Danielle Steel: Crossings

But the good cheer over the Doolittle raid was short-lived. By the night of May 4, everyone was talking of the battle of the Coral Sea, and Liane lay awake through the night, praying for Nick. The battle raged on for two days, under the direction of General MacArthur, who had wisely stayed behind in New Guinea, at Port Moresby. And by May 6 they knew the worst. The Lexington had sunk. Miraculously only 216 men had died. Another 2,735 had been saved and taken on board the Lady Lex's sister ship, the Yorktown . But what Liane did not know was whether Nick was among the 216, or the others. As she sat frozen in her room day after day, listening to the radio she'd brought upstairs, she remembered the ghastly scenes in the Atlantic when the QueenVictoria had sunk. And now she prayed that Nick would be among the survivors. She took her meals in her room on trays, and they returned to the kitchen, barely touched, as her uncle sat in the library, listening to the news there. But it would be weeks, if not longer, before they would have word of Nick. Unbeknownst to Liane, George had someone in his office call Brett Williams in New York, but he knew nothing either.

And also on May 6, the broadcaster told the nation that General Jonathan Wainwright had been forced to surrender Corregidor to the Japanese. General Wainwright and his men were taken prisoner. Things were not going well in the Pacific.

“Liane.” George stood in the doorway of her bedroom on the morning of May 8, two days after the Lexington had sunk. “I want you to come downstairs for breakfast.”

She stared at him lifelessly from her bed. “I'm not hungry-”

“I don't care. The girls are afraid you're sick.” She stared at him then for a long time, and silently nodded. And when she came down at last, she was weak from the days in bed, listening to the radio with the shades drawn. The girls watched her now as though they were frightened of her, and she made an effort to see them off to school, and then she went back to her room and turned the radio on again. But there was nothing more. The battle of the Coral Sea was over.

“Liane.” He had followed her to her room again and she turned to look at her uncle with empty eyes. “You can't do this to yourself.”

“I'll be all right.”

“I know you will. And what you're doing isn't helping him.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “They've had no news in New York. If he'd been killed, they would have got a telegram. I'm sure he lived through it.” She nodded, fighting back tears again. It was just too much worrying about both of them. And that day, she had had another letter from Armand. Thirty thousand Jews had been taken out of their homes in Paris. It was one of the letters Moulin had gotten out, and like many of the others, it crossed the Atlantic on the Gripsholm .

The Jews in Paris had been locked in a stadium for eight days without water or food or toilets. Many people, including women and children, had died. The world was going mad. From one end of the globe to the other, people were dying and killing each other. Suddenly she knew what she had to do. She pulled a dress from her closet and threw it on the bed. She looked better than she had in days.

“Where are you going?”

“To my office.” And she didn't tell him why. She bathed and dressed, and an hour later she had turned in her resignation, not from the Red Cross, but that chapter. And by that afternoon she had signed up at the naval hospital in Oakland. She was assigned to the care of men in a surgical ward. It was the most difficult work of all, but when she returned to the house on Broadway at eight o'clock that night, she felt better than she had in months. It was what she should have done long before, and always meant to do. She told her uncle that night after dinner.

“That's a terrible job, Liane. Are you sure that's what you want to do?”

“Absolutely.” There was no doubt in her voice and he could see from her face that she had pulled herself back together. They talked of the Jews in Paris and he shook his head. Nothing was the same anymore. Absolutely nothing. Nothing was safe. Nothing was sacred. U-boats cruised American coasts, Jews were driven from their homes all over Europe, the Japanese were killing Americans in the South Pacific. Even the beautiful Normandie had burned three months before in New York harbor as workmen raced against the clock to turn her into a troop ship. And in London, bombs fell day and night, killing women and children.

For the next month Liane worked like a fiend in the naval hospital in Oakland, three times a week. She left the house at eight o'clock in the morning and came home at five or six at night and sometimes even seven, exhausted, smelling of surgical solution and disinfectant, her uniforms often covered with dried blood, her face pale, but her eyes alive. She was doing the only thing she could to help and it was better than sitting in an office. And a month after the battle of the Coral Sea, she was rewarded with a letter from Nick. He was alive! She sat on the front steps and cried as she read it.

n the fourth of June, the battle of Midway began, and by the following day it was over. The Japanese had lost four out of five of their aircraft carriers, and the Americans rejoiced. It was the biggest victory by far for us. And Liane knew that Nick was safe. He was on the Enterprise by now, out of the storm of the battle. And although Liane trembled each time she heard the news, a regular stream of letters kept her informed that Nick was alive and well. She wrote to him almost every day, and as often as she could she wrote to Armand.

Her husband's most recent letters seemed to indicate a heightened sense of tension in Paris. More young Communists had been shot, more Jews had been rounded up, and in his frequent meetings with the Kommandostab , it was becoming increasingly clear that they were cracking down on Paris. The Resistance in the villages was reaching an alarming strength, and it was important to them that they keep a tight rein on the capital to keep it as an example. As such, the Germans were turning increasingly to Armand now, expecting him to account for artwork that couldn't be found, people who had disappeared, and people in Pétain's flanks who allegedly had Communist leanings. They needed someone to turn to each time there was a problem that couldn't be blamed on the Germans, and Armand was invariably it.

He provided a comfortable buffer for Maréchal Pétain, but it left him perennially tense and exhausted.

And as he sat in his office in the Hotel Majestic on a warm June day, André Marchand walked in and dumped a fresh stack of papers on his desk.

“What are these?”

“Reports on the people arrested last night. The High Command wants to know if there's anyone important here, masquerading as peasants.” Marchand liked nothing better than turning his countrymen over to the Germans, and Armand was only sorry they didn't draft him and send him to Russia. If he wanted to be a German so badly, let him.

“Thank you. I'll take a look when I have time.”

“The High Command wants them back by tonight.” He looked Armand in the eye.

“Fine. I'll see to it.” He wondered lately if Marchand had been assigned to him to make sure that he was faithful to Pétain and the Germans. But that was a ridiculous thought. Marchand was a child, a man of no importance. They couldn't possibly use him as a watchdog. Armand smiled to himself. He was so tired, he was seeing dangers everywhere now. The night before he even thought he was being followed. He turned to the reports on his desk then, adjusting the glasses he now wore to read. It was just as well that he got it done anyway. He was meeting with Moulin tonight, before the man went back to London.