Chapter 27
CHAPTER 27
J ack’s message tugged at Lizzie’s emotions. What he said made perfect sense. Leaving was the sensible thing to do. Before she returned downstairs, she stuffed the bulky wireless and novel back into the hidden compartment and wondered how she could get Hannah to leave with her.
‘What did he say?’ Hannah asked.
Lizzie told her he ordered them both to abandon the mission and to leave the farmhouse. ‘He said he’s arranging a pickup at the usual place for tomorrow night.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know where that is. You could come with me…’
‘I will explain or take you myself.’
Lizzie knew what Hannah would say before she said it, but she hoped she was wrong.
‘I can’t go now. I’m only just getting started. The office is a goldmine of information. You should get out now, though. I will figure out where you can stay and give you directions for the pickup.’
‘Won’t you reconsider?’ Lizzie asked, conflicted between her loyalty to Jack and to Hannah. It didn’t feel right to leave her, but it didn’t feel right to disobey Jack’s orders, either.
There was a rap at the door. They both jumped and stared at each other.
‘Expecting anyone?’ Lizzie whispered.
Hannah said, ‘No, did you hide the wireless?’
Lizzie nodded, panic shooting through her. ‘What shall we do?’
Hannah walked over to the window and peeked through the slit at the side of the blackout blinds. There was another louder knock, and she froze as if deciding whether to answer, before she strode to the door and turned the handle.
Lizzie stood watching, her heart bouncing in her chest, half expecting to see menacing Gestapo figures in trench coats.
The thoughts swirled through her mind. Had Francois been unable to hold out any longer? Was this the end of her time as a special agent? She remembered her trainers saying it would be a miracle for an SOE agent to survive longer than a few weeks in Nazi occupied territory, which is why they designed operations of the get-in, get-out style. Lizzie had defied the odds by staying longer, but maybe this was the day her luck ran out.
The tension drained from Lizzie’s body when she saw Margot, the lady who had begged her to take the Stern family in.
Hannah grabbed her arm and pulled her inside. ‘Thank goodness it’s you. Come in quickly. We might be blown.’
‘What happened?’ Margot asked. ‘You both look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘They’ve got one of ours. It’s better for you if you don’t know the details. What do you need?’ Hannah asked, her tone businesslike.
Margot said she had come to see if there was any news of the Sterns. ‘I can’t get them out of my head. Did they make it over the Pyrenees and into Spain?’
‘You shouldn’t have come just for that,’ Hannah scolded. ‘You’re supposed to make contact only in an emergency.’ Hannah’s voice softened as she saw Margot’s distraught expression on her lined face. ‘I got word yesterday the Sterns made it to Spain. I don’t know more than that.’
This was news to Lizzie, who had thought about the family’s progress too. ‘Will they be picked up from Gibraltar and taken back to London like the airmen you rescued?’ she asked.
‘I doubt it,’ Hannah said, her voice flat. ‘French Jews don’t warrant the same treatment as British airmen.’
‘So where will they go if not to England?’ Lizzie asked.
‘Who knows? Isaac said if they reach Spain, he will try to get a visa for America. I didn’t discourage him, but it’s a long shot, to say the least.’
Margot looked relieved and soon, she slipped out the back door and disappeared into the dark night like a phantom.
Lizzie and Hannah flopped onto the sofa.
‘Thank God we’re not blown,’ Lizzie said.
‘Yet…’ Hannah said ominously. ‘It’s early days. If Francois is alive, he could crack at any moment, and they’ll be all over us like a rash.’
‘Does he know this address?’
‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘We’re careful about that kind of thing for this very reason. Margot has the address from an operation, but most of the network don’t know where I live.’
Lizzie said, ‘But he knows the rough area we’re in. He left me the chalk mark on the oak tree to meet him.’
‘True,’ Hannah said. ‘And that’s only about two miles from here. It wouldn’t take those bastards long to track us down. There are few houses in this area—it’s mainly agricultural land.’
‘Is there any way we can find out if Francois is still alive?’ Lizzie asked, her voice ringing with sadness.
‘The only chance is if I overhear something at work tomorrow. Lots of soldiers from all over Paris come in and out. That’s why it’s such a brilliant position to be in.’
Lizzie stared at Hannah and realised she was deadly serious. She was going to waltz into German High Command tomorrow morning as though nothing had happened, even though one of her lead Resistance members, at this very second, could spill his guts to the Gestapo about her: Angel, the Liberty Network leader.
‘What else do you suggest?’ Hannah asked, seeing the shock on Lizzie’s face, and raising an eyebrow.
‘Jack says you should come back to London with me tomorrow night.’
When Hannah didn’t refuse, Lizzie pressed on, hoping she was seriously considering her suggestion. ‘Imagine how wonderful it would be if Jack could get a message to Henry and you two could see each other again. It must be more than a year, isn’t it?’
Hannah turned her head, and Lizzie felt the force of her blue eyes studying her. ‘It’s been one year, five months—.’ Her voice tailed off as she moved her fingers. ‘And six days.’
Lizzie stared at Hannah, thinking how awful it would be not to see Jack for so long. Not to know if she would ever see him again. It was too terrible to imagine.
On impulse, she beseeched her, ‘Come back with me, Hannah. Do this for you and Henry. You need to see each other, even if it’s just for a day, or even a few hours! You can return and resume your work when things have cooled down. ’
Hannah’s eyes glowed with raw emotion. ‘As lovely as that sounds, I can’t. There’s too much at stake.’
‘You are allowed to have a life, you know. All of this is important. I understand what we’re fighting for—the freedoms you are fighting for—but still ...’ Lizzie rubbed her forehead with one hand as a pain gripped her head.
‘I know it must look that way. But I’m not like you and Jack. I have no home to go back to.’
Lizzie’s throat clogged, and the tears seeped from her eyes. She couldn’t hold back the pent-up emotion any longer. It was all too sad to bear, and the feelings swept through her like a giant wave.
‘But Henry is your home,’ she whispered. ‘And me and Jack. We all care for you so much. Jack said you can come home with me. You’ve more than earned a place at the SOE. You’d be invaluable to them as a full-time agent behind the scenes.’
Hannah said, ‘It is very thoughtful of you. And Jack. But I’m not a behind-the-scenes kind of girl. I need to be in the centre of the action. I’d go insane in some office in London instead of here in the thick of it. As long as the Nazis are terrorising France, I will be here, fighting them every step of the way.’
Lizzie reached for Hannah’s hand and squeezed it. ‘I understand. I just wish it were different.’
‘Me too. After the war—if I make it through—I dream of visiting my cousins in Jerusalem. If the British are still ruling there, perhaps Jack will help me arrange it,’ Hannah said, her tone wistful. ‘In the thirties, when things got really frightening for us in Berlin, my cousins wrote to invite us to join them. How I wish my parents had left Germany and boarded a ship to Haifa whilst they still could.’
Hannah continued talking as if in a trance. ‘Every Passover, we prayed for “Next year in Jerusalem”. Jews have always lived in the Land of Israel, but I used to think reestablishing our own independent state in the historic homeland was just a Zionist dream. With the rise of the Reich, I see it as our only hope of having the right to defend ourselves in our own land. This time it’s Hitler, next time, it will be someone else.’
Lizzie listened as Hannah, who was visibly emotional, talked of her family.
‘My father told me stories of how our ancestors returned to Israel after each time a tyrant expelled them. When the Romans occupied Judea, they did everything in their power to crush the population. After yet another rebellion, Roman Emperor Hadrian, renamed Judea, Syria Palaestina, to punish the Jews and try to erase the link to their land.’
Hannah spoke softly, sharing snippets of the history of the Jewish people.
Lizzie couldn’t imagine what it must be like to come from a nation that was persecuted over thousands of years just because of their ethnic identity, but she knew what it was like to have her homeland occupied. It was likely the Nazis had entrenched themselves at Seagrove. She clung to the hope that it wasn’t so, and her grandparents still lived in their beautiful house overlooking Portelet Bay in Jersey. Lizzie cherished the memory of her family home exactly as it was when she left.
‘Do you think the Jews will be able to live in peace in their homeland when this is all over?’ Lizzie asked.
‘Not unless we fight for our lives and destroy the Nazis. There won’t be a Jew alive if they repeat what they did in Germany and Poland. Nor a person with a physical disability, mental illness, a homosexual or any other group the Nazis regard as inferior to their bloody “master race”. They have a special word for non-Aryans, you know: Untermenschen. They class us as subhuman and believe our genes must be eliminated from the gene pool.’
The tears rolled down Lizzie’s face and she surrendered to the emotion. Her heart felt like it was bursting, and she found it cathartic to release the pain.
The two young women sat together in mutual understanding, Lizzie sniffing, her face pink and damp. She didn’t know how long passed until Hannah stood. When she returned, she placed two cups of coffee on the table in front of them.
‘You must leave soon. I’ll take you as far as I can without risking leading the Boche to our contact’s door.’