‘In Germany it is the duty of a married couple to have as many children as quickly as possible. You must make me pregnant or it will seem suspicious.’
‘Pregnant…?’
Francine tossed her skirt aside. ‘Oh, do stop repeating things. Yes, pregnant. It is no sin,’ she assured him. ‘The Nazis have become as godless as the communists. Our priest was taken away to the concentration camps two months ago.’
The girl’s voice was matter-of-fact as she talked, sitting back with her hands on her knees, unconscious of her striking beauty. Memling’s breath caught in his throat. Her figure was firm, well rounded, her large breasts were perfectly formed, and her flat stomach sloped to wide hips and sturdy thighs. Her skin was smooth, milky, and scattered with freckles. Curly blonde hair capped a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones. Sitting nude before him, she seemed as natural a part of the forest as the trees or the stream nearby, and Memling knew then why the Greeks had invented the nymph.
‘It only matters that the communists be stopped, not how. We work for an armistice with the English and Americans so the struggle can continue wholly against the godless communists. So, you see, this is a holy endeavour, as Father Dunn told us before they took him away.’
The girl leaned forward and began to unbutton his shirt. ‘You English. You must be as cold as they say. Perhaps the sun will warm you.’
The next few hours capped the holiday events of the past days with an idyll he would not have believed possible. Although a virgin, Francine later told him that she had spent much time discussing the techniques of lovemaking with her married friends, and despite a bit of clumsiness now and then, she threw herself enthusiastically into her work – as she made him understand she viewed it. And Memling had thought only the English capable of such self-deception. But he was grateful that she had no basis on which to judge his performance, out of practice as he was and worn down from days of hiking. Francine seemed pleased enough and asked him to stay behind while she went to the small stream to wash. After a while she called to Memling, and their cooling swim ended in a much more satisfactory bout of lovemaking. Dusk had deepened by the time they left the stream bank, found their clothes, and dressed. Francine was quiet, and whenever Memling glanced at her, she smiled with such vivacity that he knew she was quite happy at the way things had turned out.
The girl kissed him once, stretched out on the moss, and was asleep in moments. Memling sat nearby smoking and wondered what he had got himself into. There were a host of conflicting thoughts vying for attention, beginning with the fact that he was married and had just betrayed his wife. Second, there was the problem of what to do with Francine, tonight and tomorrow and the day after that. What if she did become pregnant? What the devil was going to happen to her?
They had walked openly through the streets of Wolgast to the riverside docks where the fishing boats waited for a pre-dawn start. Francine moved along proudly beside Memling, her arm linked with his and one soft breast pressing his side, and he realised that she viewed this all as a great adventure.
They had seen no policemen and very few soldiers, for so remote was this comer of Germany that – if one ignored its contributions of men, taxes, and levies of crops, as well as the presence of a good number of apparently ill-supervised foreign prisoner-workers – the war could have been taking place on another planet.
A single long-faded poster advised fishermen to be on the lookout for foreign submarines. The customs house, little more than a Victorian-style shed, was shuttered and closed. The quay stretching along the river was silent. Francine found the right nondescript Baltic trawler, and the captain of the boat and his crew – consisting of a beefy wife with the same reddened face and hands as her husband, and a son so shy that he could not even look at Francine – greeted and conducted them below to an evil-smelling hold. The captain apologised for the inconvenience but thought that as they were often stopped by coastal patrols, it would be better if they remained out of sight. A few minutes later Memling heard the engine rattle into life, and the boat moved slowly out into the river.
Francine clung to his hand, but apparently the smell of the place dampened her ardour and shortly she fell asleep against his shoulder.
The journey was over within an hour. The changed beat of the engine woke Memling just as he had begun to doze. He sat up, struggling with the familiar gagging sensation of fear, and disengaged Francine’s arm. He slid the pistol from his blanket roll as the hatch was thrown back and pale dawn flooded the interior. The captain beamed down on them.
‘We have arrived, sir.’
Memling scrambled to his feet, shushing Francine’s questions. ‘Arrived? Arrived where?’
‘Why at Wolgaster Fahre, sir. Just across the Peene from Wolgast. We would have come sooner, but I go down the river to make anyone watching think we are bound for the fishing grounds. You have only now to walk to Peenemunde town a few kilometres north.’ He handed down a heavy envelope. ‘Here are your papers, including orders to report to the research centre for assignment to duties there. You and your wife are to stay with a couple named Zinn, at number Seven Treptnow, in the town of Peenemunde.’ He spread his hands in apology as if it were his fault. ‘There are no accommodations for married couples at the foreign workers’ compound near Herringsdorf, sir.’
Memling and Francine walked along the dusty, little-used track that led to the fishing village of Peenemunde. The island was covered with thick pine forest, much as the mainland had been, and for a long while there was nothing but the silence of forest sounds about them. They had familiarised themselves thoroughly with their new identification documents, and when they had come to a spot out of view of the river, Memling turned inland until he found a place deep in the forest. There he burned and scattered the ashes of their old documents and hid the radio.
For the next half-hour they quizzed each other on their new identities. Memling’s new name was Walden Forst. Born twenty-eight years before in Herent, a small village near Louvain, he was an experienced quality control technician and had served in the Belgian army. His unit had surrendered at Namur in early May 1940. He had been released from a prison camp near Aachen a few months later, after having volunteered for labour service, and had been sent to work in a chemical factory near Bremen. A few weeks ago he had been selected for a highly technical position at Peenemunde and had accepted in return for a promise that his new wife could accompany him and a sizable increase in salary. He was now reporting for work after a two-week walking holiday-honeymoon.
Because of her distinct Pomeranian accent, Francine’s history had not been altered. She assured Memling that should anyone check, they would find that she had worked in the same chemical factory in Bremen and that they had married two weeks before in Wiescek, a fishing and farming village on the Greifswalder Boden. They were both Catholic, and the marriage had been performed in the parish church and duly recorded and witnessed. ‘You see,’ she said, laughing, ‘we really are married, even if you did not have a chance to say I do and promise to love, honour and obey me for ever.’