He took her hand in his and kissed the back of it tenderly. Then he leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Lady, I noticed that about you the first time we met.”
When he left, her smile was still in his memory, and the thought of her soft skin rode with him down the gravel drive and out onto the country road. While he drove back to the base he let his mind wander over when they had met in the hospital, the few days they had had together while she struggled with the thought that her husband might still be alive and returning from North Africa. Cole had wanted Rebecca to leave him but she would not and then when Gregory came home, terribly burned and missing a leg, Cole realized that Rebecca would never leave Gregory. Even after it became apparent that her husband was a bastard.
The rain began to pound on the windshield of the jeep and a stiff wind drummed at the canvas top as Cole drove on. He had to slow down because it became difficult to see, and several times gusts of wind threatened to push the jeep off the road. Gradually all thought of Rebecca faded and he struggled to control the jeep on the slick road, trying to peer between ineffectual sweeps of the wipers.
His mind went back to Rebecca and her possessions, arrayed on a small table next to her. He recognized the intimacy of those things, and for a moment felt that he was an intruder and should not have seen them. He knew that he was being silly, that what he saw was everyday evidence of a person’s life. But they were private things as well. They were a part of her and each commented on some fragile, simple element in her life. Her hand mirror with a mother-of-pearl back was turned glass side down with a tiny pillbox next to it. There were two other books besides the one that she had been reading, each with a tasseled bookmark that reminded her that she should return to what lay within the pages. Near the mirror of course was a brush and comb, and Cole imagined her carefully running the comb through her thick hair as she studied the movement in the mirror. She was as delicate as the personal items arrayed on the table, and he thought of her carefully placing each in its proper location so that order was maintained in Rebecca’s world. Jordan craved to understand Rebecca; he wanted to be a part of the world that he had just glimpsed. He never wanted anything as much in his life.
He was tired and longed for a good, strong cup of coffee and a cigarette. He couldn’t stomach navy coffee, weak with lots of milk and sugar. He liked black coffee, strong.
Cole pulled in to the main gate at Portsmouth, stopped, and pulled out his ID. He waited until a bundled figure holding a flashlight got within arm’s length before he opened the door. The wind nearly ripped it from his grasp and rain flooded the interior of the jeep.
“Jesus Christ,” Cole shouted above the howl of the wind. “Hurry up, will you?”
Raindrops flashed through the beam of yellow light while the SP guard tried to read Cole’s ID.
“You made it back just in time, sir,” the guard said, trying to turn his back to the wind.
“What? What do you mean?”
“They’re closing the base in thirty minutes. Looks like it’s the real McCoy this time.”
Chapter 23
The storm increased in intensity, the wind beating at Reubold’s Volkswagen as he skidded to a stop in the driving rain. The little vehicle had almost been knocked off the road a dozen times, and the only reason that Reubold had been able to make good time from Paris was because Allied planes were grounded by the weather. He thought of the situation as a minor blessing.
He thought also of his visit to Rommel’s headquarters and Walters’s hasty retreat. At first he was confused because he had believed that the kommodore was working with Rommel’s approval — even if it was an approval that was reluctantly given. Dresser’s appearance and Walters’s departure compounded the confusion, but his long drive back to Cherbourg gave Reubold a chance to sort out what had happened.
He came to the conclusion that it was politics. General officers were reluctant to give up control of power, and interservice cooperation existed only as far as it benefited members of either service. Dresser would respond to Rommel’s needs because Rommel had been handpicked by Hitler to create the Atlantic Wall. Or at least, pile more bricks on top of those that already lined the beaches.
And the kommodore. The kommodore perhaps saw a chance to advance his position by offering up something new to Rommel; another weapon in the vast array of weapons that the feldmarschall counted on to stop the Allies. The only problem was that Rommel wasn’t interested, and that was understandable. Six tiny boats. How could they change the war? What difference would they make against the invincible armada that had been assembled in the English ports?
A great deal, Reubold decided in a flash of excitement. Walters had given him the key: confusion to the enemy. The invasion had to come at dawn, the tides demanded it, the darkness required it; and if the German defenses were most vulnerable at dawn, then the approaching vessels were as well. I will hide in the darkness, Reubold decided. All six of his boats had Naxos radar receivers and they could locate the fleet by the Allies’ own radar activity. Better than the crude Biscay Cross, Reubold knew.
A single word struck him — suicide. It would be suicide to attack the greatest armada in the world with six S-boats, even with his boats. Not with luck. Not with skill, he decided. Move fast, come at them from different directions, wait until the last minute — the very last minute, to fire. Then we slash an opening in the escorts, and the Guernsey S-boats go in with torpedoes. Confusion to the enemy.
Reubold pulled over as a convoy of trucks lumbered by, throwing a heavy coating of soupy mud over his windshield. He found himself marking time with the windshield wipers by tapping the steering wheel with his finger.
But Dresser wants us stripped. And Walters has faded away. We have no savior. Where is my champion? Reubold asked himself. Goering. “Yes, of course,” he said, the sound of his voice an odd addition to the darkened vehicle. “Goering is my champion. Goering is my guardian angel. My god.” He thought of Walters and the kommodore’s easy exit from a confrontation with Rommel to Berlin. You have no champion, Reubold thought and for an instant he realized that he missed Waldvogel. He laughed at the idea that the strange little man who puzzled him so had now become a valued friend. He wondered about the complexities of life. The last truck passed. Reubold checked his rearview mirror and pulled out onto the road.
It was near midnight when he drove across the wooden bridge and out onto the quay where the S-boat pen was located. The storm had increased its fury, thick lightning bolts splitting the sky. Reubold counted the time between the claps of thunder and the flashes of lightning and realized the full storm was less than five kilometers away.
As he threw open the car door and made a run for the pen blast door he heard another clap of thunder, sharper and closer than the others. He was relieved to see that the heavy steel door was open, a rare occurrence at night when the enemy came calling. He heard shouts and cries for help as he threw off his raincoat, then he realized that all the lights were turned on.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” Reubold shouted as he swung down the expanded metal staircase and landed heavily on the pen floor. Sailors were racing to their boats as he grabbed an oberbootsmannmaat by the collar. “What the devil are you doing? Why are the lights on?”
“We’re trying to get the boats out, sir.” He turned and pointed. “Look.”
Reubold pushed the man to one side and watched as a dozen men played a work lamp on the concrete ceiling of the pen. The crack that had opened up the night that Waldvogel had been injured was much bigger. A steady cloud of concrete dust poured from the fissure, but what was worse, chunks of concrete broke loose and landed with an echoing splash in the water. The ceiling was caving in. Beneath it was a damaged S-boat.