11
Rozel Bay, Jersey
Thursday, December 3, 1942
Rocks weighted down the blueprint on a table at the construction site, but Gerrit wouldn’t mind if the wind flung his detailed drawings into Rozel Bay.
To Gerrit’s left, Schmidt, the site foreman, folded his thick arms. “You modified the design of the Type 670 casemate?”
To Gerrit’s right, Bernardus toed the ground, softened by a persistent mist. “The Rozel conglomerate in the area lies on a graded base of mudstones, siltstones, and microbreccias.”
The foreman’s heavy gray brows rose over protruding eyes.
Gerrit gave the man his most serious nod. “It means the rocky soil isn’t stable. I needed to compensate for that and design features to support the casemate so it can bear the weight of the gun.”
Schmidt huffed. “When plans are modified, they must be approved by headquarters, by bureaucrats in Paris. That could take weeks. Months.”
So Gerrit hoped. “I’m afraid so, but it’s necessary.”
“Quite,” Bernardus said.
A muttered curse, and the foreman waved his hand over theblueprint. “That will delay my work. My supervisor will not be pleased.”
Gerrit managed a sympathetic murmur. “He’d be even less pleased if you finished construction quickly and the casemate tumbled into the bay.”
A quieter curse, and Schmidt settled his hands on his hips.
Gerrit shifted the rocks off the blueprint and rolled it up. “While you wait, you can do the preparatory work we discussed. But how much work can you complete in winter anyway?”
Schmidt glared at the rough gray clouds overhead. “The weather favors the English.”
Gerrit slid the rolled blueprint into a tube. For once, something did favor the Allies—and Gerrit and Bernardus’s goals.
Outright sabotage would be futile and fatal, but conscientiousness offered a subtle form of sabotage. Painstaking attention to detail. Investigating every potential problem. Performing soil studies. Modifying plans and drafting new sets of blueprints. Such actions had allowed them to delay a handful of projects until winter. Then winter caused its own delays.
It wasn’t much. In fact, it was pathetically little. But it was all they had.
Gerrit and Bernardus bid the foreman farewell and left the construction site, passing a squad of workers huddled in thin clothing.
“We should give them our coats,” Gerrit said.
“They’d be presumed guilty of theft and punished.” Bernardus whacked Gerrit in the arm. “Come on. I have the wild plans. You’re the voice of reason. Don’t mix up our roles.”
Gerrit gave his friend half a smile. When they reached the road, they mounted the bicycles they’d propped against a tree and pedaled east along La Grande Route de Rozel.
On occasion, Gerrit saw Demyan Marchenko and passed on packets of food, but with over five thousand foreign workers in Jersey, the problem was too large for one man to solve.
Those workers were making their own solutions, breaking out oftheir camps at night and begging for food from local farmers—or stealing it. Dozens of workers were missing.
Two days earlier, a Jerseyman had been killed while protecting his shop from theft, and the Germans were searching house by house for escapees.
The narrow road curved around a promontory, opening a vista over the sea to the east.
Bernardus hopped off his bicycle, rested it against the hedges on the landward side of the road, and crossed to the seaward side. “Beautiful land, ja?” Bernardus said in Dutch.
“Ja.” Gerrit parked his own bicycle and followed his friend down a footpath until they reached the point. A veil of mist concealed France, lying about thirty kilometers to the east. If only he could sail the tube with the blueprints across the waters, under the mist, and to the resistance.
“I saw Charlie Picot on the docks this morning. He gave me this.” From the pocket of his greatcoat, Bernardus pulled out a—lemon.
