“You're much better at it than you think. Almost too good.” She was so convincing as the wife of an SS officer that he was beginning to fear she would do more of this work. And he didn't think she should. You could only risk your life so many times. He always said he had at least ten lives. But she was young, and it somehow seemed like too much risk. At forty-two, he felt as though he had already lived. With his wife and boys gone, no one would miss him if he were gone, except his kinders. What he did, he did to pay the Germans back for his wife and sons, and also to serve his king.
They walked to Serge's grandparents' house after that, reported in, changed papers. Rupert used the radio for several hours, changing frequencies every fifteen minutes, so the Germans couldn't use their tracking devices to pinpoint their position, and listened in to what was happening in France. They did everything they had to do before they left, and Amadea decided that her premonition of something going wrong had been silly. It couldn't have been smoother.
In the end, they drove down to Melun that evening, and got back to her farmhouse before too late. She sat in the barn with him as they had before, and walked out to the field with him after midnight. It was so cold that there was frost on the ground, and there was a light snow in the air. She held his arm so she wouldn't slip on the patches of ice, and he steadied her several times. They had a familiar ease with each other, as though they really were man and wife now, or at the very least somehow related. They were waiting in a clump of trees for the plane to come. It all seemed very routine. It was hard to believe they had been in Germany the night before, and nearly for an entire week. She no longer even cared that it was Christmas. They had survived. That was all that mattered.
The plane came just before one that night. It had been a long wait in the freezing cold. Her hands were numb as she shook Rupert's and wished him a Merry Christmas and a good trip. This time he bent and kissed her cheek.
“You were extraordinary, as usual …I hope it's a good Christmas for you.”
“It will be. We're still alive, and I'm not in Auschwitz.” She smiled at him. “Enjoy Christmas with your kinders,” as the children of the transport were called by their English foster parents, and all who knew of them.
He patted her shoulder then, and she watched the others signal the plane in. They didn't need her for it tonight. She had just come to see him off, like any dutiful wife at an airport. She stood back among the trees, and watched him run across the field to the waiting Lysander, and as he did, a shot rang out. He bent low for a minute, and she saw him clutch his shoulder, and then keep running. There were more shots, and she saw two of the men with the torches fall, with the beams from their flashlights pointing upward. Amadea sank deeper into the bushes. There was nothing she could do for any of them. She wasn't even armed. But she had seen that Rupert was wounded. Within seconds, they pulled him into the plane and took off, closing the door as the aircraft lifted. The other members of the cell had run across the field and disappeared, dragging the two injured men with them, but both were dead. Within minutes there were soldiers everywhere, and she knew that they would be visiting all the neighboring farms. There might be reprisals, or perhaps not, since no Germans had been killed or injured, only Rupert.
The soldiers headed off after the men who'd fled, and she ran home as fast as she could. She ran into her room, tore off her clothes, and got into bed in her nightgown, rubbing her hands and face as hard as she could to warm them. But her room was ice cold anyway.
Much to her amazement, they never came. She couldn't believe the luck they'd had getting out of Germany, accomplishing their mission, and surviving his departure. She was reminded of the premonition she'd had ever since the last night in Germany, which gave her new respect for her own instincts.
The two young freedom fighters were dead, they were both old friends of Jean-Yves. And the next day, Serge received a message from the British on his shortwave radio. Apollo had landed, with a scratch on his wing, but nothing major, and warm thanks to Teresa. Serge duly passed on the message. And much to every-one's relief, it was a peaceful Christmas.
24
THE SYSTEMATIC EXTERMINATION OF JEWS CONTINUED ALL over Europe through the winter of 1943. Nearly five thousand people a day were being gassed at Auschwitz. And 850,000 had been killed at Treblinka by the previous August. By October, 250,000 had been killed at Sobibor. In November, 42,000 Polish Jews had been killed. Jews from Vienna were sent to Auschwitz in December. There were mass deportations now from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. And ghettos all over Europe had been leveled.
By March 1944, the Nazis had set their sights on 725,000 Hungarian Jews. In April, the Nazis were raiding French homes, looking for Jewish children. The tragedy of the year before was that Jean Moulin, one of the famed leaders of the Resistance, had been arrested in Lyon.
In the spring of '44, Serge and everyone else in the Resistance knew that the Allies were coming. The question was when, and how soon. The Germans were after everyone, and the plan for the Resistance was to cripple them in every way they could, so they wouldn't be able to stop the Allies when they came.
Amadea wondered if Rupert was part of it, and was sure he must have been. She had heard nothing of him for four months since their mission into Germany in December. But there was no reason why she should. She thought of him from time to time, and his kinders, and hoped that he and the children he had brought to England were safe and well.
She went on more missions than usual in March. The weather was better, and it was easier moving around than in the winter. She had been made the head of her group, and many of the decisions of her cell rested on her.
In an effort to cripple the Germans' movements, she had decided with several others to blow up a train. They had done things like that before, often with dire results, and severe reprisals, but the word they were getting from Paris was to slow the trains down in any way they could. Blowing up the train and the tracks east of Orléans seemed like a good move, although it was dangerous for all of them.
Coincidentally, the plan was set for the night of Amadea's twenty-seventh birthday. No one knew, and it meant little to her. Birthdays and holidays seemed irrelevant at that point. They always made her sad anyway. She was happier doing something useful, particularly if it hindered the Germans.
There were twenty people involved in their movements that night. A dozen men and eight women. Some of them were local, and others had come from nearby cells. One of the men had worked for Jean Moulin and had left Lyon the year before, when Moulin got arrested. Not surprisingly, Amadea thought he was remarkably well trained. And she couldn't help thinking as she lay in the dirt that night, waiting for the sentries to pass, that it was hard even for her to believe now that she had once been a nun. She spent her time preparing weapons, putting together explosives, damaging property, and doing everything she could to disrupt and destroy the enemy that was occupying France. She still intended to go back to the convent, but she wondered sometimes if they, or the God she loved, could ever forgive her for all that she'd done. But she was more determined than ever to do what she was doing. Until the war was over, she felt she had no choice.
Amadea herself helped set the explosives near the track that night. She had done things like it before, and knew how much to use. As always when they did things like that, it reminded her of Jean-Yves. But she was careful, and when they lit the fuse, she was about to run, just as a German sentry strolled by. She knew that within seconds he would be blown to smithereens, but if she didn't move, so would she. Instead of moving toward where some of the others were hiding, she had no choice but to fall backward, which separated her farther from them. She had just started to run, when the first explosion detonated. The German sentry was killed instantly, and Amadea was thrown backward with such force that she flew into the air like a rag doll, and landed not far from the tracks flat on her back. Much to her own amazement, she was still conscious and knew what was happening, but she couldn't move after what she'd been through
. She had landed with a breathtaking blow to her spine.
One of the men had seen what happened, and he darted past the fire to where she lay. He threw her roughly over his shoulder and ran back to the others, just as the second explosion went off. The second one was huge, and would have killed her, just as had happened to Jean-Yves.
All she knew afterward was that someone carried her for a long time, and she felt nothing. She remembered being put in a truck with explosions in the distance and fire everywhere. After that, she lost consciousness and woke up two days later in a strange barn, among people she didn't know. She had been taken to a neighboring town and concealed.
She drifted in and out of consciousness for the next week, and two of the men from her own cell came to see her. They looked worried about her, and said the Germans were looking for her everywhere. They had gone to Jean-Yves's aunt and uncle's farmhouse where she lived, and found her missing. The old couple said they had no idea where she was, and miraculously they had been spared. But she couldn't go back there. Serge had radioed them from Paris and said they had to get her out. But in addition to the Germans looking for her, her second greatest problem was that she couldn't move her legs or even sit up. Her back had been broken when she had fallen. Her legs were numb, and there was no way she could leave on her own. In the condition she was in, she had become a serious handicap, and was no longer of any use to them.
“He wants us to get you out,” one of the men she knew and had worked with for a year and a half told her gently. They didn't want to say it to her, but she looked like death. She had been incoherent and hallucinating for the past two days. Her back had not only been broken but badly burned. She felt nothing as she lay there, not even pain.
“To where?” Amadea said, trying to focus on the problem. But she was so tired she could hardly stay awake. She kept drifting into unconsciousness when she talked to them. In one of her brief moments of lucidity, they explained what was going to happen. Everything had been arranged.
“There's a plane coming for you tonight.”
“Don't send me back to the camp,” she pleaded with him… “I'll be good, I promise. I'll get up in a minute.” But they all knew she couldn't. A doctor had come and said she would be paralyzed for life. And even in her condition, if the Germans found her, she'd be killed. They wouldn't even bother sending her to a camp. She was worthless to them now, even as a slave.
To make matters worse, it was too dangerous for them to keep her now. A young boy had informed, and the Germans knew that she was either part of or in charge of a cell. They all knew Serge was right. She had no choice but to get out. If they could get her out alive, which seemed doubtful. One of the Lysanders was coming for her that night. If they could get her on it. And if she survived. She was unconscious that night when they carried her out of the barn. One of the women had wrapped her in a blanket. She looked like a dead body, and they had covered her face. She moaned as they carried her, but she didn't regain consciousness again.
A young boy who had known her since she came to France ran across the field with her, as the others shone their lights. It felt more like a funeral than a rescue mission. One of the men had cried and said she would be dead before they got her off the plane. And the others suspected he was right.
The door was open as soon as the small plane landed. And they literally threw her onto the floor of the plane, still wrapped in the blanket. There were two men on the plane. One of them pulled her in, and then slammed the door shut as they took off. The pilot just managed to clear the trees, and then turned and headed toward England as the other man gently pulled the blanket off her face. They knew they had come for a French Resistance fighter they had to get out. They knew nothing more than that. They didn't even know her name. Serge had radioed what they needed to know to the British. All the pilots needed to know was where to go and that there was someone to pick up. They had.
“I think we made a bum run on this one,” the man sitting next to her on the floor said as he saw her face. She was barely breathing, and she had almost no pulse. “I don't think she's going to make it.” The pilot said nothing, and flew home.
They were both surprised to find that she was still alive when they got to England. An ambulance was waiting on the tarmac and took her. They took her to a hospital, where a bed was waiting for her, and when they saw her, they realized that she needed a lot more than a bed. She had third-degree burns all over her back, and her spine was broken. It was unlikely, the surgeon wrote in the report, after they had done what they could for her, that she would ever walk again.
They put her in the ward under the name on the papers she was carrying. Her French identification papers said her name was Amélie Dumas. Shortly afterward, a clerk from the British Secret Service office had called and identified her under the code name of Teresa.
“Do you suppose she's a British agent?” one of the nurses asked another when she saw the notation on the chart. They knew she had been picked up in France, but not why, or by whom.
“Could be. She hasn't spoken a word since she got here. I don't know what language she speaks.”
The head sister looked at the chart intently. It was hard to tell these days. She wasn't British Army in any case, and she was in desperate shape. “She could be one of ours.”
“Whoever she is, she's been through some pretty rough times,” the other nurse said.
Amadea didn't regain consciousness until three days later, and when she did, she only did so for a minute. She looked up at the nurse ministering to her and spoke in French with haunted, unseeing eyes. She spoke in French, not German or English, and said only, “Je suis l'épouse du Christ Crucifié”… I am the bride of the crucified Christ. And with that, she lost consciousness again.
25
ON JUNE 6, THE ALLIES HAD LANDED IN NORMANDY, AND Amadea cried when she heard the news. More than anyone in the hospital, it was what she had prayed for and fought for. It was mid-June before Amadea could be rolled out into the hospital garden in a wheelchair.
The doctors had told her that it was unlikely she would ever walk again, although not entirely certain. But highly unlikely, as they put it. She thought her legs were a small sacrifice to have made for the war effort, and to keep the people she had fought for alive. There were countless others who would never even see life from a wheelchair. And as she sat in the sunshine, with a blanket over her legs, she suddenly realized that she would be one of those old nuns in wheelchairs that the young nuns took care of. She didn't care if she had to crawl into the convent, as soon as they let her out of the hospital, she was going back. There was a Carmelite convent in Notting Hill in London, and she was planning to visit them when she was able to get out. But the doctor said she couldn't consider it yet. Her burns were still healing, and she needed therapy for her back and legs. And she didn't want to be a burden on the other nuns just yet.
She sat in the garden with her eyes closed and her face to the sunshine, when beside her she heard a familiar voice. She couldn't place it, and she had heard it in another language. It was like an echo of the distant past.
“Well, Sister, you've certainly done it this time.” She opened her eyes and saw Rupert standing next to her. He was wearing the uniform of a British officer. And it seemed strange to her not to be seeing him in the uniform of the SS. She realized that the unfamiliar sound of his voice was that he was speaking English, and not German or French. She smiled as she looked at him. “I understand you tried single-handedly to destroy the entire French railway system and half the German Army with it. I hear you did a hell of a job.”
“Thank you, Colonel.” Her eyes lit up as soon as she saw him. He was the only friend she'd seen since she'd been there. And she had been having terrible nightmares about Theresienstadt. Worse than she'd ever had since she left. “What have you been up to?” It had been six months since they last met, after their last mission into Germany together, when he'd been shot as he left France. “How's your shoulder, by the way?”
“I got your message when you got back here. Thank you. I was worried,” she said sincerely, as he sat down on the bench facing her.
“Not nearly as worried as I've been about you,” he said seriously. “Sounds like you took a devil of a hit.”
“I've never been good with explosives,” she said, sounding the way some women did when they said they couldn't manage apple pies or soufflés.
“You might consider giving them up in that case,” he said practically, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Have you come to ask me to go back to Germany, pretending to be your wife?” she asked mischievously. As terrifying as it had been, in retrospect she had enjoyed working with him. Almost as much as he had enjoyed working with her. “Maybe you could say I'm your grandmother, now that I'm in a wheelchair,” she said, looking faintly embarrassed, and he brushed the comment off.
“Nonsense. You'll be running around again in no time. They tell me you'll be getting out next month.” He had kept close track of her, and had promised Serge he would. But he had waited until he thought she'd be up to a visit. He knew she had been in bad shape until then. She'd had a very rough two months.
“I thought I'd go to the convent in Notting Hill, when I get out. I don't want to be a burden to them, but there's still a lot I can do. I'll have to brush up on my sewing,” she said demurely, looking only for an instant like a nun. But he knew her better.
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