Simple Faith (28 page)

M
ikel had no illusions about Anja’s true motive when she came to him later that afternoon.

“Do you still wish to marry me, Mikel?”

Although he was taken aback at her directness, he did not show his surprise. He was a simple man—a practical man—and there could be only one answer to such a question. “I do,” he said as he continued to scatter straw for the lone cow the nuns kept for milking.

“Good.” She walked away but not before he saw her face. He knew that look. It was the tight, determined expression she took on whenever she was planning something. “Anja?”

She paused and looked back at him.

“Do you wish to marry me?”

“We will marry,” she replied, and although he knew this was not an answer, he would not risk questioning her for fear she would change her mind. “If you are sure,” she added, and the way she looked at him, he knew that she was offering him this one last chance to back out. He also knew that in that look was the truth of her feelings for him—she cared for him as a friend and colleague. She did not love him.

“I am sure.”

“Then I will ask Reverend Mother how we can do this.” To Mikel’s surprise, she did not turn to go again. Instead, she took a step toward him and cupped his cheek with her palm. “Thank you, Mikel. I will—”

He closed his eyes. “No promises, Anja. It is enough.” He held her hand. “What will you tell the American?” He had always refused to use the man’s name. He was no different from all the others they had shepherded to safety. He was an evader and as such had no name.

“Nothing.”

“He loves you.”
And you love him
.

“He only thinks he loves me. It is wartime—an unreal time when nothing is as it seems.” She smiled at him. “You and I understand what is real and what is not.”

He watched her walk away. She was far too thin, but there was such strength in the set of her shoulders. No, she did not love him, but he would take whatever she could offer, and in time perhaps …

Suddenly he knew what he must do. Until the American was out of her life and back with his unit, he would always be there between them. With Anja and Daniel relatively safe in the convent, Mikel could take the American the rest of the way.

Every waking moment, Peter, Ian, and Colin worked on their escape plan. No one would say it, but they all knew that none of them would go without Roger. The problem was that Roger was not getting any better. In fact, when the German officer had sent Ian and Colin for a visit, still hoping for them to reveal details about the Allied invasion that he could take to his superiors, they had returned to report that Roger was running a high fever and struggling to breathe. They told Peter that a nurse had confided that Roger’s lungs were full of fluid and they did not have the medicine necessary to help him.

A few days later the officer called Peter to his office.

“Your friend died last night,” he said in a tone devoid of any sympathy.

Peter had a moment when he suspected a trick.

But then the officer sighed heavily. “I suppose we can bury him in the cemetery near the convent. The ground is still frozen, but—” He suddenly looked directly at Peter and smiled. “But surely you and the others would wish to give him a proper funeral. You will dig the grave and prepare the coffin. After all, have you not been asking for more opportunities for the men to exercise and be outside?”

Peter clenched and unclenched his fists. It would serve no purpose to punch this little Napoleon in the mouth. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell the others the news. Is there anything else?”

It was evident that the officer had expected more of a reaction from Peter. He stared at him for a long moment and then dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “Be ready to leave in ten minutes,” he said as Peter left the office.

There was no opportunity to talk as they were herded onto the truck and rode with a guard over the now-familiar road to the convent. But Peter was coming up with a plan—one he hoped would get them all—including Anja and even Mikel—to safety. The key was finding a way to speak with Mikel.

Once when the German officer had been called out of the room to handle some business, Peter had gotten a good look at a map of the area. Not only were they within sight of the mountains that stood between them and freedom, they were only a short distance from the village where they were supposed to meet up with their Basque guide and perhaps some other airmen to start their trek over the mountains and into Spain. He didn’t stop to think about the dangers they would face on that journey or once they reached Spain. For now the goal was to get to the safe house at the foot of the mountains—three airmen, one woman, and their Basque guide—Mikel.

Anja and the nuns had done everything they could to save the British airman, but the medicines they had at their disposal were primitive at best, and they had mostly relied on home remedies to try and control his weak heart. He had become a favorite of the sisters, teasing them on the rare occasions when he seemed to rally and be capable of fighting off the fever that had finally taken him. Even the Germans on the ward had come to like him.

With Roger dead, she could not help but wonder what the German officer would do next. The guards had not shown up now for two days while the Englishman’s body had lain in the convent’s small, unheated chapel awaiting a decision on burial. Mikel was using the time to craft a coffin out of pieces of old wood he’d found stored in the barn’s loft. The ground was still partially frozen, and digging a grave would be hard work. Reverend Mother had sent two of the sisters to set a small fire over a patch of land in the cemetery in an effort to warm the ground enough so that digging would be easier. But she went no further, saying that they must wait for orders.

On the third day, Anja was in the hospital ward delivering the meager lunches the sisters could provide the patients when she heard the now-familiar rumble of the military truck in the courtyard. She looked out the window and saw the officer climb down from the passenger side, and then she saw Peter and the two other airmen who had visited Roger exit the rear of the truck along with two guards.

Sister Marie joined her at the window. “What is this?”

“I don’t know, but I do not think it is something good.”

The guards herded Peter and the others to the barn, and a moment later they—and Mikel—emerged carrying shovels and a pickax and headed toward the small cemetery just outside the convent wall. Marie took hold of Anja’s hand, and the two women watched as the guards ordered the men to start digging—not where the sisters had maintained the fire pit but on frozen ground a few yards away. They kept their guns leveled at the men as they set to work. Meanwhile the officer was headed toward the convent and the hospital ward.

“Look busy,” another of the sisters whispered as she grabbed a mop and began dry-mopping the floor. Anja continued pushing the food cart along and serving their patients. Sister Marie sat at the desk and scribbled something onto a patient’s chart.

Seconds later the officer strode into the ward and walked straight toward Anja. “Have you anything to report?”

“The patient has died,” she began, and he struck her across the mouth.

“You think you can make a joke of this? Information. I want information. Deathbed confessions. Last words.”

Sister Marie came to Anja’s aid, pressing a damp cloth to her friend’s bleeding lip. Anja took the cloth from her and faced her attacker. “I did what I could. I told you we needed medicine to bring down the fever. At the end, he was ranting mostly about his home and his family and his love for his wife and children. That is the information he gave me.”

The man struck her again.

“Go outside. Find something to do close to where they are digging, and listen—they are going to talk, and this time do not fail to bring me what I want. Tell your lover—the Basque—that I want the grave to be the proper depth—no shirking. Speak to him in French. It is the language of lovers, is it not?” He laughed and then snarled. “Go.”

She did as she was told, grabbing a cape from a hook as she exited the building. Glancing up at a window on the second floor, she saw Reverend Mother watching her and knew that the woman was helpless to offer any aid. They were powerless—all of them. This man with his uniform could decide their fate, and no one would question his decision.

She walked quickly across the courtyard, and as she approached the cemetery, the guard who had stayed nights in the hospital ward turned and pointed his gun at her. “What do you want?” he growled.

She answered him in German, explaining that she had been sent by their superior. She was just following orders. With the gun still leveled at her head, she walked to the fire pit. “It would go faster if you let the men dig here,” she continued. “Reverend Mother has been preparing this plot for days now.”

“They will dig where I say they dig,” the guard replied. Suddenly aware that Peter and Mikel had both stopped digging, he swung the gun toward them. “Work,” he shouted and fired the gun at their feet, sending up a scattering of dirt.

Anja shuddered and turned toward the fire. “Then I will just—”

“You will do nothing.” The soldier’s lips curled upward in an expression of pure evil. “I decide.”

“Your officer has given me an order. Will you disobey your superior?”

The man glanced toward the convent and then spat on the ground. “Do as you have been told,” he grumbled and turned back to guarding the others.

The fire was close to where Mikel was swinging the pickax to break up the frozen ground. Anja began scooping up the dirt he loosened and transporting it to the embers to douse them. She kept her back to the guards and spoke to him in French. “Listen and do not react,” she instructed.

Mikel turned away from her and continued swinging the pickax. She spoke between strikes to the hard ground. “You need to get Peter and the others out of here. Get them to our friends so they can take them over the mountains. Once they are gone, the Germans will be preoccupied with hunting them down, and that’s when you, Daniel, and I can make our escape.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Mikel muttered. But something told Anja that he had his own ideas about how they were going to handle things.

“Mikel, listen—”

“You must trust me, Anja,” he said and walked away.

As she watched him, she saw Peter watching her. He lifted his eyebrows—a question she could not answer. She turned back to making sure the embers were extinguished and glanced back at the convent. The officer was standing on the steps, waiting for her. There was no possibility that Peter and the others would reveal information while they were being driven to dig the grave. She would just have to make up something. Anything to buy them the time that Mikel would need to get them on their way.

The officer lifted an expectant eyebrow as she passed him on her way into the convent. “Three weeks,” she murmured. “The invasion is scheduled for three weeks from today.” It was a lie, of course, but she prayed with all her heart that it might be so.

Peter wished he’d paid more attention to learning French as he strained to hear the conversation between Mikel and Anja. He knew that she did most of the talking, but neither one of them was saying much. As soon as Mikel turned away from Anja, Peter moved closer to him, pretending to shovel up the dirt he’d created with the blows of the ax. “What’s going on?” he said, making sure he was turned away from the guards, his head down.