Faber studied Wake’s eyes for several minutes, the prolonged silence and pleading look on Faber’s face crushing Wake’s heart. “I do think you loved her just a little, though. Do not worry—it is not a problem, Lieutenant. What normal man would not fall under her spell? I believe you when you say it did not go further.”
Faber looked off for a moment. “You have a wife also? And children?”
“Yes, sir. A boy and a girl.”
“And you are happy?”
He thought of Linda’s last letter, received the night before he left on this mission. One paragraph telling him they could make it, that she wouldn’t let him go. He choked with emotion. “It’s not easy to be a naval officer with a family, sir. It’s very hard on the family, especially on the woman. But I hope it will get better and that my wife becomes happier with her marriage. I hope it gets better for you too, sir.”
“I want you to please call me Henri, for after all we have been through it seems that we share something—a common sadness and a common hope.”
Wake held out his hand. “Yes, Henri, I think we do. Please, call me Peter.”
Faber exhaled loudly and shook Wake’s hand. “Peter, we will find her. I have no doubt of that now.”
Woodgerd snored abruptly, which made everyone laugh. Rork said, “Well, if the toughest man amongst us can sleep, then methinks we little people can rest easy.”
“Good point, Rork,” Wake observed. “We should get some shuteye.”
Wake tried to settle into sleep, his mind was whirling. He noticed that Faber was not asleep either. Perhaps here’s an opportunity to loosen Faber’s obnoxious façade, Wake thought. He turned to him and said in a low tone. “Henri, if we can’t sleep, we might as well talk. I’d like to ask you about Paris during the German invasion. Is it true you actually flew balloons out of the city?”
Faber regarded him suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because it’s one of the great accomplishments in military history and I want to hear about from a man who was there.”
The Frenchman shrugged. “Yes, I was on the committee that tried to maintain communication with the outside. I helped to construct balloons and operated one of the last out myself. Actually, we flew many of them out, right over the Germans with their vaunted big guns. It was how we got thousands of pages of national documents—treasures, really—and secret communiqués through the siege. And, of course, we used the birds. Pigeons.”
“Birds and balloons. Amazing,” exclaimed Wake. “But what if they had captured them?”
“We thought of that. The Germans would not have been able to read them—we had them photographed and reduced the images to a tiny size, with many of them on a sheet of paper.” Faber was warming to the subject, the pride of his accomplishment obvious. “They didn’t look like normal photographs, they looked like dots to the average person.”
“I’ve never heard of that. They used balloons a bit in our war, but not to that extent. Very innovative.”
“Oh, the Parisians did far more than that. We sent out many balloons with carrier pigeons who then flew inbound over the Germans with messages from outside. On the ground the siege was tight, but in the air,” he grinned again, “it was not so dominated by Prussian metal.”
Rork asked, “Didn’t they try to shoot you down, sir?”
“Yes, quite aggressively. The balloon I flew out in January of seventy-one had several dozen holes and was deflating slowly when I landed outside the city and beyond German lines. They upended their cannon and fired grape, but by the time it reached our elevation it was robbed of its, how do you say? . . . punch? But it was very frightening, I must say.”
Wake had never seen the man like this, Faber’s eyes were shining as he narrated what he saw during the famous siege. “We had to be innovative, the Germans were closing the ring tighter and tighter. We used magic-lanterns, semaphore stations, small boys who would hide in containers, and of course, those pigeons, who became the heroes of the city. They carried much of the tiny film documents—almost three thousand of them. You know, Peter, they even arranged money transfers that way. Germans like Moltke may boast of their army and the defeat of our country, but they never defeated us in Paris. Never!”
Wake could visualize the man at the scene three years earlier, his élan and strength leading the way for a beleaguered people. No wonder they revered him afterward. Faber and the defense of Paris was one of the few bright memories of the war for the French.
“An incredible story.”
“Not all was successful, though, Peter. We had failures with some of our ideas, which in retrospect seem ridiculous. We tried flying out five special sheep dogs who would then walk back and return to the city with messages from the outside. They got out but never made it back in. We floated zinc metal balls, boules de Moulins, down the river Seine to the outside world, but none made it. We even laid a secret telegraph cable down the river’s bottom—a very good idea—but the damned Germans found it.”
“Yes, but Paris never was captured,” said Wake, “and the German Army never stopped the birds.”
“Yes, my friend. It shows what determined men can do, does it not?”
Just then an animal howl rose from the darkness around them. It was Sohkoor, standing at the edge of the firelight, arms raised to the east. Woodgerd spun over, wide awake, one hand on his rifle. He looked
