Simple Faith (2 page)

His head felt as if it were on a swivel as he looked wildly around and below him. Off to his left and several yards below was Simpson, the plane’s navigator. He, too, was no more than a kid—a scared kid—and Peter could see that he’d panicked and opened his parachute too soon. He was headed for a cluster of trees.

An explosion to his right drew Peter’s attention to the west where he saw the plane already in flames hit the frozen ground hard and then erupt in a fireball. He knew there was no way Walker would have abandoned the plane even once the rest of the crew bailed out. He would have done everything possible to put distance between his crew and the wreckage, knowing the Germans would go first to the wreckage to search for survivors.

Peter squeezed his eyes shut and sent up a prayer for mercy for Walker and the others then forced his attention back to the issue at hand—his own safe landing. Turning his head to the right, he strained to look over his shoulder and saw a road and some power lines. If he hit the power lines, he could be killed instantly. The hard earth was racing up to meet him. He twisted his face to one side, closed his eyes, and pulled the rip cord, feeling the power of the released parachute as the force of it rushed past his face and it ballooned above him, slowing his descent with a jolt of the harness and flipping him so that he was now facing the ground. Not thirty seconds later he landed—hard—with his wounded leg twisted at an unnatural angle beneath him. Grimacing against the pain that threatened to overwhelm him, he fumbled to unfasten the harness and shrug free of it, all the while pulling the still-billowing silk of the parachute to him and wadding it into a tight ball as quickly as possible. He also shrugged out of his flight suit and stowed it with his headgear in the wad of the parachute.

He performed these actions automatically as he studied his surroundings. The sun was low in the sky, partially obliterated by a line of gray clouds that threatened snow. He was grateful for the realization that in a matter of minutes what sun there was would slip below the horizon and dusk would cover his movements. He needed to wait for full darkness.

The field had been plowed, but the ground was frozen solid and rock hard. A haystack stood maybe ten yards from him. Clutching the balled-up chute in one arm and using the other as a kind of crutch, he dragged himself inch by painful inch toward the haystack. Along the way he paused often, taking time to check to be sure that the frozen ground showed no signs of his journey. By the time he reached his destination, he was sweating profusely in spite of the temperature that had to be below freezing. And he was pretty sure he had lost a good amount of blood.

The sun was gone, leaving him very little time to get his bearings before he was enveloped in total darkness. He opened his escape kit, or “evasion purse,” as it was called. It contained maps for the areas the crew would fly over as well as a little money, although given that he wasn’t sure where he was, it was difficult to know if the money would do him any good.

Of more importance were the photographs of him taken in civilian garb that could be used to create false identity papers. There were also cards printed in various languages that read, “I am an American, and misfortune forces me to seek your assistance.” These could be used to communicate with locals and offered a reward to anyone who provided such assistance. Finally, every kit was stocked with Benzedrine tablets to give the downed airman the energy he would need to focus on his escape. Peter popped a couple of these tablets into his mouth and then set to work. He figured he had as little as ten minutes or—if luck was with him—perhaps as much as twenty before the Germans would start heading his way. With both hands, he gouged out a section of the hay and stuffed the parachute inside. He also abandoned his helmet and goggles and considered continuing to hollow out the hay so that he, too, could hide inside but soon realized the effort was pointless. The haystack was frozen stiff, and his hands already felt raw and frozen in spite of his gloves. It was all he could manage to carve out a space deep enough to stuff the parachute and other items.

Gasping the way he had in basic training after running drills with a thirty-pound pack on his back, he leaned against the haystack and considered his next move. His head spun with the instructions he’d received in training—stick to low-lying areas; stay near the edge of a forest or wall or hedge because it’s harder to see movement when background is dark. Remove wristwatch—a dead giveaway that he was not European.

He unfastened the leather strap of the watch his dad had given him the day he shipped out—his grandfather’s watch. Unzipping his flight suit, he stuffed it in one of his shirt pockets and buttoned the flap. Behind him was the road he’d spotted during his fall. A car passed, then a row of trucks, military by the shape and size of them and definitely not friendly. The trees where Simpson had landed were to his right, the telltale white of the parachute flapping in the wind, which was beginning to pick up. No sign of Simpson, but at the moment Peter couldn’t worry about that. All he could do was hope the kid had the good sense to unhook his harness and separate himself from the chute even though that would mean free-falling several feet.

For Simpson and the rest—as well as for him—the race was on. Who would reach them first? Friendly locals or the Germans? Locals were less likely. The punishment for aiding the enemy—in this case, Peter—was death. He couldn’t take a chance that some farmer or villager was willing to risk that. He needed to find someplace to hide. Even with the moon fighting with clouds to shine its light, Peter knew that a parachute in the trees would be as good as a flare and bring the Nazis to investigate. If Simpson wasn’t already free of the contraption—or dead—the Germans would surely finish the job and then start looking for other survivors.

In the distance another convoy of trucks passed. They were moving fast and headed in the direction of the downed plane. Once they realized the crew had jumped, it wouldn’t be long until they fanned out in a search. Instinctively, Peter tried pulling his knees close to his body to make himself as small and unnoticeable as possible. But the action sent a shot of pain down his leg so powerful that he had to bite his dog tags to keep from crying out.

Dog tags—keep them safe
. If he was captured wearing them, the Germans would supposedly deal with him according to international rules regarding the treatment of captured enemy personnel. Without them he could be labeled a spy or traitor and tortured or worse.

He wondered if on top of the gunshot wound he had broken his leg in the fall. If so, then what? Across the field he saw a ring of light and knew that the trucks had circled the downed wreckage and turned their headlights on to make it easier to assess the situation. Sooner or later …

Ice cracked close by. Too close. He recalled puddles that had formed in the ruts and furrows of the field—puddles covered with a thin coating of ice. Puddles he had deliberately avoided so that they didn’t break and form a trail right to him.

Peter cast about for something he might use as a weapon. His fingers closed around a rock the size of a baseball. Back home he’d played first base, and he had a good arm.

“Mister?” The whisper came from his left. He hefted the rock and turned to face a boy of no more than eight or ten. “Can you walk?” The kid was down on all fours inching his way around the haystack. The fact that he spoke at least some English albeit with a heavy accent of some sort put Peter on guard. Could be a trick to gain his trust.

He wasn’t about to admit that he not only couldn’t walk but wasn’t sure if he could move at all. The leg was stiffening up, and he was in a lot of pain and starting to fear that he might actually black out. He clenched the rock a little tighter as the kid closed in on him, glancing over his shoulder toward the ring of trucks around the wreckage of the plane. The boy pointed toward a thicket of shrubs. “We’ll get you over there, and I’ll go for help,” he said more to himself than to Peter. “Mama will know what to do.” He pronounced
Mama
with the accent on the second syllable. “Come on,” he instructed as he started to crawl toward the shrubs. When he realized that Peter was not following him, he paused then stood up. “Okay, I’ll drag you.”

The idea would have made Peter smile under any other circumstances. The kid was skinny, almost frail-looking. There was no way he was going to drag Peter’s six-foot-two, 185-pound frame to safety.

“Go for help,” Peter said, his voice husky from both the smoke in the plane and now the cold. He fumbled with the first-aid kit that was standard issue as part of his gear. Inside was a syringe with morphine. This seemed as good a time as any to use it.

The kid stood up and came back to him, watching him as he gave himself the pain medication. “You can’t stay here, mister.” Without warning, he stepped behind Peter and thrust both his arms under Peter’s armpits. “Use your good leg to push,” he grunted as he tugged on Peter’s upper body.

“Let go,” Peter whispered. “I can do this.” He jammed the syringe into the haystack so it wouldn’t be discovered; then he used the roll of bandages to fashion a tourniquet. Next he braced his palms flat behind him. Pushing off with his good foot, he scooted along the frozen field as the boy hovered nearby to show the way and apparently play cheerleader.

“Almost there, mister.”

“Just a few more meters, mister.”

The kid scrambled ahead, and Peter heard the snap of some branches and the rustle of dried leaves. “In here,” the boy said.

Peter gave his body one great heave and once again felt himself falling—this time into a ditch. He was lying in half an inch of cold water—the ice that had covered it floating around him. He caught a piece and pressed it to his lips to stem the incredible thirst he felt. The smell of wet decaying leaves surrounded him, and he surrendered to the pain and exhaustion and closed his eyes. The last thing he remembered was the kid covering him with branches that smelled like his mother’s cedar chest and the sounds of truck engines revving in the distance and a man’s voice barking out orders in German. It was the eleventh of November. In two weeks, Peter would be twenty-eight years old. His fellow crew members had jokingly referred to him as the Old Man. He had to wonder just where he would spend that birthday—if he made it out of this mess alive.

Anja Jensen Steinberg—a last name she had surrendered to the need for anonymity and the protection of her son—sat on the train, staring out into the gathering darkness. The journey from Brussels to the village where her grandparents Olaf and Ailsa Jensen had their farm could take as little as an hour or as long as four to six hours, depending on whether their train was forced to sit on a side track so that some German general or a trainload of German troops could have preference. The idea that their business was of more importance than her chance to spend twenty-four blessed hours with her eight-year-old son, Daniel, annoyed her. During the week Daniel lived in the orphanage where he had been taken when they had fled Munich and he and Anja had been separated. There he attended classes while she worked at the hospital in Brussels. He spent weekends and holidays on the farm. So much had changed for all of them in just a year.

This time last year she had been Anja Steinberg, running for her life across Poland—her husband and daughter murdered by the Nazis, her son’s whereabouts unknown. Along with her friends Beth and Josef Buch, she had escaped from the notorious Sobibor death camp and eventually made it to her home on the island of Bornholm off the coast of Denmark where she had abandoned her married name and gotten new identity papers—forged—for herself, using her family name of Jensen. Once she learned that Daniel was alive and discovered his whereabouts, she procured forged papers for him as well. She had no doubt that her late husband would not only approve but would have encouraged her to do whatever was necessary to keep herself and their son safe. She, along with Beth and Josef, had been advised to stick as close as possible to their given names. Both Anja and Jensen were common names in Denmark. For Josef and Beth it had been a bit more complicated. Beth became Lisbeth, and Josef kept his given name but changed the spelling of his surname to Buchermann. So far they had all survived without anyone questioning them or their forged identity papers.

When they first arrived on Bornholm, it seemed as if they might have found a place where they could wait out the end of the war. The news was better than it had been when they were all living in Munich and certainly gave them more hope than they had dared to entertain for even an instant while imprisoned at the Nazi extermination camp in eastern Poland. In those precious weeks on the island that held so many happy memories for her, they had enjoyed an almost normal life. Beth and Josef had married, and Anja had received the best gift of all—the news that her son was safe in an orphanage run by an order of nuns just outside Brussels. Immediately she had begun making plans to bring him to Bornholm.

But shortly after that, they learned that it was no longer safe for them to remain on the island. The Nazi presence was growing because Hitler’s regime had decided to work there in secret on the development of an atomic bomb. Everyone on the island had been subjected to interrogation—their backgrounds and identity documents thoroughly checked. As an escapee from Sobibor, she was still being hunted, and as Anja knew all too well, the Nazis prided themselves on leaving no loose ends. Even in their small village, it was impossible to know who might betray them.