The Limoges Dilemma (Alex Kovacs thriller series Book 4)

by Richard Wake

  At a certain point in the middle of my personal nowhere, a stream ran close to the roadside, and I pulled over for a drink, a splash on my face and a piss. I was pulling myself together when a lorry traveling in the other direction pulled over to the same spot with the probable intention of doing the same. Part of me wanted to ask for directions, part of me didn’t want to draw attention to myself — because the truth was, there was a nine in 10 chance that these guys were either Vichy supporters or neutrals who would sell out a stranger in a heartbeat for a little favor with the local Gestapo. Still, I was lost, so I played the pathetically honest card.

  “Hey, I’m lost coming from Limoges. Which way is Mansle?” I knew how to orient myself from there, so I figured.

  “Mansle. Terrible,” one of the guys said.

  “My cousins, I know,” I said.

  “Did they lose their house?”

  “Apparently not,” I said. “They said they were on the side of the explosion that didn’t burn.”

  “Dumb luck,” the other guy said.

  “Better than no luck,” I said.

  The guy told me to continue for about a mile and then take the left turn at the road “where the big tree has fallen over and broken the fence.”

  “There used to be a sign there, but the Resistance,” he said.

  I nodded. The youngest kids in the Resistance made a sport out of knocking down road signs, or pointing them in the opposite direction, all to confuse the Germans. But I couldn’t tell if the guy was approving of the whole thing or not, so I just went with the non-committal nod. Back before the Anschluss in Vienna, trying to discern if a new acquaintance was pro-Nazi or ant-Nazi had involved an elaborate conversational dance before you could speak honestly, and this was the same thing, only in French. But then as now, in whatever language, there tended to be a lot of nodding.

  Anyway, I got on the bike, found the left turn in question, and was soon enough back at the small clearing that Maurice and I had left a day and a half before. It was late in the afternoon and it appeared that everyone was napping. No one had been left as a lookout. I walked the last hundred yards or so with the bicycle and no one stopped me or even saw me. Maybe it was supposed to have been Richard. He was a couple of hundred feet away from the rest of the group, using his knapsack as a pillow, snoring. The radio and the hand-cranked charger were next to him.

  I shook him and he awoke, startled, reaching for a rifle that wasn’t there. “Where…” he said.

  “Are you sure you had it?”

  “No,” Richard said. “I guess not. Glad you’re back. Where’s Maurice?”

  I told him. He screamed, “Noooooooo,” and stood up and began kicking things and just repeating it over and over. “Noooooooo.”

  The commotion woke the rest of them, and they came over, and I told them, too. In the space of about five seconds, the disbelief on their faces morphed into anguish and then again into fear. Maurice was their everything. For most of them, Maurice was the reason they had joined the Resistance. He was the smartest among them by a mile — the smartest, the nerviest, the most glib. He was Granite, and he had been everything they could hope for themselves, and now he was gone, picked off at random, picked off as easily as any of them might be. Fear. Yes, that was the look they settled on.

  “So what do we do now?” It was JP, and it was more a whisper than it was a question.

  “We move in 20 minutes,” Richard said. He had stopped kicking things and had wiped his face on his sleeve. “Pack up your bag. Shit if you have to. But 20 minutes.”

  “Let’s think for a second,” I said.

  “Twenty minutes,” Richard said. His voice was just a bit louder the second time. The look he gave me was not hard to decipher. It was not my place. This was Richard’s show now. My eyes were locked on his and his were locked on mine when somebody — I never saw who — asked quietly, “Alex, what are you thinking?”

  The question clearly infuriated Richard — eyes just tell you so much. Fury, anguish, panic — all of that flickered across Richard’s face. And then the same voice asked again, “Alex?” Finally, Richard looked down and our eyes unlocked.

  “I just think we need to think about this for a second,” I said.

  “This demands an immediate response,” Richard said.

  “It demands a response, but there’s no difference between 20 minutes and 24 hours or 48 hours. We’re angry. We’re in shock. We need that to pass. There’s no hurry.”

  “Our anger will fuel us,” Richard said.

  “Our anger could get us killed,” I said.

  With that, we all stood silently. Richard and I were facing each other about eight feet apart, and the rest were arrayed in a semicircle between us. I had no idea how this was going to resolve itself. By all rights, this was Richard’s group now. I was the interloper. I had not lived most of what they had lived. I wasn’t even French, for God’s sake.

  Finally, JP broke the silence. He said, “I think we should listen to Alex. I think we should wait.”

  There was silent nodding among the rest of the group. No one made eye contact, especially not with Richard. After a few more seconds, he stormed off into the woods. He didn’t say a word.

  42

  As it turned out, the only true bit of leadership that Richard had performed in Maurice’s and my absence was to send JP into Mansle with the remainder of the cash to buy a half-dozen bottles from the bar across the street from the dearly departed German barracks.

  “You must be exhausted, carrying all of that, what, five miles?” I said.

  “Probably six,” he said. “But when you’re doing the Lord’s work—”

  JP stopped himself short. He welled up.

  “What?” I said.

  “The Lord’s work,” he said. “That wasn’t exactly Maurice’s favorite phrase, but I use it a lot. It’s just a habit I can’t break. He tried to get me to say ‘Lenin’s work’ instead. It was like a running joke between us.”

  JP handed me the few francs he had left. I guess I was in charge of the money now. “It took almost every centime,” he said. “There’s clearly no Resistance discount.”

  “Discount? There might have been a surcharge,” I said. “That guy was interested in only one thing, and that was no trouble. And I’m pretty sure he has it figured out by now that we were the ones who caused all the trouble.”

  We sat in a circle and started to drink and waited for Richard to slink back from the woods, which he eventually did. While we waited, I mostly just listened to the rest of them reminisce. God, they loved Granite. Every one of them had a story about some instance when he saved them, sometimes physically but more often emotionally. As JP said, “We’re all just fucking babies. He knew it and he didn’t care. He just grew us up as fast as he could.”

  “He didn’t grow me up — not Uncle Alex,” I said. It got a small laugh. “But he opened my eyes. He showed me the purity of our struggle, and that the rest was just bullshit. That’s what he told me the first night I got here: ‘Fuck the bullshit.’ It was a good lesson. Maybe it did grow me up even a little more than I already am.”

  I raised the bottle I was holding. It was one of three that we had opened and were passing among us. The other two joined me, and we clanked them together. I offered the first of what would be many toasts before the end of the night.

  “First toast,” I said. “Fuck the bullshit.”

  When Richard was in place, I veered the conversation toward the previous 48 hours. I told them everything, starting with the Resistance council meeting in the porcelain factory and ending with my ears ringing in the alley. And by everything, I also told them about the redhead, and about getting drunk at Louis’s bar next to the chapel, and about how I had spent the night with Clarisse. At that point, I didn’t want to hide anything. I figured there was no sense in letting my pride get in the way of telling an accurate story. I couldn’t imagine how leaving out the bit about Clarisse would be a problem, but I kept telling myself
that I really didn’t know what the Free Guard knew about us, and I couldn’t have it on my conscience that another man sitting in this circle could die because of my stupid vanity.

  “So, all of my cards are now turned over,” I said. “Now you all know everything that I know. Any questions?”

  Three of them answered at once, all some variation of this: “Who do you think sold him out?”

  I went through the possibilities that had run through my own head — the coincidence possibility, or the Resistance sellout possibility, or the redhead possibility, or the careless rendezvous possibility, or I didn’t know what. Somebody would build up one of them as a solution, layering on the evidence, and then I would knock it down. We went through all the scenarios that way — build up, knock down. It was an easy game for me, seeing as how I had already been playing the solitaire version for about 10 hours.

  Everyone had pretty studiously avoided returning to the subject of our next move. Richard had been silent the whole time since he returned. He looked beaten, and it was clear no one wanted to rub his nose in it. Still, something needed to be said — and I was drunk enough at that point to say it. And if Richard’s feelings were hurt, too bad.

  “You’re all wondering what’s next,” I said, and everyone perked up a bit. Even Richard sat up a little straighter.

  “Well, I’m wondering too,” I said. “I have a couple of thoughts, but I’m not going to lie to you — I’m not sure either of them will work. I’m not to the point where I want to share either one of them with you. I need to sleep on it — or not sleep on it, as the case may be. I’m sorry if you think I’m being secretive but it’s the only way I know how to operate. I have to be convinced the plan will work before I bring it to you. For me, that’s the only way. Then you can pick it apart, but not before.” Then I paused.

  “Does anybody have a problem giving me 12 hours or so to think about it?” I looked around, made eye contact with everybody, including Richard. No one said anything.

  “Okay,” I said. I held up the bottle and looked through the dark green glass, aided by the moonlight. “There are about two drinks left in this one.”

  “Two?” JP said. He was smiling.

  “Fine, three drinks,” I said, laughing. It was easily four. “But I’m still going to take it with me over to the tree line and get started with my thinking. There are three unopened bottles, and you guys still have a lot of stories to tell. It’s important for you to do that, and it’s important for me to do this. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  I stood up. “One more thing.” They were all looking up at me — sadly, hopefully, hopelessly, I couldn’t tell.

  “Just know that this is only a pause,” I said. “Just know that it’s only for a little while. Because I want you to know something, to be sure of it, to never doubt it. I want you to know that we will get our revenge. We cannot bring Maurice back, but we will get our revenge. Know that. Remember that tonight when you close your eyes.”

  I turned, walked a step, stopped. I held the bottle high.

  “Next toast,” I said. “To the justice of revenge.”

  43

  We were parked a full block away from the building where Maurice had been executed. I was worried that it was too far away for me to be able to make a proper identification, but to park any closer was too dangerous. Given how few cars there were on the streets anymore, even a block away seemed too close sometimes. We were the only car parked on the block.

  The car belonged to Martin, our old friend the vice-mayor of Couzeix. My life had turned upside down about three different times since Martin had driven Leon and I out to that Resistance council meeting in the schoolhouse in Saint-Junien. Leon was gone. Maurice was dead. Clarisse had entered my life, whatever that meant. But when I counted it out on my fingers, I’m not sure it had been even five weeks.

  We had been parked there for six hours. I could never leave the car because I was the only one who knew what I was looking for, but Martin and JP could take turns. In fact, our cover story — meager as it was — required that one of them be gone at all times. The story was that we were waiting for another worker to go on a vice-mayor’s mission to pick up a Resistance printing press — the same story we had used at the checkpoint on the way to Saint-Junien.

  Martin could pretty much wander anywhere he wanted, given his pocket full of vice-mayor paperwork — which meant he could stay pretty much in sight of the car as he ambled around the neighborhood. JP, though, didn’t need to be drawing any attention to himself. His best move would be to go to a cafe or a bar and settle in with a drink. With that, the remainder of the ration tickets and the few leftover francs were his.

  “One drink and then back. Keep it to a half-hour,” I said.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  If a gendarme, or the Gestapo, came by and asked what we were waiting for, Martin would pull out his vice-mayor paperwork and say that the third worker — “my wife’s lazy fucking brother” — was late. Then JP would show up in a few minutes with alcohol on his breath, and we would be fine. If Martin wasn’t in the car when the questioning started, I would say that Martin was out searching for his wife’s lazy fucking brother, and Martin would show up five minutes later, empty-handed except for his fancy vice-mayor paperwork, cursing his wife’s lazy fucking brother. It would work.

  By all rights, I should have brought Richard with me, not JP. The next day, after everyone had drunk themselves to sleep while mourning Maurice, the hangovers were noticeable but Richard’s demeanor was something else entirely. He was not hungover. He was borderline comatose, walking around in his own non-alcoholic fog. When I told everyone about the plan I had settled on, he didn’t react at all. He was barely blinking. If I’d had a compact mirror, I might have put it below his nostrils, just to see if his breathing created a little fog.

  “Was he like this all night?” I grabbed JP off to the side.

  “He never said a word.”

  “No stories? No reminiscences?”

  “I’m telling you, not a word,” JP said. “I’m not sure he was even drinking.”

  People mourn in different ways, which is something you learn with age. I had seen stoic in my time — plenty of stoic. I had also seen a woman throw herself on a closed casket, wailing. A lot of people used alcohol as an anesthetic, but I knew one guy who literally drank himself to death after his wife was hit by a car, which left his two kids as orphans. Nothing really surprised me about mourning. And the truth was, Richard had known Maurice longer that any of the rest and was likely to have been hit the hardest of all.

  But the more I thought about it, that wasn’t it. Because Richard had begun barking orders in the minutes after I brought the word of Maurice’s death. He was very much alive at that point, hardly comatose. It was only when people wouldn’t follow him that the cocoon descended. This was not mourning. This was embarrassment.

  If I were Maurice, maybe I would have nursed Richard back. Maybe that’s what great leaders do, leaders like Maurice, men with that innate charisma. But that wasn’t me. I didn’t have time for Richard’s shit. This plan needed to work — this revenge needed to be had — if our group was to stay together. I felt that pretty strongly, and I felt I owed it to them, and the last thing I needed was Richard’s moping to jeopardize the operation. So I took JP. That is, I sent JP to Couzeix on the bicycle, and he and Martin drove back to pick me up.

  As we were driving into Limoges, Martin peppered me with questions and kept coming back to a single detail. Three different times, he asked some variation of, “But this is really all about a goddamn handkerchief?”

  “Are you not listening?” I said.

  “I am. We’re going to chase a guy because of his handkerchief?”

  “Forget the handkerchief. It’s a small detail.”

  “But—”

  “Forget the fucking handkerchief.”

  “But—”

  Our target was, indeed, the Free Guard officer with the handkerchief, the judge who sa
t in the middle of the tribunal, the man who said, “ready, aim, fire.” In my mind, he was the only revenge target worthy of the effort. They killed our leader, and we needed to kill their leader — and that’s what this guy gave every appearance of being.

  We had nowhere else to start but the building where Maurice was murdered. It had to be their Limoges headquarters building. I was only guessing — I had no idea about their structure — but I had to assume that the Free Guard did have some kind of hierarchy, and that our man sat above it, and that he must have been leading at least a loose bureaucracy. So the guess was that he was an executive who worked mostly behind a desk, and that he probably worked day hours.

  “The handkerchief,” I said, trying again. “This is where it comes in. I’m telling you, it was folded and ironed. That didn’t happen in a barracks. The rest of them looked like men who lived with men. Their boots were dirty. Their shaves were indifferent. They had some discipline about them, but it was just different. Our guy, though, was clean. And that handkerchief — I’m telling you, he lives at home with a wife.”

  “But what if you’re wrong?” JP said.

  “If I’m wrong, I’m wrong,” I said. “If he doesn’t work behind a desk in that building, we’ll change course and try to find him somewhere else. If he doesn’t work days, we’ll wait all night. If he lives in a barracks and not at home, we’ll re-think the plan. But this is where we’re going to start.”

  And after six hours of waiting, at about 6 p.m., the front door of the building opened.

  “Finally,” I said.

  “Him?” Martin said. He had been half-asleep.

  “Yeah — get the bicycle out of the trunk. Just lean it against the building.” He was opening the passenger door when JP plopped into the back seat, back from his latest trip to the bar.