Jeremy closed his eyes and breathed in and out slowly. He shook his head. “Is she safe and well? What about Chantal?”
“Yes, they are both well. Chantal is having to grow up too fast.”
“Aren’t we all.”
Nicolas’ face grew serious. “I couldn’t tell you where they are anyway. By now, they’ve moved. I won’t know to where.” He grimaced. “I need to tell you some things.”
He recounted what had happened at the Boulier house after Jeremy had left. “That’s the reason the family had to flee. We have no time to waste.”
As Nicolas spoke, Jeremy felt a boiling rage welling up such as he had never faced, recalling that he had first arrived in France to build airfields, a young, recently graduated and commissioned engineer wanting to do good. Finding himself in combat with almost no training, his primal instinct had been survival. Then in the Boulier house he had experienced emotions with Amélie that he had never before known.
After surviving the haunting trip across France with Nicolas and out to the Lancastria with Jacques, another drive, that of caring unselfishly for a child, had guided him through his actions on the ship, and then in the waters with Timmy.
Timmy! He realized that he had barely thought of the child since accepting the mission to return to France. Oh my God, how is he? His heart wrenched on remembering how the toddler had clung to him, and he realized that he did not want Timmy’s relations to find the child. But he needs them. I might not be around.
Now he felt intense internal conflict, rage pitted against caring, and he thought of what Nicolas told him had happened to Chantal and what Amélie had done about it. His mind went to Amélie again, and he imagined her in the beauty of their short time together.
Then he pictured Chantal, small, frightened, exuberant; a teenage girl, full of life, having to contend with evil monsters. He saw Ferrand in his mind’s eye, the gentle, bent old man who had gone out into a storm to save him from the Nazis.
The Bouliers are family now. This just became personal.
51
Coudekerque-Village, France
“This is one of those out-of-the-way villages that was passed by as the Germans attacked Dunkirk,” Nicolas told Jeremy. “There’s not much here, no one had the means to resist anyway, and neither the French nor British armies bothered with it, so the Germans didn’t either. I guess the villagers should count their blessings; it’s only about six kilometers to Dunkirk, which is almost completely destroyed.”
They had arrived during the night after nerve-wracking journeys in tiny farm trucks, buses, cars, and whatever modes of transportation that friends of the Bouliers had or could arrange that took them in the right direction, including horse-drawn farm-carts. Jacques had steered them around German checkpoints so that they were able to arrive at this small village without being challenged.
Exhausted, they fell into beds in another farm, this one owned by a longtime family friend. Claude arrived to greet them the next morning, overjoyed to see Jeremy alive and well. “We didn’t expect to see you so soon,” he said. He gave a sidelong grin to Nicolas and jutted his chin at him. “I hope my no-good son didn’t steer you in the wrong direction,” he teased. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him either since before you left.” He gave Nicolas a jocular bear hug and tousled his hair.
“He did well by me,” Jeremy replied, smiling, and introduced his team and Jacques.
“Thank you all for coming,” Claude said. “I won’t say I’m glad you’re here. I hope we can gather again in better times.”
A somber silence followed. Jeremy asked him, “Do you understand our mission?”
“I’m not sure,” Claude replied. “I secured housing for Brigitte and Théo separate from you and each other, and well away from here. I got them employment that fit their cover stories. I received word that Brigitte is a trained nurse, so I put her in for a job at a clinic. The area is short of medical help, but the need is great, as you can guess. She’ll be able to travel around to visit ‘patients,’ and she can camouflage her radio case as a medical bag, so she should be able to make her transmissions from various places to avoid detection.”
Jeremy nodded. “Good. And the people in the area where she’ll live and do her rounds, they don’t know where she comes from?”
“Correct. As far as they know, she was assigned there by the Pétain regime.” He spat out the name derisively. “We forged papers that say so.”
“Good, and what about Théo?”
“He’s a mechanic, oui?”
Jeremy and Théo both nodded.
Claude laughed. “That’s good. I have some vehicles needing repair.” His brow furrowed, and he directed his comments to Théo. “Seriously, a lot of vehicles in the area need work. There’s a garage in a nearby village that’s looking for a mechanic. They want to talk to you. You’ll be able to move around to meet people’s needs too.”
“How about transportation?”
“Everyone travels around on bicycles these days. With all the destruction…” Claude bowed his head, wiped his eyes, and coughed. “So many dead,” he mused. He looked toward the horizon. “We just had another cousin die, fortunately of old age, but we couldn’t even give him a decent burial.” He caught himself. “Getting on with business, we had no problem finding spare bicycles.”
He looked at Jeremy questioningly. “What do we need to do for you?”
Jeremy grasped Claude’s shoulder. “I won’t be around long,” he said. “This team came here months ahead of schedule. I will be replaced. My headquarters sent me because I already knew the people here.”
“And we trust you,” Claude added. “Are you here to rescue my brother?”
Jeremy did not answer directly. “Let’s you and me take a walk.” He glanced at Brigitte and Théo to indicate that he needed to speak to Claude alone. They nodded.
Secluded as the farm was, the countryside
