Warren used his Webley revolver to take another shot at the guard rushing into the building. The other guard had run off, probably for reinforcements. The same civilian whose appearance had prompted Warren to throw a rock at one of the back windows came stumbling out and grabbed the guard by the shoulder. He yelled something in German. Warren couldn’t understand the words, but he grasped the meaning. Something inside was no longer safe.
No matter how good Olivier was, a single, unarmed man was unlikely to scare a guard with a rifle, so Warren assumed the danger was something else. He went back to the building’s rear, wondering if he should follow Olivier in through the vent on the roof. As he jogged to the tree, Warren heard the squeak of a window and a cough worse than the time he’d listened to the German pilot drown in his own blood.
If he hadn’t recognized the man at the window, he would have fled. “Spider?”
The Frenchman didn’t answer, struggling for breath as he tried to push the window up. It seemed jammed somehow, so Warren moved to help, but it slid open easily for him. He grabbed Olivier underneath the arms and pulled him outside.
Olivier immediately slumped to the ground, barely awake.
“Come on, Spider.” Warren patted the man’s cheeks, hoping to revive him, but he only winced. Noise from the front of the building told him the reinforcements had arrived. “Thank you, McDougall, for picking a small spy.” Warren tugged Olivier from the ground and balanced him on his shoulder. He was heavy, but Warren could manage for a while. He ran, eager to put some distance between the two of them and the guards.
He rushed past a road and paused, listening for anyone who might be chasing them. He was met with silence. Maybe they were going to get away after all. He began moving again, afraid if he stopped for too long he wouldn’t have the energy to start again. It was a long way back to the plane. Could he carry Olivier that far?
Olivier gagged and vomited all over Warren’s back. Warren shuddered at the thick wetness, but the wind and the chill kept most of the smell away. Someone yelled, and Warren ran faster. Then a shot rang out, and Warren felt a painful blow in his thigh. He tumbled to the ground, dropping Olivier in the process.
* * *
Warren sat in the cold German jail cell with his knees pulled to his chest. The floor was hard and frozen, but there was only one narrow bench in the cell, and he’d laid Olivier on that. He’d also given the Frenchman the cell’s single blanket. Blisters surrounded the edges of Olivier’s nose and mouth, and each breath sounded like a gasp. He’d vomited again when they’d arrived. Warren had done his best to wipe away the mess, most of it blood.
Olivier was unresponsive. Warren didn’t know what he’d been exposed to, so he wasn’t sure how to help. The truth was, most forms of gas poisoning couldn’t be treated in jail anyway. They’d probably both be executed in the morning, so at least it would be over soon. Listening to Olivier’s struggle for breath, Warren thought it would be over for Spider well before dawn.
A German doctor had removed the bullet from Warren’s left thigh and stitched it up. The man had even spoken English, told him it was only a flesh wound, that if he kept it clean and if he lived long enough, it would heal. It ached now, the pain flaring whenever he moved. The doctor had disinfected the wound but had spared no morphine for a prisoner.
At the beginning of his assignment in Essen, Olivier had told Warren that being executed wasn’t any worse than dying in the trenches. It couldn’t be much worse than burning to death or falling ten thousand feet from a broken airplane either, but the apprehension gnawed at Warren’s stomach. Apprehension and regret. He would have rather died in the air.
He shivered in the chill that penetrated all the way to his bones. Either the Germans didn’t waste coal on prisoners, or they were as desperate for fuel as the French were. Would they freeze to death? He’d heard dying of cold was relatively easy after one turned numb. A draft sailed through the bars at the front of the cell. A narrow window on the back wall, also crossed with bars, let in an even bigger draft. Concrete blocks formed the rest of the cell.
Despite his injured leg, Warren was driven to his feet by the cold. The bars on the window were solid, and the opening was too small and too high to climb through anyway. The lock at the front of the cell looked solid, and a few moments of fiddling with it earned a shout from the guard.
Eventually Warren went back to his spot on the floor, listening to what he was sure were Olivier’s death throes. Depression settled on him like a well-aimed artillery shell. His mother had told him stories about dark times and dark places. She’d told him he was never alone, that he could always pray. She had been so sure, but if she was right, why hadn’t all the prayers on her behalf done her any good when she’d lain dying of cholera? Prayer was just something people did to make themselves feel better; it couldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t release them from prison or make the blisters in Olivier’s lungs go away. Warren rubbed the ground with the heel of his healthy foot, thinking, remembering, but not praying.
He dozed off and woke with a crick in his neck. As he tried to rub it out, his mother’s words about people with stiff necks and hard hearts came to mind. He felt a small smile pull at his lips. Then it faded. His mother, half the men in his flight squadron, and thousands of men in the trenches. All full of faith that hadn’t saved them. Not physically. But he also knew physical salvation had never been as important to his mother as other types of salvation.
He hadn’t prayed much since his mother had died. He’d said a few family prayers when his father had requested it but none with faith since the cholera and none at all since leaving Cardston. If he were to pray now, no one would know. Unless God was real, and then He would know. But if He was real, praying wouldn’t be a sign of weakness or evidence of gullibility. It would be the right thing to do.
Olivier’s breathing grew more strained, the gasps coming with a rattle. Praying might not help the injured Frenchman, but it couldn’t hurt him either. After a few moments of thought, Warren bowed his head and started talking to God.
* * *
Warren fell asleep sometime during the early hours of the morning. When he woke, a pale gray light shone through the barred window, and the cell was silent. His limbs were numb with the cold, and each breath he released hung in the air as a small white cloud. It took him a few seconds to remember where he was and what had happened. Then he panicked. If he couldn’t hear Olivier, it probably meant the Frenchman was no longer breathing.
When he approached the bench, he saw Olivier’s chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. Perhaps Spider had an abnormally robust constitution. Or perhaps the Germans had come up with a new type of gas that had only temporary effects. Or maybe, maybe, it was a miracle.
Relief was short-lived because Warren fully expected the two of them to be sentenced and executed during the coming day. Had Olivier been healed just so he could stand before the firing squad or the hangman?
“Julian?” Warren whispered.
Olivier’s eyelids closed more tightly, and a muffled grunt came from his throat.
Warren waited, wondering if he should wake him further, but being awake wouldn’t do Olivier any good. Warren paced the cell a few times, partially as a distraction, partially to keep from freezing. As the blood worked its way through his body, the ache in his thigh flared.
“Flynn?” Olivier’s voice was barely audible, a muffled utterance from someone on his deathbed.
“How do you feel?” Warren asked, sitting on the edge of the bench.
Olivier lifted a hand a few inches and turned his neck to the side. “I can move a little. That’s something. And I can breathe. But everything hurts—especially my throat and my nose.” He paused. Warren picked out a slight rattle in his breathing. “I didn’t expect to be alive this morning.”
“We might be shot before the morning’s over.”
Olivier frowned. “Tell them you crashed a few months ago on the German side of the line and you escaped from a prison camp. You’re a POW, not a spy. Maybe they’ll just send you to prison.”
Warren almost laughed. “Lie while your body is being riddled with bullets from the firing squad?”
“It’s not lying; it’s self-preservation. And it would be foolish for you to die when there’s a chance you can live. You’ve only been a spy for a few hours. Stick to being a pilot.”
Chances were someone would find Warren’s plane, and that would prove the lie false. Warren was glad he had borrowed an older model for the flight. The Germans wouldn’t gain any new technology from taking the R.E.8 apart.
Their jailer came toward them, preventing any further discussion. He said a few sentences in German and held out two pieces of a substance that vaguely resembled bread. Warren hobbled to the front of the cell to receive it. When the old jailer walked away, Warren turned to Olivier for a translation.
“He said his lieutenant is on leave until after Christmas. While he’s away, our guard is in charge. He said he’s seen enough death to last him a lifetime, so he’ll wait until the lieutenant returns and he’s ordered to execute us. We have a few more weeks of life, I suppose.”
Warren limped back to the bench. Another miracle? Or a mere postponement? Knowing Olivier couldn’t feed himself, Warren broke off a small piece of bread and put it into his friend’s mouth. Feeding the bread to Olivier was a slow process, but they had nothing else to do, and anything that could make their meager ration last a little longer felt worthwhile. The small pieces reminded him of Canada and his father, of breaking bread for their worship service, of all the symbolism that went with the sacrament. Those were his parents’ beliefs, not his, and yet there was comfort in their faith and devotion. And maybe comfort wasn’t an illusion after all, but something to seek after, worthwhile for its own sake, and evidence of a benevolent God.