The Children's War (51 page)

“I know,” he agreed. “I thought you might enjoy them for a few minutes anyway.”

“You just wanted an excuse to give that girl a few marks.”

“Maybe. Anyone selling flowers in the middle of the night . . .” He did not finish his thought.

“It’s almost dawn,” Allison said as if disagreeing, but he knew she was just sayinggood-bye.

“I’ll walk you home.”

The air was misty and their footsteps were muffled as though they were ghosts treading the desolate streets. He watched her as she slipped into her apartment building, waited long enough to feel sure that she had arrived safely, then turned to head back to his room. En route he stopped and laid Allison’s flowers at one of the impromptu memorials to the defenders of the city. A patrolman called out to him but he ignored the summons, slipping down an alley before the policeman could fire off a shot. The narrow escape left him feeling rather apprehensive, and he took extra care for the rest of his long walk home. When he got there, as was his habit, he waited a few moments out of sight to observe his building. It was just a habit and he hardly expected to see anything, so he was rather shaken when he saw three officers exit the building. He could not discern their insignia in the poor light; all he could see was that they conferred in front of the building, in a manner suggesting frustration, and then left on foot.

He stood absolutely still for a moment trying not to believe what the evidence suggested. Had they come looking for him? Why? And how did they know where he lived? The confusion blinded him momentarily to the implications. He knew he should not go inside just yet. There was no guarantee the building was not being watched or that someone was not still inside. No, he should sleep somewhere else tonight, this morning—already the sky was turning gray. It would be dangerous to go to any of his colleagues. . . . He felt a sudden catch in his throat. If they were seeking him, if he had been betrayed, then . . . Oh, God. He turned and began running back toward Allison’s flat.

Only years of expertise kept him from being picked up by a patrol during his wild run back to her place; instinct sent him dodging among the shadows at the last minute. He stopped two streets away from his destination to catch his breath. He had to be really careful now. It would hardly do to betray himself in his effort to protect her. Assuming a semblance of calm, he strolled toward the massive concrete tower that she called home. It was late enough that he could join the people stumbling to their jobs as the sun broke through the morning mist. As he walked, he prayed that it was a false alarm. Or that he had arrived in time.

But the small knot of people in front of the main entrance of her building indicated that his hopes were in vain. His heart pounded wildly in his chest. Hardly able to refrain from running, he walked up to the crowd. The entrance of the building was blocked—no admittance to anyone. He thought for a moment about entering through one of the hidden exits they usually used, but a sudden commotion held him fixed in the crowd. With a horrible fascination he watched as the security police emerged from the building.

They dragged a body out with them. It was Terry—unconscious, but apparently alive. Then two more police emerged with another body. He heard his breath catch in his throat as he struggled to breathe through the treacle that suffocated
him. That hair, fine and black and beautiful. Those strong, loving arms dangling so lifelessly, twisted at an odd angle as if broken to bits, like his heart. Someone in the crowd shushed him—
Do you want them to take you, too?
He was oblivious. He knew she was not alive, but he stared at the body in a desperate attempt to see some sign of life. Anything.

He wrapped his arms around his chest, clutching his heart. His helpless sobs drew the attention of a bystander—
Do you know them?
He could not answer. How could he say anything to anyone ever again? He still insanely believed it was possible that he was mistaken. He watched, paralyzed by his dread, as they loaded their captives into a van. As they turned to put her in, he saw that the left half of her face was missing. And he saw, from the bloody remains, that it was indeed Allie. A sudden incoherent rage made him want to scream. Why did you fight? Why the hell didn’t you let them take you alive! Damn you to hell!

The van drove off and the crowd dispersed. He stood alone on the pavement as workers hurried by, jostling him in their rush to their jobs. Any alert patrol should have noticed him and taken him in for questioning, but he remained undisturbed. The bizarre thought crept into his mind that he led a charmed life. In a daze, he walked away.

He needed to get as far away as possible. Some mindless survival instinct kept him safe as he wandered about. He stopped under a bridge—the same bridge that he had retreated to after his parents’ arrest—and stared at the oily swirls of tidal water struggling to flow upstream. The damp air reeked of mysterious chemicals and untreated sewage. It seemed appropriate that he should be here, it seemed a fitting place to think about what had happened. If, as he suspected, they had been betrayed, the betrayal looked complete. He could not return home, nor could he use any of his current aliases, and there was no one to turn to. He assumed anyone he knew was arrested or dead or guilty of the betrayal. Not only were they suspect to him, but he would be suspect to them, and he would be suspect to any other member of the Underground; any other assumption on their part would be suicidally stupid. Given the circumstantial evidence against him, if they knew he was alive, they would almost certainly try to assassinate him. The realization left him stunned: he would be relentlessly hunted by both sides.

He was not sure why he cared to continue to live—stubbornness perhaps, or maybe a desire for revenge—but he began to make plans. There was a set of papers he had, against orders, saved. No one in the group had known about them, not even Allie, and any record of them had long ago been destroyed. They were the ones he had used years ago when he had first joined, long before any of his current comrades had met him. They were old and out-of-date, but they would give him a safe identity, one that had not been betrayed, until he could find better papers. He went to the place he had hidden them and removed them from their protective envelope. He paged through them, looked at the weathered photograph of his younger self, and read the name aloud: Peter Halifax.

It was the identity he had been given by the Underground group that had adopted him not long after his parents were arrested. He had lived scavenging and stealing for about a month, celebrating his thirteenth birthday on the run, when a fellow had simply walked up to him, put his hand on his shoulder and said, “Come with me.” The cell had noticed him in the neighborhood, had watched him for a while, and had then decided to adopt him into their ranks. He was given a name, a place to live, and a purpose.

When he reached the age of sixteen, he was supposed to report for the draft, and for the next six years, his life was complicated by this fact. He was given a new identity that changed his name and background and reduced his age by two years. When he reached eighteen, he was given another identity that was excused from service for a year, then his name was changed again and his age was increased by three years so that his records could show that he had completed his service as specified by the law. After that, with each passing year his name was changed and his age reduced until, at the age of twenty-two, his papers and birth year agreed again.

It was a simple albeit disconcerting process that did not end. From then on, for reasons of security and to avoid leaving too long a trail if he were ever taken in, his name and history were changed with some regularity. He got used to it— got used to dropping one persona and adopting another each time he changed assignments or associates. Only the very first time had it bothered him. He was told that the name he had used for three years, a name that he associated with his rescue from the streets and his adoption into the Resistance, was to be discarded. He felt hurt and bothered by their cavalier attitude toward his identity, and he disobeyed orders and hid his papers, feigning their destruction.

And so they had sat, hidden high up in the loose bricks of the foundation of the bridge he had used for refuge and a home. There it was, a name he had not used since he was sixteen, a name that neither his parents nor his boyhood friends would know. A name that anyone who knew him currently would not recognize. Yet, he would have to believe that it was his name and think of himself with that name until . . . until he did not know when.

A desolate feeling of loneliness invaded him; he gasped with the realization of how devastating a loss he had suffered. He reeled with pain as a vision of Allie’s destroyed face crossed his mind. Her hair had been damp with blood, the flesh hung in shreds. What the hell had happened?

With an effort, he opened his eyes against the pain. The murky waters of the Temms shifted and swirled into the hallway wallpaper. Stunned, he glanced up and down the hall, wondering how long he had stood there. He could still hear the rise and fall of voices as Elspeth and Karl continued talking in the sitting room. He remembered her order and decided to comply and then get something to eat.

After eating, he went up to clean the kitchen. It was a mess—everything had been left to accumulate, but he did not mind the work. His thoughts wandered back through time as his hands worked mechanically. He stared ahead without
seeing; in his mind’s eye he was walking the dark streets of east London, breathing his last taste of freedom. It had recently rained, had been raining for some time, and the air smelt of damp bricks. Keeping to back alleys, he made his way out of the old district and into Workers’ District #9. It was harder to pass unnoticed here; there were no alleys, just large expanses of muddy open ground between the monstrous concrete housing blocks. A few weeds struggled to survive, but it was a losing battle on this poisoned ground. The air was damp and cold, and the mist glowed ominously under the bright orange lights. He shoved his hand into his pocket, closed his fingers around the day’s takings: four hundred
Neue Reichsmark
and a gold watch. Not very good, but better than nothing. The money would pay off the desk clerk for another day. Maybe the watch would help toward the acquisition of good papers. Groceries, acquired at ludicrous black-market prices, would have to wait: he simply had to acquire those papers.

He passed out of the district, reached the slums of East Göbbels. At the bottom of a narrow, dirty alley, he climbed the steps of an anonymous, dilapidated building, a converted warehouse. He had taken a room here because it was the sort of place where, for a price, no questions were asked. The blackmail he had to pay cut into his earnings quite heavily, but he could not get a proper residence, not to mention a food ration card or a job, until he had a proper set of papers.

His thoughts were interrupted by Horst’s dropping a pair of muddy army boots on the floor and grunting, “Before tomorrow morning.” Horst stomped out, leaving him staring at the boots in confusion. It was unlike the boy to pass on a chance to harass him. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and went back to scouring the pans.

The patterns on the tiling behind the sink dissolved into the dusty shadows of the hallway of his rooming house. A single bulb hung from a cord, accentuating the darkness with its incongruent brightness. Behind one of the doors he heard a radio droning on about the latest Berlin rally. He felt disgusted with himself. Once again he had been obliged to rob his own people. The watch and more than half the money had belonged to a German who had carelessly wandered alone down an unpatrolled alley. Who would have thought that a German wearing a gold watch would only be carrying 250 marks! As the evening wore on without any success, he had become desperate and resorted to burglary. The German residential districts were too difficult to penetrate, and the rest of his night’s earnings had come from three separate break-ins in WD8. It was pathetic how poor his fellow countrymen were.

He turned his key in the rusty lock and entered the room. Without turning on the light, he went to the loose floorboard he had prepared long before and secreted the watch with the other valuables that might one day purchase an identity for him. He hid his knife under the same board, but farther out of reach, deep in a crevice. Carefully replacing the board and the furniture, he then turned on the lights. After paying the desk clerk for her lack of interest and paying the
night’s rent, he had thirty marks left. Enough for a loaf of bread in a government store or about two slices on the open market. Damn! He surveyed his kitchen shelf, located just over his bed, and determined that he had enough for a good meal tonight if he did not worry about tomorrow. There was also half a bottle of gin, and he decided to drink that as well.

When he poured the last shot of gin into the glass, he was feeling well fed and comfortably numb. Tomorrow would be better. He would only rob Germans, and he would get enough to make a difference. He would find another resistance cell, teach them to trust him, get new papers, maybe even find another woman like Allison. . . . He surveyed the clear fluid, savored hope. Maybe he could rebuild his life, he had thought, even as he heard the heavy footsteps in the hallway.