Chapter 11
chapter
Rozel Bay, Jersey
Rocks weighted down the blueprint on a table at the construction site, but Gerrit wouldn’t mind if the wind flung his detailed drawings into Rozel Bay.
To Gerrit’s right, Bernardus toed the ground, softened by a persistent mist. “The Rozel conglomerate in the area lies on a graded base of mudstones, siltstones, and microbreccias.”
The foreman’s heavy gray brows rose over protruding eyes.
Gerrit gave the man his most serious nod. “It means the rocky soil isn’t stable. I needed to compensate for that and design features to support the casemate so it can bear the weight of the gun.”
Schmidt huffed. “When plans are modified, they must be approved by headquarters, by bureaucrats in Paris. That could take weeks. Months.”
So Gerrit hoped. “I’m afraid so, but it’s necessary.”
“Quite,” Bernardus said.
A muttered curse, and the foreman waved his hand over the blueprint. “That will delay my work. My supervisor will not be pleased.”
Gerrit managed a sympathetic murmur. “He’d be even less pleased if you finished construction quickly and the casemate tumbled into the bay.”
A quieter curse, and Schmidt settled his hands on his hips.
Gerrit shifted the rocks off the blueprint and rolled it up. “While you wait, you can do the preparatory work we discussed. But how much work can you complete in winter anyway?”
Schmidt glared at the rough gray clouds overhead. “The weather favors the English.”
Gerrit slid the rolled blueprint into a tube. For once, something did favor the Allies—and Gerrit and Bernardus’s goals.
Outright sabotage would be futile and fatal, but conscientiousness offered a subtle form of sabotage.
Painstaking attention to detail. Investigating every potential problem.
Performing soil studies. Modifying plans and drafting new sets of blueprints.
Such actions had allowed them to delay a handful of projects until winter. Then winter caused its own delays.
It wasn’t much. In fact, it was pathetically little. But it was all they had.
Gerrit and Bernardus bid the foreman farewell and left the construction site, passing a squad of workers huddled in thin clothing.
“We should give them our coats,” Gerrit said.
“They’d be presumed guilty of theft and punished.” Bernardus whacked Gerrit in the arm. “Come on. I have the wild plans. You’re the voice of reason. Don’t mix up our roles.”
Gerrit gave his friend half a smile. When they reached the road, they mounted the bicycles they’d propped against a tree and pedaled east along La Grande Route de Rozel.
On occasion, Gerrit saw Demyan Marchenko and passed on packets of food, but with over five thousand foreign workers in Jersey, the problem was too large for one man to solve.
Those workers were making their own solutions, breaking out of their camps at night and begging for food from local farmers—or stealing it. Dozens of workers were missing.
Two days earlier, a Jerseyman had been killed while protecting his shop from theft, and the Germans were searching house by house for escapees.
The narrow road curved around a promontory, opening a vista over the sea to the east.
Bernardus hopped off his bicycle, rested it against the hedges on the landward side of the road, and crossed to the seaward side. “Beautiful land, ja?” Bernardus said in Dutch.
“Ja.” Gerrit parked his own bicycle and followed his friend down a footpath until they reached the point. A veil of mist concealed France, lying about thirty kilometers to the east. If only he could sail the tube with the blueprints across the waters, under the mist, and to the resistance.
“I saw Charlie Picot on the docks this morning. He gave me this.” From the pocket of his greatcoat, Bernardus pulled out a—lemon.
Gerrit hadn’t seen a lemon since the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. He’d forgotten the brilliance of yellow, the tangy smell. “How . . . ?”
“He said he got it in France. Black market, no doubt.” Bernardus rotated the fruit in his gloved hand. “Enterprising lad.”
He was. “Why did he give it to you?”
A slight smile creased Bernardus’s cheeks. “He only said, ‘I hope you find it of use.’”
Gerrit could still see the candle flame reflecting in Charlie’s bright eyes as he talked about secret messages in lemon juice.
He scowled at Bernardus. “No.”
Bernardus shrugged, and his smile deepened.
Gerrit took one step closer. “You didn’t tell him about the letter, did you?”
“No. Did you?”
“Of course not.” When held to the light, the secret ink in the letter from Saint-Malo had revealed the resistance suggestion to use Charlie as a courier, to smuggle pieces of Gerrit’s maps folded inside the boy’s shoes.
Gerrit and Bernardus had not replied to that letter, their silence serving as refusal.
Sending maps of German military installations in plain ink would be foolish.
If Charlie were searched for any reason—like buying lemons on the black market—and they removed his shoes in the search, he would be tortured and shot, and during torture might condemn countless others to death.
Bernardus tossed the lemon up and down. “Charlie has never repeated his offer. Until now.”
The yellow orb rose and fell and rose again. With one gesture, with few and carefully chosen words, Charlie had indeed repeated his offer—and his willingness to participate.
Bernardus snatched the lemon from the air and held it in his fist toward Gerrit. “We should do it.”
“No. This changes nothing.”
“This changes everything.”
“He’s still a fifteen-year-old boy. I won’t risk his life.” The lovely face of Ivy Picot flashed through his mind. How she doted on her little brother. How she protected him.
“He’s willing to risk his own life.” Bernardus shook his fist. “Trace the maps in lemon juice, and I’ll write a florid love letter in regular ink on the other side. It’ll work. We have the network’s instructions on how Charlie should transfer the maps in Saint-Malo, his ‘cutout,’ they call it.”
Gerrit shut his eyes against all that yellow. “How can we trust those instructions? That cutout? It’s too far out of our hands, out of our sight, out of our control. We can’t guarantee the maps will reach the Allies.”
Bernardus fell silent, then sighed. “Could we ever?”
“No, we couldn’t.” Heavy though they were, Gerrit’s eyelids lifted. “We can’t do it. I refuse to be responsible for more deaths.”
“More?”
Gerrit’s mouth twitched. He’d said too much. He turned for the footpath. “We should go. Dinner.”
“Deaths? Whose deaths are you responsible for?”
Gerrit forged his way up the path. Didn’t Bernardus know? Of course not. How could he? Gerrit had certainly never told him.
“What are you saying?” Bernardus’s tone pierced Gerrit’s back like a sword.
“Dirk,” Gerrit said. “Cilla.”
“Dirk? Cilla?” Bernardus grabbed Gerrit’s arm and jerked him around. “What did you do?”
“Nothing!” Gerrit tried to wrest his arm free, failed. Tried to wrest his gaze from Bernardus’s gaze—even more piercing than his tone. Failed again.
“I did nothing.” Gerrit’s voice deflated. “Or not enough. I don’t know.”
Bernardus’s fingers dug into Gerrit’s bicep. “What did you do to Dirk? Tell me.”
Gerrit lowered his head and yanked his arm free.
“He told me he was going to confront that mob attacking the Jews. I told him not to. I said his work with the underground newspaper was too valuable to risk. He—he asked me to go with him. I refused.” His voice caught, and he jerked his head to the side. Away.
A deep groan from Bernardus. “What could you have done? You’re no fighter.”
“No.” Gerrit’s left hand ached, and he rubbed it. “But I might have been able to—”
“To what? Negotiate? With a violent Nazi mob?” Bernardus sank down to sit on a boulder. “You’re no more responsible for Dirk’s death than I am. I didn’t go with him either.”
No, he hadn’t, but Gerrit kept rubbing his hand.
“What about Cilla?” No sharpness remained in Bernardus’s tone.
“The day Dirk died—she saw him die, remember?—she asked me to help her escape to England. I told her it was impossible.”
“I’ll say. We didn’t have escape lines to help people flee back then. Even now, it’s dangerous and difficult.”
“I didn’t even try. Didn’t even investigate the possibility.” Gerrit waved his arm toward the sea, toward home. “I said her work was too important to the resistance group—the same group we dissolved only a few weeks later. And she—I don’t know what she did.”
“We’ll never know. But she did it. Not you.” Bernardus rose from the boulder and handed Gerrit the lemon. “Only you can make this decision. Charlie is willing to be a courier. I have the contacts, the knowledge of the resistance network. But only you can draw the diagrams.”
The lemon shone with freshness in Gerrit’s hand. “He’s so young.”
“So eager. A boy like that will find a way.”
Gerrit winced. If they turned Charlie away, he might find an even more perilous path. “So many ways for boys to die nowadays.”
“What about us? Dying a bit each day, building for the enemy, closing our eyes to suffering, our brave decision to join Organisation Todt in vain.” Echoing Gerrit’s own thoughts.
With the lemon in his right hand, Gerrit flexed his left hand over and over. They’d joined OT to send diagrams and maps to the Allies. Charlie had offered them a means to do just that, to make everything worthwhile. “If only I could know the maps would arrive in England.”
Bernardus’s eyes grew as gray as the clouds. “I was wrong to give you a guarantee before. Arrogant, even. Only God knows the future. We have to trust him.”
Gerrit sniffed.
Bernardus let out a wry chuckle. “Ah, that’s it, ja? You’re willing to risk your life, but trusting God? That takes far more courage.”
Gerrit wanted to trust again, needed to trust again, but how?
He frowned at the fruit in his hand. Somewhere in Spain, God had made the lemon. He’d guided it north to Saint-Malo, to Charlie Picot, and across the waters to Gerrit.
If God could orchestrate that—and he had.
And if God was good—and he was.
And if he knew the future—and he did.
Then Gerrit had to trust.