As they did so, a machine gun opened up.
It seemed to be in the jungle about four hundred yards along the beach. Had it been there all along, the gunner biding his time, or had it just been moved into position from another location? Eddie and Chuck bent double and ran for the tree line.
A sailor with a crate of ammunition on his shoulder gave a shout of pain and fell, dropping the box.
Then Eddie cried out.
Chuck ran on two paces before he could stop. When he turned, Eddie was rolling on the sand clutching his knee, yelling: ‘Ah, fuck!’
Chuck came back and knelt beside him. ‘It’s okay, I’m here!’ he shouted. Eddie’s eyes were closed, but he was alive, and Chuck could see no wounds other than the knee.
He glanced up. The boat that had brought them was still close to shore, being unloaded. He could get Eddie back to the ship in minutes. But the machine gun was still firing.
He got into a crouching position. ‘This is going to hurt,’ he said. ‘Yell as much as you like.’
He got his right arm under Eddie’s shoulder, then slid his left under Eddie’s thighs. He took the weight and straightened up. Eddie screamed with pain as his smashed leg swung free. ‘Hang in there, buddy,’ Chuck said. He turned towards the water.
He felt sudden, unbearably sharp pains in his legs, his back and finally his head. In the next fraction of a second he thought he must not drop Eddie. A moment later he knew he was going to. There was a flash of light behind his eyes that rendered him blind.
And then the world came to an end.
On her day off, Carla worked at the Jewish Hospital.
Dr Rothmann had persuaded her. He had been released from the camp – no one knew why, except the Nazis, and they did not tell anyone. He had lost one eye and he walked with a limp, but he was alive, and capable of practising medicine.
The hospital was in the northern working-class district of Wedding, but there was nothing proletarian about the architecture. It had been built before the First World War, when Berlin’s Jews had been prosperous and proud. There were seven elegant buildings set in a large garden. The different departments were linked by tunnels, so that patients and staff could move from one to another without braving the weather.
It was a miracle there was still a Jewish hospital. Very few Jews were left in Berlin. They had been rounded up in their thousands and sent away in special trains. No one knew where they had gone or what happened to them. There were incredible rumours about extermination camps.
The few Jews still in Berlin could not be treated, if they were sick, by Aryan doctors and nurses. So, by the tangled logic of Nazi racism, the hospital was allowed to remain. It was mainly staffed by Jews and other unfortunate people who did not count as properly Aryan: Slavs from Eastern Europe, people of mixed ancestry, and those married to Jews. But there were not enough nurses, so Carla helped out.
The hospital was harassed constantly by the Gestapo, critically short of supplies, especially drugs, understaffed and almost completely without funds.
Carla was breaking the law as she took the temperature of an eleven-year-old boy whose foot had been crushed in an air raid. It was also a crime for her to smuggle medicines out of her everyday hospital and bring them here. But she wanted to prove, if only to herself, that not everyone had given in to the Nazis.
As she finished her ward round she saw Werner outside the door, in his air force uniform.
For several days he and Carla had lived in fear, wondering whether anyone had survived the bombing of the school and lived to condemn Werner; but it was now clear they had all died, and no one else knew of Macke’s suspicions. They had got away with it, again.
Werner had recovered quickly from his bullet wound.
And they were lovers. Werner had moved into the von Ulrichs’ large, half-empty house, and he slept with Carla every night. Their parents made no objection: everyone felt they could die any day, and people should take what joy they could from a life of hardship and suffering.
But Werner looked more solemn than usual as he waved to Carla through the glass panel in the door to the ward. She beckoned him inside and kissed him. ‘I love you,’ she said. She never tired of saying it.
He was always happy to say: ‘I love you, too.’
‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘Did you just want a kiss?’
‘I’ve got bad news. I’ve been posted to the Eastern Front.’
‘Oh, no!’ Tears came to her eyes.
‘It’s really a miracle I’ve avoided it this long. But General Dorn can’t keep me any longer. Half our army consists of old men and schoolboys, and I’m a fit twenty-four-year-old officer.’
She whispered: ‘Please don’t die.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
Still whispering, she said: ‘But what will happen to the network? You know everything. Who else could run it?’
