Simple Faith (25 page)

Peter relaxed slightly. It could all still be a trick to keep him thinking they were headed for help when in fact … Nacht und Nebel.

“Not far now,” the soldier added as he gazed out the back of the truck. He tightened his grip on his rifle and sat up a little straighter.

So he’d been right after all. They were moving now through dense forest. They would shoot Roger and him and leave their bodies to rot where no one would find them for a very long time. They would simply disappear.

Peter thought about the letters he’d written to his parents before setting out on his first mission. By now those letters would have been delivered along with the news that he was missing in action and presumed dead. He wished he’d taken the time over these last weeks to leave a letter for Anja. There was so much he wanted to tell her—how she had changed his life with her quiet faith and incredible courage; how he had thought that in time they would find each other again once the war was over. But the thing he would regret most of all was never having told her how he had come to love her and how all that had kept him going these endless days and nights since his capture was the hope that one day they would be reunited and start a life together.

As the truck cleared the woods and the road ran through open fields on either side, Peter breathed easier. He also noticed something he had failed to see before. In the distance, he could see a mountain range. It could only be the Pyrenees, and if that were true, then he and the others were closer to freedom than he had imagined. As they pulled up to a gate and waited for a nun to open it, the officer turned in his seat and stared at Peter through the small opening that separated them.

“You will stay in the truck,” he instructed.

“I—”

At a nod from the officer, the guard aimed his rifle at Peter’s head.

“Okay. Just be sure my friend here is well taken care of.”

Mikel went every day to the small but still dangerous river near the convent that they would need to ford to reach the mountains. He was anxious to get Anja and Daniel as far away from Schwarz as possible. He had grown up in those mountains, and he had many friends in the area. They would all be safe there for the duration of the war.

But Daniel was still too weak to travel, and it hardly mattered since the river was swollen with the beginnings of a spring thaw. For now they were safe behind the cloistered walls of the convent. Still he worried. As he regained his strength, Daniel slept late and went to bed early, and Anja had begun to look for ways that she might be useful to the nuns. At first Sister Marie had suggested that perhaps she could just visit the ward, perhaps read to a patient or write letters for them, and that had satisfied Anja. Sister Marie had suggested that Anja dress as a novice—a girl hoping to become a nun. That disguise would raise fewer questions than her usual garb of homespun pants and a ragged sweater.

That morning as Mikel returned from his walk, he saw a German military truck pull up to the gates. A low-ranking officer strode to the entrance and impatiently rang the bell. When one of the nuns finally appeared, he barked out a series of commands, and when she opened the gate, he brushed past her and ordered the driver and another soldier accompanying him to carry in a man on a stretcher.

Mikel hung back, watching the action from the shadows provided by one of the archways of the convent. When he saw the officer follow the men inside, he hurried to a side entrance the nuns had shown him. Inside he made his way along the narrow corridor to the room that Anja shared with Daniel. He knocked lightly and then opened the door.

Daniel was sitting up in bed with Sister Marie seated next to him in the room’s only chair. She laid aside the book she’d evidently been reading to Daniel and smiled. “It seems you have a visitor, Daniel,” she said and got up, clearly prepared to leave Mikel with the boy.

“I need to speak with Anja,” Mikel said.

“She’s visiting the patients,” Daniel announced. “She said that soon I could go with her and that it would cheer them up to see me.”

“She’s right,” Mikel assured him, ruffling Daniel’s hair as he looked at the nun. “How long ago did she leave?”

“Quarter of an hour at least,” Sister Marie replied. “Is something wrong?”

Daniel glanced up, his brow furrowed by a frown. “Something has happened to Mama?”

“Not at all,” Mikel said with a heartiness he hoped sounded genuine. “I just need to tell her something. I’ll go to the ward and wait for her there.”

He left the room and heard the nun resume her reading as he closed the door behind him. The corridor was deserted, but he moved with the caution born of dozens of crossings over the Great Pyrenees Mountains, leading downed Allied airmen like Peter Trent to safety. He wondered where Peter was now. He hoped he was safe—perhaps on his way back to England and from there home to America. He didn’t like the guy—mostly because he suspected that Anja was in love with him—but he did not wish him harm.

Anja was sitting at the bedside of a German soldier. The man was dictating a letter to her, and she smiled at him and laughed at something he said. Mikel knew she wasn’t just pretending to be enjoying her time with the man. He might be Mikel’s enemy, but Anja’s Quaker faith had no room for labeling people and certainly not for lumping them into some group simply because they were of one nationality or another. No, to Anja this man had every bit as much possibility of connecting with the so-called Inner Light that Anja and those of her faith believed existed in every human as Mikel or even the sisters in the convent did.

He had once asked her if she could honestly believe that Hitler had even a flicker of that light inside him. She had smiled and said, “Of course he does. For the time being it appears he prefers to live in darkness.”

Mikel thought he would never understand this woman, and that was why he loved her to the very core of his being. He was about to call out to her and motion for her to join him in the corridor when he saw the two soldiers carry the stretcher into the ward. The only empty bed was the one next to where Anja was sitting. Reverend Mother glided down the way between the two rows of beds until she came to a halt next to Anja. Mikel noticed how she stood in such a way that she was shielding Anja from the view of the officer who had followed his men. Anja did not look up but continued to write. She was dressed in a pale blue dress with a white bibbed apron, and with her hair covered by a triangular scarf, she looked little different from the other nuns on the ward. Mikel retreated back down the corridor before the officer could spot him. Any man in the convent who was not a patient would arouse immediate suspicion. Anja was safe, and that was all that mattered.

   CHAPTER 13   

S
ometimes Anja amazed herself with how calm she could be in the face of danger. Certainly the unexpected arrival of the German officer in charge of the village could be considered a threatening if not dangerous situation for her and Mikel and Daniel. Yet as the officer followed Reverend Mother down the aisle between the rows of beds, Anja remained focused on the letter she was writing for the German soldier. He’d been badly burned in a battle, and his hands and face were heavily bandaged. He was also under a good deal of sedation for the pain, and the medicine made him a little silly, causing Anja to smile at what he told her to write in the letter to his parents.

“You there,” the officer said in a voice meant for someone at the far end of the ward. “You, writing the letter,” he added.

He pushed rudely past Reverend Mother and stood over Anja, glaring down at her. He grabbed the paper from her hands and scanned it. “You are German?”

“I speak several languages,” she replied.

“English?”

She nodded.

He turned to Reverend Mother. “This woman will sit with the prisoner at all times. She will eat and sleep here, is that understood? If the prisoner speaks while she is asleep or … otherwise occupied, someone will immediately call for her.”

“As you wish.”

He turned his attention back to Anja. “In the days to come, I will permit visits by other prisoners—his peers. You are to show no interest in these men. Rather, you must appear to them to be going about your nursing duties. Above all, do not reveal your knowledge of English. We want them to feel free to speak openly, and they will only do that if they assume no one speaks their language. They will never suspect a mere girl—a novice like you …” He chuckled, clearly proud of his cleverness.

“Will that be all?” Reverend Mother had not moved a muscle, and yet dismissal was clear in every syllable.

“For now.” He turned to the two soldiers and gave one of them orders to stand guard, then led the way as he and the other soldier left the ward.

Anja had not considered that a guard would be stationed to watch not only the prisoner but her as well. She had hoped to question the Englishman to see if perhaps he had any knowledge of Peter. It was unlikely, but sometimes on the escape line, people heard things about other evaders. “His name?” she asked the soldier, speaking in German.

The soldier shrugged and then slouched against the wall. He was no more than seventeen and looked bone weary. “Here,” she said, offering the chair she’d pulled next to the German soldier’s bed. “You will be here for some time, and we will have ample warning when your superior is returning.”

Gratefully the soldier accepted her offer. He even smiled at her and murmured his thanks. Anja nodded then turned her attention to the man in the bed. He was covered in sweat, and the only sound he made was a series of low moans. She wondered if she was expected to record those murmurs of distress for the officer. She wondered if he would ever come out of his delirium enough to answer her questions about Peter.

Days passed with no news of Roger and no sign of the Gestapo agents supposedly on their way to take charge of Peter and the others, confirming Peter’s belief that the officer had never sent for them. It rained every day, and if they got any exercise or fresh air at all, they came back to their cells soaked and chilled for the effort. Instead of being suspicious of Peter and his special relationship with the officer, the others made it clear that the longer Peter could keep up the lessons, the better it would be for all of them.