Flame of Resistance

by Tracy Groot

  Later this face would change. As the days of interrogations went on, the face would become haunted, no matter how courageous the individual. Each new summons would bring a face newly learned in pain. When she saw this face next, it would know the pain of hunger and thirst. When she saw it again, it would know pain far worse. She avoided eye contact with Kees Nieuwenhuis as she set up her station with pencils and pads of paper and three dictionaries. Every new, bewildered prisoner sought a scrap of comfort against well-founded fears and hoped to find it in a young woman armed only with office supplies. He must not find it yet.

  “Do you speak German?” Schiffer asked the prisoner as he settled in the seat across from him with the file.

  The prisoner shook his head, then shrugged and said in German, “Very little, I am sorry.” The Dutch accent was strong.

  “Do you speak French?”

  “Nee.”

  “I am Sturmbannführer Schiffer. I do not speak Dutch. Fräulein Hegel will translate, and you will answer truthfully. It is custom, as you may know, to wait ten days or so into your incarceration before beginning our talks. You are a special case.”

  Krista translated Schiffer’s opening statements, settling her mind to the Dutch language, and the PII began.

  Schiffer opened the file and took his time to look over the radio transcript.

  “Hmm. Do I call you Kees, Cabby, or Tom?”

  The prisoner stared at the transcript. Schiffer faked surprise. “Oh, this?” He pushed it across the table. “This is how we discovered you are not who you say you are. Have a look.”

  The prisoner slowly read the transcript. Schiffer feigned disinterested patience, as if his mind were elsewhere, but Krista knew he was watching the prisoner like a bird of prey.

  Krista watched too. Pale-blue eyes ran over the words, and after a few moments, she looked away. She now had a fair measure of his type, and her heart filled with sorrow. Schiffer had the measure, too.

  Though the prisoner had done his best to conceal all emotion, she had watched the eyes take in the words first with disbelief, then belief, then resignation, and finally, defiance. The young man was better than others; the flow from one emotion to the other was subtle enough that it took someone who had done this for a long time to recognize the four emotions. She always held her breath when the resignation came, for what followed next determined the entire course of Schiffer’s interrogations: if despair followed the resignation, things went better for the prisoner. He would break easily, suffer less. If, however, defiance came—as she knew Schiffer hoped it would, for he loved a challenge—then the prisoner was in for dimensions of hell he knew not existed.

  So she turned her eyes away from this young man, and while defiance filled his heart, despair seeped into her own.

  Courage, Krista, the still, small voice said.

  The prisoner pushed the transcript back with bound hands. He had taken as much time as he dared to buy time for his own course of action. The blue eyes now raised to Schiffer were impassive and steady.

  Courage . . .

  She reached for a pad and a pencil, and the interrogation began.

  That wasn’t so bad, Tom thought as they escorted him back to his cell. The corridor held the same jangled cacophony, as if someone opened and shut the reception room of hell. His French friend was gone when he returned. He noticed the stench for the first time, vomit and urine and mildew. The door slammed behind him, and he went to take the Frenchman’s seat, but changed his mind, deciding to pace out his thoughts and keep his butt warm a little longer.

  Things weren’t so bad, and in fact they were better: they had replaced the handcuffs with much softer rope and even left a few extra inches between his hands. Still only three things to deal with, not counting the stench: no food, a cold cell, and handcuffs.

  Mentally he’d slid into his Dutch Resistance story after he read the transcript, glad he had it ready; he also became Captain Fitzgerald’s ambassador for radio silence. If ever he got back, he’d sell it like war bonds.

  A scream tore the air, and Tom made fists until it died away.

  Schiffer had not asked a single question about his mission. The interrogation lasted only one hour, and to Tom’s surprise, he asked mostly about the P-47 Thunderbolt. When he asked questions for which Tom figured he already had the answers, he spoke truthfully. The fuel capacity, the caliber of the guns—surely they knew that from recovered wreckage. But when asked about maximum altitude, maximum bomb load, the rate of fire, Tom lied easily about the Jug. When asked how many were manufactured, he shrugged and said offhandedly, as if it were common knowledge, “Thousands.” He had no idea.

  Schiffer got folksy, or thought he did, asking Tom companionably about his early days of training. Tom answered, feeling all the while that there was nothing companionable about Schiffer. He came off as an actor who spoke the right lines with a determined delivery that was off-kilter for the very reason of the determination. He thought he was good at what he did. Tom encouraged his illusion by easing into a seemingly relaxed posture, talking a mile a minute and saying nothing important.

  “I couldn’t wait to fly. Early days, I learned on a PT-17, then a BT-13. But once I got into a P-40—” and here, Tom let his face go smiling soft with remembrance—“then I knew what torque was.”

  “Ah, yes,” Schiffer said importantly. “The P-40. And did you train on a P-39?”

  Tom looked at him as if surprised. “Sure did. Two hundred hours.”

  “And what do you think of your Thunderbolt, your Jug? How do you feel about her? Why is she superior to you?”

  “She’s a warhorse, lemme tell you. She can take fire that would easily knock out others. She’s slick in a dive, she’s—” Then Tom made as if he’d said too much, and finished with a mumbled “She’s not glamorous, but she gets it done.”

  Schiffer had smiled a kindly, superior smile. He rose to go and then made a parting remark about radar detection, saying with a wag of his finger, as if the Allies had been very naughty, “We found ways around your aluminum strips for jamming.” He smiled mysteriously. “You can fill the sky with that trash. It does not matter.”

  It was an odd comment dropped into a conversation that had no place for it, and it meant nothing to Tom. Schiffer moved to a tune he thought Tom heard.

  Tom paced the tiny cell. Four steps to the wall, four steps to the door.

  The blonde secretary seemed a cold little thing, not much older than he, all business. She refused him the courtesy of eye contact, and when he made a joke, she did not attempt to smile.

  Tom had felt a subdued shock when he first saw the double lightning bolts on the lapel of Schiffer’s coat. At first he seemed affable enough, for an enemy SS commander; as the hour-long chat wore on, he got a feel for Schiffer. He knew things would get ugly.

  Tom sat down and put his head against the wall. This day, this minute, he was okay. Attaboy, Cab—

  He didn’t want Oswald. He wanted Clemmie.

  I hope you’re okay, Clemmie.

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—it’s you.

  Calabrese would say you’re swearing.

  Pfft. It is a calling upon. Say—that big blond head made a promise to come see me.

  Sit tight, Clemmie. I’m taking you home with me. I’m gonna get you out of this place.

  Ten days before the average prisoner was interrogated. Clemmie had to fall into that category. That meant he had seven, eight days. First he’d get out of here. Then he’d get to Cabourg. And then he’d get her free.

  He rubbed the black button between his thumb and finger. “Sit tight, Clemmie,” he murmured. “Not gonna let my girl go down.”

  Hauptmann Braun strolled down the street, grateful for the coming of spring. It was late afternoon, and he paused to lift his face to the last warmth of the sun. He wondered how Lisette was doing. He wondered if her thoughts went as his did to their apartment in Berlin, to springtime there, and the flowers, and Franz and Erich home for Easter break, and the
lovely way life used to be—

  He opened his eyes at the sound of footsteps rapidly descending the steps of the Gestapo headquarters.

  He smiled. Speaking of Berlin . . . “Krista!” he called. But the girl didn’t hear. She reached the bottom of the stairs and kept on. “Krista Hegel!”

  The girl stopped and turned. She gazed blankly at Braun.

  He came closer. “Is everything all right?”

  “Herr Braun.” A perfunctory smile came and faded. “Yes. Fine.”

  “Are you well?”

  “Perfectly.” But the lovely porcelain cheeks, reminiscent of her mother’s, were quite pale. Gone was the healthy rose hue she’d had when she came to Caen last autumn. They’d had coffee, then, when they ran into each other in a café near the depot, mutually delighted to be in familiar company so far from home. She was excited about her transfer, glad to be quit of Trieste, she confessed, for the camp in Trieste was a bad place.

  They hadn’t had coffee since, but they saw each other on occasion as Krista was billeted in the same apartment block as Braun. Now that he thought of it, the girl’s natural effusiveness had waned over the past several months. But, Braun thought a trifle guiltily, he had been too busy for coffee.

  “How is your family?” he asked. He and Lisette were good friends with the Hegels. Krista’s father worked in police administration in Berlin and had managed to get Krista a job when she was sixteen.

  “Fine. I am terribly sorry, Herr Braun. I must—I am late. Good day.” She hurried off at a trot.

  Braun watched her go. He glanced up at the massive tapestry-like hanging of the swastika on the building. It lifted with a slow filling of the wind, then settled against the wall, as if the building were breathing.

  The last rays of sun disappeared, and the wind came chill. Braun turned up his collar and walked on.

  The scrape of the key in the lock woke Tom. A guard ordered him to his feet.

  He must have finally slept. He had the sense of a passage of time. It had taken a long time to get to sleep. He had to shut out the groans of other prisoners in other cells and the occasional distant screams. He had to stop thinking about water. His body was stiff from sleeping on cold concrete, and now that he stood, he felt sick from lack of food. Thirst had become some demon thing. His tongue felt thick; his lips throbbed. How long since that coffee? Yesterday morning? What time was it? Was it day or night? He had not seen daylight since—

  “Gehe, schnell,” one of the two guards said with a prod.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a beer on you?” Tom asked hoarsely in Dutch. “Tomato soup?”

  “Sei still!” the other guard said.

  They went through the doors at the end of the rabbit warren corridor and turned down the same hallway as yesterday. There were no thrown-together cells in this hallway, and it was far brighter. The building was fairly modern, maybe ten to twenty years old, and the rooms in this hallway were labeled in French, with the German names beneath. He figured out what the archives room was for, and there were two of those, but he didn’t know what chaufferie meant; the German word below, Kesselraum, was close enough to the Dutch, ketelruim, to make it the boiler room.

  They turned right again into another hallway that felt less like a basement and more like a high school corridor. Last door on the right, if they headed for the same room, interrogation room 3.

  They did. But the room was different this time. They had a welcome wagon.

  “Looks like things are about to get ugly,” Tom said with grim cheer when he saw the steel ladder. His heart rate jacked a notch.

  It was bent to the form of an A without the peak, centered over a stained drop cloth. Chains dangled in the middle space. A few metal rods lay on the table. One of the guards pointed to the chair by the rods.

  Tom sat and noticed the leather whip next to the bars. It looked like a long, braided riding quirt. It was caked with dried blood. His heart rate jacked again, and a bulge of fear rose low in his throat.

  Schiffer was not yet in the room, only the secretary and the two guards.

  Tom turned from the welcome wagon. “I’m very thirsty,” he said to the secretary, who sat at the opposite end of the table with her notepad and pencil.

  “Do not speak to me,” the woman said coldly, with only a flick of her eyes. “You will address yourself to Sturmbannführer Schiffer.”

  “I don’t think he cares if I’m thirsty. You might.”

  She did not answer. She glanced through the notes taken yesterday.

  “No dice from Princess Ice,” he muttered in English, a familiar barracks phrase. He looked over his shoulder. “How ’bout you fellas? Anyone got a hip flask?”

  “Stick to Dutch,” the secretary said very quietly.

  She went over notes with a competent air, filling something in, striking something out. After a moment he was unsure if she had spoken at all.

  “Schön—nicht wahr?”

  Sturmbannführer Schiffer filled the doorway, tugging off his gloves. When the secretary did not translate, he looked at her and barked something in German.

  “Beautiful, is she not?” the woman said tonelessly.

  “I prefer brunettes,” Tom said slowly in Dutch, glancing from her to the man.

  Schiffer rattled off a long speech in German, gazing at the woman.

  “I think of her often,” the secretary said softly, and Tom saw the first crack of composure. Color bloomed in the white cheeks. She blinked and, when Schiffer barked at her again, said, “I—I think how lovely to have her in my arms. My wife is in Munich. France is my playground. I—I want her . . . for my . . .” The cheeks turned crimson.

  Tom glared at Schiffer. “You son of a—”

  “Where is Greenland?” Schiffer said in perfect English.

  Tom’s gut plunged.

  At a motion from Schiffer, the guards hauled him from the chair and dragged him to the steel ladder. Fear fluttered wildly, like a rush of startled bats. It wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. They shoved him to his knees on the drop cloth, pushed him over, pushed him to his back. One of the guards took the metal rod and hooked one end to a dangling chain. They brought his knees together and pulled his bound hands over his knees.

  “Oh, I get it,” Tom said. “You weren’t being nice.”

  The extra inches made it possible for his knees to fit between his arms. They slid the rod behind his knees, in front of his elbows, and hooked the other dangling chain to the other end of the rod. Then the two guards hauled on the chains and hoisted him into the air.

  He dangled in a ball several feet from the ground in the empty space of the steel ladder. His head hung back and filled with pressure, his hands and the back of his knees took the job of holding his body aloft. It already hurt.

  A ferocious surge of panic came and he tried furiously to struggle, but could not move. He could not even swing himself. He could only dangle and turn slowly in place. He could only watch them upside down, the man and the guards and the girl, whose head bent over her pad.

  Schiffer pulled out a chair and sat, crossing his legs. He took the braided whip and laid it in his lap. Sweat sprang to Tom’s scalp.

  “You are asking yourself how. How did he know?” Schiffer said musingly. He had reverted to German. The girl began to translate in Dutch, but Schiffer gave a sharp command, and she translated in English.

  “I will tell you how. Your impeccable papers have been traced to the same forger who worked for Greenland.” He let it sink in. “We picked him up last week. A pity he did not survive. You could have reminisced.”

  The secretary translated in a dull but clear murmur.

  “I have broken men tougher than you. You think your size means toughness? You think physical beauty is a sign of strength? I have learned much. Size matters not at all. Beauty will no longer serve you.”

  What now? Tom couldn’t think. He had no plan to fall back on. He had only his carefully plotted story. He had nothing else.

&n
bsp; He could barely breathe, scrunched up like this, and if he lifted his head to ease the pressure, it put more painful pressure on the back of his knees.

  Stick to the story? But if his papers had been traced to the same forger . . . what did that mean for him? For Rousseau? He couldn’t think; he couldn’t think!

  He had no plan, no place to fall back to except one, the last resort of any captured soldier.

  “Where is Greenland?” Schiffer asked.

  “Thomas William Jaeger,” he said in English, then paused for breath. “First lieutenant, United States Army Air Forces.” Pause. “One four oh nine six . . . five two six.”

  The secretary wrote it down.

  “It was a radio transmission,” Brigitte said. “Picked up at Douvres-la-Délivrande. I saw the transcript. They passed them out to the Milice.”

  “They know he is Tom,” Monsieur Rousseau mused at the window, gazing at the courtyard below. “What story will he give them? What will he do?”

  “What will we do?” Rafael said morosely, slumped at the desk in Rousseau’s chair, resting his head on his arm and idling with a paperweight. Charlotte sat in a wingback near the fireplace.

  It was a new day, and nothing had changed since the previous night. They were back in the office with nothing new. Yesterday they had gone over idea after idea, some plausible, some preposterous—as the evening wore on, the more desperate they grew, the more preposterous the plan.

  Brigitte and Rafael had gone home with Michel. Brigitte stayed in the same room Tom had; when she slipped out of her clothing and into the bed, she caught his scent on the pillow. This morning, she took a careful look around the room, searching for some trace of him. She did not find it until she washed up in the little bathroom and saw a decorative bowl arranged with small paper-covered soaps. She took one of the soaps and held it to her nose, closed her eyes.

  This is France . . . and this is England . . . and this is ten thousand troops . . .

  He was part of the sky, bird-flown and sun-streaked, sometimes clouded and angry, sometimes star-luminous.