“What do you mean?”
“I assume that your intelligence operatives are unaware of the six anti-aircraft guns that arrived a week ago.”
Alec said nothing.
“I thought as much.” Sarah turned to the two men sitting quietly beside her. “Roby, can you enlighten us with the details?”
Roby cleared his throat. Half of his face was like a hardened lava flow, the result of some horrific burn. “The Huns call these newly installed anti-aircraft weapons Fliegerabwehrkanone, or Flak, for short.” Roby’s voice was glassy, smooth and hard. “A Flak unit is most effective when several guns fire in sequence. Each shell is timed so that it detonates in the air, sending out a spray of fire and fragments intended to bring down incoming aircraft.”
Ellenor looked at Alec. Had he flown through such barrages before?
Roby continued. “The big ninety-millimeter Flaks are supported by nasty little thirty-sevens that work like the American Gatling gun, with rotating barrels that fire flares up to five thousand feet high.”
Alec said, “We flyers call those ‘flaming onions.’”
“A fitting name,” Roby agreed. “The Germans use the term lichtspucker, or light-spitter, because the damn thing vomits up fire at such a high rate. And they have ten of them ringing the city in support of half a dozen ninety-millimeter wheeled Flak guns. Throw in an observation balloon, a searchlight unit, and an armored communications bunker, and our fair town is as well-guarded as the Kaiser’s latrine.”
No one said anything. Ellenor watched Alec, waiting for him to make it all better with a word of wit and a crafty grin, but he looked uncharacteristically grim. She shared his appreciation for the irony of coming here to rescue Sarah only to learn that not only was his sister in no need of saving, she was also desperate to stop the work being done at her own factory.
Ellenor wondered if this was what Josef meant by bashert. Probably not.
Sarah broke the silence. “It’s like this. The sky over Metz is protected by sixteen different guns, at our last count, plus a reinforced command center. So unless you can get a message back to your friends in France sometime today, every single plane they send will be blown out of the sky.”
Chapter Twenty
Gustov woke with a woman on his chest.
In all the ways a man could wake up in the morning, there were perhaps only three that mattered. One: in jail. Two: in a hospital bed. Three: in a lover’s arms. The other variations, though many were important, did not indicate such an interesting history.
He slid from beneath her. She purred and slipped back into sleep.
Last night and into the early hours of the black Metz morning, he’d visited five—no, six—taverns along Avenue Foch. No one had seen the Englander, nor any foreigners at all, for that matter. These were Messines, a people in love with life and, in an existential way, in love with war. That conflict on the Hindenburg Line not so far away reminded them that they were brothers. Every hour they were free was a gift they longed to share with the men at the Front, soldiers who got so sick with gangrene that their body parts were amputated by field surgeons with wagons for operating rooms. The bar patrons had adored Gustov because he embodied the patriotism they felt only when their country was fighting someone else. They had loved him for his handsome face and for his acumen at cards. They had plied him with drink. When they learned he was an airman, they’d practically fallen to pieces in excitement. None had ever flown in an airplane before. He had borne their endless questions with the patience only a hunter knows.
He swung his feet from the boardinghouse bed.
Shortly before sunrise, he’d found his way here, mostly drunk. But there was not a pilot in this war who was a stranger to drinking until sunrise and then finding sobriety in the clouds on a dawn patrol. Now, only a few hours later, Gustov would have to strap on his holster and continue his investigation. He’d promised Mier and the men that he’d return to Father’s farm by late afternoon.
He stood, feeling the warmth spread through his abdominals and lower back, and walked naked to where a stack of folded towels waited near the door. He wrapped his lower body, picked up his travel kit, and left the room in search of coffee, a sink in which to shave, and a toilet, in whichever order they happened to present themselves.
When he returned to his room, dressed and normalized by breakfast, the woman was gone. He tidied the area, paid his bill, and fired himself like an arrow into the neighborhood outside, once again consumed with his mission. Surely someone on this street had seen the Englander. Someone had a story to tell.
Gustov started with a bootblack on the corner, asking his one question while his boots were being buffed. He was prepared to ask it as many times as necessary. He was a man of uncluttered intent. He had not told the woman his name nor asked for hers in return.
****
Alec and Ellenor crept back into Klaus Weller’s house while the world was still dark enough to conceal their passage. They stole up the stairs, whispered a goodnight even though the sun would rise in less than an hour, and disappeared into their respective rooms.
Alec had no intention of sleeping.
He threw himself into the creaking little bed, put his arms behind his head, and gazed up at the slanted ceiling.
He lay there for less than a minute before realizing he needed to speak with Ellenor. The two of them had arranged to meet again with Sarah and her friends at eleven in the morning, only a few hours from now. Roby and Jules represented the entire membership of Sarah’s army of revolutionaries. The German Polizei had arrested or killed enough malcontents that everyone but those three quixotic fools had gone to ground. And unless he and Ellenor intervened, the Franc-tireurs of Metz were going to meet their ruin tomorrow in the dark hours before dawn, and the Spads and Breguet 14s and all the men inside them would leave the aerodrome and never return.
Alec got up, departed his room, went to Ellenor’s door, and promptly lost his nerve.
Shit. He’d killed men ten thousand feet above the face of the earth. He’d been the target of hundreds of bullets. And yet his knuckles were frozen in space, two inches from her door.
“Sally forth, old boy.” With that, he knocked.
She opened the door almost immediately She’d brushed her long hair.
He whispered, “May I come in?”
She stepped aside without a word. Alec entered.
She’d not yet turned out the oil lamp beside the bed. Like him, she was not inclined to sleep, not when the bombing raid was scheduled for approximately twenty-four hours from now.
“I’d ask you to sit down, but…” She indicated the lack of chairs between the bed and the cedar chest.
“No worries.” Alec dropped to the floor and leaned against the bed as if it were the back of a chair. He patted the space beside him.
After only a moment’s hesitation, Ellenor lowered herself down to her designated spot.
“Hell of a night, eh?” he said.
“It’s one surprise after the next. How’s your hand?”
He held it up and unwrapped the bandage. The wound was red and puckered but no longer throbbed. “At least you didn’t shoot any fingers off.”
“I panicked. I thought you were going to hurt me.”
“I’m sure it will leave a fascinating scar.” He put his hand down. “Do you like her?”
“Sarah? I hardly know her.”
“Apparently I don’t really know her, either. All this free-shooter business…” He wasn’t even sure what to say about it.
“Well, I suppose the question of how to fly your sister to France has been answered. She doesn’t intend to go at all. She wants to stay and fight.”
“Fight and get killed, yes, and as much as I’d love to boast of a martyr in the family, I’m not going to let that happen.”
“Unless we plan on kidnapping her, our only other option is to stay and help.”
“Then we’ll stay and help.”
“But you heard what
Roby said. All those big guns are placed around the city. How bad is that, exactly? You know far better than I do…can the French planes make it through all that?”
“They’ll be slaughtered. I’ve experienced anti-aircraft fire in the worst possible way. We call it ‘ack-ack’ or ‘Archie.’ The shells are set to some kind of mechanical timer so they explode at a predetermined moment after launching. And when they do, they spew out a mess of fire and little steel fragments. Flying through ack-ack is like…um…”
“Like moving through a cloud of angry bees?”
He smiled. “Quite.”
“So…is there any way to get word of this to the French? Can we warn them?”
“We haven’t the time.”
“Even in our plane?”
“Hildegard is a dear, and I’ve already fallen madly for her, but as soon as we approach the Front, her German markings will get us shot down by our own allies, and I don’t think painting a Union Jack on her wings is the answer.”
“Then what do we do?” She narrowed her eyes, suddenly suspicious. “You’ve already thought of a plan, haven’t you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“That look on your face.”
“I don’t have a look.” He couldn’t help but grin again. Sarah was alive, and now Alec sat on the floor beside a woman who compelled him in a way he was only now admitting to himself. He was in rare spirits. “I’m famous for my bold plans, you know.”
“Certainly. The last one almost got me killed.”
“You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
“I’m wearing another woman’s skirt because I’ve only one change of clothes to my name. I may be alive, but I’m also destitute.”
“That makes us two of a kind. But we’ll need to worry about our wardrobe later.”
She shifted just enough that she was facing him. “I’m listening.”
Alec paused for a few seconds. His idea might not sound so credible if he spoke it aloud.
“Say it,” she said.
“As you wish.” He nodded, mostly to himself. “Dear Hildegard is carrying a quartet of fifty-pound bombs in her egg basket. Those ack-ack emplacements are located outside the city, away from civilians. I plan to get her in the sky and bomb the shit out of those guns.”
Ellenor’s eyes widened at the thought. “You can do that?”
“Hildegard was born for it. And I was born to fly her.”
“That’s sounds awfully dramatic. Will it work?”
“It should. I mean, yes, of course it will work. But, um…”
“What?”
“Well, I have one small problem.”
“Yes?”
“The lever that releases the bombs isn’t located in the pilot’s cockpit.”
She slowly realized what he was implying. “The observer drops the bombs.”
He winked at her. “Indeed.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“I can’t do that,” Ellenor said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know anything about bombs.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“Teach Roby. He looks rugged enough. He was probably a soldier before he was injured. I’m sure he’s far better suited to the task than I am.”
Alec shook his head. “For one thing, Roby has likely never been off the ground in his life, and he’ll puke out his guts as soon as we’re at elevation. We can’t afford a practice run to test his constitution, and I can’t take the chance he’s fit for the job. Secondly, and far more importantly, I don’t want him up there with me. I want you.”
Ellenor had no rebuttal for that. No flippant word. No bit of banter to deflect his gaze. His words moved her. She and Alec were in this together, however it turned out. Ellenor’s trust in him was disproportionate to the amount of time she’d known him. The day she’d met him, he’d said one simple thing as he lay bleeding: I have to find her. Yet now that he’d reached Sarah, his motivations had changed, and Ellenor’s had changed along with them.
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” she told him.
“In wartime, one speaks only the truth.”
“And what if we weren’t at war?”
“Oh, I suppose I’d skirt the subject indefinitely, knowing me.”
Ellenor imagined herself up there with him, taking to the skies under the cover of a new moon, banking hard to the left and tipping the release lever, listening to a bomb whistle as it fell…
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“What will we do after this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s say we convince Sarah to go forward with this plan of yours tonight and by some miracle we succeed in not dying. What happens next?”
“Find a bottle of champagne and celebrate?”
“While we’re flying away? We won’t be able to land here again. The military at all the nearby posts will rush in to see who was responsible. Once we’re in the air, win or lose, we’ll have to keep going.”
“Hmmm. I suppose you’re right. We’ll make sure to take on plenty of petrol.”
“But where will we go?” she pressed, knowing he hadn’t considered it. He might have had a life back home in Derby, but did he expect her to get on a steamship and sail back to America? Nothing was waiting for her there. Everything she had was in front of her.
After a while he said, “I wish I had an answer for you. I had imagined that Sarah and I would land safely back in France, then make our way to a port somewhere, perhaps Calais, and use some of Sarah’s money to pay for passage to England. I’d report to an RFC base and confess my story so as not to be branded a deserter for the rest of my life, and then I’d face whatever punishment they gave me. They’d never let me near an airplane again, but it would’ve been worth it. Now none of that is happening. I’ll talk to Sarah, see what she wants to do. All I know for certain is that I’m not going anywhere without you, if you don’t mind.”
She kept her hands folded safely in her lap. “I don’t mind at all.”
When they heard Klaus stirring downstairs, they washed and joined him for breakfast. He was a man whose son had died of smallpox and daughter-in-law was presumed dead, and he wore those burdens. Ellenor saw it in the way he moved, like a man carrying a yoke across his shoulders. Sarah was cruel to let him live like this. Ellenor intended to confront her about it when next they met.
Uli prepared a simple breakfast of Müesli and milk. Alec—freshly scrubbed—assisted with the tea, while Klaus read a newspaper that was six days old; the plain cereal was due to a lack of fresh fruit, and the outdated paper to a shortage of newsprint. Delivery trucks came less frequently by the week. Ellenor found herself making an effort to talk to Klaus about anything that seemed to interest him. He enjoyed visiting the local Kientopp, a storefront cinema, though he complained that most films were preceded by at least one reel of war propaganda. Ellenor ached for him, as half of his sorrow could be alleviated if Uli would just tell him the truth. She developed a grudge against Sarah that she vowed to resolve before noon.
Klaus Weller put on his hat and left for the factory, telling Ellenor they could stay as long as they liked. He enjoyed their company, even if his taciturn demeanor indicated otherwise.
Watching through the drapes as he made his way down the walk, Ellenor suspected she would never see him again. Her life had become a series of interludes.
When they were ready, Uli led them out again, taking a different route to the hulking stable building and avoiding contact with those they passed along the way. The morning was clear and vibrant; when the afternoon arrived, it would be hot. A church steeple with brass trim reflected the sun like a lighthouse.
A lookout was now posted outside the stable. He was a cripple, nonchalant, reading a disintegrating copy of The Metamorphosis with a jar half full of pfennig coins beside him. Uli dropped in a handful of change, and the man did not even glance up. Ellenor noticed the string mostly covered in straw a few inches from
where he sat. She knew the other end of that line was connected to a bell downstairs.
A few minutes later, they were underground again, where Roby field-stripped an Enfield rifle and Jules waited with his arms crossed near Sarah, like a court bodyguard within reach of his queen.
“Good morning,” Sarah said. “I hope you were able to get a couple of hours of sleep. Let’s have a seat. We need to work this out. If you’re right about the timing of the raid, we have a little over sixteen hours to find a solution.”
They gathered in wooden chairs.
Ellenor didn’t want to miss her chance. She spoke first, looking at Sarah. “Why do you let Klaus go on thinking you’re dead? Do you not trust him to keep your secret?”
Sarah seemed as if she’d been expecting the question. “I hear what you’re saying. It’s on my mind almost every day. But it’s not Klaus so much as the people he knows. He’s a successful businessman. He has friends who are bankers, barristers, politicians, generals. I can’t risk telling him the truth, because he might choose to confide in the wrong person.”
“So you let him live in misery?”
“If they know I’m alive, I’m a danger to him. This is the only way I can keep him safe.”
“I don’t think anyone is safe anymore,” Ellenor said. “We just have to hope for luck, or for a hand to hold. It’s all too precarious to let him go on living like that. You need to tell him.”
“Or what? You’ll tell him yourself?”
The thought had occurred to her. Sarah must have seen that in her face.
Sarah acquiesced with a nod. “Let’s concentrate on the problem at hand. If we make it through the night, I’ll find a way to speak with Klaus. I promise.”
Alec said, “Better take her up on that promise, old girl. My dear sister may have her faults, but I’ve never known her to break a vow.”
“I believe you.” Ellenor didn’t know what prompted her, but she stood up and held out her hand. Maybe shaking would make it permanent and real.
Sarah rose and clasped her hand in return and then did something that surprised everyone in the room: she pulled Ellenor into a close embrace.
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