Shadows over Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  All at once Lise heard sounds. Instinctively she glanced up into the sky again. But she realized immediately it was not the sounds of aircraft she heard. They came from far away, carried to her ears probably by a trick of the breeze.

  They were short, sharp blasts—the unmistakable sounds of gunfire.

  Lise scanned the fields in the direction Claude had gone, her heart trembling within her. More shots penetrated the night air. She could see occasional flashes of gunfire off in the distance, perhaps a kilometer away, at the edge of the woods.

  Without even thinking her actions through, Lise started running toward the sounds, dreading what she might find. She could hear more gunfire, and shouting.

  Several more shots; then all fell silent.

  Lise stopped. What if the gunfire had nothing to do with her comrades? To continue on, if what she had seen and heard was indeed from a German patrol, might only attract Boche attention toward the airfield.

  But what if Michel and Claude were hurt or in danger, and needed her?

  She glanced back toward the airfield, then again at the now silent darkness ahead of her.

  Slowly she decided to inch ahead. If she heard anything from the airfield, she would turn immediately and hasten back to it. In the meantime, remaining as cautious, quiet, and out of sight as she was able, she had to try to find out what had prompted the gunfire. If her comrades were wounded or dead, the plane would mean little to her now.

  Slowly she made her way forward through the uncut grass, crouching now and then to keep out of sight. Minutes passed. Still she saw and heard nothing. Still she seemed no nearer her destination.

  Then in the distance came the sound she had been half-dreading. Faintly overhead came the distant whine of the single-engine aircraft.

  ———

  Logan crouched on the ground, numb. Gradually he awoke from his stupor, his hands shaking. About a foot away lay the revolver where it had slipped from his fingers.

  Suddenly he remembered. A young German soldier lay dead, probably less than ten feet away. He could not make out whatever expression had been fixed on his face when Logan’s reckless bullet had snuffed out his life. Logan could not see past the circle of blood in his chest. He turned around, lurched, and was sick.

  A moment later he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. He started half to his feet, turned, and nearly shrank away. He looked up into René’s stricken face. The boy had tears streaming down his dirty cheeks. Logan couldn’t cry. The devastation wracking his brain was too tormenting for weeping to wash away.

  There were other bodies nearby, but Logan was afraid to look at them. He knew one was Nat’s.

  Less than two minutes had passed since the first rounds had been fired. He didn’t want to face more death. But he had to. Nat was there.

  He forced himself up to his feet, then to his brother-in-law’s prostrate form. He laid a hand on the lad’s chest. Was there a faint movement he felt? Nat slowly opened his eyes.

  “Logan,” he whispered weakly, “ye’re all right, then?”

  “Nat . . . !” cried Logan, but whatever other words he felt in his heart caught in his throat.

  He tore off his jacket and pressed it against the wound in Nat’s abdomen. Then he slumped down beside the wasted form, staring blankly ahead.

  Some flickering remnant of who he was, or who he was supposed to be, kept trying to force its way into his dulled consciousness. He had to do something! The shots might have alerted the rest of some German patrol; they had to get moving!

  “Your comrade is coming around,” called René into the blur of Logan’s mind.

  “What?”

  “Your other comrade,” said the youth. “It was he who surprised our captors, off there in the field.”

  Logan gently laid down Nat’s head and went in the direction the boy pointed. Claude had a deep gash on his head, whether from the gunfire or from striking a nearby rock as he had dived for cover Logan couldn’t immediately tell. But he would survive, with only another ragged, ugly scar to add to his morbid collection. Logan reached a hand out to help him as he tried to rise, but Claude shook him away.

  “I can manage,” he growled. “What happened to the Boche?”

  “You killed one,” replied Logan. “I owe you my life.”

  “Save your thanks for someone who needs it! And the other?”

  “I killed him,” said Logan.

  “You, Anglais?” exclaimed Claude in derisive disbelief. “I didn’t think you had the guts!”

  Logan did not reply.

  “We’d better get out of here!” said Claude.

  Still Logan just stared blankly forward. How could Claude think so clearly after all that had just happened? But then, this wasn’t Claude’s first killing. Did it get easier? Would he one day be able to gun down his enemy without a thought? Such a prospect was even more fearsome than the act of killing itself.

  What finally forced Logan back into action, mechanical though it might have been, was the thought of Nat. He was still alive! If they could just make it to the airstrip and get him aboard the Lysander! He had to get Nat home—home to Stonewycke, to his mother, to Allison.

  They walked back, and with Logan and René carrying Nat, and Claude stumbling ahead, they managed to get on the move again. Whatever their difficulties had been before, they were multiplied tenfold now. Though Nat should never have been moved, Logan knew whatever chance he had at all depended on that plane. Fortunately, by this time Nat was beyond pain.

  “Faster,” urged Claude, starting to outdistance them. “It’s not far.”

  But the words were barely out of his mouth when they heard the sound of the plane. In another moment it came into sight in the light of the moon, though it carried no lights of its own. The little Lysander buzzed once over the airstrip, the pilot probably checking his coordinates to assure himself that this dark area was indeed the right field. It circled once more, dipping low enough to make out whatever figures might be below, if there were any.

  By this time Lise was sprinting back toward the runway. Suddenly Logan’s numbed mind snapped back into action. That plane represented Nat’s only hope! It might circle one more time, but then it would take the lack of activity as a sign that the mission had been scrubbed. They had to signal the pilot.

  “René,” said Logan hurriedly, “run on ahead to the field and help Lise signal the plane.”

  “There may be a Boche patrol out there, fool!” said Claude. “We must let the plane go!”

  “I don’t care if the entire Wehrmacht is out there!” cried Logan “Go, René—now! You too, Claude.”

  Perhaps in his weakened condition Claude had no more heart to argue. Perhaps the thought of Logan in the hands of the Boche again wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Whatever the case, he trotted off as quickly as he could.

  By now Lise was almost back to the strip, but she still did not know if it would be safe to light the lamps.

  Logan picked up Nat, carrying him in both arms, and, staggering under the weight, continued on one slow step at a time.

  “Logan,” Nat breathed, his voice barely audible, thin and pale. “We’ve got to stop . . . the pain—”

  “It’s not far, Nat! Can you hear the plane?”

  “I’m na goin’ to make the plane—Logan—got to rest—”

  “No,” said Logan. “We’ll make it!”

  He quickened his pace only to stumble over an exposed root. He crumpled to his knees, easing Nat as gently to the ground as he could. Immediately he got his arms around Nat’s shoulders and under his knees and tried again to stand, though his own strength was all but spent.

  “Please, Logan . . . rest . . .”

  “You’re almost home, Nat. Just a bit farther.”

  “I’m on my way home, Logan, but na to Stonewycke.”

  “You can’t die, Nat! Hang on!”

  “I love ye, Logan! But let me go. ’Tis all right, ye ken . . . I dinna mind sae much as long as I ken ye and dear Alli
son will be together again.”

  “We will be, I promise.”

  “Ye was always a big brother to me—I’m glad it’s you that’s wi’ me noo . . . at the end.” He winced sharply in pain, but struggled to go on speaking: “Do ye remember when the old Austin was stalled and ye—?”

  But young Nathaniel MacNeil said no more. In the arms of his sister’s husband, he calmly slipped away into that rest he longed for, with the smile of a happy memory of their first meeting on his lips.

  ———

  The moment Claude and René had arrived, Lise had left them to greet the plane and its delivery of the two Gaullist agents. Then she shot off to help Logan in whatever way she might.

  Before she had run twenty yards into the darkness, she heard the bitter groan of Logan’s voice in the distance, crying his brother-in-law’s name. Logan’s heartfelt agony and self-recrimination was too keen to accept the reality before him. Neither could he even begin to comprehend the peace on Nat’s dying face.

  When Lise approached she found Logan hunched over Nat, his body shaking in a convulsion of weeping.

  52

  Duplicity

  Now it was no longer a game to Logan Macintyre. No more jocular cons. The whole thing had soured, and the business turned dirty.

  Lise had seen it coming. Perhaps he had sensed it, too. Now all his reasons for being where he was had faded into reality, and a hollow emptiness settled over both Logan Macintyre and Michel Tanant.

  He had always mastered the art of distancing himself from death. Claude and Antoine and others in the underground had done the killing. Nat and Alec and two soldiers in a Vouziers wood faced the bloody battlefields of the war. But now Logan himself had tasted the guilt of blood on his own hands. Days later the thought of what he had done turned his stomach. True, he had grabbed the gun and fired out of the sheer instinct for preservation of life—both his and Nat’s. But such reasoning could not quell the self-reproach in his heart. It would never erase the horrible picture of the blood-spattered German soldier lying at his feet.

  Nor would he ever be able to forget the awful helplessness of holding his dying brother-in-law in his arms.

  Lise tried to convince him it wasn’t his fault. And of course, it wasn’t. But Nat’s death had been a truly heroic one—a wounded man, throwing himself at an enemy soldier, saving the life of his brother-in-law, his hero, by taking the fatal bullet in his own chest.

  What had he ever done himself that could compare in heroism? Nothing! His life was marked by duplicity and falsehood. His own wife didn’t even know where he was, and with her brother dead at his feet, all he could do was load the battered body onto the plane and watch it soar back into the night sky for England.

  The facts may not have indicted him. But he could not escape the feeling of culpability. That night in the Vouziers wood had been a night of death, and Logan would never be the same again.

  Logan gazed around the crowded cafe where he had just met Paul and passed some messages on to him for Henri. Paul was gone now, and Logan too should be on his way. He had to meet with von Graff in half an hour, and that surely was reason enough to linger. He watched absently as a group of drunken patriots sang La Marseillaise in celebration of Bastille Day.

  Allons, enfants de la patrie!

  Hark! hark! what myriads bid you rise!

  Yours children, wives, and grandsires hoary,

  Behold their tears and hear their cries!

  But Logan’s patriotic fervor could not be nudged. In the past year he had been in France, he had become as much a Frenchman as any Scot could hope to become. He should feel a pride in thus having united himself with his country’s ancient ally. With what pride would not the grand dame of Scottish legend, Mary Queen of Scots, look down on him for his efforts to help the kinsmen of her mother! Now, like so many noble Scotsmen of past times, he had even killed for the glorious cause.

  But there was no joy in the heart of Logan Macintyre today. And as he sat listening to the rousing song, all he could think was that those poor blokes were likely to end up in front of a firing squad for their efforts.

  Wearily Logan rose. He could not prolong his meeting any longer.

  ———

  Von Graff wore an unhappy expression, one that seemed to mark his aristocratic features more and more of late.

  “You were gone from Paris a whole week!” he stormed.

  “My girl wanted a holiday,” Logan replied stoically.

  “Yet you did not see fit to inform me?”

  “I didn’t see that it was your business.”

  “Everything you do is my business!”

  Logan shrugged.

  Von Graff rose ominously from his chair.

  “Anyway,” Logan went on defiantly, “I thought we agreed that I would have no watchdogs.”

  “And I kept our bargain,” said the general, sitting back in his chair more composed. “This is how I found out.”

  He held up a document which Logan assumed was his application for travel papers.

  He eyed it indifferently.

  Von Graff laid down the application, and after studying Logan’s expression for a moment, spoke again.

  “What’s wrong with you, Herr MacVey?” he said in a more sympathetic tone than he had yet used. “Are you growing weary of the double game—mixed loyalties—betraying your own countrymen—all of that? It happens, believe me . . . only too often.”

  Logan followed von Graff’s lead. After all, it was more than half true.

  “I think the week in Reims helped,” he replied. “Sometimes it’s just nice to forget about everything. I guess that’s why I went without saying anything.”

  “There was Resistance activity some forty kilometers from Reims last week.”

  “Oh?”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “I try not to blow up trains when I’m on holiday.”

  “It was not a train.”

  “What then?”

  “Nothing was blown up at all, Herr MacVey. I thought you might already know that important fact.”

  Logan lifted up his eyes to squarely meet von Graff’s. “After all these months,” he said, “I think I’d be somewhat immune from these tiresome cross-examinations.”

  “No one is immune,” replied von Graff. “Even I must face them.”

  “You, General?”

  “When the Jewish section chief, Herr Eichmann, visited Paris recently, I was hard-pressed to make as good an account of my months here as I would have liked.”

  “Had you up against the wall, did he?”

  “I hoped I might be able to report more significant arrests.”

  “But at least you didn’t have as many significant escapes,” said Logan optimistically. “You must admit I’ve done that much for you.”

  “Perhaps. But the escapes do go on, and L’Escroc remains unapprehended.”

  “L’Escroc has been lying low lately.”

  “True, but by now I had hoped to see more results from your operations.”

  “I’ve set you up with several ideal opportunities,” parried Logan. “Can I be blamed if your strong-arm boys haven’t kept up their end?”

  “All right, MacVey, no blame is laid,” conceded the general. “But tomorrow night we may all have a chance to reprieve ourselves.”

  “A new assault against Free France, eh?”

  “Not exactly. A new thrust which Hitler apparently feels is equally important to the subduing of resistant regimes: there is to be a raid on Parisian Jews. Some thirty thousand are scheduled for arrest.”

  “Thirty thousand Jews!” exclaimed Logan in unmasked shock.

  “It’s all part of Herr Eichmann’s Final Solution. It should come as no surprise really. Berlin’s racial loyalties, shall we say, are well known. It would come as no surprise to me if this is merely the beginning.”

  “Such an action will play havoc with the terms of the Armistice,” said Logan. “The Führer will lose much suppor
t.”

  “The Armistice is a sham and always has been. Even Pétain knows that. As far as the Führer’s popularity goes—I doubt it will suffer much. He’s never been popular with the Jews anyway.”

  Herr von Graff attempted a chuckle, but even he was capable of realizing how inept humor seemed at that moment. “Besides,” he went on, “the French police will conduct the raid—no German soldiers will be involved at all.”

  “So why are you telling me all this?”

  “I want you on your toes,” replied von Graff. “An event of this magnitude is likely to bring the underground out in droves—especially its leaders. We could make quite a score in addition to the Jewish scenario—perhaps even L’Escroc will show his face.”

  “Shall I dangle this information about today, and see if I get any bites . . . stir up the pot, so to speak?” Logan knew he would have to warn the underground of the raid; he hoped with von Graff’s affirmative answer to be able to protect his Trinity cover at the same time.

  “We prefer the utmost security,” replied von Graff. “However, we know there has already been some leaking. Not enough to endanger the scheme, however.”

  “No mass exodus of Jews?”

  “Where would they go? Most are marked well enough by their foreign accents and identification papers. All the railroad stations and exits from the city are being stringently watched. And the punishment for getting picked up with false papers is far worse than the prospect of a labor camp.”

  “That’s where they will be sent, then?”

  “That is my assumption. What else would they do with them?”

  “But I cannot imagine facilities large enough for such an army of prisoners.”

  “No matter. What happens to them after the raid is not our concern, now is it?”

  53

  Vouziers Once More

  The fine summer day gleaming over the Vouziers countryside went unnoticed by Arnaud Soustelle.

  He had not come here on holiday as Trinity had claimed so convincingly to General von Graff. The general was a fool, for some idiotic reason mesmerized by the smooth-talking Anglais.