The Unsung Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Charles started to cough, a dry, racking hack that shook his body. “Damn you,” he rasped between coughs. “God damn you! I want you out of here! You’re fired, you son of a bitch!”

  “Hey, hey, guys . . .” As Tom moved toward the car, he realized that Kelly had come out of the main house. She approached from the other side, wheeling some kind of tank behind her. Oxygen.

  “Stop this!” she said sharply. “Right this minute! Both of you!”

  Joe got out of the car, slamming the door shut. “You can’t fire me, you pompous, selfish bastard, because I quit!”

  “Whoa,” Tom said, blocking Joe’s path to the cottage. “Everyone take a deep breath and count to ten. Let’s rewind that last bit. I know you both didn’t mean any of it. Let’s just calm it down a little, okay?”

  Kelly gave some kind of inhaler to her father. After he took a hit of the medicine, she helped affix a face mask to him, adjusting the tank, trying to make it easier for the old man to breathe. As his breathing grew less labored, she looked at Tom over the top of the car, shaking her head slightly, her eyes wide. This was as much a mystery to her as it was to him.

  Her eyes widened even farther as she saw him standing there in—oh, damn—only his boxers.

  She’d changed, too—into a pair of running shorts and a sports bra, sneakers on her feet. From the sheen of perspiration on her skin, it was obvious that she’d been interrupted in the middle of a workout.

  He tried not to look at her trim, lithe body, but all that smooth skin was distracting as hell. Of course, he was one to talk, half naked as he was. But with Charles having some kind of attack and Joe quivering with anger, this wasn’t the best time to go inside to find himself a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

  “What’s this about?” he asked, shifting slightly left so that Joe couldn’t go around him and escape into the house.

  Charles yanked the mask away from his face. “Seven, eight, nine, ten,” he rasped. “You’re still fired!”

  “Dad!” Kelly said in exasperation as he started coughing again. She put the mask back on him, rolling her eyes at Tom.

  He turned to his uncle, bracing himself against the side of the car as another wave of dizziness hit him. Shit. All this circus sideshow needed was for him to hit the deck face first. “What’s going on?”

  Charles pulled his mask off again. “You want to know what’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on. Judas here has agreed to give an interview with some stupid fool who’s writing some stupid book about the Fighting Fifty-fifth.” He started coughing again and when Kelly reached for his mask, he pulled it away from her with a quelling look, putting it up over his mouth and nose himself.

  “His name is Kurt Kaufman,” Joe said tightly, crossing around the back of the station wagon so that he could address Charles directly without having to peer through the interior of the car. “And he’s a professor of history at Boston College, so stupid probably doesn’t apply, either to him or to his book.”

  Charles pulled his mask away. “Even better—he’s some Kraut. What gives him the right—”

  “His grandfather served beside you in the Fifty-fifth,” Joe told him. “He died fighting the Nazis in the hedgerows outside of Normandy. He has every right.”

  Charles put his mask back on with a humph, losing the point to Joe most ungraciously.

  Tom followed Joe more slowly, keeping one hand on the car like a baby who could walk only while holding on to furniture.

  He’d never seen Joe so angry before. The few times Joe had lost his temper had been quick explosions—short flashes that were over almost before they’d started. It had been nothing like this deeply burning, shaking fury.

  “If he’s writing about the Fifty-fifth,” Tom asked him, rubbing his forehead as a sharp pain suddenly grabbed him right behind his left eye, “why does he want to talk to you? I’ve seen that picture Mom had of you with my grandfather after you enlisted. You were both in Air Force uniforms.”

  Kelly was still crouched next to her father, but she was looking up at him, frowning slightly. “Tom, are you all right?”

  Great. He probably looked as shitty as he felt.

  Aside from the fact that he had thirty short days to make this frigging dizziness and these damned headaches disappear for good, aside from the fact that his career was on the line and that the one relative he’d always counted on to be a port in a storm was crumbling with his own pain and uncertainty, aside from the fact that seeing Kelly again made him want her as badly and as foolishly as he’d wanted her all those years ago, aside from the fact that her father was dying—a man he’d never quite respected or admired, but that he’d cared for nonetheless . . .

  Aside from all that, yeah, he was all right.

  “I’m tired, I’ve got a headache, I’m standing here in my underwear, and I’m confused.” Tom let his exasperation show. “I want to know what the hell’s going on. Why does this writer want to talk to an Air Force veteran about the Fifty-fifth?”

  Joe looked from Tom to Charles and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “This is private—”

  “Like hell it is,” Charles snapped. “You’re the one wants to talk to this Kaufman. How private is that?” He glared at Tom. “Kaufman wants to talk because Joe’s the ‘Hero of the Fifty-fifth.’ The ‘Hero of Baldwin’s Bridge.’ You know that statue by the marina? The one that lists the men from town who died in the war?”

  Tom knew the statue well. He’d gazed at those long lists of names many times, thinking the stonecutter had screwed up by leaving the e and s off the word hero, thinking it should have read “The Heroes of Baldwin’s Bridge.”

  He could feel Kelly watching him, and he forced himself to stand a little straighter.

  Charles had paused to press the oxygen mask to his face, breathing deeply, but he now went on. “Go down there and look at the face. That’s Joe’s face on that statue. He wouldn’t let ’em put his name on it, but it’s him. In France, a few weeks after the Normandy Invasion, he delivered information about a German counteroffensive that would have slaughtered thousands of men in the Fifty-fifth Division. Because of Joe, they were ready for ’em.”

  The Hero of Baldwin’s Bridge. Unassuming, quiet Joe Paoletti who loved his flowers was the frigging Hero of Baldwin’s Bridge.

  “Gee,” Tom said, turning to look at his uncle. “How come you never told me? Knowing that might’ve come in handy back in high school, when I was sent to the dean’s office for the fiftieth time.”

  He was only half joking. God knows it would’ve helped his head, helped his low-as-shit self-esteem as he was growing up, to know that a Paoletti, a fucking Paoletti, wore not just the title “hero” but “the hero.”

  Joe just snorted. But he wouldn’t meet Tom’s eyes.

  “The Nazis knew the terrain and planned to use it to cut off part of the Fifty-fifth,” Charles continued, “isolate them from the rest of the Allied forces. The fighting was fierce—there would have been no prisoners taken.” He looked up at Kelly and Tom. “Because of what Joe did, thousands of men from the Fifty-fifth were given a fighting chance.”

  “Because of what I did,” Joe scoffed. “That’s not the way it happened and you know it! I was wounded—I couldn’t even walk. Without you and—”

  “I was just along for the ride, and you know it,” Charles countered hotly, starting to cough again.

  “Use that oxygen,” Kelly said sternly, “or I will take you to the hospital.”

  Charles had clamped the mask over his nose and mouth, but he started to pull it off as Joe countered with “You were never just along for the ride. You wanted people to think you were—”

  “Okay.” Tom held up his hand. He was starting to feel like a bad cross between a traffic cop and a referee. The sensation that the world was tilting was subsiding, leaving him to deal only with the pounding in his head. “Wait a minute. I’m still confused.” He fixed Joe with his harshest commanding-officer gaze. “In addition to this he
ro business, which is complete news to me, I find out a few hours ago—from Kelly, I might add—that you were shot down over France in 1942. But the Allied invasion didn’t take place until the summer of 1944. What were you doing behind enemy lines in ’42? Did you get shot down twice? Or did she have the date wrong?”

  “No.” Figured Joe would pick now to go back into his monosyllabic routine.

  “Yeah. See?” Charles said. “You’re all ready to start telling stories about me, but when it comes to yourself . . .” He glared up at Tom. “He was shot down in ’42. He was badly wounded—as is often the case when your airplane falls out of the sky like a brick. Lucky for him, he was found by the French Resistance instead of the Nazis. As a result, he was taken to a safe house instead of a concentration camp—you did know that it wasn’t unheard of for the Nazis to send American prisoners of war to places like Auschwitz, didn’t you? Geneva convention be damned.”

  Joe shook his head. “They don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear this.”

  “What do you think this Kaufman’s going to ask you about?” Charles asked him. “It’s not going to be questions about protecting your roses from early frost!”

  “Dad,” Kelly said. “You’re both so upset. Maybe we should—”

  “The Resistance found him and hid him and nursed him back to health,” Charles interrupted her. “And spending time with—”

  “Don’t,” Joe said sharply.

  “Them,” Charles said pointedly, “the freedom fighters, Joe discovered his command of both Italian and French, combined with forged papers and his New York City cajones, gave him the edge he needed to wander the French countryside and target German military sites for Air Force bombing raids. It was far more effective than the airborne reconnaissance he’d originally been part of. In fact, he did such a good job, he was invited to stay in occupied France for the remainder of the war—to help provide information for the planned Allied invasion.” Charles took a hit from his oxygen tank. “Joe started out Air Force, but he ended the war as OSS.”

  Tom looked at his uncle. OSS. He’d always admired and respected his uncle, mostly for the kindness and respect he’d shown to Tom when no one else, including his own mother, had wanted anything to do with him. But he’d always been a little amused by Joe’s love of his garden, and he’d imagined that Joe had gone through the war as a desk clerk or a cook or . . . Jesus, anything but OSS.

  “My God, Joe,” Kelly said softly. “You were a spy in Nazi-occupied France for two years?”

  Tom himself had been on some tough missions, some extremely dangerous and covert missions that had required him to go deep undercover and walk among the enemy. He’d sat in cafés and had dinner surrounded by men and women who would have put a bullet in his brain had they known who and what he was.

  But he hadn’t done it straight for two frigging years.

  Cajones, indeed.

  “It’s over,” Joe said. “It’s done.”

  “But you would do it again if you had to,” Charles coughed.

  Joe fixed his friend with a grim stare. “So would you.”

  The two old men glared at each other. Neither of them blinked, neither of them moved until a cough racked Charles.

  “You’re going to do this interview, aren’t you?” Charles gasped.

  “I think so.”

  Charles angrily covered his face with the mask, dragging in as much pure oxygen as he could. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he coughed. “Like you said—it’s over. It’s done. What’s the use?” He coughed so hard his eyes watered and ran, and his lips were flecked with blood.

  Kelly looked at Tom. “I think I better get him inside. Would you mind? . . .”

  “Good idea.” Tom picked up Charles, making sure Kelly had the oxygen tank before he started toward the house.

  But Charles wasn’t done with Joe. He lifted his head to look over Tom’s shoulder, pointing a shaking hand at his oldest friend accusingly. “You hated me from the moment you first set eyes on me!”

  Joe stood in the driveway, his heart aching, watching as Tommy and Kelly carried Charles into the main house.

  The first time he’d seen Charles, nearly six decades ago, he was being carried then, too.

  It was funny. Out of all the people Joe had met in his long life, Charles Ashton truly hated being helpless more than anyone.

  Yet there he’d been, wounded and helpless, carried into the sanctuary of Cybele’s house by Henri and Jean-Claude, bringing danger to them all merely with his presence.

  He was badly injured and fading in and out of consciousness, his aristocratically handsome face pale and drawn with pain, his blond hair matted with blood and mud. A fallen prince. He’d needed Cybele’s medical skills, so he’d been brought all the way here, from the front line, at great risk to them all.

  If the Germans found him here, they would take him prisoner and hang them for harboring him.

  Yet it was not hatred that had filled Joe’s heart at that first sight of him, but rather hope.

  The Americans had landed in France. The Allied invasion, which he himself had worked so hard for, had come about as planned.

  It wouldn’t be long before the fighting surged past them, and the small city of Ste.-Hélène was free from Nazi rule. It wouldn’t be long until the few remaining Jewish families, hidden around the town in houses like Cybele’s, could step out into the sunlight.

  “Put him on the table,” Cybele commanded in rapid-fire French, tying her long, dark hair back from her face before she quickly washed in the kitchen basin. “I need hot water. Marie, a fire. Pietra, bandages and soap. Get that uniform off of him. Giuseppe?”

  She looked up at Joe with a flash of her dark brown eyes, and he nodded as the American soldier—an army lieutenant—was set down on the sturdy wooden table. His uniform—all his clothes, including his military-issue underwear—were quickly removed. Should the Nazis pay them a visit, without those clothes this man was merely a peasant, a farmer who’d been caught in the devastating cross fire of a war that was drawing closer every day.

  Joe gathered the uniform along with the lieutenant’s dog tags. “Charles Ashton,” he read aloud before bundling it all together. The clothes were bloody, but he couldn’t risk washing them clean, not right away. He’d have to bury them for now, deep enough so the starving dogs that wandered the town’s streets wouldn’t smell the blood and dig them up.

  One of the Lucs—there were two in Cybele’s private army—brought blankets to cover Ashton, but Cybele set them aside. The summer night was warm. His body was slick with sweat, and she certainly had no need for them.

  She was barely twenty-one years old, but the sight of strange men, both naked and bloody, had become a common one in this house she’d once shared with her husband and their young son.

  Ashton had been hit three times as far as Joe could see. Once in the shoulder, once in the side, and once in the upper leg. The wounds in the shoulder and the leg were bad enough, but being gut shot was a virtual kiss of death without a surgeon’s skill available. Unless . . .

  “He still has the bullets in him.” Cybele looked up from examining his wounds. “That’s a good thing. The rounds that hit him were spent. Maybe we can save him.”

  Spent bullets meant that this lieutenant had been at the very edge of the German rifles’ range when they’d shot at him. He’d been hit, but the bullets didn’t have enough power left to pass through him. They’d merely lodged within him, their flight stopped by his muscle and tissue.

  “If I can get these bullets out,” Cybele continued, “and if we can prevent infection . . .”

  As she met Joe’s gaze, she suddenly looked weary and far older than she was. Infections had taken as many lives as German bullets. Odds were, without a hospital, without a real doctor, this soldier would die. The fact that the bullets were spent had merely moved his chance of survival from impossible to unlikely.

  Joe touched her shoulder, squeezed the tense muscles in her arm.
They’d gone up against unlikely before, and won. “You can save him,” he told her.

  Cybele took a deep breath and nodded. “I can try. I’m going to need help holding him down, though, in case he wakes.”

  They had no morphine, and removing bullets without the numbing effects of the drug would be screamingly painful. Joe himself could attest to that. Maybe, just maybe, Charles Ashton would remain blessedly unconscious until she was done.

  Of course, he chose that instant to rouse. His eyelids fluttered and he groaned. And then he gazed directly up at Cybele with eyes that were the color of a summer sky.

  As Joe watched, Cybele stared back at him, transfixed. He was her first real American. Joe himself didn’t truly count since he’d grown up in an apartment with an Italian father and French mother in a part of New York City that was more European than American.

  Even naked, it was obvious Ashton was an American. He could have stepped right from the pages of a Hollywood magazine. Even injured, he was golden and gleaming, with chiseled features that provided a perfect frame for those unearthly blue eyes.

  He stared back at Cybele, reaching up to touch her cheek. “Angel,” he whispered.

  Cybele jerked her gaze away from him, stepped back to avoid his touch. “Tell him he’s wrong.” She spoke only a small amount of English, but she’d understood his single word. She glanced at Joe again. “Tell him that after I’m done he’s going to swear I’m the devil.”

  But Joe didn’t get a chance to translate, because Ashton lifted his head, painfully trying to raise himself up. “French,” he rasped. “You’re French, angel. Sister! What happened to . . . Oo et luh sare?” He could barely speak, but he struggled to sit up. “You know, sare. Big hat, black dress? Mon Dieu, Jesus—luh sare?”

  Whatever it was he wanted to know, it was vitally important to him. His eyes were all but rolling back in his head as he struggled to stay conscious.

  Cybele shook her head, looking to Joe for help.