inspected a glass, decided it was clean enough, dumped in a fingerful of shredded leaves, and added water. “Bread and dates and goat’s cheese are all I have to offer.”
“That sounds fine. Thank you.”
“Patrique told me he was headed for Gibraltar.” He sipped noisily. “There he would find safety, he said.”
Jake blew upon his glass. “Safety from what?”
“He would not tell me. He said the less I knew the safer I would remain. Two nights after he vanished the third time—”
“The third time?” Pierre appeared in the doorway.
“That is what I said.” The priest waved Pierre toward the only other chair. “I suppose you’ll be wanting tea as well.”
“He can have mine,” Jake offered.
“Nonsense. The air is dry, and so the body is fooled, but this desert chill can seep into a man’s bones.” Mikus hovered over the stove and filled a third glass. He returned to the table, set it in front of Pierre and said, “Twice before, Patrique disappeared, and each time there were rumors of his death. Each time he was brought back by something that troubled him greatly. The third time was to see if word had arrived back from Marseille. He had sent a messenger, he told me, a young girl—”
“Lilliana,” Jake offered.
The priest gaped. “You know of her?”
“That is why we came. We told you last night.”
“Last night you spoke gibberish. Lilliana is alive?”
“She is in a camp in Badenburg. I have a letter for her parents. She has suffered from a fever but is recovering and soon should be well enough to travel.”
But Father Mikus was already on his feet. “Up, up, leave your breakfast. We must hurry.”
Pierre protested, “But we have questions—”
“Questions we shall have until the day we die,” the priest snapped. “A good family has suffered the agony of the damned. I shall not force them to wait a moment longer for this news.”
“I’ll go,” Jake said, patting his friend on the shoulder as he rose. “You take it easy until we return.”
“Just one question,” Pierre demanded. “How did Patrique know of this danger?”
“The second and third times he returned and spoke of it, I have no idea. The first time, he knew the same way he learned to escape from Marseille when he did.” The priest impatiently reached from the door. “From Jasmyn. Is she not your woman? Do you not hear these things from her?”
The news shook Pierre to his deepest foundations. “Jasmyn?”
Father Mikus loomed large and crooked in the doorway. He turned back to Pierre. “What is this I hear? You do not honor the woman who has twice saved your brother?” Then he gave his head a curt shake. “No, no, that too can wait. This news cannot. Do you have the letter? Good. Then we go.”
The priest set a hasty pace across the dusty square. Although the sun had not yet risen high enough to crest the surrounding buildings, already the night’s chill was fading. All the buildings Jake could see were alike—low and brick and daubed with yellow clay and roofed with dry thatch. Walls ran around many of them. Portals were arched in the form of the Orient. The doors themselves were thick and studded with iron.
In the square’s far corner, beyond the well, stood a squat building with a pole set over its door; from the pole hung a Red Cross flag. As they approached, a gang of young children came squealing into view and danced a joyful racket around Father Mikus. He ignored them completely, and they paid his scowl no mind whatsoever. All of them were barefoot, all wore the simple cloth shift of the desert Arab, all laughed and danced and tried to work eager fingers into the priest’s pockets.
“Wait here,” he said gruffly to Jake, and disappeared into the building. The children knew better than to enter with him. They stood around, eyed Jake with shy curiosity, peered through the open door. A moment later Mikus appeared and announced, “Too early. He is still at home. Come.”
The children ran and chattered about them as the priest hurried down narrow ways. After several twists and turns Jake was completely and utterly lost. Suddenly their passage opened into a main thoroughfare that ran parallel to a tall city wall. Already the street was busy with vendors and merchants and herdsmen and donkeys piled high with wares.
A hundred met
ers farther, Mikus bounded up crumbling steps to enter a derelict abode. The filthy entrance hall opened into a broad central courtyard lined with rusting balconies and laundry. Its center boasted a well, a carefully tended patch of green, and three date palms.
Mikus reached the far corner of the courtyard and climbed the wooden staircase in great bounds. He reached the top floor, walked to the first entrance, and pounded on it with his fist.
A moment later a bespectacled man, burdened by the sorrows that lined his face, opened the door. In German he said, “Ah, Mikus. Good. You are just in time for tea.”
“I bring news,” the grizzled priest replied abruptly, also in German. “May God be praised, your daughter is alive.”
A shriek rose from the apartment’s depths, and the bespectacled man staggered against the doorpost. Before he could bring himself to speak, a woman appeared, an older image of Lilliana, dark and sharp-featured and beautiful in a tired and world-worn way. She clutched at the priest’s frock with desperate fingers. “My baby? Lilliana? Alive?”
Father Mikus motioned toward Jake. “Calm yourself. He has just come from her.”
The priest looked surprised when Jake stepped forward and added in German, “Lilliana is alive and well. I spoke with her eight days ago. She has had a fever and is still too weak to travel, but she is recovering.”
The woman broke down and wept so hard her legs gave way beneath her. Together the priest and her husband helped her inside the apartment. Jake stood awkwardly in the doorway, fumbled with his cap, and watched as Lilliana’s father held and soothed the old woman, ignoring the tears that streamed down his own face.
When a semblance of calm was restored, the husband motioned for Jake to enter and asked quietly, “What can you tell us?”
“Lilliana was arrested in Marseille,” Jake replied. “But only for not having papers. She was shipped to a Nazi prison camp and put to work in an armament factory. She stayed there until the Allies liberated her. She recognized my friend Pierre, mistaking him for his brother Patrique.”
“The brother of Patrique is here?”
“At my house,” Mikus replied. “He has word that Patrique is still alive.”
“Perhaps,” Jake amended.
“That such a man would send my baby off like that,” the woman moaned. “May he roast in hell.”
The husband became rigid. “What do you say!”
“That such a man would risk his own life time and time again to save ours,” the priest said gravely, “as well as the lives of countless others, may the dear Lord reward him well.”
Jake unbuttoned his jacket pocket and extracted Lilliana’s letter. “I have brought this from your daughter.”
Instantly the woman leapt up, tore the letter from his grasp, ripped it open, scanned the page, and crushed it to her breast. She rocked back and forth, sobbing, “Alive, alive.”
Gently the husband reached for the letter, read it, and looked up at a room he did not see. “I must go for her.”
“It would be tough but probably not impossible to arrange for you to travel,” Jake said. “I can write a couple of letters that might help, but my influence is barely above zero here, and you’d have to expect long delays on the way. Transport is extremely crowded.”
“Pay attention, Peter,” Father Mikus urged. “Listen to the colonel. This is important.”
The bespectacled man struggled to focus. “What do you suggest?”
“We have arranged for her to be issued papers—ID card, travel permits, assistance requests, official passage, the works. All we need is for you to write the Red Cross in Badenburg and confirm where you are. We can even arrange for an escort, with time—an older woman or another family traveling in this direction.”
“My wife and I will speak of this,” Lilliana’s father said in a trembling voice. “We are in your debt for all time.”
“Could I ask, did Patrique mention anything to you about a traitor?” Jake asked.
“Not to me,” the husband replied. “Three weeks after Lilliana disappeared, Patrique came to us and told us he had news that had to be delivered in person. He said that she had gone to Marseille as his messenger, and had not returned. He feared the worst. My wife,” he paused, then went on more quietly, “my wife was hysterical. Lilliana is our only child. She came late in life, after we thought children were denied to us.” He looked down at the letter. “All this time I have tried to hope, but it has been hard. So very hard.”
Father Mikus patted the man’s shoulder. “We will leave you. I shall return later. Arrangements must be made.” He stood and motioned Jake from the apartment.
Once they were outside, Mikus said, “They are too distressed to say it, so I shall do it for them. Thank you.”
“You are welcome.”
“Come.” As they made their way back downstairs, Mikus said, “Your German is good, very good.”
“Thanks. I was studying it when the war broke out.” Jake followed him through the courtyard and back out into the dusty street. There the children gathered, waiting for them.
He watched the priest walk over to a vendor, buy a fistful of sweets for a single copper, and begin distributing them to all the little hands. Somehow he seemed to know when one had already received a sweet, for several times he slapped away an eager palm and directed the candy into another mouth. When all the sweets were gone, he waved impatiently and spoke harsh words in Arabic. The children laughed as though it were part of the game and continued to dance along behind him.
Jake drew up alongside him and asked, “Do you know the name Ibn Rashid?”
“Do not speak those words in public,” Mikus snapped. He picked up the pace. “Why do you ask?”
“The assassins we captured in Gibraltar were sent by him.”
“Then this is both good and bad news.” They turned into narrow passages just as the sun cleared the city wall. Suddenly their entire world became one of brilliant light and impenetrable shadow. “Good because the man whose name you spoke is no fool and would not spend money chasing after one already dead. Bad because he is a jackal, a hyena, a robber of graves, and will do his best to ensure that Patrique’s life is as brief as possible.”
As they entered the square, Jake found the courage to venture, “May I ask you something?”
“You may ask anything you like. Whether or not I answer is an entirely different matter.”
“From time to time people have been coming to me for advice. About spiritual matters. I try to help them. I pray,” Jake said, and faltered.
Father Mikus stopped and turned to him. “You are a believer?”
“I try to be. But when I try to help people, I feel . . .” He searched for the word.
“You feel human,” the priest said. “You feel trapped within all that is not perfect within yourself. You feel empty.”
“That’s it,” Jake said, glad he had spoken.
“Good,” Father Mikus said, turning back around. “Only when we are faced with our own emptiness can we open ourselves fully to be filled by the Spirit.” He started forward. “Come, let us get out of this heat.”
Jake hustled to keep up with him. “But I feel like there has to be somebody else who would be better—”
“Look around yourself,” Father Mikus snapped. “Do you see crowds of perfect people? Do you see a world filled with the Savior’s love? Do you find a thousand people calling out to be used by our Lord? No. You find nothing of the sort. You find bitterness and pain and wounded spirits. You find unanswered needs crying out to uncaring hearts.”
He stopped once more and fixed his impatient gaze on Jake. “Accept that the Father is calling you, Colonel. Accept that in your imperfections grow the seeds of His divine love. Be content to know that no matter how flawed you may be, no matter how great your failings, the Lord sees in you the possibility of perfection. Why? Because you have opened yourself up to be used by Him, the One in whom perfection is complete.”
Chapter Thirteen
&nb
sp; When they returned to the priest’s house, Jake found that Pierre had returned upstairs. Jake sat on the crumbling stoop and watched the day’s growing heat gradually beat all life from the dusty square. There was little to be seen beyond a series of tumbledown French colonial structures, a few tired donkeys, and a handful of dusty Arabs intent about their business. Yet he could not get enough of the scene. He sat and watched the day take hold, and decided that he would go exploring on his own if Pierre did not rise soon.
Jake stiffened at the sight of two figures in Western garb crossing the square toward him. As they drew closer, he recognized Lilliana’s parents. The mother was carrying a steaming cauldron, her hands protected by layers of padding. Jake hurried over and asked in German, “Can I help you with that?”
“I am sure the good father has shown you as little concern over food as he shows for himself,” she replied, ignoring his offer. “So I have brought you some real sustenance.”
Father Mikus appeared in the doorway. “You can scarcely afford to share the little you have, Edna.”
“Nonsense. This is a time for celebration. Move aside, Father, and see to plates and spoons for these hungry men.”
As Edna bustled into the house, her husband stopped in front of Jake and solemnly extended his hand. “I failed even to introduce myself properly. Please forgive my bad manners. I am Peter Goss.”
“Nice to meet you. Jake Burnes.”
“The honor is mine, I assure you.” The handshake was firm, belying the man’s frail image. “You cannot imagine what joy you have brought into our lives.”
“My husband speaks for both of us.” Edna Goss appeared in the doorway, nervously wiping her hands over and over with her cloth. “I wish to apologize for my words about Patrique.”
Gibraltar Passage Page 9