Wide-eyed, Chantal watched Maurice’s face. She nodded vigorously. “I do,” she said, almost breathless with excitement. “I’ll go with them. We can rescue Papa, and the British team can do whatever they want, as long as we have the weapons.”
Maurice pursed his lips and shook his head. “It’s not going to be like that.”
Dismay spread over Chantal’s face. “What do you mean?”
“I know what he means,” Amélie said quietly. She faced her sister. “Papa sent us away so that he could carry on the fight without worrying about us.”
Chantal’s anger flared. “So, are we going to sit by and watch while he is tortured and killed?”
“Not at all,” Amélie replied. “We have to fight here while we trust our family and friends to rescue Papa; well, his network, and hopefully him as well.”
Chantal crossed her arms, her chin jutting forward with obstinacy. “I’m going.”
“Listen to me carefully,” Maurice replied. “If you insist on going, the British mission is off. Hérisson’s London contact made that very clear. Neither you nor you sister can be involved. They’re pulling the resources together months ahead of schedule and before the team is fully trained. These people are putting their lives on the line just by parachuting in. We need to live by their conditions.”
“But why?” Tears ran down Chantal’s face.
“Like Amélie said, if they can rescue your father, they will, but personal emotions come second to making good decisions. Only three are coming, and they have specific jobs. Your friends and neighbors in Dunkirk will carry out most of the action.”
“Then what are the British bringing?”
“Resources and organization. They demonstrate clearly that London is in this war with us.”
Chantal’s face knotted into adolescent bitterness. “Like at Dunkirk?” She slumped into a chair, buried her face in her hands, and choked back sobs.
Amélie rose and hugged her.
Maurice stood against the opposite wall, at a loss for words. He made an attempt to console. “I understand how you feel—”
“No, you don’t!” Chantal screamed, leaping to her feet. “How could you? Our city was bombed, we were driven from our home. We saw all those soldiers getting massacred. I was nearly raped, and Amélie killed—”
Her sobs made further speech impossible. “And now,” she managed after a few moments while wiping her eyes, “our father, who did nothing but help people, is being hunted down. Maybe they’ve already arrested him.”
She continued trying to control her weeping, her lungs heaving with the effort. After several minutes, she calmed down and took her seat.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Maurice, regarding him through eyes still brimming with tears. “You’ve been kind to us.”
“No worries, my little friend,” he replied with a gentle smile. “I have broad shoulders.”
“And this,” Amélie said quietly while stroking Chantal’s hair, “is exactly why we can’t get in the way.” She turned to Maurice. “Give us something meaningful to do, something that lets us strike back.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Maurice said. “I’m sure there’s a way.”
41
Somewhere east of Saint-Nazaire, France
Tramp, tramp, tramp. The incessant shuffling of footwear by the thousands along the roadway bore down on Lance’s exhausted mind, otherwise occupied with only one conscious thought: food. Days had passed since his last full meal, and all his waking hours were now spent walking, pushed along by unsympathetic guards in a miles-long throng for twenty-three out of each twenty-four hours toward the east, always east.
His original captors had treated him decently. Being the only British soldier among the group taken prisoner on that fateful morning after blowing up the fuel-oil tanks, he had been separated from the French Resistance fighters captured with him. He had no idea what had happened to them, nor, for that matter, what had happened to Horton. I hope he got away. For an hour, he had been held at gunpoint, seated on the ground with his back against the wall of a barn while curious German soldiers filed by, staring at him as they would an animal in a zoo, as if trying to discern how such a creature had come into being.
Aside from being held captive, they treated him well, some bringing food, water, coffee, and even offering cigarettes, and some posing for pictures next to him. For his part, Lance attempted a look of neutrality, fighting down an overwhelming sense of dejection. He had not anticipated spending the war as a POW.
Regardless of his effort to appear stable, his captors seemed to sense his personal turmoil, for they treated him as though both respecting and feeling sorry for him, a step above pity.
After an hour, a lorry had pulled up to the barn that the Germans had used as a quick, makeshift headquarters. Using prods and gestures, the senior non-com had indicated for Lance to load onto the canvas-covered truck-bed. By then, the extremes of actions and events of the past few days wore into his body such that every motion weighed like lead on his muscles and further dampened the cognizant operation of his brain. Painfully, he did as instructed.
Aside from two armed soldiers perched at the back end of the truck, Lance was the only passenger. He sat on the wooden bench at the front by the cab. The truck jolted into motion, and he was alone, his only company the cruel memories of the past few days and a dismal sense that he had failed his comrades, whose whereabouts remained unknown.
Deliberately, he shoved his thoughts toward home, but doing so brought no solace. Even as he pictured his mother’s stoic face with her subtly smiling eyes, his stepdad climbing among the cliffs of Sark, his sister pounding out the strong chords of Chopin on the piano, and his two brothers wrestling in the grass, his sense of isolation and failure deepened.
The lorry made several stops, and each time, captured British soldiers loaded into the back. They barely acknowledged each other, only enough to claim a narrow
