Resistance (27 page)

Had he kept track, he would know what the date was. But in the beginning, his anger and confusion were so great that the passage of time meant nothing to him. Now a single hour was among the worst tortures he could imagine—every minute anticipated, painstakingly observed, and noted in the brain. Then that minute passing to the next.

He rolled over onto his side. He thought, as he had thought a thousand times since he had been here, that an excess of time was not the worst torture he could imagine: The worst was not knowing.

Retreating footfalls behind him, he walked forward over rough field. The circle of light spun incessantly, beckoning him. In his hand, he held the chocolate bar. The documents and her scarf were in his pocket. Would he be expected to know his false name? he wondered. Would the promised aviators already be there?

When he was five feet from the circle, the light went out. Immediately, there were two men, one at each elbow. They guided him politely to the car, opened the door to the back seat, gestured for him to get in. In the car, behind the wheel, was another man. Ted saw, just briefly, the glint of a bar on a shirt under a nondescript raincoat. He thought quickly of the boy, Dussart, with his missing ear, his tone of voice with Henri. Ted knew then, processed the information in an instant. The knowledge hit him like a shell—once, hard and deafening. He bent slightly forward, put his head in his hands. He thought he might be sick.

Henri.

And Claire as well?

The man to his right took the chocolate bar from Ted's hand. In perfect, if heavily accented, English, the Belgian said: “You won't be needing this where you're going.”

“Where am I going?” Ted asked.

The man cleared his throat. He spoke as if he'd rehearsed his pronouncement.

“Lieutenant Theodore Brice, I am sorry to inform you that you are not going to France. You are being taken to Brussels.”

Ted thought he saw a slight smile, as if in satisfaction at having accomplished an important task for a superior.

They rode through the night, first on bad, unpaved roads, then on a smoother highway. The man besides him broke the chocolate bar in pieces, gave some to the driver and to the man at Ted's left. Had there been a sign, a clue? He tried to remember all of it, play it through like a film. He saw Claire's face in the truck, wet from crying, and her obvious relief. But then he saw her hand on Henri's arm, the intimacy of that gesture.

What had it meant, then, her loving him?

And what had she been about to say? I
am … not what you think?

His mind looped and circled, reversed itself, took off. He couldn't put his thoughts into a logical sequence. He started again, played the film through. He saw every hour, searched every gesture. Beside him the two men spoke in a rapid French and sometimes laughed. They seemed relaxed and happy. His head spun, momentarily cleared, spun again. His stomach was hollow and nauseous—the kind of nausea he sometimes had emerging from the plane after a bad mission. It was the aftermath of shock, a shock you couldn't allow yourself to experience in the air. But it always hit you when you landed. Like Case, who got the headaches when his feet touched the tarmac. Where was Case now? Home? Out of the war with a shattered arm?

Had Henri been paid? Or had he done it for a cause, for a belief? Did Henri positively know that Ted and Claire had been lovers? Did he approve? Enjoy the irony of the aviator's guilt?

Along the way to Brussels, the driver stopped the car once so that each man could get out to piss. When the two Belgians guarding him left the car, the driver turned around and pointed a revolver at Ted. It wasn't six inches from his head.

He almost said, Do it.

For weeks he didn't care about his cell or time, in the same way (and yet its opposite) that weeks earlier he'd have been content to remain in the attic room forever. He wanted only to play the film through, over and over, again and again. He minded the interrogations not because he feared them but because they distracted his focus. He tried to remember how much he was supposed to tell his captors, what he was supposed to do to escape. Once, bitterly, he flirted with Henri's name and even with Claire's, stopping himself on the threshold of revenge. Some days he was certain she'd been in on the plan. The details and nuances could be put together just so to construct a plot. At those moments, he would see her canniness and instinct for survival as traits nurtured not by resistance but by pragmatism and opportunity.

Then he would remember the way she reached for his hand, put her mouth on his fingers, offered herself. Never again, he knew, would he be able to see something, taste something, and say, This is positively so.

After a time (weeks, a month?) he became ill. He had fevers and soaked the khakis. Then the damp in the cell set in and chilled him and made him shiver so violently he thought he might never get warm. He began to cough, and his chest seized up when he breathed. He felt as though there was something lodged inside his chest, an unfamiliar entity—as anger was; or bitterness.

At Breendonk they said they had no medicines for him and no doctor, but the interrogations stopped, and he was sometimes given dry blankets. He became delirious and spoke aloud to Frances and to the group captain, a man he'd barely known at base. He thought he was in Ohio, then in the air. Once he dreamed of finding Claire tangled in a parachute above the clouds. In another dream, Henri was beside him in the truck, whistling and smiling.

He drifted in and out of consciousness, recovered slightly, relapsed. He thought once he had been visited by an RAF named Bernie, an officer who still had his own uniform and seemed to swallow his vowels. This visitation had about it a quality that was unlike all the others, and so Ted thought it had probably actually happened. The RAF was solicitous and asked Ted what he needed; then he confessed he couldn't help the American much. He, too, was a prisoner. His crew had bailed out over, of all places, Brussels, and he'd been arrested immediately. He seemed fascinated by the story of Ted's crash, and, as the conversation progressed, pressed for more details about the damage to the plane, Ted's night in the woods, and his rescue by the Belgian Resistance. On the verge of confiding the tale of the boy who found him, Ted saw in the RAF’s movements (the too-casual way he lit a cigarette, surveyed the cell; and why wasn't the RAF frightened or his uniform dirty?) an overeagerness that set off a faint alarm. Or was he, Ted, becoming more and more paranoid, seeing betrayal everywhere, even where it couldn't be? He feigned sleep, heard the RAF sigh with exasperation, call for a guard. Ted never saw the man again.

He slept again with the blanket up around his ears. His sleep rose to the surface, floated near a state of wakefulness, sank again to a world without dreams, then rose again and dissipated like fog. He sat up finally, remaining still a moment to get his bearings. The cell seemed somewhat lighter now—he estimated the time at near eight
A.M.
Over at the door, the circular trap had been opened. A mug of tea, once hot, had cooled in its tin cup; two hard rolls were beside it. He bent forward, tested his legs, stood. He collected the food from the tray and returned with it to the bed.

He held a roll in one hand, the tin mug in the other. His hands seemed overly large on his thin wrists—the hands of a cartoon character. He wondered how much weight he'd lost since the crash—twenty, thirty pounds? He bit into the stale roll. The sun had etched a rectangle against the gray stone. Some days, from his bed in Breen donk, he watched the rectangle descend the entire length of the wall until it folded itself onto the floor.

He coughed, put a fist to his chest. If you loved a woman, and you discovered she was not what you thought she was in one particular detail—one particular important detail—did you no longer love that woman? He could never answer that question. He tried to make himself believe that she had known what Henri was about to do, and when he thought he was thoroughly convinced, he asked himself if he still loved her. And almost as soon as he thought about loving her, the entire construct collapsed, and he could not believe in her guilt. How intimately could a face lie and not, over a period of twenty days and nights, betray itself even once?

He replaced the empty tin and plate on the circular tray, picked up his boots. They were Belgian issue of indeterminate material, too small for him, but still preferable to walking the damp floor in stocking feet. His evasion clothes had been taken from him his first day in prison, and he had been wearing the same shirt and pants and socks for nearly two months. Socks. What he wouldn't give for a clean pair.

He put his hands in his pockets and tried to make a few circuits in the cell. The leg couldn't bear all his weight, and so he still limped. Several days after he arrived at Breendonk, a Belgian officer ordered the bandages removed. A laborer was sent in with industrial scissors and a small saw; Ted was certain the man would sever his foot.

After ten revolutions, he stopped at the bed, lay down flat, stared at the ceiling. He knew he tortured himself with images of Claire and Henri together. Perhaps they even talked about him. Henri must have known, must surely have guessed when he saw Ted and Claire in the truck. Had he forgiven her? Or worse, were the twenty days merely part of Henri's larger plan? He covered his eyes with his arm.

A neat click in the door made him turn his head. He waited for the circular tray to slide the mug and plate to the other side of the door, but instead the door opened. A figure beckoned to him.

He sat up, knowing he had no choice but to comply. With his limp, he left the cell, followed the guard along a series of corridors and into a room. A scrubbed green wall, a three-legged stool. Two large guards stood sentry by the door. The floor was wooden, and on it were bloodstains. An officer was sitting behind a clean metal desk. He gestured for Ted to sit.

The officer took off his peaked cap, put it on the desk. He removed a handkerchief from a trouser pocket, wiped his brow.

“You've come from Breendonk.”

“Yes.”

“You've been ill.”

“Yes.”

“You're better now.”

“A little.”

“You've eaten your rolls.”

“Yes.”

“You know you're being sent into Germany today. To a Stalag Luft.”

“Nope.”

“Do you mind if I ask you one or two questions?”

“Yes, I mind.”

“Lieutenant Brice. Your resistance and silence in Breendonk were useless. You are not in good health, which I regret.”

“Sure.”

“I could make your circumstances more comfortable. I could arrange for your release.”

“I doubt it.”

The stool was short, and Ted felt ungainly sitting on it, with his knees raised above his waist. There was no possible way to assume a dignified position. He wondered how long it would take the guards to get to him if he suddenly lunged at the officer and tried to snap his neck.

“Lieutenant Brice, do you know a”—the officer leaned forward to examine a piece of paper—“Henri Daussois?”

He sat perfectly still, knowing that by his lack of expression and his momentary silence, he was giving himself away. He felt the heat rise to the back of his neck. He put the palms of his hands on his knees to steady himself. He tried for a tone of indifference.

“My name is Lieutenant Theodore Brice. My military identification number is AO 677292.”

“Yes, yes.” The officer fluttered a hand at Ted, as if having expected this reply, but disappointed even so.

Didn't they know it was Henri who betrayed him? Or did they know him only as a courier, and not as a double agent? Did they have Henri in custody, or were they searching for him?

Blood rushed to Ted's head, sloshed in his ears. He could sink Henri with one sentence—so easy, hardly any effort at all. He remembered how Henri handed him the chocolate bar in the darkness, making him. It would be a swift and sweet revenge. Almost certainly, Henri would be shot or hanged.

“Let me ask you again, Lieutenant Brice. And bear in mind that I might be able to arrange a release for you. Regardless of what you may have heard of the relatively better conditions at the Stalag Lufts, they are not places you want to be—particularly not with your health as it is.”

Ted closed his eyes. He felt his head spin as it some times did when he'd had too much to drink. He opened his eyes to stop the spinning, and he saw that one hand on his knee had curled itself into a fist. He extended the fingers and tried to relax the hand, but not before the officer had seen him do this.

“Lieutenant Brice, I do require an answer.”

His chest hurt. He coughed, again pressed his fist against his breastbone. He looked up at the officer. Yes, he could betray Henri with a sentence, but he wouldn't be able to stop the fuse once lit.

“My name is Lieutenant Theodore Brice,” he said. “My—”

“Please.” The officer cut him off. He rubbed his eyes. He put his fingers to the bridge of his nose.

“There is a woman,” the officer said wearily, “a Claire Daussois. Did you by chance ever meet her?”

He knew, thought Ted. He didn't want an answer because he already knew the answer. He merely wanted to see Ted's reaction. And then Ted had another thought, simultaneously, one that made him want to vomit.

They had her.

“Claire Daussois,” the officer repeated. “Did you know her?”

Ted didn't trust his voice. He hated the way her name sounded on the man's tongue. He wanted to tell him to shut his fucking mouth. Instead, he sat back, deliberately tried to cross his legs in a casual pose. He stuffed his trembling hands into his pockets. He forced himself to look toward the window and to whistle. Glenn Miller. “In the Mood.”

“Let me put the question to you another way, Lieutenant Brice. I think you knew both Monsieur and Madame Daussois rather well.”

For the first time since being captured, indeed for the first time in the entire war, Ted felt himself suffused with rage. The heat and the color had now come into his face. He didn't now care what Claire had done or not done. It would not be he who linked her to the escape route, or who confirmed that link.