“Put it away!” he ordered.
Greiser stood there, staring at him, and it was Kleist, getting to his feet, who said hoarsely, “Do as he says, Ernst.”
Greiser obeyed and Martineau said, “Good. You are, of course, a disgrace to everything the Reich stands for. This I shall discuss with your commanding officer later. Now leave.”
Greiser tried to give Kleist his arm. The big man shoved him away and walked off through the trees. Gallagher turned and shouted to Mary Vibert, “Go on girl, go up to the house.”
She turned and ran. Sarah took out a handkerchief and wiped blood from Gallagher’s mouth. “I never realized what a deadly combination Jersey was with the Irish.”
“A fine day for it, thanks be to God.” Gallagher squinted up at the sun through the trees. “Better times coming.” He grinned and turned to Martineau. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette on you? I seem to have left mine at home.”
W 9
. Jiartineau and Sarah drove down through St. Aubin and along toward Bel Royal, passing a number of fortifications and gun positions on the way. The sky was very blue, the sun bright, and yet on the horizon, beyond Fort Elizabeth, there was a dark curtain.
“Rain,” she said. ‘Typical Jersey spring weather. Wonderful sunshine and then the squalls sweep in across the bay, sometimes only for a few minutes.”
“It’s warmer than I’d expected,” he said. “Quite Mediterranean.” He nodded at the gardens as they passed. “Especially with all those palm trees. I didn’t expect those.”
She leaned back and closed her eyes. “This island has a special smell to it in the spring. Nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world.” She opened her eyes again and smiled. “That’s the de Ville side of me speaking. Hopelessly prejudiced. Tell me something. Why have you taken off your uniform?”
He was wearing the leather military trenchcoat, but underneath was a gray tweed suit with a waistcoat and white shirt with a black tie. The slouch hat was also in black, the brim down at the front and back.
“Tactics,” he said. “Everybody who is anybody will know I’m here, will know who I am, thanks to Muller. I don’t need to appear in uniform if I don’t want to. SD officers wear civilian clothes most of the time. It emphasizes our power. It’s more frightening.”
“You said our power.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. You frighten me sometimes, Harry.”
He pulled the Kubelwagen in at the side of the road and switched off. “Let’s take a walk.”
He helped her out and they paused as one of the military trains approached and moved past, then they crossed the track to the seawall. There was a cafe there, all closed up, probably from before the war, a huge bunker not too far away.
A new unlooked-for delight was music, two young soldiers on the seawall, a portable radio between them. Below, on the sands, children played, their mothers sitting against the wall, faces turned to the sun. A number of German soldiers swam in the sea, two or three young women among them.
Martineau and Sarah leaned on the wall. “Unexpectedly domestic, isn’t it?” He gave her a cigarette.
The soldiers glanced at them, attracted by the girl, but turned from his dark stare. “Yes,” she said. “Not what I expected.”
“If you look closely you’ll see that most of the soldiers on the beach are boys. Twenty at the most. Difficult to hate. When someone’s a Nazi, then it’s explicit. You know where you stand. But the average twenty-year-old German in uniform”-he shrugged-“is just a twenty-year-old in uniform.”
“What do you believe in, Harry? Where are you going?” Her face was strained, intense.
“As I once told you, I’m a very existentialist person. ‘Action this day’-Churchill’s favorite phrase. And that means defeating the Nazis because they must be destroyed totally. Hitler’s personal philosophy is unacceptable in terms of any kind of common humanity.”
“And afterward, when it’s all over? What happens to you?”
He stared out to sea, eyes very dark, leaning on the wall. “When I was young I used to love railway stations, especially at night. The smell of the steam, the dying fall of a train whistle in the distance, the platforms in those great deserted Victorian palaces at night, waiting to go somewhere, anywhere. I loved it and yet I also used to get a feeling of tremendous unease. Something to do with getting on the wrong train.” He turned to her. “And once the train’s on its way, you see, you can’t get off.”