Guernica
A few minutes after eight Sunday morning, the phone at the jailer’s desk echoed through the main-floor office. The sergeant of the guards, in charge of the lightly manned Sunday shift, was called to the phone.
A few indecipherable words leaped at him from the receiver, sounding like the growl of a mean dog. Ah, a German officer, he deduced. Then, in perfect Spanish, the officer began a lengthy excoriation of the guard.
“Sí . . . sí . . . ah . . . sí,” he tried to interject. He placed the handset down gently. “Shit.”
Gathering himself, the sergeant resumed his air of authority before entering the cell of the new prisoners.
He descended the cellar and opened the door, and with an underling at his side, he roused the prisoners. The sergeant could not have weighed more than Annie, Charley thought. He had an arrowpoint hairline and a sapling neck that did not touch the circumference of his buttoned collar at any point. He assumed a theatrical stance with his feet apart and his hands on his hips.
“Señors, we have just heard from our friends in the Gestapo,” the sergeant said. “They have identified you as a famed Basque smuggler known as ‘the Claw,’ and his escaping anglais flier. They have demanded you be given over to their custody for shipment to concentration camps. Details will arrive within the hour. Make yourselves ready.”
He slammed the iron door and loudly turned the key in the lock.
The Claw? Miguel thought.
“They even know who we are,” Charley marveled. “Is there an informer?”
Miguel nodded. Apparently, but who?
Shortly after he returned to his office and applied more oil to his hair, the sergeant walked to the front door to await the instructions he was warned were forthcoming. A black sedan with a red swastika pennant on each front fender skidded in the dirt in front of the small jail. A soldier in a campaign cap was out the back door before the car had stopped moving. He raced up the stairs, nearly striking the sergeant in the face with his Nazi salute, and handed over a sealed document. By the time the sergeant looked up from the envelope, the sedan had sped away.
Under the eagle-and-swastika letterhead, the typed document read:
The two prisoners captured at the border are to be readied for transport to San Sebastián, where they will be processed and shipped to Berlin. You will deliver them into my custody at the Irun train station. To reduce our profile at the station and eliminate the chances of their compatriots making an escape attempt, I will meet you on the platform for the train to San Sebastian at 13:00h. Purchase three tickets for the trip and deliver the prison- ers shortly before the train is to depart. We can tolerate no mistakes.
Heil Hitler,
Major Wilhelm von Schnurr, SS
The sergeant rousted his two guards and arranged the timetable for the detail. They were to clean their weapons and polish their boots. There would be no blunders, he warned them. They would leave immediately after taking their lunch, and they should plan on being back in time for their Sunday siesta.
As inconspicuously as possible, Charles Swan examined the station, considering the geometry of the elements—the travelers, the guards, the exits, the benches—as if they were pieces on a game board, searching for a means of escape. While Charley considered clever ploys, Miguel sized up the two guards, wondering about the possibility of overpowering them and disappearing off into the clusters of locals. The Sunday afternoon crowds were their best asset. Surely none of the civilians in the station would move to halt anyone trying to escape from the Guardia Civil. The sergeant personally led the small detail and there were only two guards. The prisoners were not shackled or cuffed, as that would be too conspicuous, but the guards’ two automatic rifles served as a convincing tether.
Miguel acted as if he were stumbling and bumped one of the guards to gain their focus, hoping to give Charley the opportunity to run if he saw an opening. But a rifle was turned to his face, and Charley froze. The crowds moved out of their way, not seeing the point in becoming involved.
As no practical means of flight surfaced, the two were led onto the platform with fewer than five minutes remaining before the departure time. Perhaps the train would offer an escape route, depending on how many would be guarding them.
The SS agent on the platform could not have been more obvious to the sergeant of the guards. He wore a black leather overcoat that fell to his knees; the collar was pulled high so that it almost touched his black fedora with its brim pulled low.
The agent approached the guards as if they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to pick him out from among the civilians now moving to board the train. He opened his coat to retrieve his identification and in the process revealed to the prisoners a highly polished black Walther holster over his right hip. The leather holder for his papers was snapped open for the sergeant of the guard, who examined the picture of the agent wearing the same threatening outfit. The guard offered a clumsy Nazi salute.
“Idiot . . . I’m trying not to attract attention,” the agent growled.
“Perdone,” he whispered back, looking around the platform.
The agent pulled back his coat once again to remind them of his weapon and led Miguel by the arm.
“Do you need help?” the sergeant asked. “Can you handle them by yourself?”
“Why would you think I’m alone, stupid?” The agent dismissed him with a glare and accepted the three tickets. Miguel and Charley were led onto the train only moments before its gentle forward motion caused the couplings to clank successively down its length.
Charley’s mind filled with options now, as he saw only one armed agent guarding both of them. He assumed the agent was flanked by other undercover guards, as he suggested, but if they could overpower him and split, maybe they could jump from the train. Surely they would have to make the move before the agent met with others in San Sebastián.
With his coat open so he could keep his hand on his holster, the agent led the two to a car that was not yet filled and motioned for them to sit across from him in a pair of facing bench seats.
“I’m glad you’re well,” Miguel said to the agent.
The agent tilted his head up and removed his hat. Charley inhaled loudly. It was Dodo.
“What?” Charley started elbowing Miguel and leaned across and hugged Dodo. “How?” He laughed so loudly it echoed above the rolling of the train.
“Once they started getting close with those bullets, I decided I’d be less of a target underwater and I swam as far as I could that way,” Dodo explained. “When I found a spot downstream, I got out and collected some friends in Béhobie, who talked to some friends in Irun, who discovered you were captured.”
“Where did you get the Gestapo gear?” Charley asked.
“What Gestapo gear?” Dodo laughed. “Anybody can wear a leather coat and dark hat.”
“What about the pistol?” Miguel asked.
“What pistol?”
“I saw it, the guards saw it.”
“No,” Dodo clarified. “They saw a shiny leather holster.” He took off his coat and flipped open the flap of the empty holster.
“We sent a letter to the guards that was typed on paper Renée’s mother stole from an officer. The black sedan belongs to a helper in town. We even put a couple of swastika flags on the fenders. The Nazis gave them to Renée’s mother when she asked for a couple she could put up at the hotel to dress the place up and make it more homey for the officers.”
“This is unbelievable,” Charley marveled. “You’re brilliant.”
“That’s not the best part,” Dodo said, grinning at his deviousness and eager to tell Santi Labourd about this.
“The best part?”
“Yes; the Spanish guards paid for our tickets.”
“To the Claw,” Dodo said, raising his glass at his apartment.
“The Claw!” Renée said, adding her toast and moving in to embrace Miguel and kiss him on the cheeks.
“All right, all right,” Miguel said, tipping his bere
t. “The real credit goes to Major von Schnurr here. I’d be in a prison right now if I hadn’t been rescued by the Gestapo.”
“I’ll accept that,” Dodo said, clicking his heels and lifting his arm in a Nazi salute. “I looked good in black, didn’t I? They never seemed to wonder why I spoke Spanish so well. Or why Major von Schnurr looked so similar to the soldier who delivered the instructions.”
“All Gestapo look alike,” Renée said. “It is a fact.”
“All they saw was the outfit,” Dodo said. “All they heard was the tone of voice. They’re afraid to look too long at the Gestapo.”
“Mother will be happy to know that her Nazi collection was put to good use,” Renée said. “She’s been gathering up these things for months.”
After the difficult river crossing, Charley Swan needed to rest a few days at a safe house in San Sebastián before he could be driven to Bilbao. The friends who had supplied the black “Gestapo staff car” in Irun had shuttled Dodo and Miguel back into France in a small skiff. The brothers had been back in Saint-Jean-de-Luz a day now. Renée prepared the celebration dinner. They could hear the patrons drinking and singing downstairs at the Pub du Corsaire—their bar—which Dodo now proclaimed unfit due to an infestation of German soldiers.
“So, Miguel, Dodo told us about getting you out but not how they caught you,” Renée said. “If you don’t mind . . .”
“I’d rather eat now,” he said, taking a large bite of salmon and then one of bread to fill his mouth.
“They both fell asleep and the Guardia heard them snoring along the roadside,” Dodo offered. “We’re lucky that the notorious Claw didn’t knock on the front door at a guard house and ask for a room for the night.”
“Easy, Dodo, or I’ll tell him all about your first trip across the mountains with the champagne,” Renée teased.
“Fair enough,” Dodo said. “I’m kidding anyway. He saved the flier’s life; he was incredible. I wasn’t at all afraid the Guardia would catch on to me at the station. I was worried that Miguel would recognize me and start calling Major von Schnurr ‘Dodo,’ and maybe slap me on the back or give me a big hug in front of the Guardia. But he kept his mouth shut and went along with it all. Very impressive.”
Miguel grinned and winked; he couldn’t tell Dodo how close he’d come to doing exactly that.
“Maybe I’ll turn into a master smuggler after all,” Miguel said. “What’s next?”
Dodo looked at Renée, who cleared the plates and began washing them with her back turned.
“Miguel, I think that might be a problem, for a while, at least,” Dodo said.
“What? Why? We did well. We got him through. I’m not much of a swimmer now, but I’m getting better in the mountains.”
“Yes, we did get him through, but I think the famed Claw might have too high a profile to risk going into the mountains anymore,” Dodo said.
“It was only the Spanish guards who saw me, and they thought they shipped us off with the Gestapo,” Miguel argued. “They’re not smart enough to follow up on it, are they?”
“What if they are?” Dodo said. “We have to assume they contacted the Gestapo about you before we called them. I can imagine the sergeant in Irun had a major surprise when the real Gestapo showed up Monday morning to get the two of you.”
“But they didn’t know who we were,” Miguel said.
Dodo gestured toward his hands. “I think he’ll be able to supply a fairly accurate description.”
“I can keep my hands in my pockets,” Miguel said, louder than he intended.
Dodo wouldn’t say this if he knew how important it all was to him, Miguel thought. The threat of the Gestapo and the guards, and of being caught or shot, consumed his attention during every passage. The concentration left no time to make all those connections in his mind. He needed this; he needed to continue more than Dodo could understand.
“It’s not just you, Miguel,” Dodo stressed. “And it’s not just us. We’re in a group of hundreds of people from Belgium on down. There’s Renée, her family, the fliers. We can’t take the risk.”
Miguel knew his brother had thought this through. This wasn’t the daredevil Dodo anymore. He was being smart. But Miguel couldn’t imagine anything he could do that was more important.
“So, what now? What’s left for the Claw?”
Renée finished at the sink and joined them again, putting her hand on Miguel’s shoulder.
“Go back to Spain,” Dodo said.
Miguel flashed on an alternative. “I can help on the boats.”
“There’s a risk of being seen there, too,” Dodo said. “Not to mention your seasickness. I think you’d best go back to Errotabarri and become invisible for a while. We can let everything settle down and see what we can do with you in a few months.”
Miguel took another drink of wine. It was blood-red and rich. He took another drink and broke off another piece of bread from the basket. They were right. He had become a liability. He would endanger the entire system. He would miss it. He would miss Dodo and Renée. Almost as much, he would miss the food.
Patroia and Josepe Ansotegui anchored at a small inlet near Ciboure the next night. Miguel rode back to Spain in the hold of the Egun On, waist-deep in anchovies, prepared to hold his breath and dive beneath them if the boat was detained. He was dropped off at the same high-tide pier from which he’d made his first walk into Guernica on a Christmas morning before his life had become so wonderful and so terrible.
By the time he boarded a Britain-bound ship in Gibraltar, Charley Swan’s wound had reopened slightly and become infected. It had taken a week to get to Bilbao and then down the length of Spain in a car chauffeured by a man from the British consulate. There were roadblocks and inspections along the way, but the diplomatic papers opened all doors. He had been fed and tended to, but he had not rested, still anxious over the final leg of the trip, which would be through exposed waters back to England. He was stitched and cleaned and medicated by doctors during the passage, and when he arrived at Southampton, he was sent home for two months of recovery. He would visit the homes of his crewmen’s families first, but then he would heal.
The consul in Bilbao had sent word to Annie and to Charley’s parents of his health and whereabouts. All had lived under the assumption that he was alive and in hiding and had never mentioned any of the other possibilities. Annie had spent a week with his parents in London after they heard he’d gone missing, and they had grown close through the shared anxiety. Annie wrote them each week thereafter, sharing positive thoughts and feeling as if it sustained and strengthened her connection to Charley. Now his parents planned to visit them after Charley returned to Pampis-ford and had time to settle in.
Annie started working on his welcome-home surprise the day after she heard he’d reached Spain. She found a small flat for them down the street from her parents’ home. In the three weeks it took him to reach En gland, she furnished it the best she could, given the scarcity of goods. She purchased a used wooden-frame double bed and some chipped cookware, and she co-opted some of her mother’s older crockery. It was only two rooms with a bath at the end of the hall, but it would be more than enough for them. And Blennie was positioned in a spot near the hot-water radiator, which tended to clank noisily as pockets of air passed through.
They cabbed from the station toward her parents’ home but stopped a block short, and Annie told Charley to get out. She walked him slowly to the second floor, extracted her key, and opened the door. He had expected to be housed for the two months in Annie’s room at her parents’ home and was delighted by the idea of their own place, of any size.
“Until they rang up and told me you were alive, I never really thought otherwise,” Annie told him later. “The time I was most worried was after they told us you were alive. I was afraid your ship would be torpedoed or bombed, or you’d be sick.”
After the first day or two of excitement, Charley was driven to bed by exhaustion and slept for much of the
following week. When he arose, he pronounced himself fit and eager to get on with his life. They visited her parents, sometimes ate meals with them, and Charley told everyone of the brave people who had saved him. But mostly Charley and Annie spent their time together at their new home, making plans.
After a simple dinner one night, Annie laid out a few icebreaking thoughts on a proposal. They had talked of children and a family in those hours of gentle negotiations before their marriage. Both wanted children. As she awaited his return, she had decided that she wanted to start their family immediately.
“Dear, some of the children from the home have grown up and moved out,” she told Charley.
“That’s wonderful,” he said, imagining them old enough to find their way on their own. It had been four years, and those who were teens were certainly ready for independence.
“And some have gone back to Spain, to rejoin whatever was left of their families, although that’s surely going to be a hard life, at least for a while,” she said, moving toward the sink with dinner plates. “Some of the ones without parents have been adopted by English couples.”
With that comment, he understood where she was headed. She wanted to adopt a Basque orphan. Charley thought of Miguel and Dodo and Renée, and the Labourds, and the pleasant children they’d known at the rectory home.
“Let’s do it,” he said, trying to be calm against his growing enthusiasm for the idea. “Let’s do it now.”
The dishes were forgotten as she encircled him with a hug that nearly caused his chair to tip over backward.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “And I don’t think I could pick one over the others here; it would feel like I had a favorite all along, and the others would be disappointed. They’re already like family. If I can’t take them all, I can’t take one.”
Charley understood her point and suggested they try to find one of the younger children, who would be with them for a longer time and not ready for its own independence so soon.