Shadows of Yesterday

Chapter 3

The River Scheldt turned and twisted from northern France, through Belgium, to the North Sea. Eighty kilometers from the river’s mouth, Antwerp straddled its banks, one of Europe’s greatest ports and the diamond capital of the world. Over eighty percent of the world’s diamonds came through Antwerp, and the merchants who traded them had done so for centuries.

Camille sat in a stolen 1936 Minerva, the green fender dented and scraped, a taillight missing. Parked a few blocks from the port, near warehouses and wharfs damaged by Nazi air raids—bricks, stone, shattered glass, and timber blocked some of the roads. A wisp of smoke spiraled skyward; an occasional explosion rocked the ground. It had been difficult getting to Antwerp, the Germans arriving just as she did.

She waited in darkness until just after ten p.m. A man approached, dressed in black, pausing to study the deserted street. Once satisfied it was safe, he approached the car, and opened the passenger door.

“All that glitters is not gold,” he said in stilted English, poking his head in the car.

“Get in,” she said, confused by the accent. She had expected an Englishman. Even though he pretended he was, he wasn’t. “I’m Camille.”

“Roger,” he said. “We haven’t much time. Just over an hour. I have to get into the vault.”

“That’s why I’m here,” she said as they drove away.

“The Germans are close.”

She left the river, clogged with wharfs and warehouses, and entered a residential neighborhood. She passed empty rowhomes, a few destroyed by errant bombs meant for the port. Debris clogged some streets, but destruction waned the farther they got from the river. Air raids had ebbed, the city soon to fall.

“Most of the Belgian army left,” Roger said.

“They had no choice. The British and French have already gone.”

Camille drove down cobblestone streets to the diamond district. A few residents still fled, hurrying down boulevards, but most who wanted to leave had already gone. She passed her destination, Sternberg & Sons, rounded the corner, drove another block, and parked beside a tree, the limbs sprawling over the road.

As they exited the car, she handed him an empty satchel. “For the diamonds,” she said. She carried the cloth sack.

“What’s in your bag?” he asked,

“A map of the building and tools to breach the deposit boxes.”

She led him to the rear of Sternberg & Sons. It sat in a row of similar buildings, two or three stories high, scalloped rooflines and narrow six-pane windows. They entered a garden wrapped by buildings, a kaleidoscope of colors and scents, an oasis in a sea of stone. A winding walk led to the doorway, and she knelt when she reached it, a shrub next to the building. A metal box, hidden by branches, was attached to the wall. A key sat on the top. She grabbed it, put it in her pocket, and took wire cutters from her bag. She cut the lock on the box, and opened it. Finding wire number eight, she snipped it.

“The door alarm,” she said simply. She fished the entry key from her pocket and opened the door. “If we get separated, find your way back to the car.”

Roger glanced at his watch. “We have to hurry.”

The Germans came closer, farther down the street, shouting. “They want what we want,” she said. “The best industrial diamonds in the world.”

“How were they missed?” he asked as they hurried through the building.

“The owner thought they would save his soul. But no souls are saved from the Germans.”

She took the sketch from her bag and led him to a set of stairs. They descended one floor, the rattling of gunfire coming from nearby streets.

He looked at her nervously. “They fight just outside the door.”

Camille took him down a second flight of steps. She studied the sketch, wondering who had drawn it, and pointed in the opposite direction. “Those stairs lead to the main lobby, the bank entrance.”

“An escape path if we need it.”

They hurried down the hallway and reached the vault, defined by a steel door with a combination lock.

Roger looked at her skeptically. “It seems impregnable.”

She smiled faintly and put her satchel on the floor. She stood in front of the lock, listening, her fingers caressing the dial, eyes closed.

Gunfire erupted above them, closer than before, mixed with shouts in Flemish and German.

“We have to—”

“Hush!”

She turned the face of the dial, right, left, right, her delicate fingers feeling the tumblers. After a moment, and a failure or two, an audible click disturbed the silence. She turned the four-pronged handle and yanked the heavy door open.

“You did it!” he said.

“There’s more.” The opened vault exposed the next barrier, a flat steel door,

He pointed to the lock. “We don’t have the key.”

Camille referred to the sketch. She darted across the hallway and opened a narrow door, a utility closet filled with mops and brooms. Feeling inside the door frame, she found a strange key on a hook, twenty centimeters long with a triangular head. She took it to the vault, inserted it, and opened the steel door.

“How did you know where the key was hidden?” he asked.

“Another lock,” she said, pointing to the vault.

A mesh gate blocked their path. She took a narrow wire from the bag, bending the end.

Shouts came from the street, close to the entrance. Gunfire followed, bullets spraying brick and cobblestone.

“Hurry,” he hissed.

She inserted the wire into the lock, twisting and turning. Twenty seconds later, she frowned and withdrew it.

“They’re almost here!” he said.

Camille bent the end of the wire and inserted it again, twisting left and then right. The tumbler clicked and she opened the gate,

“We’re in!” he exclaimed but stopped abruptly.

“Over a hundred deposit boxes,” she said. “We want sixty through sixty-nine.”

Roger eyed her anxiously. “They’ll be difficult to breach.”

She took two drills with hand cranks from her satchel. She handed him one and touched the lock. “Drill here.”

“But this will take hours,” he said. “I have to hurry.”

Camille pointed at the bit. “Industrial diamond. It’ll take less than a minute.”

They started drilling, moving from one box to the next, the drawers filled with small diamonds. As they breached the last two boxes, a crash erupted from the upstairs foyer.

“Germans!” he said. “They broke into the building.”

“Hurry, we’ve only two more.”

They finished drilling and flung open the lids. Roger dumped the diamonds into the satchel as she tossed the drills in her bag.

“Come on,” she said, running from the vault. “Let’s go.”

Footsteps thundered down the stairs, coming toward them.

“We have to hide,” he hissed.

She looked at the shadows quickly approaching. “In the closet,” she said. “Hurry.”