Night of Flames: A Novel of World War II (39 page)

A murmur spread through the group, and several men clasped hands with the men next to them.

Antoine continued. “Breaking out of
côte de Normandie
will be a monumen-tal struggle and, while it seems that the Germans were caught by surprise, we know they’ll regroup and mount a powerful resistance. Now, here in Antwerp, our job begins in earnest.”

Everyone was silent and all eyes were on him.

Antoine glanced at a paper he was holding. “In what was probably a coincidence of timing, a German general named Christoph Graf Stolberg arrived in Antwerp the day before
l’invasion.
General Stolberg is assuming command of Night of Flames

263

the German forces defending Antwerp and will be followed shortly by members of his 136th Divisional Staff. We expect they will immediately begin shoring up their defenses around the city and the port.”

Antoine set the paper on the table. “We have no idea how long it will take the Allied forces to break out and begin their drive across France and into Belgium, but our job is to be ready when they get here. We know that the Germans will do everything possible to prevent the port from falling into the hands of the Allies. If they can’t defend it, they’ll try to destroy it. It’s our job to prevent that from happening.”

Antoine stepped around to the front of the table and folded his arms across his chest. He looked over the group again, acknowledging each of the men with a nod or a thin smile.

This man is a leader, Boeynants thought.

Antoine continued, speaking quietly, forcing everyone to concentrate, his voice slowly rising in volume and intensity as he fi nished. “You have your assignments. You understand the chain of command. No breach of the rules of contact or the use of codes will be tolerated. We are now in the stage of the war that we have all been trained for, that we have all been waiting for. Watch every action of the enemy. Listen to every conversation. Commit every detail to memory and report it up the chain of command.
Restez vigilant,
and be ready for action.”

When the meeting broke up, Antoine approached Auguste and Boeynants and led them to a quiet corner of the room. When they were alone, the Resistance leader gripped Boeynants’s shoulder. He spoke just above a whisper. “I have news about the Leffards.”

Boeynants stiffened.

Antoine continued to grip his shoulder, his dark eyes fi lled with pain. “We have a contact inside Breendonck prison. Last night Rene and Mimi were . . .

exécuté.
”

Boeynants sagged against the stone wall. He heard Auguste say something but it didn’t register. His vision blurred, and he took several breaths, trying to focus his eyes on Antoine’s green beret. For two months he had feared this would happen; they’d never release a man like Leffard—but hearing it, knowing it . . .

“I’m very sorry,” Antoine said softly, his hand dropping to his side. “I know you were close to them. His loss is a heavy blow to our organization.”

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Douglas W. Jacobson

Boeynants nodded. He straightened up and glanced at Auguste then back at Antoine. “
Merci.
Thank you for telling me.”

They stood in silence for a moment before Antoine spoke again. “You can be of service to us if you are willing.”

“Oui, oui, bien sûr,”
Boeynants replied, grateful for the distraction.

“Auguste tells me that you have a contact in the Interior Department.”

“Yes, it’s where I used to work.”

Antoine took a step closer, keeping his voice down. “This may be dangerous, but your contact at the Department could be very important now that General Stolberg is here in Antwerp. Anything he can fi nd out about their plans will be useful.”

“Je comprends,”
Boeynants said. “I’ll do everything I can.”

Antoine nodded. “Report directly to me.” He put a fi nger up to his beret in a brief salute and stepped away.

Chapter 52

Anna was numb, her mind a dark void as the sweltering, foul-smelling boxcar jerked to a halt. She huddled in a corner, wedged between two elderly women, one of whom had died during the night. The train had made at least a dozen stops along the way and, at each one, more people were jammed into the car until it seemed like death by suffocation was inevitable.

The lack of motion eased Anna’s discomfort slightly, and a few thoughts trickled back into her mesmerized mind. She recalled how she had stared in disbelief at the waiting train when she and the other prisoners from the jail had been forced off the truck at gunpoint. It was dark, and the shabby boxcar was only partially illuminated by dim bulbs hanging under the eaves of the railway platform. Feldgendarmes stood on the platform, shouting orders. One of them struggled to control a snarling, barking dog wearing a spiked collar.

Then one of the Feldgendarmes pulled back the door of the boxcar, and Anna put her hand over her face, recoiling from the stench of sweat, urine and feces. Dozens of people—men, women and children—stared out from the dark interior. The Feldgendarmes jumped up on the edge of the car, shouting at the terrifi ed passengers to make room, swatting those nearby with their nightsticks. The last thing Anna recalled as she was shoved up the wooden ramp, into the dark, stinking interior of the car, was a sign painted on the door:
Chevaux En Long 8.
Capacity, Eight Horses.

Anna’s only consolation had been that Koenig was nowhere to be seen. Her initial hostility toward him had turned to loathing, then fear, as he sat in her cell night after night and rambled on about their life together in Germany. She was certain the man was demented and, even now, in the wretched confi nes of 266

Douglas W. Jacobson

the boxcar, Anna felt her skin crawl as she thought about Koenig stroking her leg or her hair. She would jerk away in disgust, slap his hand and yell at him not to touch her, but he would just laugh and whisper what a “conquest” she would be.

Anna blinked, jerked back to the moment by people moving, shuffl ing about, trying to get away from the door as they did every time the train stopped.

She braced herself against the side of the car and tried to fend off the crush of bodies with her arms. Pressed against the rough wooden planks, her back felt as if it would break.

The doors jerked open, and a burst of sunlight shot into the dark, steamy interior, causing everyone near the door to turn away. Men shouted in German,

“Everyone out!”

Anna stumbled down the ramp from the boxcar, shielding her eyes from the glaring sunlight. As her eyes acclimated she looked around. They were standing at the far end of what appeared to be a large, open courtyard, surrounded on three sides by a complex of multistory buildings. Hundreds of people stood nearby, scrawny, stooped over, staring silently at the new arrivals but keeping their distance from the rail siding.

SS troopers and Feldgendarmes shouted instructions to keep moving, randomly swatting people with their nightsticks. Anna heard dogs barking and snarling but couldn’t see them. As the group shuffl ed forward she heard a man behind her mumble to the woman next to him in French, “
Mon dieu,
this must be Drancy.”

Anna turned and glanced at the man. He wore a felt hat and a soiled suit coat that looked like it had once been expensive. A yellow Star of David was sewn to his sleeve.

The man’s eyes met Anna’s. “We’re doomed,” he whispered.

Chapter 53

Another week passed before the fl ight that would transport the rocket parts to London could be arranged, and Jan had become increasingly frustrated. As tempting as it was to believe that Anna had made it out of Poland, he couldn’t bring himself to completely accept it. There was no doubt in his mind that Anna had the courage and resourcefulness to pull it off, but what about Irene and Justyn? Would Anna have been able to get two Jews through all the checkpoints? Possibly, but there was no way to know for sure, and that was the crux of his confl ict.

The Russians had re-entered Poland, and war would soon be ravaging the country once again. If he left now Jan knew he would not be able to return, perhaps for many years to come. By then any chance of fi nding Anna would be long gone. On the other hand, if Anna
had
escaped to safety in Western Europe and he stayed in Poland, he could be trapped with no way out.

It was a quandary he couldn’t solve. But the plane was arriving tonight and, of one thing he was certain: he was leaving here. He pulled the battered leather satchel from under the bed and, once again, started packing.

Jan glanced at the shelf above the bed and noticed the cut-glass model of the hand, Anna’s favorite gift from the Leffards in Antwerp. He picked it up and turned it over, rubbing it with his fi ngers. He recalled how Anna would always do the same thing as she talked on the telephone. She kept it on the shelf in the hallway, with her Hummel collection, and she liked to pick it up and turn it over in her hand as she talked. He remembered fi nding it there, lying on the fl oor in the hallway among the shattered Hummel fi gures, the day he discovered their apartment ransacked.

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Douglas W. Jacobson

He thought about it again.

No, that wasn’t right.

That wasn’t where he found it.

Jan sat on the bed and stared at the small glass hand. It hadn’t been lying on the fl oor in the hallway. He had found it on the mantel above the fi replace

. . . in the parlor.

He turned it over, again and again, feeling the smoothness, thinking, remembering the day he stood in the mess in the center of their parlor. He was sure that he’d found it there, in the parlor, on the mantel above the fi replace.

Jan had never paid a lot of attention to these things but he was certain that Anna always kept it on the shelf in the hallway, with the Hummels. He could see her, standing in the hallway talking on the telephone . . .

Jesus Christ! Anna had moved it. He was certain of it. She moved it. If it had been on the shelf in the hallway it would have been smashed with everything else. She intentionally put it on the mantel. She wanted him to notice it.

Jan stood up and paced around the small room, his heart pounding. It all made sense. Anna had no way to contact him, and she’d been instructed to leave immediately—that’s what Slomak said. She couldn’t leave him a note because she knew the Gestapo were looking for her and they’d come to the apartment.

So she put the small glass hand, the symbol of Antwerp, on the mantel, hoping he would return and notice it. Was it possible? Of course, that’s what happened. He was certain. How could he have not realized it before this?

She left him a message, telling him where she was going.

Anna was in Antwerp.

It was after midnight when the Dakota appeared. It fl ew in from the west, using the conjunction of the two rivers as orientation and dropped in altitude attempting to locate the airstrip. Jan and Slomak stood just inside the tree line, alongside three horse-drawn wagons laden with rocket parts. Slomak lit a torch and waved it in the air giving the signal for the other torches to be lit, illuminating the four corners of the airstrip.

Then Slomak extinguished his torch and said, “Godspeed, my friend, you will fi nd her.”

Jan turned to him. He wanted to tell him how grateful he was; grateful that Night of Flames

269

Slomak helped Anna all those years before, grateful that they had met now . . .

but nothing came out. He nodded and swallowed hard, waiting anxiously for the plane.

Two weeks later Jan sat in a small, sparsely furnished conference room in the basement of the SOE headquarters in London. He had been waiting about fi fteen minutes when the door opened and Colonel Stanley Whitehall shuffl ed into the room along with a prim man of about sixty, carrying a steel briefcase.

“Good morning, Major . . . oh, excuse me,
Colonel
Kopernik,” Whitehall said, noticing the new insignia on the collar of Jan’s uniform. “Congratulations on your promotion. God knows you’ve earned it.”

Jan nodded and shook Whitehall’s pudgy hand.

“Colonel Kopernik, this is Martin Fletcher,” Whitehall continued. “He’s in charge of the team that’s been examining the rocket parts. Let’s all have a seat.”

When they were seated, Whitehall leaned forward, folding his hands.

“Colonel, we asked you to come here today because, given your extraordinary efforts, you deserve to know what we’ve learned.”

Jan nodded again without replying.

“Well then,” Whitehall said, settling back in his chair, “Martin, please brief the Colonel. It goes without saying, of course, that none of this must ever leave this room.”

Martin Fletcher opened the briefcase and removed a single sheet of paper, which he placed on the table in front of him. Then he extracted a set of reading glasses from his breast pocket and set them on the edge of his long, thin nose.

He glanced up at Jan, peering over the top of the glasses. “Colonel, fi rst of all, let me congratulate you on your successful mission. Our team has been working around the clock, and the components you brought back have enabled us to reconstruct the critical portions of this device.”

Fletcher paused for a moment and studied the paper in front of him.

Jan got the impression that the pause wasn’t because the man needed to consult the notes as much as it was to determine exactly how much he was to reveal.

Fletcher continued. “This device, the V-2 as we call it, is a much more sophisticated weapon than the V-1s they’ve been fi ring at us. The V-2 is, in all 270

Douglas W. Jacobson

respects, a guided missile. It is liquid fueled and we estimate that it will travel at least eight times faster than the V-1 with a range of more than three hundred kilometers. We also estimate that it is capable of achieving an altitude of approximately thirty kilometers before descending on its target.”

Fletcher peered at Jan over the top of his glasses. “From that altitude, Colonel, it would be undetectable.” He looked back at his notes. “Its guidance system is a form of three-axis gyropilot, which engages movable exhaust vanes and aerodynamic rudders. Quite ingenious, really. Rather crude, at this stage, but still, quite an achievement. We estimate the CEP at about 17 kilometers.”