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Briar

1942

I lifted the lid of Mr. Schmidt’s box, jumping out of my skin with anticipation. Why had he left this in his medicine cabinet? Was that what he wanted to tell me about before he died from his fall down the beach steps? I shivered at the thought of poor Conrad’s body, twisted and lifeless at the bottom of the concrete stairs. I’d been the first to come upon him, his body still warm.

Scout scratched at the screen door with a pitiful whimper.

“What is it, girl?” She had just been out to do her business and would have to wait. It was only a squirrel, no doubt.

From the cold metal box I pulled a manila envelope and a black leather jeweler’s box. I opened the envelope first and found two photographs. One was taken in the woods somewhere and showed a large gathering or rally, with people dressed in Nazi uniforms, arms raised, saluting the swastika-adorned flag. The other was of a typical German house, with a decorative swastika arranged in bricks under the front eave. I looked closer at the street signs. adolf hitler strasse. goering strasse . All named after Hitler and his close friends. How did Mr. Schmidt get these? Had he kept his Nazi past a secret?

I opened the jeweler’s box next and found a ring, which I’d once seen described in a magazine as a Nazi honor ring. A shiver went through me as I turned the silver band in my fingers and examined the grinning skull with hollowed-out eyes set between two oak leaves. Frederick the Great had started that lovely tradition of using the skull in military insignia, but I didn’t know much else about it.

I held the ring to the light and searched the inside for an inscription. To Kuno. I set it back in the box. Kuno? Why would Mr. Schmidt have it? Was it a fake? Those had been springing up at hobby shops everywhere. Nazi-flag replicas and toy Lugers. No, it was the real thing—Icould tell by the heft of it alone. Why did Mr. Schmidt not tell me about it? It didn’t make sense. Conrad had been a decorated captain in the Marines during the Great War. But what had he not told me?

Sandra Granger could fill me in. She owned and operated Martha’s Vineyard’s best—only, really—military- and marine-antiquities shop, Island Treasures. That second word was possibly an attempt at New England sarcasm, since the shop, found down near the harbor, had never seen anything close to treasure. Mostly she carried old whaling antiques, heavy on the scrimshaw, and a bunch of World War I artifacts, most of them American but with some German and Russian items here and there.

The eighty-year-old proprietress had been friends with Mr. Schmidt for a few years, knew even more than I did about military paraphernalia, and seemed to be pretty discreet, which was essential. But would Sandra call the cops on me for having such a piece? I had a feeling a lot of her goods had come to her by way of a no-questions-asked policy, the kind of wink people in her trade gave to customers. She probably wouldn’t rat me out. Not if she could profit from it.

I kept the ring and the pictures and stowed the metal box back in the cupboard, feeling a fuzzy, wrapped-in-cotton disconnection from the earth. Sandra would help me make sense of it all. There was no way my best friend had been a Nazi. Had he had some connection to the U-boat I’d been seeing?

I took Mr. Schmidt’s binoculars, stepped to the porch, and scanned the sea, checking the horizon for any glint of sunlight off metal. My arms ached after a while, and just as I was about to quit, my eye caught a flash and I refocused. My whole body went cold as a fence-like run of metal partially emerged from the water.

My heart thumped. They were waiting for something. It was the deepest part along the North Shore, thirty fathoms at least, but why would they park themselves there? U-boats had only six hours of battery life before they had to resurface to recharge, but why do it right there in the shadow of an Army base? Not that the Army lookouts could see directly below the base, into Pepper Cove. The Coast Guard shore patrols had trouble accessing that rocky cove, as well, and had sworn in Gram to keep an eye on it, a job they often assigned to coastal fishermen. But even Gram doubted that what I’d seen was a U-boat.

I set the binoculars down. Though I’d glimpsed only the very tip of the conning tower, I knew it was a U-boat. But I had to be certain. I didn’t care how much they’d laugh at me—if I was 100 percent sure, I’d call it in again. It was too important to let my stupid pride get in theway.

I refocused and saw it even better than before, the whole top of the U-boat just barely submerged.

I scrambled down the cement stairs and ran along the beach to the call box, grabbed the receiver, cranked the handle, and a familiar voice came on the line.

It was Joe Presley, my least favorite of the shore-patrol dispatchers.

I bent and caught my breath. “I saw it again. German sub, just off Pepper Cove. I need Coastie backup to scare them off.”

“Aw, jeez. Is this Briar Smith?”

I heard laughter on the other end. “Is it Briar the Liar again, Joe?” someone asked.

I pictured them at that big oak desk they sat around all day, their sweaty armpits showing pink through their cheap white short-sleeved shirts, smoking and telling dumb stories, transcribing low-priority calls in their fat logbook.

“You’ve come in here to the office, as well, haven’t you? Skinny kid wearing a parka hottest day of the year? Joan of Arc hairdo. I remember you.”

I paced the beach. “I saw the conning tower.”

“The what, now?” Mr. Presley quieted for a second and then attempted a gentle tone. “Folks’ve been seein’ whales quite a lot.”

“Off the North Shore? No. It’s a U-123. I just know it.”

“We’ve had the pleasure of your call before, Miss Smith.” I heard the cover of the logbook slap against the table. “Lemme see…says here you called on August second and reported a cork life vest found washed up on Salt Cove Beach. August third reported seeing a Nazi U-boat off the North Shore. You insisted, and I quote, ‘Nazis are watching us and are gauging the best time to come ashore.’?” He turned a page. “Then August fourth. The incident with the flare gun. We don’t need to rehash that one.”

“It’s the same U-boat I saw that day.” I paused. “May be the Leopard. ”

“The Leopard ?”

Someone chuckled on Joe’s end.

“The sub they say took down the Port Nicholson off P-town?”

“Yes.”

“So, you think a German submarine is sailing offshore in shallow water, right below a U.S. Army base.”

“It’s completely secluded over there and sixty-five feet deep in places. They can’t see it from up at the base.”

“You memorize the maritime charts for fun?”

I didn’t share that on Saturday nights eighty-two-year-old Conrad Schmidt and I had often sipped iced schnapps and quizzed each other on the marine navigational charts. Just the thought of Mr. Schmidt pinched my heart. He would have believed me.

“Take any pictures of this U-boat?” Joe asked.

“No, but I know what I saw.”

“Look, Miss Smith, there’s a reason the Coast Guard has strung call boxes around the perimeter of this island. And it’s not for you and me to have chatsies every day. You’re fifteen, right?”

“Sixteen.”

“Go on over to the Jive Hive. Meet some normal kids. Play checkers.”

“I want to take it out before it torpedoes any more ships. I know what a German U-boat looks like.”

“Of course you do. I’ll log this call in, but you’ve now officially been warned to cease and desist, and your name’s been added to the list monitored by the police and the FBI. So, unless you have solid proof, stay off this line. If you want to help, knit socks for the boys.”

“Can you just—”

The line went dead. I hung up and surveyed the water, darkness now falling. The sub had probably descended when they saw me at the call box. By now they might have already gone off somewhere.

Or maybe they were still sitting out there, radios silenced. Watching.

I walked on toward home. I wouldn’t even tell Gram and the others. I was used to being called Briar the Liar, and I didn’t want to embarrass them any more than I already had. But I knew what I saw.