SARK - Below waters, rapidly retreating from the shoreline - Roger Stoker - Londoner, obedient subject of His Majesty, son, brother, husband, father, brother-in-law, son-in-law, friend and soldier - knew he was dying, had in this war witnessed Death come firsthand for so many other men. Knew his time had come and knew Legg saw it as well. The large Navy man had little or no capacity where hiding his true thoughts and emotions were concerned. Though in his straightforward line of work he had hardly needed to cultivate such.
They had barely gotten to the just-peeking-above-the-waterline railings, gotten through to the sealed chamber at the sub's top before the submersible began its dive; sharply, abruptly (to only recently-taken-on passengers), frustrating the Jerry patrols figure-eight-ing atop the waves (and hopefully setting in to outrunning whatever U-boat firepower the enemy might send after them once they were well below).
Legg had maneuvered to get him awkwardly hitched up against his seated self, awaiting the arrival of a medic. Weirdly, Stoker found himself in some approximation of the other man's embrace. His mind registered that he was not sure, beyond the rare handclasp, if they two had ever before touched. The fallout of war (such as in this occasion of unprecedented masculine intimacy) never failed to fascinate him.
"'This Oxley?" Legg questioned him with some urgency regarding the other man dragged onboard - as Roger had understood, his own war-educated eyes telling him Stoker's were not long to hold the light, and that he must learn what information he could before that came to pass.
"No. Wouldn't come," Roger answered, struggling to find his voice, the pain of the Jerry ammo sunk into him dimming somewhat as his spirit worked to float further and further away from it. "Richard...Royston," he introduced his now lifeless friend, his face contorting at the finality of what he must say about this friend, whom it was now too late to rescue or save.
He shifted his head to see up into Legg's face, "leave him to the Sea - once you are in safe, English waters. It is what he would have wanted. He was never one for too long spent on land. Promise," he entreated. "Do not let HQ, nor his sorry excuse for a Mrs. have their way - give him into the arms of his chosen mistress."
"Right, that," Legg agreed, a strong nod to his head with the natural understanding of a fellow seafaring man. "With a coin in his very pocket for Davy Jones."
"With my letter," Roger stumbled on, anything not Legg's face rapidly losing focus, "deliver also this one in my coat. It is meant for a Louise La Salle, refugee from these islands - a cleric's wife. I have given my word that it will find its way to her."
"Louise La Salle," Legg obediently repeated the name. "But have you any news for us?" he queried Stoker on the findings of his one-man invasion of the island. "Any information?"
"Unit 1192 is complete, save one." He recalled Royston's body lying next to him. "No, save two." The face of Thomas Carter flashed into the middle ground before him. "A downed airman was with us - he fell...from the boat. Don't know..."
"An airman?" Legg asked with curiosity. "One of our boys?"
"Eagle Squadron," Stoker mumbled, his chin having fallen into his chest, as though it had taken on more weight than his neck could support, and then seemed to forget what they were speaking about. "It doesn't hurt, you know," he tried to assure Legg. "It doesn't - it's not like -" he then lost even this train of thought. "Don't know who gave us up." His eyes fluttered and something seemed momentarily to rouse him. "Are we safe, then? Are we clear and away? Nearly home?"
Legg, feeling no regret at lying to a soon-to-be-dead man, nodded his head in 'yes'.
Tears welled in the corners of Stoker's eyes, but not for the present pain he endured. "It is only that you would not believe how beautiful it was there -" he tried to explain. "...like Paradise. Like a parson's anticipated eternal reward, wot, Old Man." His lips peeled back in a tooth-revealing smile. "To be understood, that is the thing, isn't it? I hope she...Evelyn -"
He gasped, and whether it was that he recalled that all he meant to say to his wife and young sons was written down in a letter Legg would faithfully deliver, or simply that he lost all sense of where he was - a submerged weapon of war, the pastoral island of Sark, or at the gates of Paradise itself - he spoke no more.
Shortly, his chest fell one final time, just as the medic was arriving, scrambling up the ship's ladder to examine him, and Naval Commander Ron Legg (as had the man's spirit before him) surrendered his hold on Roger Stoker's mortal coil, of necessity ready to radio news of his comrade-in-arms' passing. But not before he deliberately slipped his hand into the dead man's coat and withdrew the letter (the second now of two) Stoker had tasked him with delivering.
GUERNSEY - Heindl Cottage - "You should not have done it," Mitch Bonchurch (here, known as Miller) would come out of his pain long enough to hear as a voice periodically repeated it, the threat of tears washing over the voice causing something within him to register that he knew it, and its speaker, well.
But it was not his mother's voice. No, not Lady Sophie's.
"He was not going to hurt me, of course. I tried to tell you -" here the voice increased in its pleading. "Did you not see me shake my head, to show you it was all a ruse? A trick? A nasty game he was playing?"
He thought he heard the arrival of the tears now, only, he could not be certain they (and the sounds that accompanied them) were not his own.
"And what am I to do? I know of no one to tell, to contact. Faces, yes, I have seen faces. Faces of men dead years ago, walking like spirits reanimated. Walking about the island, accepting the gift of boats, the love of a Lady. But do I know where these men shelter? No."
He felt a pulling at him.
"You must wake, Chere," the voice urged him. "You must tell me what to do - how to warn these men of what is coming! Ah, mon chere, mon Mitch - mon coeur! Speak words to me!"
And he felt a kiss - not at all motherly in nature - and he felt the wetness of another's tears fall upon his cheek, and marveled that in his pain - his despair, his disconnect - he could feel so gentle, so weightless, a sensation.
But still, even for this voice, he could not pull himself out of the slippery, uncertain depths of wrenching anguish that claimed his lower half.
ALDERNEY - German-built airfield - "And what if you cannot get free of this island to return in time to host your Nightwatch?" Thomas Carter had inquired earlier in their covert travels.
"I have made plans for such a contingency," Marion had assured him without truly telling him anything, still at knowing - as did they both - the less any single person knew about the Nightwatch, about Robin and the unit, about Mitch having been located...the better.
"Another schooled mimic, then," he had concluded aloud, nodding his head, "roaming these small islands. What unexpected good fortune," he had declared, more good-humoredly than satirically.
"Hardly," she had let an edge of scorn creep into her revelation regarding the unnamed Joss Tyr, "'twas same that shot me clear through." She attempted to flex a muscle in her injured shoulder, to gauge its present level of pain. "And same to whom Mr. Thornton pointlessly lost his life."
"Hmm," Carter had offered in reflection in the last moments they were still out upon the water and not yet moored, hidden from view on an Alderney beachhead. "Then I am surprised 'twas not toward same you leveled said tire iron."
Marion had winced slightly at the unpleasant dig, but pleased with the spot she had found to tie Dale's launch, she elaborated, reminding Carter, "I am not in the habit, you may well recall, of viciously attacking the misinformed, nor killing the useful."
There was no reply given to this (nor none expected) as they had had to hurry, silently onto land, giving up the speedy vessel in the final leg of their journey to the airstrip she had promised to locate for him.
Priorly they had stopped, as suggested, at the sea cave and retrieved the Jerry uniform Carter had stolen upon her kidnapping. It suffered from being plentifully caked with mud - consequent of its burial - but thankfully in the night through which they traveled its condition was unlikely to be noticed.
Although the addition of the uniform gave them a degree of credibility (as did what he assured her was his more-than-sufficient knowledge of the German tongue), her presence - and the time of night and lack of transportation by which they journeyed - likely equaled out their liability.
Marion had only on several occasions been brought 'round to this airfield, which had not existed prior to the Germans' arrival on Alderney, but she proved adept enough at leading them toward it. It had been designed and built - conceived - as a base for the bombing of Britain, and for what der Fuehrer expected to be the coming onslaught of invasion, the Channel Islands serving as the starting point for his planned ultimate takeover of England's people.
Although generally the field was far from quiet in the dark hours, it seemed they had managed to sneak in during a lull in activity. In the distance they could hear the sounds of only occasional planes launched and landed. Perhaps there was to be no large assault this night, or perhaps tonight's bombing runs were to be carried out by pilots based elsewhere - the French mainland, perhaps.
Like young lovers caught out past their curfew, they ran when they could from shadow to shadow, tried as one to control their ragged breath when they stopped to regroup. At one such interval she asked him quietly if these planes would suffice. If he could fly them.
She hoped they would not have to waste further time in searching out others.
Looking as though he could make the trip - and successfully navigate if only given a paper airplane in which to do so - Carter gave her a hearty (if silent) affirmative. "If I can but get airborne and away from here, avoiding being shot down by Jerries will be the least of my worries," he confessed to her. "It's our boys who'll have it out for me, flying alone into British-controlled skies in an unmistakeable enemy fighter."
At her look of concern, he spoke on, elaborating in an effort to quieten her doubts. "I do know a code here, a secret channel there, that, if they have not been changed, should prove no small help in the matter."
Marion put on what she hoped he could see (in the darkness) was an optimistic smile at this.
It was not long before they were standing in the shadows of a modest-sized fighter plane, not so good looking as his beloved Spitfire, and doubtful to have the same agility when in flight, but appearing more than adequate to carry him home. He gave a quickly whispered primer to her on what he needed her to carry out to give him his start, and climbed the truncated ladder toward the pilot's seat.
She did not waste time informing him that she had some years ago - in her grief, in the wake of Robin and the unit's 'accident' - studied and researched the length and breadth of plane flight (and plane crash), down to engine parts. Did not bother to speak up and tell him she knew exactly what needed to be done to get him up and away.
Upon the ladder, something he was not familiar with caused him to pause, and turn around. Instead of thanking Marion for what she was risking for him (which would have been eminently more sensible), he heard himself say, "Come with me, if you like. There's room for a second - and you are light enough at that."
This, Marion had not expected. It felt of a big shift to her - a shift within him. This man, beyond eager to leave this place, this man not given to risks that were not certain to pay out, this man that wanted escape and flight at any cost.
"What," she teased him, her voice a broad whisper so that he might hear it from where he perched above her, her own hand to the bottom of the ladder railings, "having another go at kidnapping me?"
Before he could answer her in kind, or indeed answer her at all, she leapt to doing the things he had instructed her, and as his engine caught and choked into full-life, she saw him look down one last time (as if - could he have done - he might have had one final thing to say to her), before sliding the glass dome forward over his head and giving her a thumbs-up, his blonde hair - revealed as a consequence of his earlier frantic swim back to shore - in full-view in the moonlight, the streaking, blood-like stain of the washed-away hair dye covered up by the Nazi uniform coat he wore.
Just as at the seashore prior, Marion found herself loathe to immediately jump back into full-hiding, so desperate she was to see him airborne, to assure herself he was bound away from here. That in her overthrowing of Robin's earlier plan she had gotten at least one thing right.
The fighter rolled forward once she had pulled its blocks, the engines buzzed with their particular, pitched whine. Carter took one pass by her, circling so that he might face the outbound direction on the airstrip.
It was just as he was coming about for that second pass that she heard the unmistakable sound of jackboots - many jackboots - behind her; of a large gun being capably and quickly assembled upon the hard concrete of the landing strip. As Carter wheeled by on his final pass before taking off, she saw in his face (clearly visible through the dome's glass) that he saw what was about to occur, but saw also that he was too committed - the fighter already near-airborne - to change course, or prevent it.
She twisted to run away (she knew not to where) from the airstrip and the arrived soldiers, thinking she might yet manage it, and found a powerful leather glove commandingly clamped upon her upper arm. The wrenching pain of such a grip closing on the place where she had so recently been shot not only halted her escape, it nearly dropped her flat to the ground.
She looked up over her shoulder to see Geis looking down at her, incredulity mingled with the outrage emblazoned upon his face, abundantly readable even in the dark. But his eyes did not stay on her. Without lessening his hold on her, he shot them quickly away to the fighter plane and the face of the man who was housed within its transparent dome.
A ghost, a spectre. Not flesh and blood, not bone and muscle - brain - needed to navigate instruments and manipulate the stick used in take-off and landing. No, what he saw and understood was an apparition that would haunt exclusively him.
And so it was only the dropping of the SS Lieutenant's jaw, the utter lack of air within his own lungs at the sight of the escaped (long thought so) Flight Commander Thomas Carter, 2265483236Z (would he ever forget this man's number?) - his special prisoner, a man whom not even die maschine could break, a man that clearly held some position of deep importance in the life of Marion (husband? lover? co-conspirator?); a man who had stood in the way of his success both at his job and in his romantic life - piloting same that prevented him from immediately issuing the order for his men (and their large gun) to fire.
The RAF pilot's eyes raged back at the sight of Gisbonnhoffer. At the sight of Gisbonnhoffer's hands on the struggling-against-him Lady Marion. But even amidst his emotions - his honor - crying out for vengeance, for the man's death, Carter was skilled enough to know that there was no room to again turn the plane, to accurately aim its guns at the attachment of soldiers assembled behind his torturer and nemesis. In short, there was nothing that he could do but take to the skies and finish the task he and Marion had set out to accomplish. To turn back, to abandon the plane, would be to pointlessly sacrifice both himself and Marion to the control of the enemy. To the dangerous whim of this man.
"Go!" he could not hear Marion say, but he could read when she shouted it in the shape of her lips, could make out that it was screamed from the tension of the muscles that stood out, corded, in her usually smooth neck.
A year ago he would not have waited, sidetracked even by this - by his comrade (even a woman) in imminent danger - not been impeded for even the twinkling of an eye. Yet this day Thomas Carter let the space of two heartbeats pass. Or perhaps it was Alex La Salle that did so. Even, possibly, Alexsei Igorovich. He could not take the time to ponder it. He pulled the stick toward him as any pilot would, as their instinct would tell them to do, such men who belonged in the sky.
It was several long minutes of dodging ack-ack from below (his and Marion's ruse seen-through by the Jerries more quickly than he would have expected) before he was able to level-off and set his mind to what he must navigate next: convincing the British he was not, in fact, the Jerry bomber and officer he was at-present disguised as being.
As for Marion Nighten, it was obvious to him she ought to have come along. But not as obvious as the fact that she was now utterly erased, removed from his sphere of influence. That he could no longer aid her in whatever troubles the night brought to her. That it would surely bring to her.
He thought on Oxley.
If there was anyone that might be trusted in the faithful keeping and protection of her, it was him. He mused on this, attempted to take relief in this, as long as he in good conscience could, before returning his mind to the daunting and potentially perilous hours ahead.
The night was clear, the immediate horizon empty, and the relative safety of English shores waited for him in the distance.
And he was flying.
GUERNSEY - Nightwatch Windmill - Joss Tyr looked a sideways glance at the Nazi who had shortly ago put him into irons. One of Gisbonnhoffer's elite two. Yes, he recognized him well enough. The man, Thered, was no stranger to the Cabaret Alstroemeria.
Fortunate, though, that the landser proved thick enough not to recognize him. Of course, as with any time he stepped out-of-doors, he was still accoutered in some version of costume and makeup. Even if this particular disguise was meant to help him pass for your average islander.
It had been a bad break for him to be caught at the windmill, arriving in an attempt to do as the Lady Marion had asked him...proctor that night's broadcast. He had already been well down the rickety stairs when he saw that the place had been ransacked - the records now but shards scattered about upon the primitive flooring. He had proven easy enough to take into custody after that, his eyes repeatedly and uneasily going to the now-brown bloodstain at the base of the stair.
He did not know where they were transporting him at present - likely to their stronghold on Alderney. The journey itself ought to offer plenty of time to puzzle over how he wished to handle the incident; wait for Prinzer to step in (as he certainly would), and bamboozle him with a story? Try to talk his way out of it? Or simply see what damage he might affect, given the situation. His time - the prophecies' time - was growing short, the Voices told him.
At the least, he was glad Avia was back, returned to him...now in the safekeeping of Ginny. Gin would see to her, he felt confident. Whatever the night brought, whatever the Voices might portend, his Avia would lack for nothing.
ALDERNEY - German-built airfield - "Look at you!" Gisbonnhoffer shouted, though Carter and the stolen fighter and its clatter of engine was far enough away - up in the sky - now that there was no need to raise his voice to be easily heard. Sweat poured from his hairline, and within his leather gloves his hands had become slick and unreliable, causing his grip to tighten almost hysterically in order to hang on to both glove and Marion. "Standing here having broken into a high security facility, aiding an enemy - a prisoner's - escape!"
He delivered a strong shake of her by the grip upon her arm. His eyes felt as though someone had thrown a dose of salts into them. "At least you have the decency not to lie to me further - nor bat your lashes in distraction." He gulped for air, and gave a pause for effect, "Nightwatch." He gave another strong, teeth-rattling shake to her, so violent that with her own weight being off balance it pulled her from his hold and sent her down onto the concrete. Upon impact, her face showed him both that she was not accustomed to such treatment (which he knew), and that he had managed to render her in some degree of pain.
"I have all I need from you, Marion," he told her, ignoring both of his insights, as well as a flash-moment in which he nearly responded to them. "The windmill, your records, your transmitting equipment. There is no use denying it. A ring found an island away from where you swore you had been taken. An illegal spyglass for receiving coded messages from Sark - and who knows what else. Proof of illicit hoarding on the Barnsdale estate. And now this - this!"
He brought a hand to his head to try and stop it from reeling, ripped the glove away from it to bring his own clammy palm to his forehead's flesh. After all he had had to reconcile to himself in the past hours, the unimaginable sight of the airman's face had once again thrown it all out of the boxes he had only just tidily placed his understanding of what was going on into. Thomas Carter, here, on the islands. Only now escaping. Thomas Carter, near enough to him in distance to be shot, Thomas Carter's story to be ended. And yet again, chance lost.
Gisbonnhoffer looked down to his feet, well aware of the collection of men behind him, awaiting his further order. "Marion of Nighten," he said to her through but a narrow slot between his at-wanting-to-clench teeth, at first his voice rough and unwilling to go on from the shock of seeing, of all things, the flier's face, "Lady of Barnsdale, lone noble aristocrat on the Island of Guernsey." He scoffed hard through his nose, his lopsided smirk stretching across his face. "And look at you now. You're just a common outlaw. House and lands lost, your title derisory, without authority. Do you think I don't laugh every time I go to sleep in a Barnsdale bed? In your bed?"
Felled as she had been, at his feet, her scuffed cheek to the pavement, Marion realized she had good and well truly snapped, broken completely with the way she might have approached this situation in the past. She felt the tire iron from earlier in the night as surely as if her fist were still curled about it in those tense moments before she changed its potential into kinetic energy, before she connected it with the skull of Allan Dale, fully committing herself to whatever her decided-upon path might bring about. Now, knowing that she was done for, knowing that she no longer wished (or needed) to play at turning his head anymore, ready for the truth no matter what it might bring with it, and full-sick of denials, she put her hands to the gravel-on-concrete ground, pushing herself slowly to her feet as she spoke.
Her hair initially shielded her expression from him, but as she went on he was glad for it, glad not to see the truth and all its cruelty, in her face.
"Every moment," she told him, finding some degree of relish within it, "Every moment that I was being your friend, I was betraying you."
His eyes locked onto hers, and he could neither see nor sense anything else of his surroundings. There was only Marion. Marion, a woman as different as he had long believed her to be as was one demon-possessed. At the sound and meaning of her words, horror washed over him, in short order morphing into hatred, and a desperate, increasingly frantic need to stopper her mouth.
Unaware (and uninterested) in this, Marion spoke on, as though she had experienced some sort of triumph that deserved eulogizing, "Every day that you grew more and more to love me, I was mocking you."
"You!" His voice was as abrupt as a pistol shot or launched flare. He leveled his arm, elbow extended, finger pointed in her direction, knowing she had fifteen or more sidearms trained upon her at present. "Do not speak to me."
"What do you know?" she continued to taunt him, finding a temporary relief in her discomfort as long as she spoke, "this is who I am," she gave a ragged laugh that betrayed the pain he had put her in. "You are nothing to me."
"Gag the prisoner!" Gisbonnhoffer shouted wildly, feverishly, his voice losing its dependable (in such circumstances) monotone, unable and unwilling to hear what she was saying.
...TBC...