A handful of people gathered around a portly man with a familiar handlebar mustache, who was busy selling chocolate from a vendor tray strapped around his neck. With the end of the war, Frederik Mulder no longer feared arrest for dealing on the black market and was openly selling candy bars for five francs each.
Delia shouldered her way through the crowd. “Tell me, Mr. Mulder, where did you get that chocolate?”
Frederik Mulder grinned and gave a good-natured shrug. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
“If you did an under-the-table deal with someone at a CRB distribution center, I will find out and have you both charged,” she warned.
Mr. Mulder’s face remained the picture of innocence. “Why so glum? Here! A gift from me to the lovely local CRB representative.” He tossed up a chocolate bar, and she snatched it from the air. Finn might need it.
She and Gita continued trudging up the cobblestone street toward the prison. As they neared the top of the hill, the massive facade of Saint-Gilles loomed ahead, its formidable towers and barred windows in stark contrast to the revelry in the streets.
They weren’t the only ones going to the prison. Plenty of other people had friends and relatives imprisoned, while others were simply Belgian civilians ready to join the stampede to liberate the prisoners. Delia clutched Gita’s hand to avoid being separated as they surged up the hill toward the front gate.
Five German soldiers guarded the entrance, nervously pacing and clutching their rifles. Barely older than boys, they exchanged nervous glances when the crowd started shouting at them.
“The people are demanding for them to open the gates,” Gita told her.
It was now two o’clock in the afternoon. The armistice was in effect, and it was time to free the prisoners. She wasn’t going to wait for some Swiss diplomat or international arbitration panel. Shouts in French and Dutch filled the air as the people yelled at the guards.
About thirty unarmed civilians faced the five armed guards. It was a potentially dangerous situation.
Gita stepped forward, and the agitation from the crowd settled at the sight of her. She was only a novice, but her all-white habitand veil made her look like a nun, and she was afforded automatic respect. With her hands held up, palms out, Gita walked slowly forward to speak to a German sergeant.
“Nous venons en paix,” she said, but when the sergeant showed no understanding, she repeated it in English: “We come in peace.”
“It doesn’t look like peace to me,” the nervous sergeant replied, also speaking in English. “We’re waiting for orders from Berlin. We’re not doing anything until we get them. The commandant says we should hear something in a few days.”
Delia strode forward and faced the sergeant. “No! Not another day, not another hour!” Her demand rang off the hard granite walls, but she wasn’t finished. “We want those men outnow. Unlock the cells and throw open the gates.”
“I can’t do that,” the sergeant said. “We have orders.”
Enough people spoke English so that the sergeant’s refusal set off a ripple of anger through the crowd. “You lost the war!” someone shouted. “Let our men go!”
Then a tough-looking young man in the crowd picked up a rock. He stood where the sergeant could plainly see him as he tossed the rock from hand to hand, a clear threat. Others in the crowd reached down for loose cobblestones. The last thing Delia wanted was violence. The people of this city had endured too much for tempers to cause bloodshed this close to the end.
She wanted peace, but she wasn’t going to back down either. She took a step closer to the sergeant. “The war is over. Let the men in this prison go home to their families. People higher than us will be meeting for months and years to settle accounts for what happened in the war. If you show compassion now, it will be remembered as a sign of goodwill. And, Sergeant, there isn’t much goodwill for Germans right now.”
A muscle ticked in the German soldier’s jaw. He glanced nervously at the gathering crowd. He could order his men to open fire and end this right now, but there would be a cost for that in the time to come.
The sergeant barked an order to his men, then turned around and disappeared behind a locked door.
Though it was a cold day, sweat trickled down Delia’s back. Nobody in the crowd moved. All stood in silence, waiting for something to happen. It felt like forever but was probably only a few minutes until the gate opened and the sergeant reemerged to address the crowd.
“Everyone, stand back,” he announced. “The prisoners will be released. Feeding and caring for them is now your responsibility.”
A guard repeated the command in French as another of the soldiers pushed the gate wide, and the creak of its hinges was loud enough to cut through the nervous murmurs among the crowd.
At first nothing happened, but after a moment, a pair of bedraggled men came shuffling forward, smiles of relief on their grubby faces.
Applause sounded from the crowd while the men trudged forward. Delia’s vision blurred beneath a sheen of tears. It was happening! It was really happening, and any moment Finn Delaney was going to come walking out of the gates and she would be here to meet him. Here with a chocolate bar for him!
More prisoners came trickling out of the prison, blinking in astonishment at their sudden change in fortune. Some looked aimless and confused, as if not knowing where to go.
Delia grabbed Gita’s arm. “Someone needs to contact the Red Cross. These people will need shelter until we can get them to their homes.” Most were Belgian resistance fighters, but some came from as far away as Italy and France.
The man who had picked up the first rock tossed it to the ground. “I will contact them. I work for the Red Cross.”
Gita scowled. “And you were ready to start a riot?”
