destroyer she was on sunk in the Channel. It was filled with wounded. She made it, they didn't. That's when she volunteered for the SOE.
I understood that. She needed to find out if she deserved to live after everyone around her died. I just didn't understand what possessed her to get herself in that position in the first place. I was here under protest, like any sane person, but Diana had no one to blame but herself. I got mad at her while I thought about it, which was at least a distraction from worrying about her.
I stood on the stone floor and stretched. The cell was empty, if you didn't count a sleeping Harding, me, and a rusty bucket. The walls were a flaky white limestone that crumbled easily and smelled like mold and piss. The iron bars were coated with rust, and my hands were the color of dried blood and white chalk. My head throbbed as I stood, and I remembered some of that rust color was my own dried blood.
A door clanked and I heard footsteps coming down the stairwell. Harding opened his eyes and got up instantly. He probably slept at attention. We both went to the bars and tried to peer down the hall, just like guys in the cells back home. I liked the view better from the other side.
Remke and another German officer strolled into view. They were both dressed in full-length leather coats, with goggles pushed up over their caps. If this was going to be an interrogation, it looked like it was going to be a messy one.
'Well, gentlemen,' Remke said, 'it appears there is not time for our little chat. Conditions are changing rapidly, and we must depart at once. While we can.'
'We?' I asked. Remke smiled slightly, and glanced at his companion.
'Lieutenant Boyle is worried we might take him with us, Gerhardt,' Remke said. 'What do you say? Would he be better off as our prisoner or as an ally of the French?' Remke looked like he was enjoying himself. His pal didn't.
'Major, all I know is that we must leave immediately.' Gerhardt looked calm, every part of him except his right hand, which held the grip of the Schmeisser submachine gun slung over his shoulder. He kept flexing it, opening and closing it over the hatch-marked grip like a nervous gunsel at a bank heist.
'My aide, gentleman,' Remke said, as if we were being introduced at the officer's club. 'Lieutnant Gerhardt graf von Neiderlander. Major Harding and Lieutenant Boyle.'
Gerhardt snapped out a crisp salute. 'Major Harding, I am pleased to meet you. Major Remke regrets he cannot discuss events further with you, since we must leave immediately.' He spoke perfect English, with an accent that would have fit in at Oxford.
Harding returned the salute and looked Gerhardt up and down. He was tall and tanned, with white patches on his face where goggles had shaded his skin from the sun. A white scar ran down his right temple. His blue eyes and blond hair made him look like a high school kid, but his unusual tan, and the leather trench coat with a Schmeisser held at the ready, said he was a hardened soldier, an Afrika Korps killer.
Harding looked at me, then back to Gerhardt.
'I don't suppose you'd trade aides, Major?'
Remke laughed and said something in rapid German to Gerhardt, who cracked a smile.
'No, Major Harding. While I would like to learn more about you Americans, I cannot leave Gerhardt here. After all our difficulties working as allies with the French, I could not allow him to miss the opportunity of fighting them!'
'I'll make do with Boyle, then. Are you returning to Tunis?'
'Perhaps. Perhaps we will meet again, under circumstances that will allow me to learn more about you Americans. I am quite interested to see how you will adapt to this war. I do regret that you cannot accompany us to continue this discussion, but Captain Villard forbids it. I almost had him convinced that it would be better for him if you did not rejoin your forces, but…' He shrugged.
'You mean so that we wouldn't report the murder of Lieutenant Dupree?'
'That, and the fact that you were allowed to see the number of detainees in the courtyard,' Remke answered.
'What do you mean?' Harding said.
'I told you old scores would be settled. Some of those people will never be seen again. Villard is very powerful here, a law unto himself.'
'Why are you telling us this?' I asked. I was worried about Diana, and I needed to know if this guy was on the level.
'Most of those prisoners are ineffectual rebels who hardly know how to fire a weapon. They pose no threat to us. Perhaps you can assist in their release if you are freed soon enough. The French government here will go over to you within hours. There is no reason for Villard to shed innocent blood, but he will, and gladly.'
I was trying to believe in this little speech about the sanctity of innocent life, but it just didn't add up. Especially when I saw how nervous Gerhardt was becoming. Harding caught on faster than I did.
'You've got some of your own people out there,' Harding said with certainty. 'I guessed you were in Intelligence. You're leaving a spy ring behind and one or more of them was caught up in this dragnet. You figure that if we yell loud enough, Villard will let them go.'
I admired Harding's smarts until I saw how right he was. Gerhardt shifted one leg slightly and all of a sudden that Schmeisser was pointed straight at us.
'I don't think so, Major…' I stammered, trying to think of something, anything to say Remke put his hand on Gerhardt's arm and gave a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head.
'I see you are already learning how things work here, Major,' Remke said. 'But you still have more lessons to learn if you plan to stay alive. When to keep silent, perhaps. Remember that. Come, Gerhardt.'
Remke turned on his heel and was gone. Gerhardt smiled, bowed, clicked his heels, then followed his boss up the stairs.
I waited a couple of heartbeats and then turned to Harding. 'Major, you almost got us killed!'
'Don't worry, Boyle. All that talk was to deliver a message, to get us to look out for those prisoners so Villard doesn't knock off a German agent among them. I knew Remke wouldn't gun us down in here. Too unprofessional. But that lieutenant of his, Gerhardt, he would've done anything Remke asked. That's my idea of an aide!'
Unsure if he was joking, and not really wanting to know, I sat on the floor and waited for Vichy French politics to run their course. I also sent up a little prayer that everything would work out in time for me to get Diana out of here. I had already broken too many promises to God to even bother making another one, so I just straight out asked if He would save her. No reason, no promises, just save her from Luc Villard, the Germans, her own feelings of guilt, and her goddamned good intentions.
Chapter Six
When I woke up, I didn't have a clue where I was. My head ached and nothing felt right. I deduced from my extreme discomfort, and that fact that I was sleeping on a cold, smelly, damp stone floor, that something was wrong. Then, I remembered that floor was in the basement of the Gardes Mobiles headquarters in Algiers, I was a prisoner, and Diana was, too, if she was still alive.
I lay there thinking how nice those few seconds are after you wake up, before reality sets in. Opening one eye, I saw early morning sunlight filtering through the high, narrow, barred window above the cell. Another day in sunny North Africa. I closed that eye and wished I could fall asleep again, buying back those few precious moments of ignorant bliss. I kept my eyes shut and tried to sleep. I couldn't. I kept seeing Diana in the courtyard, blood on her face, but no fear in her blue eyes. She was brave, all right. You didn't volunteer for the SOE and go behind enemy lines if you weren't brave. And foolish, too. I tried to remember the last time we had been together in England. She must've known she was headed for North Africa. I knew I was. Neither of us had said anything. No loose lips between us. I had come to see her father, Sir Richard, concerned about how he was doing after losing Daphne, her sister. Diana showed up with three days leave, and visited me in my room each night, just as she had the first time. That first time I had only held her as she cried, and fallen in love with her. This last visit, there were no tears. We made love as if there were no tomorrow, which we both knew might be true but neither of us could admit. I smiled now as I remembered her, face shining in the moonlight, beautiful, whispering my name.
