Weapons of Peace

by Johnston, Peter D. ;

  They moved through a large wooden door.

  “Vitals?” she asked as they traveled down a dimly lit, cool hallway, empty patient recovery rooms on either side of them.

  The driver deferred to his colleague. “Yes, ma’am. BP eighty over fifty,” he answered. She frowned. “The patient has lost a lot of blood. Heart almost stopped once, but I kept it going. Pulse rate weak and rapid, temperature ninety-five, respirations shallow and thirty. He’s been in and out of consciousness—random words, nothing too coherent, except the poor sod did ask after his jacket. I told him there was more important things to worry about. He didn’t seem to think so. It’s a bloody mess, but it’s here,” he said, patting a spot under the blanketed gurney.

  They rolled the gurney up against a pair of swinging doors. Through panes on each door they could see a doctor and a nurse bathed in light as they reviewed their instruments beside the operating table.

  “Why, I’ll be damned,” the ambulance driver said. “This looks like the best place to bring the poor bastard, after all.” His youthful helper nodded as he looked around.

  The nurse managed a tired smile as she pushed the gurney into the adjoining room. “Thank you, gentlemen. We’ll do everything we can to ensure that your good work isn’t in vain. We share Dr. Lowe with other hospitals, but tonight he is on call here—and he’s an excellent internal surgeon. One last thing,” she said. “Please don’t tell anyone you were here. We have far too many patients already, and we try to keep our role a secret to avoid being targeted by the enemy.”

  The men nodded earnestly, turning to leave as the doors closed behind her.

  Dr. Paul Lowe was at her side immediately to help with the gurney while tearing away the blanket that covered his newest medical reclamation project. “All right, Nurse Doyle, who in hell’s name is this?” Then, with a grin, the silver-haired surgeon added, “And didn’t he know we were all hoping for a little sleep tonight?”

  Emma Doyle managed a laugh—but only barely. Two hours earlier, the young nurse had prayed for two things as she turned out her light. Once again, she lamented, neither sleep nor salvation would be hers.

  —

  “I’m going to need that scalpel now, Nurse Fraser,” Lowe said after they’d sedated their patient, discussed his profile, and given Nash a shot of penicillin to help ward off the bacteria that would feast on his wounds.

  Time was clearly not on their side.

  Emma’s superior, a Scotswoman by the name of Mary Fraser, handed the instrument over. The doctor made a foot-long incision across Everett Nash’s stomach, just below his rib cage, roughly lining up with the spot on his back where the first bullet had entered. He kept cutting, through the sharp-smelling lean muscle, fat, and tissue that stood between him and what he suspected was causing most of the blood loss. It was tiring work.

  “Retractor, please,” he said, holding out his hand. “If you can help me, Nurse Doyle—that’s it—I need to keep all this matter out of my way.” Minutes later, the doctor spoke again. “Okay, we have our perpetrator.” He held up a steel bullet and passed it to Emma, grabbing his scalpel to keep cutting his way inward, poking and prodding inside Nash. “If I do this right, he should be able to get by with a single kidney filtering his blood and drawing out his urine. His damaged kidney is done for. Suction, please, Nurse Doyle.”

  Ten minutes later, Emma gaped at the organ in her palm. She now knew exactly how big a grown man’s kidney was—significantly larger than her fist, as it turned out.

  “Blood pressure down to sixty over forty,” Fraser said.

  Lowe looked up with concern. “Clamps, please. How much blood do we have left, Nurse Fraser?”

  “One more bag, Doctor, in addition to this full pint we’ve just started using,” Fraser reported. “More blood is being delivered from London later today.”

  Lowe swore into his mask. “I still have this patient’s leg, hip, and face to treat. The hemorrhaging will slow now, but his heart will give out if we don’t increase the flow of blood.” The doctor looked at his two nurses. “We’ll need another pint—or we’re going to lose him.”

  “Sir, I’m type O negative. I can donate my blood—if Nurse Fraser concurs,” Emma said.

  Lowe spoke first. “Thank you, Nurse Doyle. How fortunate to have a universal donor in my operating room!”

  Fraser looked at him in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

  “I wish I weren’t, Nurse Fraser.”

  “But, sir,” Fraser began, “protocol dictates that medical personnel shouldn’t give their own blood because of the contaminants we’re exposed to. It would be—”

  “Nurse Fraser, sometimes circumstances dictate that we break from protocol. To be clear, I’m not ordering anyone to do anything, but if Nurse Doyle is volunteering, I won’t say no.”

  Fraser glared at Emma. “Fine, Nurse Doyle. I’ll help you.”

  “No, ma’am, I can do this on my own. I’ll be back with another bag shortly.” She paused. “And don’t worry, I’ll make sure our patient gets my best blood, not the tired stuff.” Lowe chuckled. Fraser didn’t. As Emma left the room, the pair turned their attention back to their patient.

  —

  The operation to save Nash’s life lasted six hours, requiring every ounce of blood available, including what Emma managed to coax out of her left arm. By the end of the medical procedures, the American had lost a kidney, gained a metal plate in his right leg, and received roughly three hundred stitches.

  The exhausted medical team stumbled out of the operating room with their patient still asleep, the two nurses immediately stripping off the blood-splattered blue aprons that covered their once crisp white nursing dresses.

  They all assumed the worst—that he would die, most likely in the next twenty-four hours, possibly in a matter of days or weeks at most. But they had done their best, as they’d learned to do in such challenging conditions. The four bullets that had punctured Nash’s skin caused considerable damage. The blood loss was extraordinary. The remaining kidney would struggle to cope with its additional workload. The risk of severe infection was high. Nor was there any way to know if the lack of oxygenated blood had impaired the patient’s mental faculties.

  Drawing a pint of her own blood had left Emma even more fatigued than she’d already been. Before returning to her chamber for some sleep, she took a moment to look down at her heavily bandaged patient. His dark complexion contrasted sharply with the white gauze covering the left side of his face. He was handsome, despite his injuries.

  Almost all her patients came in with some form of identification, usually a license or a simple citizen card for civilians, often a bracelet, a neck chain, or a tattoo for military personnel. If this patient were to die, with her own blood now very much a part of his, Emma hoped that, at the very least, they would be able to find out his name first so that it could be inscribed on his tombstone.

  And if by God’s grace this unknown patient managed to live and speak, perhaps Emma would learn what had led to his injuries. Regardless of who had tried to take his life, or why, he was safe now. There were few places more secure than this makeshift hospital at Leeds Castle. And, in particular, the hospital’s operating room, with its six-foot-thick walls and ceiling, stashed away in the castle’s dungeon along with a fine array of ancient wines, was undoubtedly the best-protected surgical theater in Europe.

  —

  For three days, Emma’s patient remained in a semiconscious state. Just when she began to doubt that he would ever fully awaken, Everett Nash’s eyes fluttered open. He called hoarsely from one of the two dozen beds spread out in the castle’s regal banquet hall, where Henry VIII had once hosted meals for foreign dignitaries.

  “I need my jacket,” Nash whispered to Emma, who had placed his bed closest to her nursing station—a simple oak desk and chair from the sixteenth century.

  “I need y
our name,” she said firmly.

  He hesitated, apparently confused, as he tried to take in the meticulously carved ceilings and the brilliant portraits of royalty above and around him. He answered her cautiously, “Brian J. Hargrove.”

  “All right, Brian J. Hargrove. I’ll retrieve your jacket for you, but I can tell you this: your beloved jacket fared worse than you, so don’t get your hopes up.” As she walked away, somewhat bewildered at his request, she tried to surmise which part of the country he hailed from. Her own accent had a mild lilt, characteristic of her hometown on Britain’s southern coast. His upper-crust English accent was harder to place.

  Chapter 3

  Monday, August 28, 1944

  4:00 p.m.

  The seaside town of Folkestone was proud of its little paper, The Recorder, because despite every conceivable excuse, including two wars and a depression, the weekly newspaper hadn’t once missed being published in the previous six decades.

  The bombing on the night of August 21, 1944, would test this standard of reliability.

  The paper’s offices, which earlier in the day had produced and distributed the Monday edition, were shattered by a German bomb, disabling the weekly’s twenty-year-old press. But Ben Harper, whose great-grandfather founded The Recorder, decided that he wasn’t going to let Hitler’s boys upset his institution’s long and distinguished record.

  Benny, as the townsfolk called him, phoned every surrounding town, finally locating a printer down the coast, Jack Rawlings, who had enough scarce paper and ink to share and agreed to produce Benny’s local paper as a favor. “As a favor?” Benny clarified. Yes, the man confirmed. Three years later, after the war, Benny would pick up his phone and hear a familiar voice: it was Rawlings, calling in his favor. He needed a thousand pounds because his wife had left him and returned to America, absconding with all their money. Benny felt that he couldn’t say no, so he lent Rawlings half of his own savings. He never saw Rawlings or his money again.

  So, technically, the one thousand copies of The Recorder that rolled off Jack Rawlings’s dilapidated press early on August 28, 1944, set Benny back about a pound per copy, an exorbitant cost for a paper that sold for one-hundredth of that amount, or a penny each. But at this particular time, years before he would learn the true cost of his own resilience, Benny beamed as he scanned the paper’s freshly printed front page.

  On the lower right side, below a large photo of The Recorder’s devastated offices, was an article that would catch the attention of many, including a pair of well-dressed professionals who had been directed to verify Everett Nash’s death or, if necessary, to find the American and finish him off.

  The article, written by Benny himself, described how two unidentified individuals, one male, the other female, had been found dead from gunshot wounds suffered on the beach on the night of the bombing. A heroic resident, Dr. Derek Brammel, saw a boat flee the scene as he rushed down to help. The lone survivor of the gunfight was promptly transported to Folkestone’s hospital, which was overflowing with casualties and in such chaos that the victim, a man, was taken elsewhere by an unidentified driver. It wasn’t immediately clear which of the dozen nearby military and civilian hospitals had taken the patient in, but it was doubtful that he survived the night, according to Dr. Brammel. The gun-toting retired veterinarian had quickly bandaged the victim after finding him, but the wounds were bleeding profusely, Brammel said.

  Benny’s article concluded: “Calls to several hospitals by yours truly failed to determine the man’s fate. Nor do we know if the victim was truly a victim—or a criminal himself.”

  “So he might still be alive,” said the shorter of Nash’s two pursuers.

  “If he is, God willing, we’ll find him,” said the other, squinting to escape the glare from his accomplice’s bald head gleaming in the late-afternoon light. “This Nash character couldn’t have gone far, and with those injuries he won’t be going anywhere for a long time. Besides which,” he added with a smile, “Americans over here stick out like nails. Fortunately, we happen to be experts with our hammers.”

  —

  The morphine Nash’s body now depended on for sleep lit up his dreams and nightmares.

  Before waking this time, he’d moved from images of making love to Sylvia Munroe to gunshots, her death, and dogs chasing him. Suddenly he was sitting beside King Henry VIII, whom he apparently thought was a friend, because the two sat holding hands. The king turned to him, grinned, and ordered that he be sent to the gallows for fraternizing with the enemy. Henry’s wife, Catherine of Aragon, was to die with him. He’d awakened when Catherine screamed at him to run.

  The morphine also made Nash groggy while he was awake. He couldn’t think clearly during the few hours that he was able to keep his eyes open, when he would inevitably be jabbed by another needle brimming with penicillin or morphine.

  Through the haze, he saw her coming. She moved gracefully past the beds toward him. Though they’d spoken, he couldn’t remember much of what they’d said. He hoped his training would hold despite the drugs in him. He was sure he’d managed to retain his British accent and profile throughout every interaction with Nurse Emma Doyle. The blond nurse with the lofty cheekbones had asked him many questions about his background. He had assumed that it was out of genuine interest, but had begun to suspect that she had other motives.

  With his brain fog beginning to clear, aided by the harsh antiseptic from the floor rising into his nostrils, he heard her ask quietly, “Did you sleep well?” as she pulled the chair from her desk up to his bedside, where no other patient could hear her.

  “Very well, thank you,” he answered, quite coherently, he thought.

  “For someone who doesn’t speak German, that was pretty good,” she said mischievously.

  “What?” he asked, blinking at her.

  “Mr. Hargrove,” she said, now speaking English, “I asked you in German whether you’d slept well, and you responded ‘Sehr gut, danke.’ It would seem that you’re learning a language in your sleep. Two days ago, you told me emphatically that you couldn’t speak or understand a word of German, and now you’ve managed both.”

  He looked at her calmly, his mind struggling to work faster. This morphine is like a bloody truth serum. He’d have to use his weakness to advantage, not fight it. “Nurse Doyle, I do speak some German, but it’s very limited. The morphine must make a liar of me.” He chuckled, employing his meticulously practiced English accent.

  She laughed gently in return. “On the contrary, Mr. Hargrove, the morphine isn’t making you lie; it’s making you tell the truth.” So kind, so pretty, and so devious. Frustrating—but impressive, he couldn’t help thinking. “My nursing station is right beside your bed, so I have an unfair advantage in this little game of ours. I hear everything you say in your sleep, and much of it is whispered in German, with a precision and accent that my own mother, a Berliner by birth, would have been proud of.”

  “As you know personally, then,” he countered quickly, “speaking German isn’t something to brag about in this war. I am sorry to have misled you, but I must protect myself. My mother also had German roots. From Magdeburg,” he added.

  “You’re right about being careful. I do the same,” she said, keeping her voice low. He relaxed slightly. “Still, it’s the other things that lead me to wonder who you really are.” Her tone was not challenging or rude but matter-of-fact.

  He was fully awake now. “And what, exactly, are you referring to?” He was not entirely sure that he wanted to hear the answer.

  “Mr. Hargrove, I have twin cousins, Alina and Maria, both twenty-eight years old like me. We’re all blond and blue-eyed, and grew up almost as triplets once they moved here from Germany after the Great War.” The morphine clogging his brain made any connection between her words and himself hard to fathom. He couldn’t stop his eyes from losing focus. “Stay with me,” she said, laughing. “
As children, we loved spy and detective games, and because my father was a clever engineer we had real homemade radios and telegraphic equipment. We were better with electronic gadgets than most trained adults. And their father, my mother’s brother, had been a police officer. He taught us how to investigate, track people down and—”

  He interrupted, pain seeping through the morphine into his midsection and his casted right leg. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not sure I’m up to this right now.”

  She ignored his interruption. “Alina is a research assistant at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library. I contacted her a few days ago and told her what you told me—about being born in Oxford, that your parents are in the Holywell graveyard, that they died from influenza.”

  He stared at her. “And?”

  “And, Mr. Hargrove, Alina reported back this morning that she found your parents. The only two Hargroves interred in the yard. Fanny and Paul, correct?”

  “Yes.” He nodded, relieved.

  She paused and looked at him closely. “Strangely, Fanny and Paul Hargrove both died around 1840, more than a hundred years ago. Now, either you do a very good job of hiding your age or something is amiss. Alina can’t find any trace of you in the birth records, at least not for the past two centuries.” The corners of her mouth turned slightly upward. “Should we be going back further?”

  “I don’t know what to say.” He kept his face clear, trying to stay composed.