August became September as they met as often as possible in the secrecy of the barn. The language barrier between the American and his French accomplices almost evaporated in the intensity of their discussions, but Laura was always on hand with help if it was needed.
On a Tuesday evening early in September Harris knelt before a sketchpad perched on an overturned crate and said, “I’m going to show you how to rig a Mercedes jeep to explode.”
The others moved in closer, peering over his shoulder.
“This is the fuel tank,” he said, stabbing at the paper. “They’re all the same. If you cut the ingoing line here, at this juncture, you can bypass the engine and feed it back into the...”
Laura lost track of what he was saying, translating automatically as one might read a book aloud but retain no impression of its meaning. Instead she studied the marine, thinking of him back in North Carolina, memorizing all of this information. Now it gushed forth in a steady stream, going to the people who could make the best use of it.
“The trucks are a little different,” Harris said, turning the sketch to show what he meant. Laura bent to look, and he glanced up and met her eyes for a second. A brief smile flitted across his mouth before he looked down again.
Laura continued to translate, not looking at Alain, who was staring at her. After the truck discussion they moved on to sabotaging trains. Curel described the favored method of prying up tracks to derail the cars. This had disadvantages, however; it had to be done immediately before the train’s arrival or it would be noticed, and it required the saboteurs to expose themselves along the heavily guarded rail lines. He explored with Harris the possibilities of recruiting or bribing switchmen to give the wrong signals, resulting in a wreck. This was also risky since it was traceable to the source, but had been effective in Poland when an immediate escape route was provided for the saboteur.
They talked long into the night, concluding with the plans for Alain’s theft of the dynamite the following evening. At the end both Harris and Laura were growing hoarse. When the members of the group left one by one, Alain hung back, waiting for Laura.
“Good luck tomorrow night,” Harris said.
Alain nodded, looking at his sister-in-law.
“Go on,” Laura said. “I’ll be along in a minute.”
The boy shot her a black look, but left. Laura turned to the American.
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” Harris asked her, referring to Alain.
“He’ll be fine,” she said firmly. “You can’t do everything yourself.” She eyed him speculatively. “You brought a lot of intelligence with you,” she added.
“Everything I could carry in my head,” he replied, reaching for a cigarette.
“And you believe it will help?” she asked seriously.
“If I didn’t I wouldn’t be here,” he replied evenly, striking a match.
“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that your coming here was futile,” Laura said quickly, afraid that he had misunderstood. “It’s just that being out there every day, in the middle of them, is discouraging. They’re so many and so organized, our task really seems...overwhelming.”
“That’s what they want you to think,” Harris said flatly, inhaling. “Buy into that and you’re dead.”
“I’m not giving up,” she said stiffly, getting annoyed. “I’m being realistic.”
“Realism is fine,” he said, blowing a stream of smoke. “Cowardice is chickenshit.”
Laura flushed, and her eyes blazed. “How dare you suggest...” she began, sputtering, until she saw the smile playing about the corners of his mouth.
“Relax, Red,” he said lazily, examining his cigarette. “Just trying to get a rise out of you.”
She stared at him, amazed. “Why?” she said finally.
“You’re always so cool, on the job, no excuses,” he replied amiably. “I thought there had to be a spitfire inside there someplace, or you wouldn’t be coming to this barn every night, getting ready to play footsie with the Germans.”
Laura didn’t know what to say. At length, still unsettled, she asked, “Are you satisfied?”
He grinned. “Yup. You can go home now.”
Laura fought the maddening urge to smile back at him. “Good night, Captain,” she said crisply, turning on her heel for the door.
“Good night, Boston,” he replied, with the edge of laughter in his voice.
Laura closed the barn door a little more firmly than was necessary and thought she heard him chuckle behind her.
Harris remained in the same position, smoking, thinking about Laura Duclos. His close proximity to her over the last few weeks, as they worked together and she translated for him, had been giving him lots of ideas. Ideas he shouldn’t be having. Like if her skin was the same glowing ivory under her clothes, and how she would look with her auburn hair cascading down her slender, naked back. Like how it would be to know she was waiting for him, that he had her to come home to after all this was done. All sorts of things that disturbed and distracted him , made him hope and made him dream. She was on his mind like a song.
Harris sighed and threw his cigarette to the floor, mashing it with his toe. As Gary Cooper once said, screwing around was fine, but this falling in love stuff was murder.
* * *
Brigitte Duclos rounded a corner, her arms piled with boxes of syringes, and stopped short. Kurt Hesse was lounging in the emergency room doorway, waiting for her.
“Will you stop following me around?” she hissed at him, glancing over her shoulder. “My supervisor is beginning to notice that you turn up everywhere I go.”
“Is that why you won’t talk to me anymore?”
“I never should have talked to you in the first place,” Brigitte said firmly, walking past him and unlocking a glass supply closet. She put the boxes inside.
“Why not?” Hesse asked.
She stared at him. “Because you invaded my country, that’s why not!”
“I didn’t invade anything. I was drafted and they sent me here.”
Brigitte raised her eyebrows. “That’s an original way of looking at it.”
“It’s the truth. Look, can’t we forget all this stuff about countries and armies and just be...friends?”
“No.” She moved to walk away and he caught her arm.
“Can’t you even give me a chance?” he asked quietly.
Brigitte looked into his eyes, debating how to handle him. She couldn’t forget where he came from, what he represented, but he was always so nice, not like what she’d imagined at all. He never pushed, never imposed. But he was also as persistent as sunrise.
“I don’t know what else to say,” she told him wearily.
“Meet me on your lunch hour. Downstairs.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
She hesitated. “Because it’s impossible, and I don’t want to. Is that clear enough for you?”
“I’ll change your mind.”
“I don’t think so.”
Brigitte replaced the supply keys on the ring at her belt and headed back to her ward as Hesse looked after her thoughtfully.
* * *
Alain Duclos glanced up at the crescent moon, pausing until a cloud obscured it before signaling the Thibeau boys to come up behind him. It had rained that afternoon and the earth underfoot was spongy, moist. A humid mist hung in the air, and with every breeze the trees bordering the German camp shed an aftershock of raindrops. They fell on his hair and clung to the individual strands like crystalline beads. He looked at his watch, then at the wall that faced him, three meters high with an electrified wire along the top. He had two minutes to wait.
The man on the night shift at the camp’s power station was a friend of Curel’s, a French electrician who’d been kept off a labor gang and pressed into service by the Germans. Curel had smuggled him a message to shut down the power in the wire at eleven PM exactly, as the guard shifts were changing. This practice never v
aried. Their devotion to established routine made the Germans efficient but it also left them susceptible to the guerrilla tactics that would become the specialty of the Résistance. Alain would have ten minutes to get in, steal the dynamite, and get out again before Curel’s man would restore the current.
He listened hard, standing beneath a dripping elm, but he could hear no German voices from inside the wall. He took a black knit hat from his pocket and pulled it on, covering his ears and extinguishing his bright hair. He mentally recited the procedure Harris had taught him, going over every move as the seconds ticked by slowly. At the appointed time Alain picked up a stick at his feet and threw it at the wire running along the top of the wall. Nothing happened. The power was off.
Alain uncoiled the anchored line he wore around his waist and fed it through his hands. When it was played out he tossed it over the wall. Twice it came back to him when he tugged, but on the third try the hook caught and the rope held his weight when he tested it. He signed to Patric in the distance, who nodded, and then Alain scaled the wall like a puma, hesitating at the summit to peer over its edge.
The German guard had his back to Alain, leaning on his rifle and talking to another soldier, possibly the man he was replacing. They were far enough away that he couldn’t pick up their voices, but near enough to shoot if they spotted him. Alain climbed over the top and dropped to the ground, falling into the parachutist’s roll he’d learned from Harris. He was on his feet in seconds, darting for cover in the shadows, as swift and silent as the saboteur he now was. He held his breath for a long moment but the guards went on talking, unaware.
His target was to his left, a trio of flatbed wagons filled with boxed explosives. The Germans loaded the wagons on Wednesday afternoon and moved them out on Thursday morning. The contents were counted at the time of loading, and a theft wouldn’t be discovered until the supplies were inventoried again at their destination. But in less than eight hours the wagons would be gone and the opportunity lost until the following week, too late for the planned raid. He had to move tonight.
Alain crouched down, low to the ground, and scurried to the nearest wagon. The crates were covered by a large canvas flap. He pulled it back and struck a kitchen match to read the lettering on the boxes, sheltering the tiny light from view with his hand.
Gefahr: Sprengstoff, the legend said. Danger: Explosives. And then in smaller print, stamped underneath, Warnung-Dynamit.
Harris had already determined, from the Thibeau uncle’s description, that the contents of two crates would be more than enough.
Alain pulled out his knife and cut a couple of boxes loose from their hemp binding. He could only carry one at a time, and as he levered the first crate to the edge of the flatbed it tumbled into his arms.
It was heavy, and he almost lost his footing on the marshy ground. His scalp itched, and he was sweating profusely under his hat but he dared not remove it. He carried the box to the rope still hanging from the wall and bound it round the crate quickly, pulling on it to alert Patric and Michel to haul it up from the other side. The box swayed and banged against the bricks as it rose, and Alain held his knife at the ready in case the guards heard the movement and turned to look. He relaxed slightly as Patric’s dark head appeared above the wall briefly. The other boy grabbed the crate and dropped it to his brother waiting below, lowering the rope again.
Alain repeated the process, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the Germans, who were now saying goodbye, the departing soldier walking back toward the barracks. Patric retrieved the second box and returned the rope to Alain, who felt a surge of adrenaline as he realized that they now had what they needed and he was about to get away too. He ascended the rope hand over hand, grateful for the protection of a pair of cotton gardening gloves Laura had produced from Thierry’s effects. But when he reached the top of the wall his tenuous streak of luck snapped.
For no reason at all, the guard turned and looked behind him. With the lightning reflexes of the young, Alain threw himself from the wall as if felled by an ax, clinging desperately to the wire with one concealed hand. He was acutely aware of the picture he would have made if the guard had glanced around a second earlier: an intruder, clad entirely in black, perched with one leg on either side of the electrified wire like a stunt performer in an aerial act.
The German boy stared intently into the shadows, certain that something was not quite right, and then decided to err on the side of caution. He shouldered his rifle, yelling “Halt! Achtung! Halt!” and dashed toward the barricade. The sentinel in the high tower above the barracks turned his searchlight on the compound, bathing the border area in a blinding white light. And Curel’s friend, reacting to the sudden commotion and seeking to cover himself, turned the power back on.
The shock traveled up Alain’s arm with numbing speed, and his fingers let go reflexively. He tumbled to the ground outside the camp. Bullets whined overhead as they ricocheted off the bricks at the top of the wall, spraying the air with cement chips. The Germans were playing it safe.
Michel bolted forward to help his friend, who was on his hands and knees, obviously injured, but Alain shoved him away.
“Go!” he shouted. “Get the stuff to Curel.”
The brothers stared at him uncertainly for a second, but there was no time to argue. The Germans were setting up an awful din; a siren began its strident wail and the sounds of running feet and shouting were getting closer. The Thibeau boys set off for the woods in a bowlegged run, each carrying a crate, and left Alain behind.
Desperate, surrounded, Alain reacted like a cat: he climbed a tree. Using his uninjured arm to take the weight of his body, he swung up into the lower branches of a nearby beech and curled into a ball, peering through the wet leaves. The Germans would expect any intruder to flee on foot, thinking that he had made it over the wire, and his only hope was to hide out until they’d passed him.
He could hear a babble of excited German as the soldiers inside tried to decide whether there had been anyone there or not. Typically, they opted for a search. The side gate of the camp burst open, and a flood of uniforms poured out of it, followed by a jeep traveling at top speed. Alain recognized Becker standing in the back; the colonel apparently stayed up late and was on hand to deal with the crisis. A squad of infantrymen ran by under Alain, evidently on orders to search the woods. His heart jumped into his throat as he waited for one of them to look up, but they pelted on into the darkness, rustling the undergrowth as they went. Other soldiers dispersed into the alleys that led to the main street of Bar-le-Duc, fronting the hospital and the officers’ quarters. In a matter of a minute he was alone, his enemies already far flung in their search.
Alain was sure the beat of his pulse was audible; his hands were shaking so much that he clasped them together, as if he were praying. But he was not. He had more faith in his own initiative than the benign intervention of a distant, formless God. He waited for the tingling to recede from his fingers, hoping that they would work again when he got down from the tree.
For he couldn’t remain where he was very long. Once the soldiers found nothing they would either decide it had been a false alarm after all, or come back and cover the same ground again, this time more thoroughly. They were pedestrian in their approach but far from stupid. His ruse had bought him some time, but he would be caught if he stayed.
He sighed and closed his eyes. Where could he go? He thought briefly of sneaking into the hospital and hiding out somewhere inside it, but then discarded the idea. It was the first thing that would occur to the Germans. Nothing else was open in Bar-le-Duc, thanks to the curfew, and if he took his chances on a private house he might stumble onto someone who would turn him in. No harbor was guaranteed safe; the climate of fear could make a traitor of almost anybody.
He crawled out on a bottom limb and lowered himself the length of his arms, making the drop to the ground as short as possible. He landed awkwardly, his trembling legs uncertain, but he discovered that he could walk.
He ran forward, intending to cut through the back streets and perhaps steal a bicycle to get him back home.
This plan was foiled at its inception as a staff car full of Germans rounded the corner ahead of him, almost catching him in its headlights.
He felt a falling sensation in the pit of his stomach. He was finished. In seconds they would see him and it would be all over.
Then he noticed a light to his left, and realized that the Cafe Mistral was open, in flagrant violation of the military governor’s laws. He made a reckless dash for the kitchen entrance, thinking that the workers were sure to be French. He would have to take his chances.
As he got closer he understood why the restaurant was still ablaze, and clearly in business. The rousing strains of Deutschland Uber Alles floated out into the warm night, offending his ears. The Germans were having a drinking party inside.
He splashed through a puddle outside the service entrance and yanked on the door, hoping that it wouldn’t be locked. It wasn’t. He had just crashed though it and slammed it behind him when he heard the staff car roar past in the street.
There were three people in the kitchen, and they all stared at him in amazement, transfixed by this midnight apparition. An old woman was slicing a long , rounded loaf of bread, and two teenaged boys were standing at the black iron stove, cooking.
“I’m running from the Germans,” Alain gasped. “Can you hide me?”
The two boys exchanged fearful glances. The woman put down her knife and peered at Alain more closely. Then without saying a word she added a block of butter, a month’s ration for a French family, to the bread platter and handed it to the shorter boy.
“Take this inside, Philippe,” she said.
Philippe gaped at her.
“You heard what I said,” she snapped. “Go in and pass it around, and stay there. Wait on them, keep yourself occupied, but don’t come back to the kitchen until I call you.”
Clash by Night (A World War II Romantic Drama) Page 9
