by Vic Robbie
‘I think you know the answer.’ She laughed. ‘Drink your wine it’ll help you sleep.’
‘I’m beyond sleep. I just want to get out of this damn country.’
They touched glasses in agreement and he took a gulp of the wine and realised it was a white and winced at its sharpness as it hit the back of his throat.
‘You must rest. Otherwise, we’ll end up in a ditch.’ She stared at the stars and puffed hard on the cigarette so it lit up her face. ‘And it would be bad for you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why would an American risk his life in this crazy war by driving this car out of France?’
Although he shrugged away the question, she persisted. ‘Why didn’t Bernay do it and attempt to save his own skin?’
‘I can’t answer for Bernay, but I like helping damsels in distress.’
‘Bullshit.’ She laughed cynically. ‘You’d already agreed before you met me. You were surprised when you realised you had to drive us as well. I saw it in your face.’
‘Perhaps I just have a love of beautiful cars.’
She laughed again. ‘Is it money?’
He winced knowing she was closer to the truth than she realised. ‘No, it’s not money.’
‘Don’t be offended.’ The tone of her voice was softer. ‘I find it hard to believe.’
‘Okay, if you think I’m hiding some secret, I’ll trade it for yours.’
She poured some more wine and took another long pull on her cigarette and exhaled the smoke so it rose in the night air making a galaxy of its own. For a moment, he believed she was on the verge of telling him something, some secret before she recovered her composure. ‘I’ve no secrets. What you see is what you get.’
‘I see a beautiful woman.’
She flicked him a smile.
‘A frightened woman and her son more desperate than me to get out of this country.’
‘True.’ There was a weariness in her voice.
‘What I can’t understand is what’s so special about you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You believe the Nazis are after you and your life is in danger...’
‘It is, and if they find us, they’ll kill us.’
‘Why?’
‘Because...’
‘What?’
‘Because of what happened...’
‘What’s happened? Why are they chasing you?’
‘I-I...’
‘I’ve no reason to believe the Nazis would be chasing me.’ He hoped they weren’t. ‘They’ve got more to worry about than Bernay’s car so why you?’
He took another swig of the wine to stop saying more, realising his persistence was closing a door that had been ajar. She was about to say something. Instead, she suppressed a sob. Perhaps he should have reached out and put an arm around her, but he didn’t want her to reject him again.
‘I was a prisoner of the Nazis in Germany.’ She was speaking so softly he had to strain to hear. ‘People put their own lives at risk to help us escape. We made it back to Paris then everything happened so fast we had to move to England. Perhaps there we will be safe, for how long I don’t know.’
‘Many other French people are trying to get away from the Nazis. What makes you so special, are you a spy?’
She snorted and stamped out the cigarette on the ground to signal their conversation was at an end.
‘Why are the British so keen to help you escape?’ he persisted.
She shrugged. ‘Perhaps they believe I can be of use to them.’
‘I take it your husband has influence?’
‘I’ve no husband, we’re alone.’
‘The boy’s father?’
‘He wants the boy, perhaps he wants to kill him, I don’t know.’ She shrugged again. ‘As for me, I don’t matter in his eyes. I can’t expect you to believe me now.’ Her hand brushed his cheek. ‘When we get to England you’ll understand.’
She threw the remains of her glass on the grass and put the bottle and glasses back into the trunk. ‘Come,’ she ordered, ‘you must rest or this beautiful car of yours will never make it to Portugal.’
Leading him to her side of the car, she made him lie back with his head against the window resting on the cushion she’d made with her jacket. As he closed his eyes, he felt her soft hands stroking his face and her body nestling into his and he drifted into the deepest sleep.
27
HER tongue moved over his cheek and into his mouth and it was rough and corpulent and very wet. He felt her face on his and the hot air from her nostrils, but the sleep was too good to give up.
‘Don’t,’ he mumbled and averted his head as the tongue followed. ‘Don’t, Alena, leave me alone.’ Not sure he wanted her to stop.
From somewhere, he heard shrieking and it came closer. He didn’t want to open his eyes and somehow he knew if the tongue went away so would the shrieking and both continued probing at his subconscious. The noise grew in intensity and, as he was emerging from his deep sleep, he recognised the sound was hysterical laughter, not something caused by pain. With difficulty, he opened one eye and saw both Alena and Freddie, tears streaming down their cheeks, holding their sides as if the laughter would split them open.
So who’d been kissing him? If it wasn’t Alena, who was it? Or could it have been a dream?
He turned the other way and came face to face with the largest brown eyes he’d ever seen. The cow had its head through the open window of the car and was intent on washing his face again.
‘Get outa here.’ He rubbed his lips on the back of his hand in disgust, and it pulled back and cantered a few steps away and gazed at him with the mournful eyes of a jilted lover.
Again Alena and Freddie roared with laughter.
‘Sorry,’ she said chuckling at her co-conspirator. ‘I opened the window to give you some air. It looks as if you’ve made a good friend there.’
He didn’t know whether he’d called her name in his sleep or out loud and she gave no hint of having heard his indiscretion. He got out of the car and shooed the cow away and it broke into a trot and hurdled a low fence to join a group of relatives.
It was one of those crisp, cold mornings when heavy dew covered the fields like icing on a cake so everything appeared fresh and untouched. A low mist on the horizon wrapped them in their own world and not even birds disturbed the silence. They were alone, at least for now.
He could see his choice for their overnight stop had been perfect. They were hidden behind stone walls and there were no houses or farm buildings in the vicinity. While he explored the perimeter of their camp, Alena and Freddie removed the rest of the food and water from the car and set up a spread on the Bentley’s bonnet.
In the distance through the mist, he could just make out the Pyrenees, the key to their freedom. Once over the border, they’d be in Spain and, he hoped, safer. Or maybe he was deluding himself. While hidden behind these walls, they would have been out of sight of anyone following them. It was also possible during the night their pursuers had passed them and gone on ahead. Now, apart from keeping watch behind them, there was the possibility they could be ahead and waiting to ambush them anywhere along the route or at the border crossing into Spain. There again, he tried to reassure himself, they would have to know where they were headed. He’d no reason to think the Nazis would have found out the Bentley was carrying the platinum.
Unless?
As he understood it, apart from British Intelligence, only two other people, Bernay and Renard, knew the plan. And even Renard didn’t know the whole story. He had been sent away when they discussed details and he didn’t know the route. Surely Bernay wouldn’t have waited around for the Nazis to invade because if they got their hands on the director they would soon get the information needed to track them down. No, he tried to convince himself, Bernay must have gone into hiding.
And there was Alena. He wasn’t sure whether he believed her story. Why would the Nazis be wasting time looking f
or a runaway mother and her child? According to Bernay, the British were very keen to get her out of the country. Or was it just a smokescreen to hide the fact British Intelligence were more interested in the platinum than they made out?
Although he wished he could just walk off over the fields and keep on walking, he knew Bernay had handed him a poisoned chalice he couldn’t put down. He glanced back at the Bentley and for the first time wished he was driving an ordinary Citroen.
Alena and Freddie’s chatter over their makeshift breakfast broke into his thoughts and the need for them to get moving again spurred him into action.
‘Come on.’ He clapped his hands to bring them back to reality. ‘We must get going, the sooner we get to Spain the better.’
Alena looked at him in surprise as if she’d forgotten why they were there. ‘Come on,’ she shouted at Freddie springing to her feet. ‘You can finish it in the car.’ And she bundled him into the back seat and gathered up the remains of the breakfast and put them in the trunk.
As he sat behind the wheel, Ben broke out in a sweat so much so his shirt felt wet against his back. What if the car didn’t start? They’d be stranded like sitting ducks. He’d often found machines were unreliable and always when you most needed them to perform. He could have written a book about how often his old Ford had failed to fire.
The Bentley was now showing the scars of its journey. In escaping the brigands, gunfire had raked the sleek bonnet leaving gouges in the bodywork and, he feared, possible internal damage. Holding his breath, he flicked the ignition switch, set the advance/retard lever on the steering wheel and coaxed it into life with the choke. She coughed like a heavy smoker. Coughed again. And then the massive engine found its voice making the whole car vibrate.
They lurched out onto the road and as the morning wore on the sun burned away the mist and in the sunshine everything was fresh and new and the war and the Germans seemed a million miles away. They passed through villages getting ready for the day and villagers waved and stopped to stare as they drove through. Some even offered wine and cheese, rather giving it to travellers than letting it fall into German hands. They waved their thanks and pressed on. He kept his foot to the floor wherever possible always aware he needed to nurse the Bentley. Once in Spain, they still had a long road ahead of them and he’d no idea just how much strain the weight of the platinum was putting on the car’s chassis.
Alena seemed more relaxed as she chatted with her son, pointing out sights of interest and answering questions coming in an endless stream. In contrast, Ben was becoming more concerned. Had the Germans entered Paris yet? What if Bernay, through some mistaken sense of duty, had stayed on at the bank? What if they’d tortured the truth out of him? With a kaleidoscope of thoughts and possible consequences running through his mind, he kept watching for pursuers and concentrating on trying to spot an ambush ahead.
Outside the coastal town of Hendaye and close to the Spanish border, what he had feared happened. A slow-moving convoy of a variety of modes of transport clogged the road ahead, their occupants all with the same aim of getting out of France. They stopped and started for a matter of feet at a time and he slammed his hands down on the steering wheel in exasperation. Pushing her hair back from her face, she gave him one of those smiles telling him not to worry. We’ll get there.
Gradually they ground to a stop and from where they sat on a slight hill they looked down into a dip before the road rose to the border. Spanish flags fluttered in the light breeze and the Spanish police, the Guardia Civil, and gendarmes were checking cars and their occupants.
‘Oh no,’ she gasped and glanced back over her shoulder as if expecting to see the Germans emerge behind her.
‘What’s wrong, maman?’ Worried by the anxiety in her voice, Freddie leant over and put his arms around his mother’s neck for reassurance.
She half turned and smiled. ‘It’s all those cars, so many of them, it’s like being in Paris.’
Freddie giggled. ‘Paris with cows.’
The halt was terminal. No one was going anywhere, at least not for some time. Up ahead, people got out of their cars and were talking with much shouting, waving and shrugging of shoulders. They climbed out of the Bentley, joining their fellow refugees in an attempt to glean what information they could. A man walking back along the line of cars told them he’d been waiting for at least several hours.
She shook her head in frustration and again looked at her wristwatch. ‘You stay with Freddie. I’ll walk on ahead and try to find out what’s happening. It’ll be better if I go alone.’
Freddie grabbed his arm. ‘Don’t worry, Ben, you stay with me. I’ll look after you.’
He ruffled the boy’s hair and they both laughed as they watched Alena progress down the long line of vehicles, stopping every so often to become engrossed in conversation until they lost sight of her. Freddie stood in the front passenger seat jumping up and down and pulling knobs and twisting dials on the dashboard always asking ‘What’s this for, Ben? What does this do?’
Seeing he was preoccupied with his thoughts, he turned and pushed his face close to Ben’s. ‘Why did you ask maman to stop it?’
‘Stop what?’ Ben asked with one eye watching out for Alena.
‘I don’t know, you just said it before you woke up,’ Freddie said with mischief shining in his pale blue eyes.
He felt his cheeks burning with embarrassment and before he could reply Alena’s face, showing a mixture of concern and defeat, appeared in the car window. She was out of breath as if she’d been running and she blurted out. ‘Gendarmes. They’re coming. Along the line. Checking people’s papers.’
‘Just what we don’t want?’
‘It’s a big problem,’ she said beginning to regain some composure. ‘They’ve closed the border unless you happen to be Spanish.’
‘Oh, God, what’ll we do now?’
‘Some people say Paris has fallen.’ Her face crumpled and she was close to tears.
He looked past her and up to the northern slopes of the Pyrenees lined with forests of beech trees and above them the dark brown granite of the mountains. And he wondered if this would be the end of the road.
28
THEY came on the morning of friday, june 14th, 1940. The Germans entered the city by the Aubervilliers Gate and marched through the north-western suburbs and on until they paraded down the Champs des Elysées. It was low key at first with just a few motorcycles with sidecars reconnoitring the route into the city. Then trucks followed and stopped at street corners and soldiers jumped out to set up machine-gun posts all the time cracking jokes to each other in guttural voices. Tanks squeaked and rattled and pumped out an evil-smelling black smoke. Armoured reconnaissance cars, anti-tank units, and trucks full of soldiers, followed by more soldiers on horseback. And finally the rest of the army swaying as one and the tramp, tramp, tramp of their boots setting a rhythm the whole city seemed to move and shake to.
Millions had already fled the invaders and Paris was almost empty. Yet those remaining attempted to carry on with a semblance of normality as though this was their stubborn protest at what was about to befall them. Although many of the shops were boarded up, there were still housewives out shopping while others sat out at café tables determined to have one last drink while they were still free to do so. There was even laughter although it was the forced hilarity of mourners at a wake celebrating for now they were at least alive.
On several streets, particularly the Champs des Elysées, Parisians lined the roadway. Some were dressed in their Sunday finery; some were crying, even men. The adults watched in defiant and sullen acceptance. They knew they’d no choice. This was an army sweeping all before it; no one could stand up to its power. There was a crushing inevitability about it and now they’d become slaves in their own land there was no one to help them. They felt deserted yet they believed their silence gave a message of protest to the invaders. To let the Germans know, they were witnesses to an act of barbarity and desecratio
n.
Younger children jumped up and down and shrieked as the convoy rattled by. Dogs chased the vehicles and ran back whimpering with their tails between their legs when they got too close. Although older children shouted abuse and made rude gestures, the soldiers never acknowledged them. Once defeated, they’d ceased to exist as human beings. It didn’t change even when a group of youths became more adventurous pelting the soldiers with vegetables. The Germans just sat in their trucks looking straight ahead holding their rifles.
At the tail end of the procession followed by a black Citroen saloon car came more trucks of soldiers who were very different from the ones who had gone before. These wore black uniforms instead of the grey of the army. While some of the troops had looked almost boyish, these were more mature with thickset heads and brutal faces. They laughed and joked and looked around and every so often when one spotted an attractive woman he’d shout and wave to the crowd. Sometimes someone would wave back, but they were forced to drop their arm by the disapproving looks of their neighbours.
Growing in confidence, the youths had replenished their stocks of vegetables and now renewed their attacks on these black-uniformed soldiers. A large potato flew out of the mob and through the open window of a truck catching a soldier on the nose knocking his helmet off his head. The truck swerved out of the line and screeched to a halt and six of the black-suited, black-booted troopers, carrying rifles, jumped down. A soldier wearing the black uniform of an SS officer with a khaki shirt and black tie with a swastika pin and a skull and crossbones on his cap appeared from behind the truck and shouted at the youths.
‘Kommen.’ He gestured with a gloved hand and smirked. ‘Come here.’
The ringleader of the youths stepped towards him and his mates crowded in behind him. The officer barked out a command and the troopers lifted their rifles to their shoulders and each fired several times. The youths fell together in a heap and for seconds there was no sound as if the Parisians were holding their breath in disbelief. With a sneer on his lips, the officer unclipped his pistol from its holster and pointed it at the head of the twitching ringleader and fired. The crowd gasped as one.
