“York?” a young British Second Lieutenant called out. “Anyone from York?” and moments later three soldiers were at his elbow, comparing addresses, favorite pubs, running through names of girlfriends—current and past—along with those of brothers and sisters, relatives and friends. A close listen revealed they had no friends in common but it didn’t matter: standing in front of another man who knew your hometown—the very lanes you’d walked, the park where you’d played cricket, the church where you were confirmed, the pub where you’d sung and spilled ale with your mates—affirmed for the prisoners that the places they ached for were solid and real and still existed in full color with their familiar smells and beloved quirks and the cherished memories attached to them. It affirmed the rightness of fighting this war, if only because those moments in those places bore repeating.

  Despite serious effort, Gordon had not found anyone who knew members of his family or Beryl’s. He’d learned through the new arrivals of the terrific bombing London had sustained and that there had been a respite as Hitler opened the Russian front. He met an officer who had worked at Grove Park Hospital who confirmed it remained untouched by bombs. Two other prisoners, both new to the camp, thought that perhaps they’d shopped at Densmore’s market—maybe—and while the details they offered didn’t seem to fit with Gordon’s remembrances of his neighborhood market, just hearing another human being say “Densmore’s” transported him right inside the shop that smelled of fresh flowers and tobacco and the faint scent of a piece of fish or two that would best be popped into a stew immediately. Many officers in the camp were Londoners, one a lawyer in civilian life who had prepared contracts for Gordon’s architecture firm, though not for any of Gordon’s projects. He had listened patiently as Gordon spoke at length about the uninspired environment in which they found themselves, all right-angles and utilitarian function, poorly situated for the prevailing weather patterns and constructed without a thought given to the movement of the sun. Better positioning could have introduced more sunlight in the barracks and in the mess, keeping the whole of it brighter and dryer and perhaps more tolerable. More thoughtful design, Gordon explained, could have obviated any number of issues but clearly, the Germans were applying their efficient and disciplined design brilliance elsewhere. The patient, erstwhile lawyer nodded in agreement.

  Standing in the guard tower, camp commandant Oberst Reinhard Schröder observed the gathering, mutely wishing his English were more serviceable so he could better understand the words the prisoners exchanged, if only to get a better sense of when the Allies might be willing to quit the fight. A Heer Colonel, not SS, Schröder proudly served in his teens in the previous world war, having been loyal to his country years longer than he’d been loyal to the Nazi party. In fact, he harbored deep worries over what Germany would be like when hostilities ended. The Fatherland would be victorious, he believed, but what caliber of leader would Hitler be in peacetime? The Führer seemed born for crisis and conflict—often creating it unnecessarily, Schröder believed. The commandant supported the German thrust into France and the Low Countries, but when he’d offered pointed insights in a staff officer meeting, questions about the overall strategic approach in the prosecution of the war, he was chastised for impertinence. That, plus his failure to seek a transfer into the Waffen-SS and an assortment of small missteps, had cost him a field command. These days, he kept his war analyses to himself. He had a prison camp to run, and he determined to do so in ways that would eventually earn him notice and favor when peace arrived.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The United Kingdom has become

  “one vast aircraft carrier anchored off the north-west coast of Europe.”

  –The Journal The Aeroplane

  England—as the Americans arrive

  There were days the wind whipped the rain sideways, little knives nicking human skin. Bundling up against the cold air was one thing, but a cold rain was a different challenge entirely. It found its way inside sleeves and up over the tops of boots and down jacket collars where it diffused silently, expansively, overcoming any residual warmth it encountered. The haste with which Kimbolton Airfield had been constructed abetted the rain’s objectives over the airmen’s efforts to stay dry. It pooled on the runways and taxiways and flowed briskly into the stone walkways between the buildings. It ran in streams underneath the corners of the Nissen huts and puddled, pulling socks and cigarette butts and the detritus of the day into a chilly whirlpool bath. Jack Henry Philip’s blood ran thin to start with: growing up on the Florida panhandle had not prepared him well for this island in the North Sea. And it was only October. Late October, 1942, but still.

  The route that had brought him here was a circuitous one, now that the skies over the Atlantic were as perilous as the seas beneath. The pioneer squadrons of the 379th Bombardment Group flew their B-17’s to England via the southern route, flying from Florida to Borinquen Field, Puerto Rico, then hopscotching several islands en route to Parnamirim Air Base in Natal, Brazil for a night’s layover before the grueling six-hour leg that came next. From Natal, the fliers crossed to Africa, stopping first in Sengal, then up through Algiers for what turned out to be a memorable few nights in Casablanca. Despite promises made to girls back home, some of the men were intent on enjoying as many of life’s pleasures as they could, in case they had more days behind them than ahead.

  From Africa, they crossed northward into England, heading for Kimbolton. Built for the Royal Air Force Bomber Command, the field was now designated USAAF Station 117 to serve American heavy bombers. The shining waters off the coast looked both familiar and strange to Jack’s eyes when he’d first piloted his bomber low and slow up the length of England. Rocks and crags in front of dense pine forests, instead of the miles of sugar sand shoreline he’d grown up with along the Gulf. But the dots of small boats, the gleam of the sun on water, the gulls wheeling and cawing, diving into the deep for a snack—all this reminded him of home.

  The day President Roosevelt declared war, Jack was home from college, two classes short of completing his engineering degree at The University of Florida. He and his fraternity brothers had anticipated returning after Christmas for a final, glorious, beer-drenched semester in Gainesville. Instead, Jack was abruptly and unceremoniously graduated from the University making him eligible for the draft, because he needed those last two courses in fluid mechanics far less than the country needed him in the service. He enlisted, seeking a position in the Army Air Forces. After barely ten months of training, first at Harding Army Air Base in Louisiana and later close to home at MacDill Field, his squadron got orders to England. After assembling briefly for final training and instructions at Fort Dix in New Jersey, they executed the complicated flight plan to England. In just days, they would begin bombing runs across the Channel. For now, it was daily training in the cockpit—touch and go’s to continue to get the feel of the aircraft—intel briefings, weather briefings, technical briefings, and updates on the dismal situations in the Pacific and North Africa. That and sloshing through the base to the mess hall, the officers’ club, or out to the hardstands to inspect their aircraft and catch up with the mechanics taking refuge in the tents meant to keep them and their tools out of the rain.

  As Jack stood smoking and talking with his ground crew one misty afternoon, he noticed two young boys outside the fence, leaning on their bicycles, watching the Americans work.

  “Can we help you, young men?” Jack called.

  The boys exchanged a glance and dissolved into laughter.

  “And what’s so funny about that?” Jack asked.

  “Nothing, sir. Nothing. Sorry,” said the taller one. “We just wanted to hear you talk. Seeming as you’re a Yank.”

  Jack excused himself from his conversation with the two mechanics, pulled his jacket collar up around his ears, and strode toward the boys in the drizzle. The smaller boy hopped on his bike, prepared for a quick getaway, but the other one stood bravely, shoulders back, as Jack grew closer.

  Hugo and Colin had developed a somewhat proprietary posture toward Kimbolton, first watching the construction workers from their schoolhouse window, then venturing over on their bicycles countless times to monitor progress. When the first of the American bombers began arriving, the boys made daily pilgrimages to watch the waves of lumbering, impossibly loud B-17s descend. They came on Saturdays to watch training flights, astonished these enormous beasts could even lift off the ground. Surely, the giant bombs they carried would bloody well demolish the Germans. How could a little Messerschmitt or Junker fighter possibly knock these out of the sky? The Americans, too, were a source of endless fascination—so brash and loose-limbed but at the same time, intense and serious-minded. These were different creatures from the boys’ more buttoned-up fathers. They seemed to follow an entirely distinct set of grown-up rules, drawing attention to themselves in ways the boys had been taught not to do. They hooted and called to one another when they came into Elsworth, walking three abreast so other shoppers had to navigate around them. They laughed loudly and unselfconsciously, drawing disapproving looks from those who found such behavior roguish, intrusive. They loved their planes and fussed over them endlessly. They gave them names and painted girly pictures on the nose—something Hugo and Colin found brilliant and bold. Village neighbors did not necessarily agree.

  “And what more would you young fellas like me to say?” Jack asked. “Any particular words y’all achin’ to hear? Want me to sing a few bars of ‘I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo?’”

  More laughter erupted from the boys at the way he said “Kalamazoo” and his slip-slidy way of talking. One word rolling into the next. Saying “y’all” and calling them young fellas. Fellas! That was new.

  Hugo and Colin exchanged a look, both working with great effort to compose themselves. Colin got a hold of himself first. He offered a small bow. “Thank you, sir. That’s quite good. No need to sing. Truly. Are you a pilot, sir? Can you fly that aeroplane?”

  “Are you a spy, son, asking all these questions?”

  “No—no sir,” Colin stammered, horrified. Hugo prepared again to make a run for it until they recognized the smile behind the American’s eyes.

  “Listen, I can’t stop you from seeing what goes on here from your side of the fence. Heck, we’ve just moved in and taken over your farmland, haven’t we? But I can’t talk about any of it because you never know if the Jerrys are listening.”

  The boys exchanged a wide-eyed look. “I knew it,” Hugo mouthed silently, prompting a grave nod from Colin.

  “And y’all best not talk about it either, boys. You know that. I’m sure you’re seeing a lot here in your little village now that all us Yanks have moved in. Bet things have really changed.”

  “I’m from London,” volunteered Colin, “not Elsworth. Got moved here before the Jerrys started bombing. Three years ago. I live with Hugo and his mum.”

  “I’m from Elsworth,” Hugo offered. “We watched them build this airfield, but we thought it was for the RAF. Nobody told us the Yanks were moving in.”

  “Well, we are. And not just here. But now look at me, saying too much. So, okay, you’re Hugo. And what’s your name, son?”

  And so began the first of many, many visits between the friendly and frequently shivering American pilot from Florida and two young boys who were rapidly becoming young men, aching for dads whom they worried they would not see again. These Americans, short and tall, stout and lanky, some olive-skinned with exotic last names, others so red-cheeked and ruddy they could be mistaken for Brits—their very presence brought hope. The reinforcements had arrived—like in American Westerns when the cavalry rode up over the hill just in the nick of time. The popular song the BBC played on a loop proclaimed, “The Yanks are coming:” and so they had.

  After that first conversation, in which they thanked their new Yank friend profusely for his time and promised to return the next day, the boys practically vibrated with excitement. Racing home through the rain, pedaling hard through the village to the point they thought their lungs might burst from their chests, they cut through the garden of Holy Trinity, rounded the corner to the house on Boxworth Road, and tore through the front door.

  “Mum!” Hugo called as they charged into the house. “Mum! We’ve met an American soldier! A pilot. Over at Kimbolton Airfield.”

  “What’s this?” asked Ivy, emerging from the small kitchen in her apron, wooden spoon in hand. The rich smell of onion and herbs wafted from the soup pot simmering on the hob. Vegetable soup tonight for supper. “You got one to chat, finally, did ya?”

  “We didn’t stay at the front gate this time,” said Colin. “We followed the fence ’round back and this American bloke was out on the runway talking to his mates. The aeroplane mechanics. He saw us and just walked over and asked us if he could help us.”

  “He asked if we were spies for the Germans!” cried Hugo.

  “Spies!” said Ivy, looking them up and down. “Well, are you?”

  The boys’ laughter spilled through the house. Hugo clutched Colin’s arm, doubling over at the very idea. Ivy’s hand came unbidden to her chest and she breathed, gratefully, deeply, for this rare and precious moment. Here are the Hugo and Colin the war has taken away. Happy, mischief-making schoolboys these circumstances rarely allowed them to be.

  “What if we are?” responded Colin finally, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “Maybe I’m a Jerry spy who’s been planted here—not from London at all but from Berlin and I’m listening and watching and radioing back secret messages that are decoded by other spies…”

  “Are you now? And what have you disclosed so far?”

  Colin tapped his lips with his forefinger and thought a moment. “That we need paratroops on a rescue mission for Marigold to save her from Margaret and Patsy. That no matter how loudly the vicar preaches, there’s always a parishioner or two asleep in the back of the church. That the Jerrys may as well give up because Brits are far braver and with the Yanks in the fight, the Germans will be pushed back and drowned in the Ruhr!”

  Ivy smiled. Oh, this boy. This boy who felt like her own, at turns serious and silly, who had become just the companion her Hugo had needed—that she needed for him—after Wills had disappeared. There was grace contained in Colin’s mischievous sense of humor, so precious in these serious, sullen, worrisome days.

  “Mum,” Hugo followed up thoughtfully, finger pointed in the air. “He must be a double agent then, if he’s talking the Jerrys into quitting.”

  “Oh, if they would quit, my boy. Right this minute. But since you’ve figured all that out, Hugo, it must mean you’re a spy as well. How did this happen that I’ve got two young and handsome spies right in my midst? I should have known, what with all the secretive trips you’ve made to the airfield to gather intelligence there. What kind of wanker am I to have not even noticed before now?”

  More laughter drew the twins into the sitting room.

  “What is it, Ivy-mum? What’s so funny?” Margaret demanded, hands on hips, as Patsy nodded at her side, the cat—a kitten no more—hanging in limp resignation over her narrow shoulder.

  “The boys were chatting with Americans today, girls, some of those soldiers who fly those very loud aeroplanes we see now.”

  “Can we meet one, too?” asked Patsy.

  “Yes! I want to meet Americans!” cried Margaret.

  “Perhaps we can, girls. Maybe we can have them for dinner here. Wouldn’t that be something? But they are busy, busy—they have important missions to do, so we’ll have to see,” said Ivy, much to the chagrin of the boys, who wanted nothing whatsoever to do with sharing their American with little girls.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The great deceivers of the world begin by deceiving themselves.

  They have to, or they wouldn’t be so good at it.

  –Molière

  Sagan, German Reich

  Reinhard Schröder was rather enjoying his wartime post, billeted for the past three years, with his wife, Annalise, in a manor house requisitioned soon after Poland was pacified. The home had belonged to a Jewish family, now relocated elsewhere, and contained rooms of carefully curated furniture, much of it burnished cherry and mahogany, devotedly cared for and in pristine condition. Drapes of dark, richly textured fabric hung at the windows, sumptuous brocades that were repeated on some of the upholstered furniture in the sitting room. Left behind were silver and brass menorahs that Schröder had melted into candelabras for the formal dining table. There were closets full of linens, some of them antique with intricate hand-sewn lace borders, all of them clean and pressed and fresh-smelling; the butler’s pantry held dozens of place settings of English bone china and finely cut crystal—hundreds of stems for wine, champagne, brandy. The music room at the back of the house opened to the gardens and featured a Steinway grand piano, which, once tuned, offered a resonant and glorious timbre. A guest house stood adjacent, where Annalise’s family and other important guests stayed when they came to visit. While Annalise had protested their move from Berlin—home to her parents and sister and second only to Paris in her mind as the nexus of European culture—she had come around once she took in the amenities their large, new home offered. Given the location of their post and the uncertainties of the time, they’d sent their two children to boarding school in Geneva and while Annalise professed to missing them intensely, she rather liked having her days more or less to herself, rising later in the morning and lingering over her coffee, not having to remind them to finish their lessons or contend with music teachers who carped that her children must practice more faithfully. After ten years of motherhood, her time was once again her own. Daily, Annalise played the Steinway, working through a lyrical Strauss waltz, the technical demands of a Bach counterpoint, sight-reading her way through the Chopin sheet music she found in the piano bench. Afternoons found her in the vast garden, snipping gladiola and iris stems to bring inside, paring back branches on the rhododendron, and enjoying the corn-cockle and larkspur that grew wild in the warmer months at the entrance to the woods at the back of the property. She passed many contented hours with the botanical encyclopedia in her lap, dreaming of new cultivars she could introduce.