He used the opportunity to study the valve-pressure gauge: dark as usual, he must speak to maintenance about it. No more cigarettes tonight, he decided. The docking reception clerk in Nantes was an agreeable Breton widow; for half a carton, he might be able to get perhaps a bottle of Calvados as well as a meal in the canteen and a cot.
"Name of a dog, Jean, hurry up!" the team-leader hissed, pulling on his own dark knit ski-mask and thrusting the Walther 9mm through the waistband of his overalls. The young machinist was fumbling with his knapsack—that was the bricks ofplastigue; Henri hoped to God the man hadn't forgotten to pack the detonators safely. You had to rely on others to do their jobs while you did yours, but sometimes he wondered about Jean, especially since his father was executed and his mother and sister were sold off in that big sweep this spring. You would think it would have toughened him…
Ironic, that the innocent father had been executed and the Resistance-worker son not even detained.
"Ready," came another voice. They crawled out of the ditch where they had lain to let the truck get out of sight, north into the dark-rustling hedgerow of old poplars and new thornrose.
That was Ybarra, the Spaniard; reliable, even if she was a woman and a foreigner and a communist. Their explosives expert, and very good with the long stiletto or the piano-wire garotte; she had learned them all during the war in Spain back in the '30s, when the Reds had taken over and defeated the generals; from what one heard, that had been almost as bloody as the Eurasian War itself, allowing for differences of scale. They were all serfs now, all on the same side, as she was fond of saying.
The three Resistance fighters lay on their stomachs in the shadow of the hedge, relaxing slowly. No sound, except the harsh rasping of the crickets and the slight water-noises from the river a hundred meters south; not even much wind, tonight. More light than he liked, but they were all in dark clothing, their faces covered, nearly invisible from any distance. The smell of sandy earth and green things overbore the traces of tar and oil-drippings from the road. A warm night, sweat gathered in his armpits and on his face, insulated by the wool. He was about to signal them to move when the faint whine of tires on pavement alerted him.
No need for words; they all froze in place. Coming from the west, he thought. No lights. Both bad, could they have stopped the truck, found something? Had someone seen it slow to let them off? The Frenchman controlled his breathing with conscious effort, remembering lying in the burning forest of the Ardennes, not moving while the Draka hunted yipping through the woods for the survivors of his volunteer company. Not moving as pitch melted out of the trees above his boulder and dripped down around the curve to fall on his back, not moving at the laughter and the screams as they bayonetted the wounded and collected ears. Not moving.
A military auto but not an armored fighting-vehicle, silent and steam-powered. Helmeted heads, difficult to tell the color of uniforms in the dark; he peered at the door insignia as it halted. A skull, black in a circle of red chain: Order Police. The doors swung open and four men emerged, stretching. One handed around a canteen, another did a few deep knee-bends; a third walked to the edge of the road and opened the fly of his trousers, and the team-leader smelled the ammonia of urine seconds before the spattering on the leaves at the bottom of the ditch. The talked softly among themselves; there was laughter, and the slap of a hand on a shoulder, then a quick order from their NCO.
Just a rural security patrol, he thought with relief. Out looking for plantation-hands off bounds without a pass, candidates for a working-over and a day in the local police pen until their owners came to take them home for the serious flogging. None of the Resistance fighters moved. They had a mission, and it was not to attack a few serf policemen; not that the odds would be good anyway.
My pistol, Ybarra's knife and Jean's Schmeisser, he thought. One and a half clips for the machine pistol, six rounds for the Walther, against four trained fighting-men with automatic rifles. They would fight if discovered, of course. Being found out of their pens at night warranted suspicion, a beating and interrogation. Being caught with weapons meant an immediate hamstringing slash across the back of the legs with a bushknife, torture for days, death on the stake or the hooks.
"Right," he said, after the police steamer had been gone a safe ten minutes. "We're…" He looked up at the stars, down at a pocket-compass flicked open for a moment. "… About two kilometers from the chateau." They would not go to earth anywhere near the plantation headquarters itself, of course. Far too much chance of a Draka out for a night stroll, and none of them had much illusion about their ability to silently dispose of a Citizen in hand-to-hand combat. Disaster even if they did; a police patrol that did not report in would bring Security and the military swarming about, but a dead Citizen would mean slaughterous reprisals all through the countryside.
"We'll head for Bourgueil," he concluded; safer to stick with the plan, although he had authority to vary according to circumstances. The town was on the fringe of the plantation, and their informants said it was unpeopled, heavily damaged in the fighting back in '44 and mined for building material since, only the winery in use. On the edge of a big forest area, too. "Lie low until daylight, then see about making contact."
It must be important, to risk his whole cell, whatever it was they were to help the American with. He reached over his shoulder to pat the radio set.
"You first, madame," he said. "I'll take the rear. Ten-meter intervals.
"Right, comrade."
"And don't call me comrade, Ybarra," he added with a slight smile. Better her insolence than Jean's sweating nerves; if he had known the man was this shaken, he would have left him behind.
"Then don't call me madame."
"Merde with that, get going."
She moved past him, less than a ghost presence in the blackness. "Su madre, yes sir."
"How's it work?" Kustaa asked, shivering slightly in the damp of the cave. Except for his shielded handlight, it was pitch-black, dank, smelling of wet rock and concrete. The surface was rough under his feet, still bearing the marks of pneumatic hammers.
The drive up from the chateau had been uneventful, barely two miles; nothing in the ruins of the town, nothing but piles of stone, the shattered ruins of the Gothic church and arcaded marketplace looking as if they had been desolate two generations instead of three years. Moonlight on tumbled rock and the serried ranks of the vines on the low hills; an open field with a windsock and a strip of darkened landing-lights and three light aircraft tied down with lines and stakes. Not even a watchman; in a countryside under permanant curfew, where the population had no access to money and rarely left the Quarters, there was little danger of theft.
Perhaps it was that which was depressing: the sheer confidence of it. Arrogant over confidence, he reminded himself. And you're the living proof of it. Or perhaps it was what he and the nun had lifted in short jumps from the compartment of the auto; the thing always gave him the willies. He looked over at her, and she smiled back at him with serene confidence. You've got it good, buddy, he told himself. You're getting out of here.
"Well, this is the outer entrance, Frederick," she said, with that trace of dignified old-world formality that was already becoming familiar. She nodded back along the short sloping tunnel cut into the pale limestone of the hill. "You see the niches? Those will be command-detonated mines."
Ahead of them was a blank surface of smooth gray metal; in its center was a naval-type blast door with a dogging wheel inset in the center. "This is from the cruiser Baboeuf, sunk in Toulon by the English in '40, after the surrender to the Germans. A section cut out of one of her main turrets, I believe, and slightly modified." There was a ball-mounting beside the door on one side, with an armorglass vision block above it, tank style. "That is for a machine-gun."
Her hand fell on his wrist and guided the light to the other side. A steel box had been welded to the surface, and she undid the latch to show a safe's combination lock recessed into the metal. "This
controls the locking mechanism from the outside, although it can be disabled from within." She began twirling the dial.
"How on earth did you get the combination, Sister?" he asked.
"Oh, it's kept in the office," she said, as the tumblers clicked. "The lock on that cabinet is childishly simple… here we are."
Something clicked and whined deep within, and the wheel of the door swung with oiled smoothness as he spun it. The bolts went chung-chank and the thick metal swung open, bringing a hint of deeper chill from within, and a stronger smell like stone after rain, mass-concrete poured within the last few months. They wrestled the box through and dropped it, panting, with a dull chunk. Kustaa shoved the door home, and heard the nun feeling in the dark for a switch. It ticked, and overhead fluorescent lights hummed, flickered, and shed bright bluish light on a square box of a room ten feet on a side, lined with metal closets. The air smelted stale, with paint and metal and rubber odors, like the basement of a construction site. In the center of the room was something he recognized.
"Periscope!" he said wonderingly.
Marya nodded. "German," she said. "More military salvage. Through there"—she pointed to another ship's watertight door—"are more rooms. A suite for the masters, dormitories for some serf cadre, storerooms. A control room for the power system; there is a fuel cell in a sealed unit, it utilizes exterior air. Water comes from deep wells; there are air filters, room for a year's supply of food, weapons…" Her finger pointed to the ceiling. "Five meters of strong rock, not to mention the concrete. Ventilating shafts, but they will be baffled and fitted with filters, later." He noticed the inlets around the room, covered with temporary grilles, steel cap-covers hanging ready to be bolted into place.
"Protection against a fairly close miss, and complete safety from radioactive debris. Only the shell, now; the furnishings and so forth are to be added over the next few years. Eventually a linked system for the rest of the serfs, and even sealed barns for breeding-stock."
"So they do plan atomic war," Kustaa said softly, glancing around the bare, well-lit, evil room.
"No," the nun said slowly. "No, I do not think so… not without a chance to strike first and suffer little retaliation themselves. I've heard them speak of it and every one has had fear and hatred in their voice. At least at the prospect of the land itself being laid waste; they care for that more than they do for any number of non-Draka lives. This is… a precaution. On the initiative of the State, you understand."
"It'll be safe here?" he said, nudging the box. "And you'd better give me the combination, as well."
"Very safe. Only the Landholders and the overseers have the combination"—she made an impish smile— "officially, and none of them come here unless they must. With the feast and their duties, virtually no chance at all. And we are close to the airfield, relatively far from the Great House. Where better?" She shrugged, then pulled the door of one of the metal cupboards open. "This will be decontamination gear someday… in here." They struggled it over to the locker, Kustaa repeating the numbers after the nun as he went.
As they swung the outer door shut, the nun stopped as if struck, then gave a low laugh.
"What is it?" he said. The night outside was still black, but it had the flat depthless quality of the time between moonset and sunrise.
"This place, Frederick, it was designed to keep that poison out. And what is inside it now?"
His own laugh had only begun when a word came from just outside the tunnel.
"Attend." Kustaa felt his mind click over into another mode, another time and place; his hand moved silently, cautiously through the darkness toward the butt of his pistol.
"Wait," came the voice again. French, male, hoarse. "What are your tastes in cuisine, Monsieur-with-the-American-accent?"
Cuisine? thought the OSS agent blankly. Then: "O.K. Well, the escargots of Dijon are very fine," he continued casually.
A gusty sigh, and the unpleasant metallic sound of an automatic pistol's action being eased back into place by hand. "That is true, Monsieur, very true. With some fresh bread to mop up the garlic butter, and perhaps a bottle of—"
"Wait, that isn't in the password," Kustaa said.
"No, merely being nostalgic,Monsieur." The man came forward, a knitted mask over his head, dressed in dark stained city-serf overalls; the woman beside him was similarly clad, but tapping the blade of a long slim knife on her knuckles. "Lyon felt," he added, "that it might be important to forward certain items you left behind in your haste." He removed his backpack. "Your radio, for example, my old."
Kustaa took the offered hand, feeling the hard strength of a manual laborer. "Damned nice of you, but as it turns out Sister—"
"No names, please," the man said, taking in the blanket and the wispy silk beneath with a slightly raised eyebrow. "Our contact, I suppose." He drew her aside, and they exchanged codes in voices too low for the others to hear. "And you do not need the radio, you say?"
"She has access to the one in the chateau. It's an authorized transmitter, less likely to attract attention."
"Merde. Well, we also brought twenty kilos of plastique—"
"Twenty kilos?"
A purely Gallic shrug. "It is easier to steal it than hide it; it had to be disposed of in any case; we thought that it might prove useful. As might three helpers— he looked around, swore, strode out to the entrance.
"Jean!" he called, low but sharp. A figure by the raised hood of Kustaa's Kellennan started erect. "Jean, name of a name, what are youdoing, imbecile?"
"Nothing, nothing, just looking at this auto," he said.
"You repair the accursed things every day; get inside and under cover!"
To the two beside him: "Even if we are not so essential as we hoped, there has been a great deal of effort to account for our absence for three days. A place of refuge is most essential…"
Kustaa and Sister Marya both began to speak at the same time; the American nodded to the Pole and let her continue.
"I think," she said, "we have a refuge available and one of… unique strength."
"And," Kustaa added, his eyes narrowing in the dim starlight, "I've just thought of a possible use for that plastique, boys. Just by way of a fail-safe."
Chantal halted, leaning in the corner of the corridor. Her skin felt raw with the scraping she had given it in the showers, but not clean. Not clean for weeks, she thought bitterly. At least the man's smell was off her, but she could still sniff the stink of it… She thought again, of what was growing beneath her heart and nearly heaved her empty stomach once more. Voices ahead drew her alert; Marya's, and a man's. She pressed herself back against the wall, leaned her head around.
It was Marya, wrapped in a blanket. The man with her, the Draka visitor they had sent her to… and he was speaking. Low, but without the hoarseness she had been told of. Chantal felt something cold crystalize inside herself as she pulled her head back; the nun was not holding herself like a woman speaking to the man who has just raped her. I should know, she thought savagely. And why would he bring her back here, to her own quarters? A master would use her, then dismiss her when he was done with her. The Frenchwoman risked another look: the tall man was handing something to Marya. Something that glittered… a knife. Something else as well, from his belt: a cartridge-case.
"… eggs in one basket," he was saying. "You hold this for a while." An American accent! She recognized it from the radio and motion pictures, before the War.
Chantal pulled back again and sank to the floor, hugging her knees to herself, waiting for the closing of the door and the sound of the man's bootheels walking away. Something was going on. Something that sanctimonious bitch hasn't been telling me, she thought with a wild flare of rage that left spots swimming behind the closed lids of her eyes. Her with her sympathy and prayers! Resistance work, it must be. Something to do, a way to strike back. And the nun had left her out of it, left her in the misery of utter helplessness, a powerless victim, a thing.
"You're
not leaving me out any longer," she whispered savagely. "Not any more."
Chapter Fifteen
PRESIDENT MARSHALL PROCLAIMS PEACE ZONE
[NFS] New York: In a statement delivered from the First Office of Washington House, President Marshall announced that the Alliance Grand Council had proclaimed a Peace Zone covering the Atlantic coast of North and South America to a 200-mile limit. We entire Pacific outside the Domination's self-proclaimed Exclusion Zone (of 125 kilometers) and the western Indian Ocean. No non-Alliance warships would be allowed within this Zone, or non-Alliance merchantmen except those proceeding under license from the Office of Shipping Control. Unauthorized ships will be treated as hostile intruders, and similar restrictions will apply to air traffic.
President Marshall denied that this was an act of war. or in any way modelled on the Draka Exclusion Zone regulations. He further categorically denied statements from the Domination's Information Directorate that Alliance submarines have been routinely violating the Exclusion Zone's limits. "The Alliance stands for freedom of the seas, as it stands for every other freedom." he stated in response to requests for clarification. "But in an era when a single bomb can destroy a city, we cannot allow vessels from a power which has demonstrated complete contempt for human life to approach our coastal cities without prior inspection and control." In further spontaneous remarks, the President heatedly denounced allegations that the OSS was behind disturbances in Europe and Asia. "Tyranny is the cause of revolt." he said. "Liberty is the cure, not repression."
In related news. Washington House officials confirmed that a permanent site for the Grand Council and Assembly of the Alliance is being considered. All of the cities mentioned were in the Pacific Basin, and highly-placed sources indicate the choice has been narrowed to San Francisco, Lima and Sydney.
U.S. Weekly Chronicle:Nation's Bilingual Newsmagazine since 1912From "President Marshall's Plan for Peace"by Ulysses Sherman SandinoManagua. NicaraguaAugust 2nd, 1947
Under the Yoke Page 39
