by Thomas Wood
Clouded Judgement
Trench Raiders Book 5
Thomas Wood
BoleynBennett Publishing
Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Wood
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Thomas Wood
Visit my website at www.ThomasWoodBooks.com
Printed in the United Kingdom
First Printing: April 2019
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Part I
1
It had taken me no more than five minutes to sprint from the hospital to the village, my small and rather unprepared feet taking a battering each and every time I connected with the cobbled street below.
The village itself bore few of the scars of war that I had become so awfully accustomed to in recent months. It was true that there were a few damaged houses and upturned statues in the square, a result of a few wayward shells, but in the main, the village still seemed intact.
It was why I had continued to reside there, despite the fact that the war could creep up on this small French village any day now. It was a stubbornness that was shared by a great many of the locals, all of whom kept their heads firmly away from the windows, as my footsteps galloped down the darkened street.
“Come on. Come on. Nearly there.”
I found myself interrupting my own thoughts, the rancid breath that I breathed into the blackness of the night time disappearing as quickly as it had appeared.
I was close now, which was good news, as I wasn’t entirely sure for how much longer I could keep on running.
I tripped up as I looked around to see how much further I had to go. I could see the front door that I was aiming for, I could only hope that a small lamp would be lit on the table as I approached.
I found my footing and continued on in earnest, not slowing down a bit as I got to the door. My feet slipped as I came to a halt, the soles of my shoes burning my skin as if I had been walking on hot coals.
I hammered on the door with the side of my fist, so hard that I imagined the old, rotting door might suddenly give way, and my arm would pulverise its way through it.
There was no lamp on the table. Not from what I could see. Not yet anyway.
I thumped again and again, until I heard the noise that I had been dreaming of for the last hour or so. The lock behind the aging, frail door, began to unlock itself in a state of sleepy confusion, or that was all I could account for, as it seemed to take an age to simply slide the bolts backwards.
The figure that revealed itself from behind the sodden wood appeared as just as confused as the unlocking door, despite the fact that I could not see a single one of his facial features. I just knew that his body mass was somewhere behind it.
I gave the figure no opportunity to ask me in, or reject my entry, as I tumbled through the doorframe, forcing the figure to stumble backwards with me.
I slammed the door back into its frame, with a gentleness, carefully and considerately sliding the bolts back across, jut in case another figure had been some way off behind me.
His eyes began to glow in the dark, as if they were only just getting going, before he squinted, troubled.
“Emilie?” he whispered, his warm breath splashing my reddened face. “Emilie Barrot?”
“Oui, Monsieur Roussir,” I gasped, “It is me.”
He fumbled around in the darkness for a moment, before the candle was lit and held up to my face. The flame flickered and burned so vehemently that I had to look away for a moment, the heat doing nothing to help me recover from the sprint that I had just completed.
“My girl, what are you doing here, at this time of the night?”
“I am sorry. I had nowhere else to go. I do not have long to explain.”
Michel Roussir’s eyebrows furrowed together at the news, great lines of concern etching from one side of his forehead to the other. I could tell immediately that he was already worrying about what he would do once I had departed. I was certain that the candle would burn for many hours after I had left him.
He nodded his head towards the centre of the room, “You better sit down, my girl.”
The heat of the candle left my face momentarily, at which point I discovered that I was beginning to shiver. My body had cooled down dramatically in the thirty seconds or so since I had stopped running, to the point where I was now experiencing the other extreme, my cheeks now losing the reddened pigment that had burned a moment before.
As I made my way over to the table, Monsieur Roussir noticed the small box that I held firmly in my grasp, as he began eyeing it with a suspicion that told me he was more than intrigued, he was fascinated.
It was a small box, with a simple hinge lid that I had used for years to store little trinkets and necklaces within, but in recent months had received a renewed sense of purpose.
It was buried in a nearby forest, far enough in so that no one would stumble upon it, but near enough to the outskirts so that I could grab it at a moment’s notice. Which is what I had done immediately before running to Monsieur Roussir’s home.
“I could not get to anyone else in time. They are probably watching my family anyway.”
“Who are, my girl?”
He knew exactly who I meant, yet I found myself spelling it out for him anyway, in a hushed whisper, in case any of them were stacked up outside the door.
“The Germans.”
At their mention, his eyes fell back on the small trinket box that sat before him, its former glory dulled quite considerably by the deposits of dirt that still clung to its sides. Even still, it was easy to see, even in the meagre light of a single candle, of how it glistened and sparkled in days gone by.
I could tell that he had already sussed what was inside the box. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to work it out.
“Money?” he queried, nodding towards the box, as if I needed a reminder as to what was the subject of his consciousness.
I nodded.
“Quite a lot of it too.”
His eyes sparkled, more than the box had ever done before.
I had earned more money in the last few months of this war, than I had done in the preceding twenty-four years of my life, each franc having sat patiently in the box until a time when I felt safe enough to use it.
It was sufficient to say that I was not yet safe enough to use it. But someone else might be able to.
The money, of which I had lost count long ago, was more than I could ever have earned from nursing. The job that I had fallen into as a result of this war was hard work and harrowing, but I was certainly not repaid in financial terms.
This side job was my secret.
Everyone that I knew had one, but sometimes it was best to just keep them hidden. Every now and then, one would find its way to the surface, plucked by the fishing line of an inquisitive neighbour or nosey best friend. So
me secrets did more harm than good, while others still, ruined lives.
Which was exactly why I had tied a millstone to my secret and had allowed it to sink to the bottom of the ocean as much as I could.
“Monsieur Roussir,” I breathed, my chest still heaving and having a great deal of trouble in recouping all of my lost oxygen. “This box here,” I rested my hand on it for effect, “there is a large sum of money in it. I entrust it to you now.”
I raised an eyebrow, in the hope that I would get some sort of a reaction from the man. I had no such luck.
“The money inside is for my family. I would like you to give it to them, with the message that I want them to use it to get away from here. To get away from the war. There is enough money here for them to start anew.”
He continued to stare at me blankly, and I almost asked him to repeat back to me what I had said. But then, he blinked. He was still alive at least.
“Please, Monsieur Roussir. It must be given to them. You can take for yourself what you like. There is plenty to go around.”
Suddenly, he sprung into life, as much as he could do at this hour of the night, as he placed his hand firmly on top of mine, which was still clinging tightly to the box.
“I will see it done, my girl.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Roussir.”
“May I ask how you came about such money, my girl. Forgive me, but you are only a nurse and I did not think that you were paid quite so handsomely.”
He must have seen the suspicion that was tinting my vision for a moment, as he added “What am I to tell your family, if they were to ask?”
I knew that I could trust the kindly old gentleman who sat across from me, his face a contortion of old wrinkles, made deeper by the shadows that danced across his face in the candlelight.
I would need to make it brief, I was certain that I did not have too much longer.
“Last year, when the hospital was first moved here, there was a woman who lived nearby. She approached me one day to ask me if I would do some work for her, aside from my nursing duties. At first, I merely thought that she was inquisitive. Interested in what happened up at the hospital. I thought maybe she was looking for a relative.”
“But she was not?”
“No, quite the opposite. She was waiting for a German, a Major, who was due to stop by at some point. She wanted to know when preparations were made for his arrival.”
“And…what happened?”
“Well, I told her. She was paying me a lot of money after all. But nothing much happened after that. I merely assumed it was all harmless. But after a few more requests, it did not take long to work out what was happening.”
He was not a naïve man, but he was hungry for every detail, something that I was careful not to give him.
“She continued to pay me for the rest of the year, in exchange for brief reports on the number of soldiers that I saw pass through and any whispers that came from dying German’s mouths. Anything really that might be helpful to her contacts.”
“Who were her contacts?”
“She never said. But I always assumed the British.”
He looked puzzled for a moment, as if he was confused as to why she would be talking to someone across the channel. For a brief second, I thought that he maybe had no knowledge whatsoever that there was a war on, his questions were angled in such a way.
“She went quiet over Christmas. I did not hear a thing from her. Then, she reappeared about a month ago. She wanted to know some very specific things. Things that meant I would have to go looking for the answers. It was risky…”
“And now you must leave, my girl.”
“Oui, Monsieur Roussir. I must leave. You will make sure that my family receive the money?”
He looked at me, with a reassuring smile etched across his face, “Every franc, my girl.”
He placed both hands on top of mine and as I stared into his deep, hazel coloured eyes, I knew that he meant every word. He would not take a single franc for himself.
I felt quite bad for the old man, not just because I was leaving a huge weight upon his shoulders, but because of what I had kept hidden from him. I had told him what he had needed to know, what my family needed to know, but I hadn’t told him the whole truth.
I had failed to mention all the preparations at the hospital for what was to come, the extra training and teaching that we had received and the huge canisters that had been passing along the supply routes nearby. I had neglected to mention what it was exactly that had been asked of me and why it now meant that I must leave.
But all of that would have to wait. At least until the end of the war and maybe even longer.
For now, I had to leave. I had to run again. But the next person I was hoping to get to was going to be a little bit riskier.
“Au revoir, Monsieur Roussir.”
“Goodbye, Emilie. Good luck, my girl.”
I slipped away from his house and began to run in the direction that I had just come, before I heard the unmistakeable sound of German troops heading my way.
2
It took me a further twenty minutes or so to make it to the hospital, after I avoided several groups of German troops who were scouring the nearby area for anyone that was out when they shouldn’t have been.
The Germans seemed to have no real reason to impose so strict a curfew upon us as they did, every one of them not giving a sufficient reply when asked. However, it seemed as if they did not need a reason for many of the new laws that they had impressed upon us, from the order to simply keep our streets clean and tidy, to the way that German officers were owed a salute every time they walked past.
For some reason, the military discipline that was instilled in every German troop that I saw, was being extended upon the occupied civilians, much to their disgust.
It was all part of the reason why I had begun to accept some of the money in return for information. I frequently wondered where in the world my information went to and whether it was ever put to any use. Maybe the woman that I had met had been a fraud and had not worked for anyone at all. But then, how would she have had access to such large sums of money?
She was certainly working for someone, somewhere, but I was yet to see a direct result of any of my information that was being passed on. There was a real possibility however, that after what had happened in the last few hours, that I was bound to at least hear of some sort of results.
I knew the route from the village to the hospital so well that I could have run it blindfolded, which was just as well, owing to the inky darkness that had been spilled across the length of the skyline that night.
The hospital itself was set in the grounds of a grand chateau, that had once housed the mayor of the local commune. Sturdy tents had been erected, in and around the gardens, for those soldiers who merely required an element of recuperation, before being sent back to the frontline.
It was inside the chateau itself that the wards and surgical rooms were located, with hundreds of men passing through its doors every week, with varying types of injuries and diseases.
It was within these walls that I had started to build something of a life for myself, having been trained as a nurse and worked there for the last seven months. I had seen everything, from men gasping and screaming as they died, to men taking nothing more than a slight glance at the stump of an arm that they would now have for the rest of their lives.
The look at a stump was an odd one, that I had observed many times now. It was a look of almost total dejection, at the realisation that their lives would never be the same again, they would not be able to do the things that they had been able to do just hours before.
But often, it was also an expression of overwhelming jubilation, of victory almost. It meant that they had beaten death. They were staring down at death’s best attempt at plucking them from this realm and yet, somehow, they had come out on top. Their war was over. They would be one of the survivors.
From then on, they would be fi
lled with glee and excitement, looking forward to the day that they would be discharged and sent back to their homes, to their families.
It was those men that I would have to try earnestly to avoid. Even at such a late hour, there was bound to be one or two of them awake, who would call out in the darkness at the invisible beauty that they thought was lurking somewhere in the corners of the ward.
If that happened, then there was a chance that the people that would soon be after me, would catch me before I could even start running.
I knew that the one person that I did want to see would be within these great corridors somewhere along the way. She would more than likely be sitting in her small room, by the light of an overly-loud and exhausting gas lamp, writing up various reports and preparing for the day ahead. I knew exactly what she would be doing as I had been there hundreds of times myself before.
As I approached her room, I could already hear the sound of a striking match through the half-opened door. It was done by all of us so that we could hear the calls of a frightened man in the middle of the night.
I waited for a moment, allowing enough time for the cigarette to be lit and a few drags to be taken, before I pushed the door further ajar.
“Marie.”
It was a low whisper, so low that it could have been mistaken for a voice inside one’s head, but the jump with which she rose from her chair suggested it was more akin to a gunshot.
“Emilie!” she exclaimed, after almost burning her top lip on the glowing stick that stood to attention from her mouth. It seemed almost as frightened as Marie did. Her hands shook as she had dropped the pen that she had been using to the floor, leaving a nice big splash of blue ink on the ground for her to clean up. “What are you doing here?”
She tried to calm herself down as best she could, which is always easier said than done, especially when your body begins to realise that there is no threat whatsoever, and your flustered heart continues to pound.
