Authors: Gilbert Morris
Castleton turned the file over and looked at it. Without a word he handed the file to Colonel Flynn, who took it and read aloud, “ ‘Your security is not very good.’ ” He looked up and smiled. “It’s signed ‘Dailon Bando.’ ”
Major Castleton was half angry but secretly pleased. “Why didn’t you take the file, Bando?”
“Because you’d know I had it.”
“Did you make a copy?”
“Only in my head. It’s usually not a good idea to write down top-secret information.”
Colonel Flynn finally laughed and stuck out his hand. “All right, Bando, you’re elected. Do you agree, Major?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just let us know what you need,” Flynn said. “Men, equipment, money.” He went on for some time to describe the urgency of the mission.
When Flynn paused, Bando asked, “What has this bloke got that we want so badly?”
“A brain that could win the war,” Colonel Flynn said bluntly. “Now, let’s get started.”
****
For two weeks Dai Bando had searched for information on Dalton Burke. He had uncovered extensive information about Burke’s professional accomplishments, but he still knew little about the man’s personal life. He had exhausted all of his resources and still felt that he had really gotten nowhere. “Any clerk could have found out what I’ve discovered,” he muttered.
He was walking along swiftly, headed for the coast. He had heard, almost by accident, that a group of Dutchmen had escaped from Holland shortly after the invasion and were now in England. In desperation he had decided to question them. “Probably do no good,” he grumbled, “but blast if I know what else to do.”
He found the headquarters of the Royal Air Force and had some difficulty at first persuading the officer in charge, a rather irate major, of his identity. He waited patiently until he had been checked thoroughly, and finally the major said, “Well, there are four of them. All of them were fliers in the Dutch Air Force, but since there is no longer a Dutch Air Force, they’ve come to join us. I’ll have the sergeant take you down to the barracks we’ve assigned them to. I don’t know if they’re there or not.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
Bando followed the sergeant to a low rectangular building
with no identifying characteristics. The sergeant opened the door, and after Bando stepped in, he said, “There’s one of them right over there.”
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
The barracks was hot, almost stifling, and Bando wiped sweat from his face as he approached the man. “Good afternoon.”
The man he spoke to was short and stocky with light blond hair and a pair of steady blue eyes. “Hello. You have come to take us to our new assignment?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m Captain Bando. I need to question you a little.”
“Question? About what?”
“Let’s start with your name.”
“Mogens Roosevelt.”
“Any relation to the American president Roosevelt?”
“Maybe a cousin. Very distant. What is it you want to know, sir?”
“Have you ever visited a little town called Oudekerk aan de Amstel, near Amsterdam?”
“No, but one of our group comes from there. That’s him over there playing draughts. The lanky fellow.”
“Thanks.” Bando approached the man and said, “My name is Bando. I understand you know the town of Oudekerk aan de Amstel.”
“I know it very well indeed. That’s my home. Why are you asking?”
“Your name is?”
“Lieutenant Lang Zeeman.” There was suspicion in Zeeman’s eyes, but he reluctantly agreed when Bando asked him to step outside.
When they were outside, Bando said, “I’m doing a job for a special unit, and I need to know a bit about your country.”
“Are you going there?”
“I expect I will, but I can’t say why. What about you, Lieutenant?”
Bando listened as Zeeman described the air battles he’d been in. “We had no chance at all,” Zeeman concluded. “I shot down three Germans, and then I went down myself. I was in Rotterdam when it was leveled. Hundreds have died, maybe thousands. Eighty thousand people are homeless.” Bitterness tinged Zeeman’s voice, and his anger was scarcely contained. “But they will not win,” he declared.
“You’ve come to England to join the RAF?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very commendable, Lieutenant. Now, our conversation must be kept absolutely secret. It could be fatal to me and my group if it got out.”
“Of course, sir. Why is it you want to know about Oudekerk?” he asked curiously.
“I need to find out all I can about a man named Dalton Burke.”
His eyes opened wide with surprise. “Dalton Burke!”
“Yes. I don’t suppose you knew him?”
“Knew him? I certainly did. I was very close to the family. As a matter of fact—”
When Zeeman broke off suddenly, Bando’s eyes narrowed. “What is it, Lieutenant?”
“Well, it’s rather personal.”
“I’d like to hear it if you don’t mind.”
“Well, I was going to marry his niece. The fellow is a traitor for going over to the Germans, but I’ll say this for him. He loved that girl and would do anything for her.”
“Is she in Berlin with him?” Bando demanded, sensing a break for exactly the kind of information he needed.
“No, she lived with him and his wife there for about two years, but she didn’t like it. She’s back home in the Netherlands. She’s a doctor. Works in the hospital in Oudekerk.”
Carefully, Bando said, “This is going to take a while, Lieutenant. I need to learn everything you know about this family. Come along. I’ll buy you a meal.”
Lang Zeeman was mystified. He ate his meal and found
that Bando was a most thorough investigator. Zeeman answered question after question, and finally, after an hour of this, he burst out, “Why do you want to know all this, Captain Bando?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, but I mean no harm to Dalton Burke. You can be sure of that.”
Zeeman hesitated. “He’s basically a good man but rather foolish in his politics. His wife has much better judgment, I think.”
Dai continued to question Zeeman, and after another half hour, he smiled and put his hand out. “You’ve been a great help, Lieutenant. I wish you good fortune. I think the RAF is lucky to have you.”
“Will you let me know, if you can, how it turns out?”
“I’ll do that.”
“And if you happen to meet Gabrielle Winslow, tell her I still think of her.”
“I’ll do that too.”
****
Bando returned to his quarters and for a long time simply sat in a chair replaying the entire conversation in his mind. Finally, he got up and pulled some old letters from a chest. He sat down and read several of them before returning them to the drawer.
He went directly to Major Castleton’s office, and when he was admitted, he said, “I’ll be leaving at once—for Holland.”
“For Holland? But why?” He listened intently as Bando explained his plan and then said, “All right. It sounds like you’re on to something. Make sure you’ve got all your radio contacts arranged. You’ll be all alone when you leave England.” He suddenly dropped his official manner and said, “If you can pull this off, Dai, it’ll be a big thing.”
Dai Bando sobered for a moment. “We’d both better believe in miracles, because that’s what it’s going to take to do this job.”
CHAPTER NINE
An Emergency Case
As the world watched, the dark shadow of Nazi tyranny spread out from Germany and swallowed up nation after nation, and there seemed to be little that the free world could do to stop it. As the Bible put it, men’s hearts were failing them for fear, and all over the world, men and women were crying out to God for deliverance from Hitler and his ruthless hordes. Resistance was hopeless against the mighty German army, and on May fifteenth, the Dutch commander-in-chief, Henri Gerard Winkelman, directed his troops to give up in order to prevent further bloodshed and annihilation. That day the Netherlands succumbed to the relentless barrage of superior German force. Later in the month, King Leopold of Belgium ordered the Belgian army to capitulate to Germany.
Throughout most of May, it became difficult to listen to the radio, as there was little to report but bad news as Germany swept forward victoriously and the Allies fell back. Gabby had a glimmer of hope, however, as she listened to the radio while she ate her lunch late in May. As she put her dishes in the sink, she heard that French and British troops that had been trapped on the beach at Dunkirk in northern France were evacuated by what seemed to be miraculous forces. The British sent boats of all kinds, both military and civilian, by the hundreds across the Channel and rescued the trapped soldiers at Dunkirk. “It was clearly a work of divine deliverance,” the announcer said with enthusiasm. Still, while avoiding news of complete disaster, he had revealed that the
Allies had suffered nearly one hundred thirty thousand dead, wounded, or captured. Thousands of guns and costly supplies were abandoned at Dunkirk.
As Gabby headed out to her car, a convoy of trucks crammed with German soldiers crawled by. She paused and examined the faces of the German soldiers. She was always surprised that they did not look like monsters, for she knew of the cruelty of the Germans as they overran their neighboring countries. One of the soldiers noticed her and pulled off his helmet, revealing his blond hair, which was cut very short around the ears, with the longer hair on top slicked back. He smiled at her and called out,
“Guten Morgen, Fraulein.”
He had a nice smile and looked very young. Without thinking, Gabby raised her hand and waved, whereupon the other soldiers began whistling and shouting at her. The roar of the engines drowned out most of their remarks, and the column soon passed, leaving a cloud of dust to settle on the street.
The movements of German troops had become fairly commonplace around Amsterdam, but still the sight of the flags bearing the hated swastika never ceased to cause a chill to run down her spine. The sight of the youthful German soldier’s face gave her pause, and as she settled into her car and started the engine, she thought,
He looks like a nice boy that I might have dated when I was younger, and yet I’ve seen with my own eyes that he and his comrades are responsible for brutality beyond comprehension.
She pulled out of the driveway and headed toward the hospital. Traffic was light, and it had proved to be a banner year for tulips. As she passed between the fields, she enjoyed the acres of brilliant yellow and crimson flowers that stretched for miles. It was one of the things she loved most about Holland, especially in the spring, along with the greenness of the grass and the slowly turning peaceful windmills. But the German occupation stood in stark contrast to the surrounding beauty. She had already heard stories of Jews being snapped up during midnight raids and disappearing, and rumors circulated that
they were being sent to concentration camps. Horrible stories leaked out of the torture and death of Jews and others the Nazis called “inferior races.” She shuddered at the thought that the very nightmare she had left Germany to escape was now here in Holland.
Ten minutes later, Gabby pulled up in front of the hospital. As she entered the building, she was greeted at once by one of the nurses, Hilda Schmidt, who, despite her German ancestry, hated Hitler and the occupation as vehemently as the Dutch did.
“Hi, Hilda,” Gabby said with a smile. Hilda was an attractive middle-aged woman with strawberry blond hair, and Gabby liked her a great deal. Her husband had been killed while fighting the Germans. Her face was now set, and a sadness prevailed over her features.
“You’d better go see Hans Dent.”
“Is he worse?”
“Not physically, but he’s ready to give up. It’s hard for a young man to lose his leg.”
Hans Dent had been one of the defenders of Holland until his leg was destroyed by a close-up blast from an automatic weapon. He had almost bled to death, and Hilda and Gabby had fought hard to save him.
“I’ll go see him right now,” she said and then added, “You need to take some rest, Hilda.”
“And you also. You’re tired. Did you sleep at all last night?”
“Enough. We’ve got to keep going. The patients depend on us.”
“Ja, listen to your own voice.” Hilda managed a smile before she turned back to her mound of paper work that never seemed to grow smaller.
Gabby moved through the hospital until she reached one of the wards where the more severely wounded lay. She moved down the line of beds speaking cheerfully to each man, as she always did, and finally came to stand beside the bed of Hans Dent. He was twenty-two years old with the typical
Dutch appearance—blond hair and blue eyes. He had little life in his features, however, and sounded exhausted as he said good morning to her.
“Good morning to you, Hans. Let me see how you’re doing.” She folded the sheet from his legs and carefully pulled part of the dressing back from his stump. “We’ll change the dressing later this afternoon,” she said as she pressed the gauze back into place. “I must say I’m proud of myself. I did a fine job.”
“Thank you, Dr. Winslow.”
The reply was weak, and Gabby put a hand on his forehead under the pretense of checking for a fever. Although she was not nearly old enough to be his mother, she was surprised, as always, at the maternal love she had for these young men. She pushed his hair back off his forehead. “What are you worried about, Hans? You’re going to be well.”
“I’ll have only one leg.”
“That’s true, but it could have been worse. They do wonders with artificial limbs these days, and I left a good pad of flesh there. You’ll adjust well. You’ll be able to go hunting and fishing and maybe even skiing. You’ll be fine.”
Dent remained silent, but obviously something was on his mind. Finally, he blurted out, “What will my fiancée say? She agreed to marry a man with two legs.”
Suddenly, Gabby understood the emotional turmoil that had drawn Dent’s face into a mask. She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. “Let me ask you this, Hans. If your fiancée had lost a leg, would you cease to love her?”
“No!”
“And she won’t cease to love you. You must get well, and you’ll marry and have children, and you’ll have a good family. Your loss of a leg will be a badge of honor. You can tell your children you lost it fighting for Holland.”