You have to be the one to survive. Stay off the main roads as much as possible and use these cards to pass checkpoints if you can’t find a way around. I used to work with some men who can help you once you get to Southampton in Britain, Lisbon in Portugal, or Casablanca in Morocco. In whichever port, ask around for Felix Courtier, Javier Méndez, Petrous Valspar, or Michael McCollum. Try to find these men. Wait in a safe port if you have to. If you find these men, tell them who you are.
Inside the pack was a stack of German ID papers with my picture but different names. The pictures were from a series Martin had me take at a department store in Utrecht the year before. There were orders corresponding to each ID badge that had the person by that name for change of post and transportation. Each soldier listed was in transition from one base to another. There were more transporting papers, and huge stacks of money in different currencies. There were wads of bills: German, Dutch, Belgian, French, English, Canadian, Australian, and American. There were canned meals, matches, a Luger, and a series of maps on which Martin had written in where large German forces were and how to go around them. The suggested route ran along the northern woods of Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France, trekking west to show the nearest Allied shipping lanes, and a passage across the water.
With everything he’d given me there was enough paperwork and planning for ten evaders to slip out of the country. Whatever misplaced paperwork he had done, he had done so to procure all this. There were identity papers, passports, exit visas, and entry permits. He even had a French Legionnaire’s papers that said, “Legionnaires, you ask for death and I will give it to you.”
The pack had combs, a toothbrush, soap, wire cutters, and three compasses that were hidden as buttons. There were maritime maps with planned-out escape routes printed on thin silk that could be folded up and stuffed into a pocket without taking up any space. There was even a pair of special shoelaces that could be used as miniature saws to cut wires. The bag had been packed to use every last millimeter of space. There were twenty-four malted milk tablets, boiled sweets, a bar of chocolate, Benzedrine tablets, a ball of darning wool, water-purifying pills, a razor, needle, thread, fishing hook and line, a rubber water container, fifty cigarettes to smoke or barter with, and a brown tarp. The whole pack was an escape plan in jigsaw puzzle form. All I had to do was sneak off and put the pieces to work.
Uncle Martin’s bag had shown what kind of man he was. His plans were so detailed that he must have been funneling supplies to escape lines and Resistance fighters like Ludo had suggested. I could see the hanged man and full mast sailing ship etched onto my uncle’s skin when I shut my eyes, the marking of life and death he wore over his veins.
I lay in bed living a dozen different lives, projecting myself into a vast array of futures and then dropping one life and taking up another, each time jumping further and further from the confusion of the war.
Uncle Martin told me to get to Ottawa, no matter what. The Dutch royal family had gone there, so if Edwin or my father were alive, they would have gone there too. The thought of them waiting out the war in Canada filled my head while I was carefully repacking the bag and putting it back in my bunk locker. But I’d also heard of German deserters who had been shot and left in the street for three days as an example. I didn’t know if I had the courage for something so bold as escape.
At ten to one, I walked outside and headed to the flagpole. I didn’t bring the pack because I didn’t want anyone to see it. I scanned the edges of the field for the figure of my uncle to emerge or call me to him. Call me to get out of this place. The field at night felt as empty and vacuous as floating in the ocean in the Negro, waiting for the cruiser to come find me. When I was by the flagpole I heard a series of gunshots: tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. After each noise, a ship or U-boat in the harbor exploded. I dropped to the ground and looked into the trees for the muzzle flash. The shooter changed aim and fired at the camp buildings, seeking out planted explosives, which began to burst into flame. Soldiers ran into the field near me. They looked up for planes as four more buildings split open with orange flame and noise. I knew it was Uncle Martin in the camp. That was his parting shot.
In the wreckage of the camp, most of the crew and soldiers who were not injured or killed were still drunk as they tried to put out the fires. A captain found me cowering in the field and put me to work cleaning up. Had he not, I would have gotten my bag and run off then. He thought I’d passed out after the party and didn’t question why I was there. I worked through the dark hours. Some soldiers talked about the air raid that had just hit us and thought one of their own had fired the gun into the sky after the planes. At a quarter past four in the morning, too tired to be of any use, I returned to my bunk to sleep.
Just before dawn, a heavy pounding sound came from the revelry field. It was a steady beating of a marching song I’d heard as a boy at camp. Now it sounded much deeper and industrial, like some large machines hammering out the rhythm. Outside the first tendrils of sunlight reached over the treetops. By the flagpole the dark shadow of a man swayed next to four, giant fifty-gallon oil drums that he swung wildly at with two long, metal rods. The rods jumped up off the tops of the oil barrels and he slammed them back down again. There were men running at the mad drummer. I recognized the outline of the bare-chested man, sweating in the cold from his wild swinging.
Two guards ran across the field. Pauwel turned to them while still pounding on the drums he’d set up in a half circle around him. The guards stopped. Pauwel was naked except for a shoulder holster that held a Luger. The guards called for him to stop, but he kept hammering. When one of the guards pulled out his own pistol, I ran over, waving my arms and telling them not to shoot.
“Pauwel.”
“Jacob. I came back for this shit? Look at this place. This is shit.” He pointed to the still smoldering areas of camp, then pounded on the drums again.
“Pauwel, what are you doing?” I yelled.
Pauwel looked at me with his deep black bags under his bloodshot eyes. His shoulders still worked the metal rods up and down but now more steadily, like he was echoing the ground’s heartbeat.
“I’m playing in the sun,” Pauwel yelled and opened his eyes crazy-wide toward the first sun rays topping the trees. “I’m going to be cleansed by the natural light.”
“Easy now,” one of the guards said as he walked up behind Pauwel.
Pauwel spun around. “Stay back,” he yelled, and he helicoptered the rods over his head.
“Pauwel. Pauwel. Look at me,” I yelled.
“Drop your weapon,” the guard yelled from behind Pauwel. Something changed in Pauwel’s face. He shut his eyes when the first of the sunlight cleared the trees. The warm light touched the back of my neck. The light caught the moving edges of Pauwel’s metal drum rods, and then the beads of wet rust on the upturned oil drum lids. Everything for a moment was touched by light.