Chapter 23
chapter
St. Helier
Even the extraordinary talent of Germany’s propagandists failed to turn the German defeats in Sicily and Ukraine into victories for the newsreel.
Gerrit fidgeted in his seat in the Forum’s darkened theater. The film itself was slightly less inane than the newsreel, but watching it—even cheering when the Germans did—soothed suspicions in Organisation Todt.
As his punishment for defying OT and for losing Ivy’s sketch on his frenzied bicycle ride—as he had claimed—Gerrit had been deprived of privileges for a month. A pittance of a penalty in comparison to what Marchenko had suffered.
Gerrit clamped his hands over his knees.
He could still see his friend’s body, hear Ivy’s enraged howl.
But Marchenko had received a decent burial in the Strangers Cemetery at St. Brelade with dozens of his comrades who had died in the past year.
Ivy had been correct—the people of Jersey insisted upon it.
The German field commander, eager to be seen as benevolent, had complied.
The praise from the upper echelons of society for Gerrit’s humane actions had forced OT into that pittance of a punishment. But Schmeling now watched him with a mix of contempt and suspicion. Gerrit needed to be on his best behavior.
Sitting to Gerrit’s left, Willy Riedel laughed at the scene on the cinema screen, and Gerrit joined in. He and Bernardus had increased their social outings with their colleagues, but Bernardus had begged off tonight.
Gerrit would rather be at the Jouny farmhouse, where he’d spent a pleasant afternoon drawing maps while Bernardus and Arthur listened to the BBC.
At Bernardus’s request, he’d traced a map of land mines along St. Aubin’s Bay.
Soon he’d run out of silk and secret ink, but until he did, he planned to keep drawing in case a new contact arose.
Two rows ahead of him in the theater, a woman tipped her head, angling her hat higher.
Fern Le Corre, sitting with a German officer.
In public. Unashamed.
The Forum was open to islanders as well as Germans, but the only locals in attendance were women accompanying German soldiers. Women who had earned derisive nicknames from their neighbors.
Didn’t Fern care how her decisions affected her sister and brother?
“Gerrit?” A fierce whisper. A tap on his shoulder.
Charlie Picot crouched in the aisle, his eyes frantic in the eerie gray light from the screen. “Come with me. It’s an emergency.”
“Emer—”
“Come.” Charlie marched back up the aisle.
“Excuse me,” Gerrit said to Riedel, who gave him a curious look.
Gerrit rushed to catch up. What kind of emergency? How could he help?
Outside in the darkness, Charlie strode to a black car used by OT. “Can you drive?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Charlie opened the passenger door. “I can’t. It’s a miracle I didn’t kill anyone driving here.”
“What . . . how . . . ?”
“Get in. Drive.” Charlie slammed the door shut.
Gerrit climbed behind the wheel, started the car, and pulled into the street. “How did you get an OT car?”
“This way.” Charlie pointed west. “I didn’t. Bernardus did. He asked me to meet him at your hotel, and we drove to St. Aubin.”
St. Aubin—where Bernardus had proposed sabotage over a month ago.
Gerrit pressed the accelerator. “What has he done?”
Charlie sat forward in the seat as if urging the car faster. “He didn’t tell me his plans until we arrived. He’s committing sabotage. The boot of the car was filled with explosives, and he’d stashed a rowboat in the woods where we parked.”
Gerrit slapped the steering wheel. “He involved you?”
“He only wanted me to stand watch. The tide is heading out, and he’s using the rowboat to tow his explosives.”
“The breakwater.” Gerrit huffed. He’d told Bernardus he couldn’t do it alone. He never dreamed he’d rope Charlie into his plan. “I told him not to.”
“I know. So did I. If he gets caught . . .” His voice broke.
He’d be executed like Marchenko—and the Germans wouldn’t stop there. “How many others will get arrested?”
“You must stop him. He listens to you.”
Not this time, but Gerrit sped down the Esplanade in the moonless night.
Charlie groaned and pressed his hands to his face. “It’s my fault. I lost my cutout.”
“It isn’t your fault.” If anything, Gerrit carried more blame. For once, he had eased up on the brakes, and Bernardus had accelerated over a cliff.
He peered across the inky expanse of St. Aubin’s Bay, but he couldn’t pick out the blacked-out village on the far side. Gerrit cranked down the window. No sounds of explosions, no fires.
Gerrit’s jaw set hard as he raced along the bay. Bernardus had chosen well—a cloudy night with no moon, with favorable tides, and with the Aubin Hafen battery unmanned due to construction.
After Gerrit drove through the seaside village of St. Aubin, Charlie directed him to a wooded area along the shore, where he parked.
“This is where he went down to the water. He was going to cut a passageway through the barbed wire.” Charlie led Gerrit through the trees toward the beach.
They stopped inside the tree line, and Gerrit leaned close.
“Wait here. If anyone comes, if anything happens, run. Don’t take the car—run, get home.
If you get caught, tell the truth. Say Bernardus told you to stand watch, and you fetched me to stop him.
Say sabotage is wrong, and you don’t know why he thought you’d approve. ”
Gerrit scanned the black sea, the black sky, and the black breakwater dividing them. Where was Bernardus? At least if Gerrit couldn’t see him, the guards in St. Aubin’s Fort on the island in the bay might not see him either.
“He’s wearing black,” Charlie said in a low voice. “Soot on his face.”
And Gerrit wasn’t. Regardless, the breakwater still stood, which meant he had time. Cutting a gap in the barbed wire large enough to accommodate a rowboat must have taken a long while.
Charlie pointed to an indentation in the sand below. “Stay in his footprints. He knows where the mines are.”
Bernardus had asked Gerrit to sneak out the map of land mines. For tracing, he’d said. For sabotage, he’d meant.
Gerrit wrestled down a groan and picked his way to the beach. Halfway down the breakwater, a still patch of black disturbed the sea—probably the rowboat.
A muffled boom. A scream. A plume of water, lit up from inside.
“Bernardus!” Charlie cried.
Gerrit scrambled back up the bank and clapped a hand over the boy’s mouth. He stretched his eyes wide, searching for his friend. What had happened? Was Bernardus hurt? Killed? How long until the Germans came?
Light flashed on in the fort—a searchlight.
Gerrit threw himself flat to the ground, yanking Charlie down beside him.
His heart thumped against the earth, hard and fast. The searchlight panned the bay north to south, blinding Gerrit as it passed, then sweeping back north. The beam paused at the rowboat.
“No,” Gerrit whispered. “Please don’t let them see.”
The beam swept to the end of the breakwater and switched off.
Sparkles filled Gerrit’s eyesight—how long until he could see in the dark again?
Had the searchlight turned off because the guards hadn’t seen anything? Or because they had? No, if they had, they would have fixed the light on it while they called in troops.
Gerrit nudged Charlie. “I’ll see if he’s alive.”
“I’ll go too. If he’s hurt, you may need my help to move him.”
Objections filled his mouth, but he swallowed them. He might indeed need help. “Stay low. Stay in my footsteps. Stay close to the breakwater—the mines are about a meter out.”
Muffled groans rose in the distance. Bernardus was alive!
Gerrit resisted the urge to call to his friend, and he made his way out as fast as he could along the narrow band of sand between breakwater and sea. His feet dipped into damp sand, slipped on wet rocks, and he grasped the lichen-covered stone of the breakwater for support.
Not only did he need to rescue Bernardus, but he needed to remove evidence of his sabotage—or his friend could still face execution. And if caught now, all three of them would be shot.
A figure lay on the sand between the rowboat and the wall.
Gerrit crouched beside Bernardus. “Where are you hurt?”
Bernardus moaned and held his leg, the trousers shredded and shiny in the faint starlight. “Rock. Fell. Mine.”
He must have dislodged a rock from the breakwater, which fell and hit a mine. “We’ll get you out of here.”
Charlie dropped his jacket and ripped off his shirt. “He’ll bleed out. I’ll apply a tourniquet.”
Meanwhile, Gerrit would destroy the evidence. “How many charges did you plant?”
Bernardus shook his head and groaned.
Gerrit leaned over his friend and glared at him. “You’re injured. If they find the explosives, you’re dead.”
“Don’t. Care.”
“Charlie and I will be dead too.” Gerrit spat out the words. “Care about that? How many charges? Where?”
A long moan, and Bernardus waved to the right. “Three.”
Gerrit found the first charge in a crevice in the breakwater, pulled it out, followed the detonating cord to the other charges, removed them.
In the rowboat, a canvas tarp covered the remaining explosives. Staying low, Gerrit flung out the canvas—they could use it as a stretcher. Then he placed the charges and detonating cord in the rowboat. They splashed.
Holes pocked the boat, some below the waterline—from the mine explosion, no doubt. Gerrit pried some rocks from the seabed and added them to the rowboat, anything to help it sink.
With a mighty heave, he shoved the boat away from the breakwater. “Please, Lord,” he muttered. Might it drift to sea, past the low tide mark, and sink, carrying the evidence with it.
“Ready.” Charlie slipped on his jacket.
“Quiet.” Gerrit grabbed Bernardus’s shoulders and transferred him onto the canvas, while Charlie shifted his hips and legs.
The canvas made a poor stretcher, with Bernardus’s body sagging in the middle, but Gerrit and Charlie made their way back.
Gerrit kept his eyes and ears peeled. No torchlight. No shouts. No clicking pistols.
With great effort, they maneuvered Bernardus up the slope and into the backseat of the car.
Gerrit leapt behind the wheel. “To the hospital.”
“No!” Bernardus cried.
“Not the hospital,” Charlie said. “His injury was obviously caused by a mine.”
Gerrit released a long groan and turned onto the road through St. Aubin. “If we missed any evidence, if the boat doesn’t sink, they’ll realize he was the saboteur.” The Germans would torture him. How many names would he spill? “But he needs help.”
“Ivy’s at home,” Charlie said.
“No.” With one hand, Gerrit smashed the idea on the car seat. “We can’t involve her.”
“If he doesn’t have surgery soon, he’ll bleed to death.”
A long, low cry of pain roiled up from the backseat.
Was there another way to explain his injury to the doctors at the hospital? Perhaps Bernardus was walking on the beach. But why would he do so at night? Everyone knew the beaches were mined. He would only be on the beach at night if he were up to no good.
“Fine.” Gerrit raced toward St. Helier. “To your house. To Ivy.”
“Fern,” Bernardus moaned. “What about Fern?”
“She went out with friends,” Charlie said.
The film had just started when Gerrit left the cinema. At least Fern’s betrayal of family and country had purchased two precious hours before curfew.