The man went to the door and put his ear to it.
Horrified, I watched Crispin pull a knife out of a sheath on his belt and move behind the man, then pick up a stone from the pathway. He threw the stone to one side of the man. The man looked toward where it landed and Crispin sprang at him from behind.
I saw the knife slash the man’s throat. The blood spurted out. My stomach turned. I retched and bent down, bracing myself on my knees so I wouldn’t fall.
Crispin pushed the man forward onto the ground and then knelt down to wipe his knife on the man’s jacket. When Crispin stood up and turned toward me, his eyes were no longer those of the brother I remembered. This hard-faced man calmly putting away a knife did not in the least resemble anyone I knew.
A memory flashed in my head of my brother at home from school on holidays, organizing us all into performing one of the theatricals. I remembered how we’d all collapse into laughter as he acted out parts, showing us how to play an elderly butler or a young girl mooning over a hero. I couldn’t imagine this man putting on a bonnet and a shawl and hobbling around playing a demanding old lady, all while barely containing his own laughter. I heard Sister Ann’s voice: It’s the young soldiers who pay the price for war.
“Did you have to kill him?” I whispered.
“I thought we were being followed,” Crispin said. “I recognize him. He’s rumored to be in the secret police.” He knelt down and went through the man’s pockets, taking out some money and cigarettes and putting them in his own. He also took the man’s revolver, sticking it in his belt. “This fellow has had his eye on me for too long. Let’s just hope he didn’t tell anyone. He seems to act alone. I think he hoped to bring in a spy all by himself for the accolades it would bring him.”
Lucas appeared in the doorway. “It’s all right,” Crispin said. “Just a potential problem out of the way.”
Lucas came outside, staring down for a long moment at the body on the ground. He glanced at me, his face strained. “My father says he won’t go.”
“Why not?” Crispin asked.
“He says the British will put him in prison. He doesn’t believe that they want him to work for them.”
“Try again,” Crispin said. “You have five minutes. We’re out of time after that.”
Lucas sighed. “I’ll try.”
I moved closer to Lucas and put my hand on his arm. “You can do it. He wouldn’t have come all this way to see you if he didn’t want to be convinced.”
He gave me a hug, leaning his forehead against mine for a brief moment, and then went back in and shut the door.
Crispin got his knife back out.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He turned to me with those eyes, blank and dark.
“You wouldn’t … You’re not going to kill Lucas’s father too?” I grabbed his arm. He shook it off. This couldn’t be happening. I felt dizzy. “No,” I said, my voice catching in my throat.
Crispin sighed. “I have to, Mina, if he won’t go to England. He knows who I am now. He may report me to the authorities, but more important than that, we can’t have him using his brilliance to benefit the German army any longer. I wanted just to kill him without all this bother of trying to get him to England, but the British authorities overruled me. They really believe he will work for them. They’ve convinced a few other scientists and engineers to leave.” He shifted the knife to his other hand and adjusted his grip. “Get Lucas away, if you don’t want him to see,” he added. “Get him to go outside, and I’ll take care of it.”
“No, you aren’t going to.” I couldn’t let him murder another man. Whatever Lucas felt for his father, he wouldn’t want him dead. Pushing past Crispin, I ran into the barn. Lucas’s father stood by the hay bales, his arms crossed. Lucas was pleading with him.
“Herr Doctor Professor Mueller, you have to come to England,” I burst out, frantically trying to think of a way to convince him. “Your talents are being wasted here.”
“This is Mina, Father,” Lucas said. His voice was calm, but his eyes were wide. He gave a slight motion with his head, like he wanted me to leave.
“Young lady, I’ve been over this with my son already,” Herr Mueller said. “The British will put me in prison.”
“No, they’d never do that!” I said. I had to think of some way to convince him. I felt like I could see right through the wall behind the man and to Crispin standing there with his knife.
I remembered what Lucas had said about his father, how he liked to be treated like an important man. “The British will be honored to have you in their country!” I knew my voice was coming out high and strained, and I was afraid he’d detect a false note in it. I had to sound absolutely convincing.
I took a breath and spoke more slowly. “Someone of your brilliance would be wasted in prison.”
I hoped I wasn’t laying on the praise too heavily. “You’ll have your own laboratory to work on whatever you want. My father will see to it. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. He sent me to assure you that England needs you. He wouldn’t put his own daughter in danger if it wasn’t vitally important. Tell him, Lucas. Tell him my father has influence.”
“She’s right,” Lucas said. “Her father, Lord Tretheway, is in the Foreign Office. He is very high up in the government.”
Herr Mueller uncrossed his arms. “How do I know he will do this?”
“Because he has always honored scientists,” I said. “You will be a valuable contributor to science in England. They will give you all the latest equipment and assistants to help you. Does the German government do that?”
“The government is very short on resources,” Herr Mueller said. “They are always pushing, pushing for results.” I could tell he was wavering.
“Since the British have allied with the Americans, we don’t have such shortages,” I said. “The Americans have everything we need. My father is very pleased about that.”
The man didn’t say anything. “Will you go?” Lucas asked. “We need a decision.”
The man hesitated for so long that I feared he would say no. He got out a handkerchief and took off his glasses, polishing them carefully and then putting them back on. He walked around the room and came back to Lucas. “You look well,” he said to him. “How are your studies going?”
I wanted to scream. We didn’t have time to talk about Lucas’s studies, not with Crispin counting down the seconds.
“They’re going well,” Lucas said. “I’m planning to study engineering once the war is over.”
I gaped at Lucas. We had never talked about school or anything like that. Engineering? I had a hard time even imagining Lucas sitting still in a classroom.
Lucas’s father nodded. “Good.” He took his glasses off again, and again he polished them. I held my breath, waiting for his next words. He put them back on and said, “I will.”
A huge feeling of relief washed over me. One hurdle crossed.
When we went outside, the body of the soldier was gone. Crispin was leaning against the wall, cleaning underneath his fingernails with his knife. It just added one more aspect of unreality to the situation. My sophisticated brother who always looked and dressed perfectly was standing outside a German barn cleaning under his fingernails with a knife he had just used to slit someone’s throat. I felt a bit of hysterical laughter bubbling up.
I took a breath and shut it off. “Crispin, Lucas’s father has agreed to go.”
“Good,” he said, nodding at Herr Mueller. I noticed that he didn’t put away his knife.
“Wait, there’s something else we need to discuss. We’ve got a problem,” Lucas said to Crispin. “Since you can count, I’m sure you realize what it is.”
“What?” I said. “I can count too.”
Crispin looked back and forth between Lucas and me. “Oh, no…”
“Do you know how to fly a plane?” Lucas asked him.
“Barely,” Crispin said. “I had enough lessons to solo, but no pract
ice after that. I know everything about how to build them, but that’s not much use. I don’t think I’m good enough.” He ran his hand through his hair. “This is a nightmare. Why me and not you?”
“It may be our only option,” Lucas said. “For Mina’s sake, it’s better if you go and I stay here with her. I have dual citizenship, American and German, because of my father.”
I wondered if I was in the middle of a bad dream taking a bizarre twist. I had no idea why Lucas and Crispin were talking about me staying in Germany. “Will you stop talking as if I’m not right here? What is going on?” I didn’t see what Lucas’s citizenship had to do with me.
“My mother became a German citizen when she married my father. If Mina marries me, she’ll get German citizenship and that will keep her safe until the war ends. And since she speaks German so well, no one has to know she’s English,” Lucas said.
“Wait! Stop! Why are we talking about marriage?” I asked.
“Mina, the plan was for me to fly my father out of here,” Lucas said.
“That makes sense, with all the time you spent practicing at Cranwell. I still don’t understand the problem.” I stopped, thinking of Andrew and Lucas in the plane. “Oh.” I felt like someone had hit me in the stomach. Aeroplanes only held two people. There were four of us. “But what about Andrew? He was supposed to be here instead of me. How was he going to get out?”
“He wasn’t, not right away. He was going to stay behind with me. We had another mission planned,” Crispin said.
I tried to think up a brilliant idea of my own. “Why can’t we go back the way Lucas and I came? We can catch a train and go back to Brussels. The family there will help us.” If they hadn’t been arrested. My stomach tightened at the thought of putting them back in danger.
Lucas and Crispin looked at each other. “That might work,” Lucas said.
“No,” I said, shooting down my own idea. “Even if we make it there and then on to the coast, we don’t have any way to get back to England. And it’s a hard journey to get there.” But I couldn’t come up with any more ideas. “So only two people get out of here,” I said. “And one of them has to be Herr Mueller.”
“Yes,” Crispin said. “The Germans have the borders very tightly sewn up. They’ve had far too many prisoners of war escape, and they’ve tightened inspections on everything leaving. There was someone who managed to get out by swimming down the Rhine and over the border into France, but he nearly drowned. It’s a hard swim.”
“How were you and Andrew going to get out once you’d finished whatever it was? Why can’t Lucas and I go that way?”
Crispin looked down at the ground. “We were going to swim.” He held up his hand. “And before you tell me that was a bad idea, it really wasn’t. Both Andrew and I are strong swimmers, and we’re both healthy at the moment, at least since my leg healed.” He looked up at me. “I don’t think you have the strength, Mina. If you practiced, maybe, but it’s very, very risky. And they guard the river there, shining lights on it at night.”
He was right. I was only a fair swimmer at the best of times.
Crispin came over to me and took me by the shoulders. “I can’t believe you are here.” He let go of me. “There’s no time,” he said, almost as if to himself. He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, he said. “We’ll have to carry through with Lucas’s plan. Herr Mueller has to go, even if it means you have to stay.” He turned to Lucas. “I’m counting on you to take care of my little sister.”
Andrew’s voice popped into my head—Andrew at dinner talking about the Australian pilots and how they gave people rides on the wings of their aeroplanes. Could that be done? Or was I just grasping for anything to get us away?
“We have another problem too,” Crispin said. “There are soldiers in the village. I don’t know if they are searching for us or someone else. We can’t wait until they are gone. It’s going to be daylight soon. We are going to have to be as quiet as possible. The aeroplane is in another barn. I’ll show you.”
Crispin led us down a lane. We didn’t see anyone. When we came to the other barn and Crispin and Lucas pulled open the doors, all I could think to say was “Does it actually fly?” The aeroplane in front of us didn’t even look sturdy enough to hold together where it stood. There were rips in the canvas on its wings that had been patched with what looked like strips of an old quilt.
“What did you expect?” Crispin said. “The Germans don’t leave perfectly good aeroplanes standing around unused. We had to find one no one wanted anymore. It’s an old reconnaissance plane that has been replaced by a newer model. But the engine has been completely overhauled. It’s supposed to fly just fine.”
Now was the time to tell them about my plan. “I have an idea.” I explained about what Andrew had said at dinner. “If the Australians can do it, we can too.”
The three men looked at me as if I was speaking gibberish.
“That would never work,” Crispin said. “We’ll stick to the original plan. Let’s get the plane out of here.”
I looked over at Lucas. His eyes were narrowed as he stared at the plane. I knew he’d want to try it. He wouldn’t turn down a challenge.
“Let’s talk about it when we get it out in the field,” he said. “If it’s still holding together then, Mina might have just solved our problem.”
“We’re sticking to the original plan,” Crispin snarled. “Now, push.”
“Okay, we’ll push,” Lucas said. He winked at me. I took it to mean he wasn’t going to abandon my idea. We all worked to push the plane out and onto the field beyond the barn. As we got the plane into position, I heard shouts from the village.
“What are they saying?” Lucas asked. All of us held perfectly still, trying to hear.
“They are on to us,” Crispin said.
“Get in the plane, Father,” Lucas ordered. “I’ll get the prop going. Crispin, Mina’s idea will work. I know it will. I’ll fly the plane and you and Mina can ride on the wings.”
“No,” Crispin said.
“Stop!” A German soldier came running toward us, his rifle and bayonet pointed at Crispin.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
CRISPIN PUSHED ME behind him. I could tell he was trying to decide whether or not to go for the gun he had.
“All of you, move over to the side of the barn,” the soldier ordered.
Crispin hesitated and then motioned with his head for Lucas and me to obey the soldier. I purposely did not look at the plane. I thought the soldier might not be able to see Herr Mueller in the early morning light. I wondered what the soldier would do. Would he call for help? This one was far older than the one Lucas and I had met in the forest. He didn’t look scared. He looked pleased.
“I think I will save our firing squad some ammunition,” he said. “Filthy spies die anyway.” He trained his sight on Crispin. “You look like the ringleader.”
“My sister isn’t a spy,” Crispin yelled. “Let her go, please.”
“No!” A voice came from right behind the soldier just as the man pulled the trigger. Crispin let out a cry of pain and collapsed. The soldier swung around as Oscar came around the side of the cottage, holding a large branch above his head. I couldn’t believe it was him. Had he followed us all the way from the abbey? I remembered thinking that I had seen someone in the woods. Or had he just decided to come back to the village after Sister Ann was taken away?
Oscar brought it down on the soldier’s head and then stopped, an expression of surprise on his face. The soldier dropped to the ground.
I could see Oscar then. He stood still, his mouth open, gazing down at the soldier’s bayonet embedded in his chest. Oscar looked back up at me and then down again at the weapon, as if he didn’t understand. He put one hand on it and then fell against the side of the cottage. Lucas ran toward the two, his revolver in hand.
“Mina, help me,” Crispin gasped. There was blood on his leg, seeping through his trousers. Lucas’s fa
ther was there before I could regain my senses. He grabbed Crispin under the arms and struggled to raise him, but couldn’t get him far enough off the ground. I knelt down to help, getting on one side of him and putting his arm over my shoulder.
Lucas ran over to us. “Oscar is dead,” he said. “I think the bayonet went right into his heart. I don’t know about the soldier.”
I felt so light-headed that I thought I was going to faint.
“The sound of the shot is going to bring people here. I don’t know how many soldiers are out there, but we need to move,” Crispin said. “You’re going to have to fly the plane, Lucas. I can’t.”
“We can’t just leave Oscar here,” I said.
“We don’t have a choice,” Lucas said.
“Perhaps I should stay,” Herr Mueller said. Lucas gave his father a sharp look. “I want you to go, Lucas. I haven’t been much of a father to you, but I can’t just go and leave you here.”
“No,” Crispin said. “You’re not staying here.”
“We’re all going,” I said. I was getting tired of Crispin’s stubbornness. “Let’s stop arguing. Why not take the best chance we have?”
“Even if Lucas could fly the plane with wing riders, the extra weight would make us burn too much fuel. We’d never make it to England.”
“Why do we have to go to England?” I said. “We’ve got an aeroplane. We can fly it in any direction we choose. We just need to get out of Germany and German-occupied territory.”
“She’s right. If we made it to France or Switzerland, we’d have help to get back to England,” Lucas said.
“Switzerland is too far,” Herr Mueller spoke up. “The border with France is much closer.”
“Except there are about two million German soldiers between us and the British line in France, all of whom might be inclined to shoot at an aeroplane carrying people on the wings,” Crispin pointed out. “You’re better off with as few people as possible.”
I couldn’t take any more. “I’m tired of all your stupid bravery and nobility,” I said. “Haven’t you done your part? There are other people who care about you.”
All Is Fair Page 21
