The policeman stirred as they arrived back at their campsite. He fell to his knees when Isabelle and Diane let him go. He surveyed his captors, disoriented and afraid.
Hiram knelt in front of him. “Where are the Jewish prisoners?” Deborah translated.
The policeman stuttered.
Hiram backhanded the man. “Where are they?”
The policeman held his hands up to Hiram and started talking.
“He says they were sent away by train. Two days ago. Captain Petain’s orders said Drancy,” Deborah said. The concentration camp in Drancy put the prisoners one stop closer to Auschwitz◦– and extermination.
“Captain Petain?’ Hiram recognized the surname. “Any relation to the Grand Marshall?”
The policeman nodded. “His granduncle, I think.”
Danette stepped forward, leaned over the prisoner, and spat a few words.
“She’s asking about the five women from the convoy?” Deborah said.
The policeman’s eyes shifted between Hiram and Danette.
Deborah kept her eyes on him while she passed his words on to Hiram. “The maids from the Chateau. He guesses they are dead. Thirty-six women from the labor roster were reported dead. Petain told his men they killed the guards and drivers trying to escape. After they were all captured, he had them disposed.”
Danette’s voice grew louder.
“She asked if we look dead to him,” Deborah said. “He doesn’t believe so many of us are here.”
Danette kept pressing the sniveling policeman, her anger building. His response did not satisfy her. “Enfoiré!” Danette hit the man with the butt of her weapon. Frieda pulled her away before she landed the second blow.
“Keep an eye on him,” Hiram said before stepping away from the group.
He made his way out into the woods. Even with the dull light of the glow lamps visible in the distance he could no longer make out the individual forms of the women. He knelt, placing his pack on the ground in front of him. He opened the upper section, exposing the portal.
“What are you going to do?” Deborah said. Her presence surprised him. She moved with stealth, a skill she learned well before Hiram began her training.
He wanted to be alone, to brood on his failure. He ignored her and activated the portal to the pod.
“So, you are going to hide inside your pod as if you’ve been defeated?”
“That’s the plan.”
Deborah came around in front of him. She knelt across from Hiram, the active portal sitting between them. “It’s not a very good plan.”
He shrugged. “Do you have a better one?”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a flask. “Our guest had it on him when he arrived. Must have been early in the shift. It’s still full.” She shook the flask, the sloshing of the liquid audible in the quiet night.
He grinned. “I think your plan is better.”
Deborah opened the flask and took a sip. She cringed at the taste. “I’ve had worse.” She passed the flask over to him.
Hiram held the flask for a moment and took a drink anyway. Warmth crept through his body, overriding the angry heat brewing since his discovery at Camp Joffre. He passed the flask back.
Hiram deactivated the portal, closed the pack, and sat beside Deborah. They faced the glow of the camp.
“We can try again,” she said. “How far away is Drancy?”
“Almost seven hundred kilometers. But that’s not the real problem. It’s too far from the coast to escape with thousands of prisoners in tow.”
“Then what do we do?”
He looked at the flask when she handed it back. “I don’t know. Perhaps we finish this off and see if our heads are any clearer.”
Deborah let out a small laugh. When he turned to hand the flask back to her, her eyes met his and his heart beat faster. Blood rushed to his cheeks. Her smile faded and even in the dim light from the camp he could not resist that look. Hiram leaned over and kissed her, gently. As he started to pull back, she wrapped her left arm around his neck and pulled him in close to her. Their lips remained locked together as she shifted until she sat on his lap, her legs wrapping around his back. He embraced her. The flask fell over, forgotten. The contents leaked out on to the dirt. Without another word, she pulled him deeper into the woods, away from the sounds of the camp,
When at last they broke apart, their breathing desperate, wanting, Hiram let out a small laugh.
“What’s funny?” She unbuckled her belt, the movement rushed.
“An old joke.” The two continued awkwardly discarding weapons, body armor, and camouflaged uniforms. “How do porcupines make love?”
She kissed his neck, stopping to whisper in his ear. “How?”
“Very carefully,” he said.
She pulled back to face him and shook her head, smiling. Then Deborah pushed him down on the ground.
For a time, they forgot about plans.
When Hiram and Deborah returned to the encampment hours later the French policeman was no longer tied to the tree where he’d left him.
“Where’s the prisoner?” he asked Danette.
She said a few calm words to Hiram and smiled.
Deborah stepped closer, hesitant. “She said don’t trouble yourself about that Nazi-loving pig.”
11
1845 hours, Saturday, July 25, 1942, Aboard the M.V. Calais in the Mediterranean Sea
Waves rocked the boat as Hiram took hold of the knotted rope that led up to the deck of the M.V. Calais. Sarah watched him tie off the smaller boat and begin his weary climb into the commercial fishing vessel. The soldier’s journey warranted his exhaustion.
Sarah was not feeling well herself. She had ordered the ship’s captain to travel in circles once darkness fell on Friday evening, limiting Hiram’s search when he rendezvoused with Team Two. A storm had emerged from the Atlantic before sunup on Saturday morning and roiled the Mediterranean Sea all day. The storm proved to be a blessing. Aircraft had been grounded and the ships at sea were too involved in their own survival to worry about the M.V. Calais. The waters, along with Sarah’s stomach, finally stopped churning. “I haven’t seen that design before,” Sarah said as Hiram climbed on to the deck.
“It’s a rigid hull inflatable boat, or RHIB. Better suited for open water than the kayaks, especially through a storm like that.”
“You’re soaked,” Sarah said.
“But alive.”
Simone peeked her head out of the cabin, followed by Nora. The members of Team Two were anxious to hear news of their families. “Couverture?”
Simone nodded, disappeared for a minute, and came back cradling a woolen blanket. Sarah draped the fabric over Hiram’s shoulders.
“Thank you. Let’s talk somewhere private,” he said. Sarah led him into the Captain’s day cabin located behind the bridge.
“The plan’s a bust. Since there’re only eight of you, we don’t need this big ship. We’ll keep heading down the coast for a couple of hours, then disable the ship. We’ll take boats ashore and find a good hiding place for your team until I figure out our next move. I assume you’ve already disabled the ship’s wireless set?”
“Yes, and the backup we found as well,” she replied. “But what are we going to do about our families? Where are they?”
“According to a guard we questioned, they were shipped to Drancy two days ago.”
Sarah slumped into a chair as her chest tightened. Her voice waivered as she held in her tears. “But you said we had two weeks to rescue them.”