Echoes

20

FOR THE REST OF THE WINTER, AMADEA CONTINUED RUNNING missions with him. Supplies and men were steadily being parachuted in by the British. They waited for a British officer to parachute in one night, and after they helped him bury his parachute and sent him on his way in an SS uniform, Jean-Yves asked Amadea if she had heard of him. His name was Lord Rupert Montgomery, and he was one of the men who had helped start the Kindertransport that got ten thousand children out of Europe before the war started.

“I asked my mother to put my sister on it,” Amadea said sadly as they drove home. “She never thought we'd have a problem, and she was afraid of what would happen to her if she went. She was thirteen then, and was deported when she was sixteen. He did a wonderful thing for many children.”

“He's a good man. I met him once before last year,” Jean-Yves commented, with a smile at her.

Their affair had continued unchecked by then since Christmas. He had broached the subject of marriage to her, but she wasn't sure. She still didn't know if God wanted her to go back to the convent. But the prospect of that seemed more difficult now, even to her. She had killed one man, even if accidentally, and now she was deeply in love with another. They were making love to each other every chance they got. He could hardly keep his hands off of her. There was no way he was letting her go back to the convent after the war, he vowed to himself. Surely, that couldn't be what God wanted. It was an unnatural life, as far as he was concerned, and he was very much in love with her.

Serge came down from Paris in the spring to see them. It was 1943. And he could see what had happened between Amadea and Jean-Yves, without their explaining it to him. He told his brother Pierre when he went back to Paris that he thought the Carmelite order was going to be minus one very pretty young nun after the war. But more than that, he was profoundly impressed by the work Amadea had done with Jean-Yves. They had been bringing in successful missions since she'd arrived, and from what Jean-Yves said, she was fearless, although always cautious not to put any of the members of their cell unduly at risk.

Serge and Jean-Yves had talked about blowing up a nearby German munitions dump in the next few weeks. Jean-Yves had insisted that he didn't want Amadea on the mission with him. Serge thought it should be up to her, but he understood what motivated Jean-Yves's concern. He was in love with her. The fact was, they needed her help, and she was good, and quick, from what he heard. Serge trusted her almost more than anyone else in Melun, with the exception of Jean-Yves.

They were still debating the matter hotly when Serge left, and Amadea agreed with Serge. She wanted to go on the mission with Jean-Yves. The war was starting to turn around. The Germans had surrendered at Stalingrad in February, in the first defeat of Hitler's army. They had to do everything they could now in France to defeat him here, too. And there was no question, blowing up their arsenal of weapons would be a major blow to them.

They planned the mission carefully over the next several weeks, and Amadea finally convinced him. It went against all his protective instincts, but Jean-Yves agreed to let her come. The final decision was his, as the leader of the cell. The fact was that they were short of men. Two of his best men were sick.

Jean-Yves, Amadea, two women, Georges, and another man set out for the munitions dump late one night. They took two trucks and an arsenal of explosives hidden in the back. Amadea was in the same truck as Jean-Yves. Two of the men got out and cut the sentries' throats. This was the most dangerous mission they had ever done. They set the explosives carefully around the munitions dump, and then as they had planned, all but Jean-Yves and Georges ran back to the trucks. They knew they only had minutes to light the fuses and get out. The explosives they were using were crude, but they were the best they could get. And before they even got back to the trucks, Amadea heard a tremendous explosion, and what looked like the biggest fireworks display she had ever seen lit up the night sky. She and the others looked at each other, as they started the trucks, and there was no sign of Georges or Jean-Yves.

“Go!… Go!” the man in the truck with her said, but they couldn't leave Georges and Jean-Yves. All of the local military forces would be arriving any minute, and if they found the other two, they'd be shot. The other two women were waiting in the second truck for Georges. Amadea was at the wheel of hers.

“I'm not leaving,” she said through her teeth, but as she looked behind her, she saw an enormous ball of fire, and the second truck shifted into gear and took off.

“We can't wait,” the man next to her begged her. They were going to get caught, and Amadea knew it too.

“We have to,” she said, as a series of explosions erupted behind her and the truck shook. The fire was spreading as sirens went off, and without hesitating, she stepped on the gas and took off too. They bounced over the fields in the two trucks, and she was shaking from head to foot as they pulled into the barn where the trucks were stored. It was a miracle they hadn't gotten caught, and she knew they had waited too long. She had nearly jeopardized all the others for the sake of the man she loved. They stood silently in the barn in the darkness, listening to the explosions and crying softly. All they could do now was pray that Jean-Yves and Georges had gotten out, but Amadea couldn't see how they could have. The explosives had gone off much faster than they'd expected, and it seemed more than likely now that the two men had either been badly wounded or killed on the spot.

“I'm sorry,” she said to the others, with a shaking voice. “We should have left sooner.” They all nodded, they knew it was true, but they hadn't wanted to abandon the two men either. She had very nearly cost all their lives by waiting too long. They had just managed to get out.

She walked back to her own farm that night, listening to the explosions and looking up at the brightly lit sky. And she lay in bed for hours praying for him. The news was everywhere the next morning. The army was all over the countryside looking for evidence. But there was none. People on the farms were quietly going about their work. The Germans had found two men dead, burned beyond recognition, even their papers had turned to ashes. And not knowing what else to do, they took four boys off a neighboring farm and shot them, as a warning to the rest. Amadea sat in her room all that day, sick with grief and shock. Not only had Jean-Yves died, but four young boys had been killed as the result of what they'd done. It was a high price to pay for freedom, and for destroying the weapons the Germans would have used to kill so many others. But the man she loved was dead, and she had been responsible for the deaths of eight people, Georges and Jean-Yves, four young farm boys, and even the two German sentries whose throats had been cut. It was a lot to have on her conscience, for a woman who had once wanted to be the bride of God. And for the first time, as she mourned the only man she had ever loved, she knew that when it was all over, she had to go back. It would take her the rest of her life as a Carmelite to atone for her sins.