Amadea herself helped set the explosives near the track that night. She had done things like it before, and knew how much to use. As always when they did things like that, it reminded her of Jean-Yves. But she was careful, and when they lit the fuse, she was about to run, just as a German sentry strolled by. She knew that within seconds he would be blown to smithereens, but if she didn't move, so would she. Instead of moving toward where some of the others were hiding, she had no choice but to fall backward, which separated her farther from them. She had just started to run, when the first explosion detonated. The German sentry was killed instantly, and Amadea was thrown backward with such force that she flew into the air like a rag doll, and landed not far from the tracks flat on her back. Much to her own amazement, she was still conscious and knew what was happening, but she couldn't move after what she'd been through. She had landed with a breathtaking blow to her spine.
One of the men had seen what happened, and he darted past the fire to where she lay. He threw her roughly over his shoulder and ran back to the others, just as the second explosion went off. The second one was huge, and would have killed her, just as had happened to Jean-Yves.
All she knew afterward was that someone carried her for a long time, and she felt nothing. She remembered being put in a truck with explosions in the distance and fire everywhere. After that, she lost consciousness and woke up two days later in a strange barn, among people she didn't know. She had been taken to a neighboring town and concealed.
She drifted in and out of consciousness for the next week, and two of the men from her own cell came to see her. They looked worried about her, and said the Germans were looking for her everywhere. They had gone to Jean-Yves's aunt and uncle's farmhouse where she lived, and found her missing. The old couple said they had no idea where she was, and miraculously they had been spared. But she couldn't go back there. Serge had radioed them from Paris and said they had to get her out. But in addition to the Germans looking for her, her second greatest problem was that she couldn't move her legs or even sit up. Her back had been broken when she had fallen. Her legs were numb, and there was no way she could leave on her own. In the condition she was in, she had become a serious handicap, and was no longer of any use to them.
“He wants us to get you out,” one of the men she knew and had worked with for a year and a half told her gently. They didn't want to say it to her, but she looked like death. She had been incoherent and hallucinating for the past two days. Her back had not only been broken but badly burned. She felt nothing as she lay there, not even pain.
“To where?” Amadea said, trying to focus on the problem. But she was so tired she could hardly stay awake. She kept drifting into unconsciousness when she talked to them. In one of her brief moments of lucidity, they explained what was going to happen. Everything had been arranged.
“There's a plane coming for you tonight.”
“Don't send me back to the camp,” she pleaded with him… “I'll be good, I promise. I'll get up in a minute.” But they all knew she couldn't. A doctor had come and said she would be paralyzed for life. And even in her condition, if the Germans found her, she'd be killed. They wouldn't even bother sending her to a camp. She was worthless to them now, even as a slave.
To make matters worse, it was too dangerous for them to keep her now. A young boy had informed, and the Germans knew that she was either part of or in charge of a cell. They all knew Serge was right. She had no choice but to get out. If they could get her out alive, which seemed doubtful. One of the Lysanders was coming for her that night. If they could get her on it. And if she survived. She was unconscious that night when they carried her out of the barn. One of the women had wrapped her in a blanket. She looked like a dead body, and they had covered her face. She moaned as they carried her, but she didn't regain consciousness again.
A young boy who had known her since she came to France ran across the field with her, as the others shone their lights. It felt more like a funeral than a rescue mission. One of the men had cried and said she would be dead before they got her off the plane. And the others suspected he was right.
The door was open as soon as the small plane landed. And they literally threw her onto the floor of the plane, still wrapped in the blanket. There were two men on the plane. One of them pulled her in, and then slammed the door shut as they took off. The pilot just managed to clear the trees, and then turned and headed toward England as the other man gently pulled the blanket off her face. They knew they had come for a French Resistance fighter they had to get out. They knew nothing more than that. They didn't even know her name. Serge had radioed what they needed to know to the British. All the pilots needed to know was where to go and that there was someone to pick up. They had.
“I think we made a bum run on this one,” the man sitting next to her on the floor said as he saw her face. She was barely breathing, and she had almost no pulse. “I don't think she's going to make it.” The pilot said nothing, and flew home.
They were both surprised to find that she was still alive when they got to England. An ambulance was waiting on the tarmac and took her. They took her to a hospital, where a bed was waiting for her, and when they saw her, they realized that she needed a lot more than a bed. She had third-degree burns all over her back, and her spine was broken. It was unlikely, the surgeon wrote in the report, after they had done what they could for her, that she would ever walk again.
They put her in the ward under the name on the papers she was carrying. Her French identification papers said her name was Amelie Dumas. Shortly afterward, a clerk from the British Secret Service office had called and identified her under the code name of Teresa.
“Do you suppose she's a British agent?” one of the nurses asked another when she saw the notation on the chart. They knew she had been picked up in France, but not why, or by whom.
“Could be. She hasn't spoken a word since she got here. I don't know what language she speaks.”
The head sister looked at the chart intently. It was hard to tell these days. She wasn't British Army in any case, and she was in desperate shape. “She could be one of ours.”
“Whoever she is, she's been through some pretty rough times,” the other nurse said.
Amadea didn't regain consciousness until three days later, and when she did, she only did so for a minute. She looked up at the nurse ministering to her and spoke in French with haunted, unseeing eyes. She spoke in French, not German or English, and said only,
25
ON JUNE 6, THE ALLIES HAD LANDED IN NORMANDY, AND Amadea cried when she heard the news. More than anyone in the hospital, it was what she had prayed for and fought for. It was mid-June before Amadea could be rolled out into the hospital garden in a wheelchair.
The doctors had told her that it was unlikely she would ever walk again, although not entirely certain. But highly unlikely, as they put it. She thought her legs were a small sacrifice to have made for the war effort, and to keep the people she had fought for alive. There were countless others who would never even see life from a wheelchair. And as she sat in the sunshine, with a blanket over her legs, she suddenly realized that she would be one of those old nuns in wheelchairs that the young nuns took care of. She didn't care if she had to crawl into the convent, as soon as they let her out of the hospital, she was going back. There was a Carmelite convent in Notting Hill in London, and she was planning to visit them when she was able to get out. But the doctor said she couldn't consider it yet. Her burns were still healing, and she needed therapy for her back and legs. And she didn't want to be a burden on the other nuns just yet.
She sat in the garden with her eyes closed and her face to the sunshine, when beside her she heard a familiar voice. She couldn't place it, and she had heard it in another language. It was like an echo of the distant past.
“Well, Sister, you've certainly done it this time.” She opened her eyes and saw Rupert standing next to her. He was wearing the uniform of a British officer. And it seemed strange to her not to be seeing him in the uniform of the SS. She realized that the unfamiliar sound of his voice was that he was speaking English, and not German or French. She smiled as she looked at him. “I understand you tried single-handedly to destroy the entire French railway system and half the German Army with it. I hear you did a hell of a job.”
“Thank you, Colonel.” Her eyes lit up as soon as she saw him. He was the only friend she'd seen since she'd been there. And she had been having terrible nightmares about Theresienstadt. Worse than she'd ever had since
