by Robert Rigby
The previous year, when setting up the Resistance cell, he’d given himself the code name Reynard for secrecy when in radio communications with other groups. He’d chosen Reynard because an old business friend often called him a wily old customer in business deals, cunning like a fox, and always ready with a plan or idea.
But now Henri had no ideas at all. He took a breath, thinking furiously but playing for time. “There are at least six Germans,” he said at last. “We know that from Paul and Didier. We also know they are trained soldiers and fully armed. We can’t possibly outfight them, so—”
“We can try!” Josette interrupted.
“Josette!” Didier said impatiently. “Listen to your father.”
Josette glared at Didier but stayed silent.
“Our only objective,” Henri continued, trying to figure out tactics as he talked the situation through, “is to free Max’s wife.” He spoke softly. “We can’t concern ourselves with fighting the Germans – or dealing with Victor Forêt, or for the moment, with anything else – we just have to free Julia. So…” Henri hesitated, and everyone around the table leaned forward slightly in their chair.
“Yes, Papa?” Josette said, in little more than a whisper.
“So…”
Paul and Didier exchanged a look.
“So … I’m open to suggestions on how we proceed from here.”
There was a collective sigh of disappointment. For a few moments no one spoke.
“Henri’s right,” Paul said at last. “We can’t outfight the Germans.” He remembered what Didier had said to him earlier as he continued. “And we shouldn’t take unnecessary risks; we have to think of the safety of us all.”
“So what do we do?” Max Bernard asked urgently. “We must free my wife.”
“And we will,” Paul replied. He glanced at Didier. “And we will have to take risks – necessary risks. But as we can’t outfight the enemy, we’ll have to use tactics and cunning.” He looked at Henri. “Eh, Reynard?”
“What are you getting at, Paul?” Didier asked. “What tactics?”
Henri spoke up before Paul could answer. “Look, there’s something else you need to know, Paul.”
“About what?”
“It’s Eagle,” Henri said. “It’s on.”
“Oh,” Paul breathed. In the excitement and tension of the day, Eagle had completely slipped from his mind. “When?”
Henri hesitated. After his earlier mistake he’d said nothing more in front of Max and Inigo about the operation. But with events moving so swiftly and Eagle imminent, there seemed little point in holding back the information from anyone in the room. “Tomorrow.”
“What!”
“Tomorrow night.”
“No, not tomorrow, it can’t be then. They’ll have to put it back for a few days.”
Henri shook his head. “That’s impossible, you know that.”
“But I’m not ready to go.”
“Paul, do you realize how much planning has gone into this operation? The British Government, their secret forces, the Royal Navy – they’re all involved, as well as our contacts in Portugal and Spain. And our Resistance friends from nearby.”
“Nearby?”
“Limoux and Puivert. The movement is growing, Paul, and these people are coming to help you.”
Inigo raised his bushy eyebrows and his eyes widened as he looked at Paul. “You must be a very important person.”
“We have to tell them I’ve changed my mind, Henri,” Paul said. “I don’t want to go.”
“It’s too late for that, Paul. You made your decision, you have to stick to it.”
“Then just ask them to give me a few more days.”
“I told you, that’s impossible. The weather reports say tomorrow night will be clear with very light winds; perfect for a small plane to land. After that, the weather is predicted to turn bad, possibly for a week or more; with rain and low cloud a plane couldn’t land. So it must be tomorrow night.”
The room fell silent. Everyone’s eyes were on Paul. He thought rapidly before speaking again. “Then our only chance to rescue Julia is tomorrow morning.”
“What!” Henri and Max said together.
“Why, Paul?” Didier said. “Why tomorrow?”
“Because if a plane is coming for me tomorrow night, then another has to be coming for the Germans.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I heard them say it was soon. They’ll have had the weather reports too; they’ll know their only chance of getting out is tomorrow. But they have to find Max first, which means they have to go searching for him. And while they’re away from the wood yard, we’ll go in and snatch Julia.”
Everyone stopped to consider. Paul’s reasoning made sense and was even the beginning of a plan of action.
“You make it sound easy,” Didier said eventually.
“I know it won’t be easy, but it’s our only chance.”
“But they’re not fools; they won’t leave Julia completely unguarded.”
“No, but a single guard, or even two, will be a lot easier to fight than six heavily armed Germans.”
“We agreed before that we couldn’t fight them.”
“All right, we don’t fight them, we draw the guards from the house by creating some sort of diversion. You still have your shotgun, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“We can make a noise with that.”
Inigo had been listening intently, looking from one face to another. “If you want to create a diversion, and a big noise, I can do a lot better than a shotgun.”
“How?” Paul asked.
“In my war, in Spain, we had to make many of our own weapons. I became an expert in home-made grenades and petrol bombs. I’ll make a few of those.” He laughed. “They’ll give you your diversion.”
Paul smiled. “Excellent.”
Didier turned to Henri. “If Paul’s right, and the Germans do go searching for Max tomorrow, we also have to consider where they’ll go.”
Henri sighed wearily. He was acutely aware that the younger members of his group were thinking much more quickly and tactically than him.
“And where do you think they’ll go, Didier?”
“They’ll start with you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you and those close to you. If Victor has told them you lead the Resistance group here, then you’re their obvious starting point. Get you and maybe they’ll get Max. That will be their thinking.”
“Yes, but this is still just speculation.”
“But I think he’s right,” Paul said quickly. “And even if he’s not, they have to go looking for Max tomorrow; it’s their last chance. So we have to act while we can. We’ll need vehicles; your bike, Didier, and your car, Henri.”
Henri sighed. “Paul, even if you are right about this…”
“He is right, Papa,” Josette said urgently.
“Probably right,” Henri agreed. “But I should forbid you to be part of the operation, Paul, for the sake of the information you have for the Allies.”
“You need me, Henri.”
“It’s true,” Josette said, “we do need him.”
“We’re too few as it is,” Didier agreed.
Henri considered for a long moment before speaking. “Very well. But a Lysander light aircraft will touch down on the landing strip outside Puivert at ten minutes to midnight tomorrow night. When it takes off again you must be on it, Paul.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Day Four
It was one a.m. Paul checked his watch as a church clock in the centre of town struck the hour. He was alone, writing a letter, trying to get down everything that needed to be said.
He could hear the faint murmur of voices downstairs. Paul knew he should be trying to sleep, but the letter had to be written, and besides, he was wide awake, buzzing, an electric energy pulsing through his veins at the thought of what was to come during the next few hours.
&n
bsp; They were going into danger, into the unknown. Anything might happen: there was a chance he might not survive, and it was not just a remote chance. The letter had to be written.
Paul was agonizing over every word, trying to ensure that what he wrote was exactly right. And as he wrote, his thoughts kept returning to his parents and his previous life in Antwerp, seeing his father gunned down on the dockside and then hearing that his mother had been arrested and dragged away by the Germans. Where was she now? Was she even alive?
He stopped writing and stared at the wall as he guiltily realized he had not once thought about his parents during the previous twenty-four hours.
It was a shocking realization.
Until then he had thought about them every day, first thing in the morning when he woke up and last thing at night as he tried to go to sleep. And they were always in his dreams: his dark, disturbing dreams.
The constant pain of losing his parents had eased a little over the months. But it was still there, nagging away, and it would always be there.
Paul had vowed that he would one day return to Antwerp to hunt down the person who had betrayed his parents. To keep that vow he had to survive.
But for now all those thoughts had to be put to the back of his mind. In a few hours he was going into action, which was what he had wanted for so long. And this time they were going on the offensive instead of fighting a merely defensive battle.
Paul could hear his heart thudding in his chest. Was it always like this before action, this sensation of feeling sick in the pit of the stomach but at the same time dizzy with anticipation and desperate to get the job done?
Inigo had spoken earlier about his experiences fighting on the front line during the Spanish Civil War. He said he’d been afraid every time, because only a fool was never scared.
“Only a fool was never scared.” The words had stuck in Paul’s mind and they came back to him now.
He returned to his letter, making certain everything was in order just in case the worst did happen.
But then he stopped suddenly. What if his prediction was wrong? What if the Germans didn’t come searching for Max tomorrow and just sat tight at the yard? There was no way Henri and his team could defeat them all, even Paul knew that. No, he couldn’t be wrong. He was certain: the enemy would come in the morning.
But it already was morning. The time for action was drawing relentlessly nearer.
Paul carefully read through what he had written and signed his name at the bottom of the second page. He folded the letter and slipped it into an envelope, which he sealed and put into an inside pocket of his jacket.
Josette could not sleep; not now.
Outside, the night was still and quiet, but Josette’s mind was churning with jumbled thoughts of the day to come and of the people she loved. And of the danger they faced.
She knew their hurriedly cobbled together tactics were far from perfect; they were hardly tactics at all. But thanks mainly to Paul’s dogged determination to act while they could, they were going to try to free Julia Bernard.
Josette was afraid – not for herself, but for the others, especially her father. He’d changed; she’d realized that during the evening. He’d suddenly grown older. He was in his late forties, so wasn’t old, but the many stresses and the anguish of the last year seemed finally to have taken their toll.
During the meeting, once Henri had virtually confessed that he was bereft of ideas, it had been Paul and Didier, particularly Paul, who had taken the initiative. Henri had been far less decisive than he used to be. If it came to a fight in the morning, that hesitancy could be fatal. They were all at risk, but Henri, perhaps, most of all.
Josette sighed and pulled the blanket up to her chin, not because she was sleepy, but because the soft wool against her face was comforting. She desperately wanted to protect the man who had been her protector for the past seventeen years. It was a strange thought, upsetting. Her father had always considered her his little girl, the baby of the family. And despite her many loud and frequent protestations, sometimes she had secretly quite liked it.
But she wasn’t Henri’s little girl any more; she had grown up.
The war had made her grow up, and made her father grow old.
Didier had much to consider. They had decided on the tactics and logistics of the raid on the wood yard, but there was still the personnel to worry about.
With the exception of Inigo, they were all novices in the type of guerrilla warfare they were planning: hit and run, get in and get out before the enemy had a chance to respond. Inigo himself admitted that even for him it had been a long time, but Didier instinctively felt that the little Spanish terrier would still acquit himself well. Inigo would be at the forefront of the action, as would Didier and Paul. And Paul was the one Didier was most worried about.
He’d become more and more reckless in his actions: charging into the barn as he did could have ended in disaster. And though, thankfully, he’d got away with it, he still didn’t seem to fully appreciate that it had been a crazy move even though it gained them the vital information they needed. Paul had been lucky, and luck didn’t always hold. It turned, usually without warning.
Didier reminded him again that they were up against a team of highly trained professional soldiers. But Paul’s judgement was clouded by the desire to beat the enemy while he had the chance. And the next impulsive or impetuous move might prove deadly, for them all.
Didier was going to have to keep a close watch on him, as well as look out for his own safety. They were the best of friends, in many ways closer than brothers. They worked side by side at the factory, spent most of their spare time together, shared a sense of humour and they were both crazy about Josette, although they tended not to mention that fact in their conversations.
But in wartime, situations change quickly and now Paul was leaving, probably forever. A Lysander would swoop in to Puivert in less than twenty-four hours; Eagle really was going to happen, as long as Paul made it to the rendezvous point on time.
Didier told himself that he was going to make sure that Paul not only got there on time, but that he also got there in one piece.
Henri sat in an armchair, rhythmically smoothing down the bristles of his bushy moustache with the index finger of his right hand. He was very worried and very anxious.
He was in charge of the operation, and the responsibility was weighing heavily on his shoulders. Josette; Paul and Didier; Inigo; Max and Julia Bernard; his mother, Odile; his wife, Hélène; even Didier’s mother had been dragged into this now. No one had complained.
Henri wanted to inspire them all, to fill them with confidence with stirring words and daring deeds. But he didn’t feel confident. He was far from confident.
He had never particularly wanted to lead the Resistance group, but when they’d started it the previous year, there was no one else prepared to do the job. That’s what the others said, anyway. They voted him leader. He was proud, in his own modest way, and thought he merited his code name.
But these days he was almost always tired, and he’d started to think that he no longer had the energy, the skill or even the imagination to lead. And the cunning of Reynard the fox seemed to have deserted him.
Sitting there in the armchair, he told himself that he must think positively. They would win through, and when this operation was over he would hand the group over to Didier. He would still be there to advise, to discuss and help where he could, but the running of the group needed to be in the hands of a younger man.
And of course there was Josette. Even with Didier in charge, she would still have plenty to say about how the group was run. Despite his worries, Henri realized that he was smiling at the thought of his beloved daughter. Josette would always be his little girl.
Max Bernard watched Inigo pour fuel into the empty glass bottle. There was a row of filled bottles now, all with screw tops securely tightened. In the morning, if and when the home-made incendiary devices were required, the screw t
ops would be removed and a cloth wick soaked in alcohol would be pushed into the neck of each bottle and made secure by a cork. The wick would be lit, the bottle hurled at the target, and when it smashed on impact it would create an instant fireball as the flame ignited the fuel. It was an effective weapon, and highly dangerous for both the intended victims and the thrower.
“I made many of these in the Civil War,” Inigo said quietly, watching the last of the fuel trickle into the bottle. “More than I could count. We all used them; us, Franco’s forces. They’re very dangerous, I’ve seen them explode in people’s hands.”
“Are you sure you want to take the risk, Inigo? This isn’t your fight.”
Inigo smiled grimly. “It is my fight; it’s everyone’s fight.” He tightened the screw top. “And I’m an expert with these things. You have to be quick, because once the wick is alight the thrower becomes very visible to the enemy, a clear target. So you get as close as you can, you light, you throw and you get out fast.”
Max looked at the neat row of bottles. They appeared harmless enough, but each one was a bomb. “You know, the Germans want me because they believe I can make them a bomb. I’m an expert, too.”
“Yes?” Inigo said, looking impressed. “A bomb like this?”
Max shook his head. “No, not like that, Inigo. A very different bomb, and one that I’ll never make.”
Victor Forêt huddled uncomfortably in the lumpy chair, beneath a blanket that he was certain had previously been used to keep a horse warm. It stank.
A single oil lamp was burning weakly on the far side of the room, shedding just enough light to see from one wooden wall to the other. The cheap oil burned smokily and made his eyes smart.
Victor detested the house. Wood everywhere, inside and out. The floors, the walls, the ceilings: nothing but wood. It was as though the place had put down roots and grown to become part of the forest. It was desolate and bleak on the brightest of days, but at night, with the sky as black as tar, it seemed the loneliest place in the world.
Victor felt more lonely than he ever had, even though the house was filled to capacity with captives and captors. Most of them were asleep, Victor supposed, but he couldn’t sleep no matter how hard he tried.
