It seemed that Julie knew her way around perfectly. Now he knew how she had managed to reach Givet on that bicycle. She sped up and slowed down at unexpected moments and he found it hard to keep up with her.
Before he knew it, they were out of Brussels.
They cycled fast down an empty dirt road in near-complete darkness. Melbourne could just make out the contours of Julie on her bike, aided by the little moonlight that shone through the clouds. Despite the danger and uncertainty of the trip, all he could think of was the bitter cold. He tried closing the collar of his coat a little more.
Julie stopped at the border of a forest. From a pocket of her jacket she pulled out an electric flashlight, clipped it to her handlebars, and turned it on. The little white light gave off a ray of illumination in the pitch black before them. She turned to Melbourne, little gusts of fog emanating from her mouth as she breathed.
“This might be a bit of bumpy ride, all right?” she said. “Just stay right behind me and watch where you are going.”
Melbourne nodded.
She set off again, straight into the woods. Melbourne stuck close behind her, trying to keep up with her sudden twists and turns. Bumpy was an understatement. They turned left and right, dodging fallen branches, bushes, and protruding roots. The little ray of light was always pointed downwards, straight in front of them.
Melbourne almost lost his balance as his bicycle suddenly lurched forward down a hill. Julie, on the other hand, seemed as if she had done it hundreds of times.
The obstacle course in the dark took close to two hours before Julie finally came to a stop. They were still in the forest with no end in sight. She got off her bicycle and laid it silently against a tree. Melbourne’s body ached as he got off his saddle and placed his bike next to hers.
“Where are — ”
Julie placed a finger to her lips, shining the flashlight at her face.
“Talk quietly,” she whispered. “There may be patrols in this forest.”
She started walking, shining the light down at her feet. He followed her in silence until she suddenly turned off her flashlight. Grabbing one of his shoulders, she pushed him down behind a fallen tree trunk.
She pointed a little to their left. “Look, down there.”
There was a light hovering above the ground in the distance. It moved slowly, sometimes disappearing and then reappearing a little nearer. Melbourne concentrated. He could hear leaves crunching. The light kept moving toward them until he could see the contours of a hand and an arm holding it. Melbourne turned to look towards Julie and he saw just the glint in her eyes. They both stared at each other and in the silence, they knew who it was.
The guard holding the lantern slowly made his way past them until he disappeared behind a grove of trees. Melbourne looked around him. He could see more lanterns, some farther off in the distance, others carefully approaching their direction.
“This place is infested,” he whispered.
Julie placed a finger on his lips and then tugged at his shirt. He took her hand and followed her as she quietly led him a little further off. Once again, she pushed him down and they crouched behind another trunk.
Melbourne could hear voices now. German.
A light was shining through the trees. It was almost at the same height of the fir trees that surrounded him. It shone down on the ground, outlining something large and black. A train car. He saw that there were more, extending all the down the forest as more lights illuminated its silhouette. The train was straight ahead of him, running both to his left and right, disappearing down the horizon in both directions.
“What is this town?” he whispered.
“Nothing much, just a few houses and a church. And a coaling and watering station, which is probably why the train has stopped.”
“No barracks nearby?”
“None. We would have known. Not even a depot or proper train station. I can’t understand why they didn’t proceed a little farther down the railway and head to a proper town.”
“No depot? That means whatever is inside the train is still there.” He thought for a few seconds. “All right, give me your flashlight.”
He was about to get up on his feet when Julie pushed him back down.
“Terrible idea. I don’t know if you haven’t noticed.” She pointed at a lantern a little off in the distance.
He took the flashlight from her hands and smirked. “I’m good at hide and seek.”
Melbourne got up, and as quietly as he could he sprinted towards the train, crouching low, looking left to right hoping he would not run into anyone. As he reached one of the freight cars, he flattened himself against it and listened. There was not a sound around him, save for the hooting of an owl nearby.
He turned around and saw a little rectangular window just above him. Climbing up on a metal rod, he took a peek inside. It was dark, but the large lights that emanated from the opposite side of the train created slight shadows within. He could not make the contours of what was inside. Grabbing the flashlight from his pocket, he turned it on and shone it to the window.
The carriage was completely empty.
He stepped down and walked up to the next one. Once more, there was a little rectangular window. He put a foot on a metal rod and pushed himself up to get a better look. Empty.
Melbourne turned back towards the woods. What was going on here? The train couldn’t have been unloaded already. And it wasn’t going to pick material up to take back to Germany. Something wasn’t right. Julie had disappeared from his sight and he hoped she was safe and hiding, or at least hadn’t left him there. A sudden sense of fear gripped him in the stomach. What if she had?
He brushed the thought away and moved on along the box car’s wooden walls until he reached a long flat car. He had seen these cars before in his reconnaissance missions with his trusted Farman. The Germans used them to carry large artillery weapons, and this was the right size for one – around five metres in length. It was covered in a large green tarp that took up the entire space of the flat car, neatly tied down with a hard, dirty piece of cord. He looked around him to make sure there was nobody, then pulled up a piece of cloth and stuck the flashlight in.
Nothing at all. Just a light wooden frame holding up the tarp.
Something caught his attention to his right. A lantern.
He quickly turned off the flashlight and slid under the flat car. His heart was pounding fast and he tried to steady his breath, hoping the guard had not seen his light. From underneath, he saw the light approaching and heard gravel crunching. The leather boots appeared, walking in front of him.
They stopped. Just a few centimetres from his face.
Melbourne held his breath. Something thin and cylindrical fell to the ground and the boot stepped on it, squishing it. A cigarette. The guard then proceeded on, and Melbourne quietly let out a long sigh. When the guard had disappeared, Melbourne slipped out the other side of the train and resumed his search.
He continued on, checking boxcar after boxcar. All yielded the same result.
There was nothing.
Sticking the flashlight into a coat pocket, he proceeded to carefully cross to the opposite side of the train, passing in between two box cars. He stayed there, crouched low beneath the flat car, and listened. He could hear German being spoken.
Peeking out, Melbourne saw a long platform, lined with evenly spaced tall street lamps that gave off a faint light – the same ones he saw from the woods. He looked both ways and saw a number of guards talking to each other about ten metres from him. Why was an empty train so heavily guarded?
Crouching low, he quickly slipped towards a dark patch of shrubbery on the quay and looked around. To his right, a little farther off he could see a lone figure, sitting on what looked like a stool. He lay flat on the ground and carefully and quietly made his way in the shadows towards the man. As he drew nearer, he could hear a growling sound. It was a soldier in German uniform, sitting in a strange position as if he
were about to fall to the ground in any moment. His chin rested on his chest as did his crossed arms. A bottle, Melbourne guessed of wine from the looks of it, rested next to his stool. As he approached him, Melbourne knew what the growling was.
The soldier was snoring. Drunk and passed out.
Just a little farther down was a wooden shack, the only building that could be considered a train station. Beyond that, near the engine, were the coal bunkers and a squat watering tower. He approached the shack and peeked inside one of the windows. It was dark, and empty, save for a desk, a few chairs, and a telegraph key. He looked to his right and saw the town lit by pale moonlight. Julie was right, there were only a handful of houses and a church. There was no way an army could be housed in a place like that.
It couldn’t be, could it?
He moved back towards the train and climbed over the coupler between two large box cars. Checking that no one was around, he moved from box car to box car, passing the occasional cattle car and metallic gondola. He searched every window, every nook he could shine light in. He hid whenever a guard was nearby and waited for him to move along.
Step up. Flash. Step down. Move on.
As he stepped up to search another wagon, the flashlight began to give signs that its time had come. The light began waning, shining intermittently as if sending a message in Morse code. Melbourne slapped it a few times and shook it but there was nothing he could do. The light suddenly died, the batteries drained of its last bit of power. He was plunged into darkness.
Melbourne leaned against the hard wood of a box car, his breath fogging in front of him. It was just as he had thought.
The train was empty.
It was all empty.
XXXV
Melbourne returned to the log, but Julie was gone. Dammit. He crouched down next to it and looked around. Had they taken her? Could they take her silently? But if not, then she must have left, abandoning him here. What if –
A hand touched his shoulder and he jumped, almost letting out a little yelp. He placed a hand on his chest. “I think you just took away a good five years of my life.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said with a just hint of amusement. “Patrols were too close, and I had to move. What did you find?”
“Nothing. And I truly mean nothing. The train is completely empty, not one single piece of ammunition, not one single weapon.”
“But… that makes no sense,” she said.
“Believe it or not it does,” Melbourne said. “It’s a ruse. All of it. The trains you see passing by near you are all empty.”
“But why would anybody want to do that?” Julie asked.
“To convince you that they’re planning an attack on the Front when they are not.”
“A diversion?”
“Exactly. But that means that they want to hide something and are willing to go to great lengths to do it. They want to slip something by while our soldiers are busy preparing for what they think will be the worst.”
Melbourne lay on the ground. This explained the guards – the Boche knew the trains were being watched and didn’t want anyone discovering the truth. But what were they covering? The options were endless. Yet, his brother had discovered it, he was certain of it. And it had cost him his life.
“We must go back,” Julie said. “We must warn the Resistance.”
Melbourne nodded and handed her flashlight. “I’m sorry, the batteries are dead.”
“There’s plenty of moonlight.”
They got up and walked to their bicycles, still resting against the trees. Julie sped off, with Melbourne behind her, sticking as close as possible. The return trip was worse than the outbound journey. He followed her mostly by sound, and that didn’t give him any warning of sudden drop-offs or unexpected roots. Twice he was thrown completely, falling to the rocky ground in the dark. Once he hit his head on a low branch. By the time they reached Brussels, he would have a number of new bruises to add to his collection. If they reached Brussels before his bike shook apart beneath him.
Finally, they left the last tree behind them and entered a place with enough moonlight to see where they were going. They were back near the countryside road that led to the city. Melbourne could see from Julie’s face that she was visibly exhausted and shaken. She was out of breath as gusts of fog blew out of her mouth in rapid successions.
“This is where we break off,” she said. “Brussels is just up the road.”
Melbourne nodded. He too needed a short break. His bicycle was dented in a few areas and a few spokes of his front wheel were bent. But it was still rideable.
“Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”
“Be careful and good luck.”
She turned her bicycle and sped off. Melbourne stared at her as she disappeared into the darkness and then set off on his own path back to the Esmonds. The Iron Shadow was something else, something elusive, unknown, occult, and yet connected to those trains void of the essential materials of war. What were the Germans trying to slip through undetected?
The city was quiet, and even the German soldiers had gone to sleep. What time was it? He took out his pocket watch and checked to make sure it was still running. It said half past three. As quietly as he could, he cycled through the empty streets, stopping only once when he noticed a German truck parked on the side of a road.
He needed sleep. The adventure was going to be over in just a few hours. Julie would report what they’d found to the Resistance. He would meet Danielle at the train station, head back to France, and give the details to Colonel Dunn-Hamming. The Iron Shadow was still out there, but what more could he do?
Melbourne turned the corner and entered Avenue Legrand. Getting off his bicycle, he walked as softly as he could so as to not perturb the quietness and stillness of sleep, carrying his tattered vehicle by hand. The gas lamps had been turned off, yet a source of light softly illuminated the street. Melbourne noticed it came from the windows of a house and wondered who would still be up at this ungodly hour. He slowed down a little when he realised it came from the Esmond’s house.
The lights coming through the living room windows shone bright, as if dinner was about to be served. He stopped. The Esmonds weren’t insomniacs. Were they worried about his return? But surely they knew well enough to not advertise it like this.
He stared at the window for some time. It was calm. Not a stir and not a sound came from behind it.
Something was off.
He placed his bicycle next to the house’s fence and walked up the three steps that led to the front door. He was fumbling through his coat’s pocket to find the key when the door moved, opening itself slightly ajar with a creek. Light from inside spilled out onto the darkened street.
Melbourne quietly opened the door and entered. The lights were all on as if they had never been turned off from earlier in the evening. He stood still, listening for the slightest sound.
Silence.
“Madame Esmond? Monsieur?” he whispered loudly. No answer came.
He slowly and cautiously began moving up the stairs, the wooden steps creaking under his weight. “Monsieur? Madame?”
He reached the top of the stairs and looked around at the second floor. The house felt abandoned, as if its occupants had left in a rush.
He walked towards the living room where the lights shone onto the street. “Is anyone here? Are you — ”
A sudden rush of pain swept through him, and he dropped to the ground. His ears began ringing. Clutching the back of his head, he felt dazed, confused. Then came an unmistakable sound. It was a trigger being pulled back. He rolled over.
The muzzle was pointed straight at his face.
XXXVI
A bulky man, twice the size of Melbourne, with a shaved head and with a crooked nose, held the gun in his hand. He wore a long, dark coat that went down to his knees.
Melbourne started but was quickly shut up by the brute.
“Sag kein Word! Auf deinen Knien, Hund!”
>
Melbourne obliged and stood on his knees, his hands still behind his head. His heart pounded fast, faster than when he was being hunted by the Fokker.
“Listen,” he said in German. “I don’t know who you are or why you’re here but there is nothing to be taken in this house.”
Melbourne’s eyes shifted to the ceiling as the sound of footsteps from above echoed in the hall. The steps slowly moved away from his position, shifting to the side, until he could hear them descending the stairs. A second man emerged. He was frailer than the beast holding him prisoner but by no means less dangerous. He toyed with a knife, making it run across his short, bushy black beard, enjoying the scratchy sound that it was making. He eyed Melbourne with a smile.
“But there is something to be taken,” he said. “You.”
“The spy walked straight into the trap,” the brute said.
“Look, I think there must be some sort of mistake. I’m not who you — ”
“Don’t fuck with me, spy!” The frail man waved the knife in front of Melbourne’s face.
“Where are the lady and gentleman who live here?” Melbourne asked. “What have you done to them?”
The front door of the house slammed down below, the booming sound echoing loudly throughout the building. Someone began walking up the stairs.
Melbourne turned his head towards the staircase. He hoped it wasn’t one of the Esmonds. He wanted to yell, to tell them to run for their lives, but that would be the last thing he did. Sweat began to break on his forehead. He felt out of breath. What in the world was going on?
But it wasn’t one of the Esmonds.
Danielle strode in with her usual graciousness. Her beautiful red dress that he had only seen on stage made a soft hissing sound as the hems slid on the wooden floor. Her blonde hair cascaded to one side of her shoulders and her jewellery gleamed under the houses’ lights. A third man followed her, his lifeless eyes staring out at the scene before him.
The Iron Shadow Page 19
