Sons of Thunder (30 page)

“Of course.”

He sang a mournful song, something that should probably move her, but instead it turned the taste in her mouth sour as she poured the last of the barrel of retsina into a pitcher.

She banged it onto the colonel’s table. He looked up at her, whined out a couple bars in her direction. Winked.

How, exactly, did Lucien think she might sneak away to meet this supposedly English contact, let alone determine if he was truly British? Ask him for tea? Perhaps make him sing “God save the King?”

A shot cracked the air, as if the blue sky had split in half.

Sofia jerked, the plate in her hand crashing to the stones.

Another.

The colonel put down his accordion, the last of the song eaten in the waves. Sofia turned, spied Dino in Zoë’s arms.

Lucien flashed by her periphery, running down the boardwalk.

Towards the fishery.

No.

The Germans had risen, grabbed their caps.

The colonel shot her a glance, almost—was that a warning? It jolted her for a moment, that scant texture of concern in his eyes. She raised her chin and ducked into the kitchen.

Ava stood at the back door, her apron to her mouth. From the warehouses, a finger of black traced the sky.

“Stay here,” Sofia said. She untied her apron, balled it into Ava’s hands.

Please, God, don’t let it be Ari and Nikos.
She hadn’t checked the time, but certainly they hadn’t a scheduled transmission—unless—oh no!—unless last night the SS had triangulated their position.

She hustled down the cobbled street then picked up her pace to a run, skirting flower stands, women selling bags of walnuts, cigarette vendors. She dodged two bicyclists and nearly trampled a goat that ran from her in erratic terror, bell tinkling.

Above the harbor, smoke blackened the sky.

A chill swelled inside her as, from a half-block away, she saw the flames licking out of the fishery, windows shattering in the blaze. SS men, their
Sturmgewehr
rifles at their hips, dared anyone to extinguish the flames.

Of course, a crowd turned out, gasps as people pressed against each other, drew back when something inside—maybe the barrels of oil they used as a cover business—exploded.

Sofia pushed through the crowd, spotting Lucien on the other side, his hat low, standing away, arms folded. His gaze slipped off her and landed on—

No. Ari and Nikos, shackled, the radio in pieces at their feet. Nikos’s nose bled, crooked at an ugly angle. Ari, no more than sixteen, hung his head, his shoulders rising and falling.

No.

The flames licked out of the building, reaching toward the crowd. The SS agents backed their captives onto the beach then turned and pushed them down, onto the sand.

Sofia began to tremble. She searched for Lucien. He had his head down, almost as if he didn’t care.

Or couldn’t.

No! She pushed to the front of the crowd, her voice webbed inside her chest. No!

God, please…
She didn’t know where the prayer emerged from, but she let it free, followed it with a moan.

An SS officer—she recognized him as a regular at the taverna—pressed the barrel of his pistol against Nikos’s temple.

Nikos raised his eyes, and Sofia stood paralyzed as his gaze caught hers. A single tear tracked down his cheek. She cupped her hand over her mouth, crushing her lips to her teeth as she held in her scream.

God, please, if You are listening…!

It happened so fast, the click, the shot, almost like the popping of a cork. But in that second, right before her horrified eyes, Nikos crumpled to the ground. His blood wept into the sand.

Next to him, Ari began to sob. Beg.

Sofia felt hands on her arms and realized she was swaying.

She must have kept her feet, although the world whooshed up at her. She must have stumbled back to the taverna, although she had no recollection of the kitchen, of Ava gathering her into her arms. She had no idea how she made it home.

She woke in the double bed, sweat slicking her body despite the cold tremor wracking her. Dino played on the floor, as Zoë rocked in the chair beside him, her eyes on Sofia.

“How did—”

“The colonel. You collapsed at the taverna, and he’d returned for the accordion. He brought you home.”

Zoë said it without rancor, a sort of relief in her eyes. “He doesn’t suspect that you might be involved. He thinks you were overcome with heat, perhaps exhaustion. Ava told him that you’d been feeling ill.”

Yes. For over a decade now.

“Lucien stopped by after the colonel left. The SS took Ari for questioning at the central offices. We don’t know what will happen to him. They’re trying to find out more information.”

Sofia scrubbed her hand down her face. Right now, the English might be dropping their agent at the landing zone near the Blue Cave.

Dino got up and toddled to her. She pulled him onto the bed with her. He straddled her lap and she played patty-cake with him. Patty-cake, patty-cake—and put it in the oven for Dino and me… “I’m done, Zoë. No more.”

Zoë just rocked, her eyes on Sofia’s.

The breeze carried in the smells of the olive grove, the roses twining up the house, the sound of cicadas nestled in the trees. Behind it,
night pressed into the room, dotted by a thousand pricks of traitorous, damning light.

“We need new wine.” Ava’s voice echoed through the taverna, like a stone skipping into the sea. Sofia heard her footsteps slap across the portico but didn’t turn from her place just inside the lap of the thatched roof.

It could be any day, the sky cloudless over the azure Ionian Sea, the waves barely lapping at the shore, the water so clear that if she were in a fishing boat, she could trace the schools of sardines and the gallop of an octopus as it ballooned the sand.

A day to deceive herself. Perhaps if she closed her eyes to the German transport ship in the harbor, the swastika flags hanging like cockroaches from the building in the central square, the black garb of the two SS officers sitting at a table in the portico, their smoke twining up to catch in the overhanging bursts of bougainvillea—yes, if she concentrated on the salty tang of the sea in the air, the cry of gulls, the tinkling of goat bells, the smells of the
mavro psomi
baking in the kitchen, she might cajole herself into believing that time hadn’t passed.

That Markos would soon arrive, hauling in his fresh catch, steal a glance at her in the kitchen. She could always sense him, her ears tuned to his step, his soft voice. She loved to lure him with her song, capture his thoughts so completely it rendered him motionless, dripping seawater onto the stone floor, stolen by her muse. She could trace his outline even as he secreted himself behind her—his lean body tan, his shoulders sculpted by the sea, powerful hands, his eyes watching her—never intrusive, but with a sort of wonder.

Her throat filled. She hadn’t sung since the day he disappeared. She’d simply lost the tune and had no desire to root for it in her heart.

Recently, however, when little Dino curled into her breast, she heard something, not unlike a song, echo deep inside. Someday, perhaps, she might find the tune, although she had no hope for words. Not with such sorrow stealing them away.

“Did you hear me?” Ava stepped up beside her, wiping her hands on her apron. “We need new wine. Can you help me haul it from the cellar?”

“Why should we give them our best wine?” Sofia didn’t even try to scour the bitterness from her voice.

“Because…we have it to give. It is not the recipient who determines the value, daughter. It’s the giver.”

Daughter. Ava had called her that from the moment she stepped into the taverna off the boat, wearing Markos’s coat, her stomach already filling out her dress. Sofia couldn’t help but lean into the name, to swallow it down.

Let it salve her.

“I hate serving our best to those pigs.”

Ava stepped out of the portico’s shadow into the sun-baked sand. “We will make our bread, pour our best wine, and we will serve it to the Germans. Just because we serve it to swine doesn’t make it slop.”

The sunlight had chased the shadow from Ava’s face. For a moment, the battles vanished, and instead, a young woman looked to the sky. Opened her mouth, as if she might be drinking it in.

“What are you doing?”

“Drinking the sun.” She held out her hands, strong, lined, empty hands.

Sofia held up her own. Closed them against the resemblance.

“I stood here every morning after my sons left. Watching. Hoping that the ferry would return them. Sometimes I could even see Markos, his bag over his shoulder, his hair too long in his eyes, scraping up the beach to me. Or Dino, his face so full of mischief, arms open, flinging himself into mine.” She turned to Sofia.

“Then one day, you appeared. Just stepped onto the pier, staring at Zante. And when your hands went to your belly, I tasted the sunlight pouring through me, heating my bones.”

Ava had Markos’s—and perhaps Dino’s—eyes. She had the ability to pour them into Sofia, make her forget herself and believe in the person reflected there.

“You have never told me what happened to my boys.” She drew in a breath. “I admit, I was afraid to ask.”

“Ava—”

“No. I no longer need to know.” She touched her fingers ever so lightly to Sofia’s cheek. “When I look at little Dino, I feel as though I have my answers.”

Sofia pressed her hands against her stomach. She’d awakened with it empty and angry, and now it spasmed.

“I know, if I am to see my boys again, it is because God wills it. And if He doesn’t…”

Sofia looked away. “How can you believe in God’s deliverance after everything that’s happened, everything you’ve lost?”

Ava sighed, dropped her hand. Patted it on Sofia’s. “Everyone thinks that believing in God means that He will deliver us from trouble. But this isn’t true—God delivers us
through
trouble. It is in the middle of trouble that we truly discover what it means to live, who we truly are. Our God says that He has overcome everything the world throws at us—but we are stubborn, we want to handle it ourselves. Or
we believe that because of our sins He won’t help us. Or even, because of what has happened to us, that God has turned His back.”

Sofia drew in a sharp breath.

“But when we try and deliver ourselves, our strength will give out. We have to open our angry, stubborn fists and let it go. That’s when we find our deliverance.”

She held her hands out again. “God
will
deliver us, daughter. One day at a time.”

Sofia closed her eyes in a slow wince. Turned to fetch the wine. Ava caught her arm, nudged her back to the hot sunlight.

“Drink the sun with me, Sofia. You will need it for the cloudy days.”

Drink the sun. Sofia instead stared out at the waves, saw Markos on his tiny red fishing boat, standing with his hand on the mast, waving to her. Dino beside him, hands behind his head, his legs lazy over the side as his feet trailed in the water. A warmth stirred inside, and she longed to let escape the smile that nudged her. Then the sun caught her eyes, burning, and they watered.

“I’ll fetch the wine.”

After standing in the heat, her skin chilled against the clammy exhale of the wine cellar. She stood at the open door outside the taverna, the steps leading down to the grotto chipped out of the rock, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the shadows.

Water sweated down the walls, turning the stones black. An electric wire ran along the outside of the rock. At the bottom, a bulb dangled from a socket, and from it, a chain.

Running her hand along the side of the rock, she descended into the shadows.

Her hand brushed the chain. She caught it, tugged. Nothing. Blown, probably. From memory, she edged into the blackness, toward the next light.

Water puddled the floor, the breath of the damp cellar licking her skin. Around her rose casks of wine, stacked against the walls. The cellar had originally been a twisting cave until the Stavroses generations before hollowed it out, turned the tunnels into storage. She reached for the next dangling chain.

“Stop. Don’t.”

The voice shook her cold. Low, but with a warning tone to it that raked up a tremor.

Then someone stepped from behind a tall pallet of barrels, shining a flashlight onto the floor, chasing away the secrets. Taller than she remembered—although, yes, time would have done that. Broader too, and on his face an expression she couldn’t read. Not with the layer of grizzle and dirt, a scrape across his jaw, a fisherman’s cap pulled low over black—probably grimy—hair that skiffed his collar. He looked every inch a fisherman, tanned and ruddy and seasoned. The man he should have become.

No
…it couldn’t be.

But she met his eyes and recognized in them a teenager, a boy caught in a song, even as his mouth opened, his breath coiled, his eyes blinked at her.

Markos.

CHAPTER 23