Page 17

16

Briar

1942

I led them all down to the boathouse, with Bess helping Gram to take it slow at the rear.

Cadence took me aside as we walked. “Gram shouldn’t be out like this at night, Briar. She can barely breathe.”

“It’s important, trust me.”

Cadence walked next to me in silence, but I knew what she was thinking. Yet another Briar drama about nothing.

I stepped into the boathouse first.

“My God,” Cadence said when she saw the man on the floor. “Who is it?”

I approached him. “I don’t know. I found him on the beach.”

Bess crouched over him. “Is he even alive?”

“Just unconscious,” I said. “He almost drowned. Shock from exposure. Hypothermia.”

Bess ran up to the house to get supplies.

“We have to call the police,” Cadence said.

“Get him to the sofa,” Gram said.

Cadence set her hand on Gram’s arm. “He needs a doctor. I’ll call an ambulance.” She started to turn away.

I pulled her back. “Wait. Let’s get him stable first.”

Cadence kept her gaze on the man. “But we have no idea who heis.”

We woke him enough to get him settled on the sofa, but he lost consciousness again.

“Has he spoken at all?” Margaret asked.

“No.”

Gram put a hand on the man’s forehead. “He needs to change out of that wet shirt.”

“It’s no one local, right?” Cadence asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

“We’ll get him fixed up,” Gram said, in her element, no doubt eager to stir up some of her tinctures and potions. “I’ll make a poultice up at the house.”

Margaret stroked his hair. “Poor thing. Almost drowned.”

Bess returned with a basin and towels, more blankets, and some of Tom’s clean shirts and trousers.

As we pulled back the blanket, through the man’s wet shirt I saw the outline of something taped to his torso. I lifted his shirt to find a rectangular length of waxed paper taped to his chest.

Cadence leaned closer. “What’s in there?”

I gently pulled off the tape and paper to find a pamphlet calendar, written in French, and a thin leather case the size of a deck of cards.

“He’s French?” Gram asked.

“Maybe,” I said, though I suspected he was not. Hitler based his submarine operations out of Lorient, France, on the western coast. If this man had come off a U-boat, it was possible that France was the last place he’d been.

Bess took the leather case from me and opened it to reveal a photo. She held it up. “Look.”

It was a picture of a child, not more than a year old, looking at the camera with a grave expression.

Bess returned her gaze to the man. “His son or daughter maybe.”

Cadence paced. “We need to call someone. He could die here.”

Gram ran some cool water in the basin and drew a towel down the side of the man’s face. “He’s already coming around.”

“ Mutti? ” the man muttered, with his eyes still closed.

Gram turned to me, her eyes wide.

“He’s German,” Cadence said, breathless.

Bess set the blanket over him again. “Does it really matter right now? He’s hurt and needs us.”

I could only nod, amazed my suspicions were true. A warm thrill coursed through me. In some ways this was the opportunity I’d dreamed of—a German soldier ready to answer anything I asked. I could finally use my German skills. It was a dangerous situation, of course, and it had to be handled smartly.

Margaret hurried to the bathroom, came back with a cup of water, and helped him sip from it.

“Please help me,” the man said weakly, in good English. “I am just a medic, not a criminal.”

“This is just like what happened on Long Island.” Cadence headed for the door. “I’m calling the police.”

“Not yet, Cade, please,” Bess said. “Just hear him out.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Peter Muller. I cannot go back to them. I’ll do anything.”

“Why are you here?” I asked. “I know you came off the U-boat that’s been sitting out there.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “I had to get away. I didn’t sign up for what Hitler’s doing. I am just the ship’s medic.”

“Why is your English so good?” Cadence asked.

“I was raised here in America.” He patted his chest. “Where is my photo?”

Bess handed him the little leather case. “A beautiful child.”

“My daughter, Anna.” He opened the case and looked at the photo. “She’s with my grandmother in Minnesota.”

“How old is she?” Bess asked.

He looked at the picture. “Already three now.”

“How long since you’ve seen her?”

“Too long. Since she was an infant.”

“Why did you jump ship?” I asked.

He struggled to sit and then gave up and settled back down. “My grandmother is a Mennonite. Our family moved to Minnesota from Germany when I was a child, and I was raised in a household of nonviolence.”

Gram stepped closer to him. “God-fearing people.”

He nodded. “I hate what Hitler is doing. I finally left last night. I knew I’d rather die than remain a part of that.”

“But they’ll come looking for you,” I said.

“No. I staged my own death. With pig’s blood from the galley, on the clothes I left behind.”

“But they have binoculars,” I said. “They’ll see you here.”

“They have only limited focal range from out there.” He paused and looked at Gram. “I would like to defect.”

“How did you end up in Germany?” I asked. Had he just made up this elaborate story? It was hard to tell. But the details seemed unique enough to be true.

“My parents took me back, to Hesse, when I was in middle school, to wrap up the family’s estate. We ended up staying and I married. My mother and wife took our infant to Minneapolis when the war started and I was conscripted.”

“So they’re waiting for you there?” Bess asked.

He shook his head. “My wife got sick on the voyage over, and my mother, too.”

Gram tapped herself with the sign of the cross. “God help them.”

Bess crouched near him. “But the baby survived?”

“She did. Thriving with my grandmother, last I heard.”

Gram sat next to him on the sofa. “Thank the Lord, raised in a Christian household. Nazis have disavowed God.”

“I’m so sorry,” Bess said. “All while you were on that U-boat, separated from them.”

“I was a farmer like my father—we grew all our own food—but the Kriegsmarine trained me as a medic since I’d birthed calves. And I was assigned to a U-boat. Once we downed a ship, I knew I couldn’t stay.”

Cadence clearly wasn’t buying his story. “So you had no idea what the U-boat was out there to do?”

He turned to Cadence. “Of course I was aware that we would confront the enemy—I was trained to bandage wounds and suture—but I didn’t know our exact mission. It was terrible knowing I’d been a part of causing so much pain and bloodshed.”

“How awful for you,” Bess said.

“You don’t know the horror of it, hunting ships with human beings aboard like that, the men cheering at the kills, and adding another pennant to hoist upon our arrival home.”

Cadence went to the door. “I’m sorry, but this sounds implausible. We have to call the police now.”

Peter reached out one arm toward Cadence. “Please. I love this country. I’m not a threat to anyone. I just need to reach my daughter. My grandmother is not well.”

I weighed his claim of fealty to the United States. Was he making it up to save his skin? I had no idea about the process, but helping him defect wouldn’t be easy. And all of us would be liable, too, if we didn’t turn him in soon. We were probably already harboring a criminal in the law’s eyes.

“Sleep now,” I said. “We’ll talk more later.”

After he fell asleep, I stepped to Cadence at the door.

“You’re not actually thinking of keeping him here?” Cadence asked.

Bess, Gram, and Margaret joined us. “What if this were Tom far from home?” Bess asked. “Wouldn’t we want someone to care for him?”

“These are the men Tom’s fighting,” Cadence said. “Gram, you swore a Coast Guard pledge to watch the shore for invaders. We have to turn him in.”

“We need to know more,” I said. “What would the defection protocol entail?”

“You just want to study him,” Cadence said. “You must be having a field day, seeing a Nazi up close like this. But this isn’t some spy game, Briar. We have to turn him in and be done with it. His story sounds so fake.”

“Let me go and talk to Captain McManus about defection.”

The thought of finding and turning over a German who wanted to defect was appealing. Someone would finally believe me about something. But it had to be handled delicately. Peter was innocent and practically American. He didn’t deserve to die in the electric chair, no matter what Cadence thought.

“Head-of-the-FBI McManus?” Bess asked.

“I know him a little from work. Maybe we can hand Peter over quietly. When J. Edgar Hoover announced they had found those German saboteurs, it created a riot. Roosevelt had no choice but to execute them. Maybe we can do this secretly somehow.”

“Fine,” Cadence said. “Go talk to McManus tomorrow.” She sent Bess a pointed look. “But don’t get too attached to him. As soon as we figure out the best way, we’re turning him in.”