The Agony of France (Alex Kovacs thriller series Book 6)

by Richard Wake

  We sat on the buses for a few minutes at the station — the sign said we were in Bobigny, wherever the hell that was — and were waiting, apparently, for the train to arrive. I could see, though, that it was already there, just needing to be pulled in from a siding. When it was, the buses were unloaded in the same order they were loaded. We were fourth.

  Our guards walked us the 50 feet or so to an open freight car. It was brownish-reddish wood, with a door that swung open after the black iron bolt was disengaged. A small set of steps was brought down from the car that had just been loaded. We stood in a line, and a man with a clipboard checked each man’s identification card and then made a tick mark on his list before the prisoner was permitted to climb the last few steps to Pitchipoi.

  When they got to me, an argument among the Germans began.

  “But he’s not a Jew,” one guard said, pointing to my armband.

  “Put him on,” the guy with the clipboard said.

  “Non-Jews are not to be transported. The regulations—”

  “I said, put him on.”

  “But—”

  The German with the clipboard showed it to the objector. “See what it says? Special circumstances. See the initials? The captain’s. So fucking put him on, now. You’re making us late.”

  The first guard wasn’t giving up.

  “And what would the special circumstances be?”

  “They will be determined at the other end of the line,” the German holding the clipboard said. “Or not. Isn’t my issue or your issue. We have signed orders, so let’s go.”

  I was pushed up the little wooden steps and into the freight car. It would be dark when the door was shut. As they finished loading, I could see that while it wasn’t comfortable, it wasn’t unbearably crowded, either. There would be room to lie down, if each of us positioned ourselves with our heads toward the wall and our feet toward the middle. Our legs would tangle a bit, but it was doable. There was a single bucket in the back corner, presumably for any and all bodily functions. It would be the nastiest corner of the boxcar, likely within hours.

  But would we be in it for hours? Or for days?

  A prisoner I didn’t know began mimicking an announcement in a train station. He even made the crackling sound of a microphone being turned on through a loudspeaker as he began. “This is the train to Pitchipoi, making intermediate stops at Fear, Destitution, Misery, Despair and Hell. Train to Pitchipoi, leaving in three minutes. Train to Pitchipoi. All aboard!”

  At which point, the whole freight car shouted in unison, “Train to Pitchipoi. All aboard!”

  A minute later, the heavy door was swung shut and bolted with a clang. The only light inside came from the tiny openings of a metal air vent in the ceiling of the freight car. There were four skinny shafts of sun in all. They didn’t throw off enough light to read by, but at least you could see the person sitting next to you, and maybe one more person past him.

  A minute after that, we were moving. I was pretty sure we were headed east, but that was about it.

  50

  We had been moving for 15 minutes or so. Whatever conversation had been taking place had pretty much stopped. Most everyone was sitting with their back against one of the four walls of the boxcar. The clickety-clack of the train rolling along the tracks filled the space.

  But in the corner opposite to where Leon, Max’s father and I were sitting, Karl and some of his screwdriver friends where whispering and looking up at the vent in the ceiling. I gave it a better look, too, and noticed that it was covered by several small iron bars. We could all dream, I guessed, but the bars looked pretty solid from my perspective, and screwdrivers could only take you so far.

  When Karl and his friend stood up and walked toward the center of the car, directly beneath the vent, Leon and I got up and joined them. We all craned our necks and stared up, with only those four pinpricks of light providing any illumination.

  “This was your plan?” I said.

  Karl nodded. “It looks tough, but it isn’t a Nazi with a rifle.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Look,” he said, “If you and Leon could lift me and one of the others, we could get a better look.”

  I looked at Leon. He shrugged. And within a few seconds, I had Karl on my shoulders, and Leon had another guy. A couple of the others helped anchor us in place as the train gently, and occasionally not-too-gently, rocked. I couldn’t see what was going on above me. I heard what much have been jabbing with their picks, and some cursing, and the occasional clang. After what seemed like about five minutes, they had us let them down. A dozen others circled them to hear the verdict.

  “I don’t know,” Karl said. “I think we need to pry open the bars somehow, but the tools we have are too short to use as levers. I don’t know, maybe Phil.”

  He looked over at a fairly young kid, maybe 20 years old and with some muscle on his frame. “Maybe,” Karl said, “if we lift you up, and you hang from the bars, maybe with your weight and whatever strength…”

  He stopped, surveyed again.

  “What the hell,” Phil said. A couple of people lifted him, and he grabbed the bars, and hung from them, and did pull-ups, and tried to swing back and forth. But after about a minute, his feet were back on the floor and he was cursing as he examined his hands.

  “Anything?” Karl said.

  “I didn’t feel them move.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Sorry, no,” the kid said. “Maybe if I try again.”

  They all looked at each other for a few seconds, at each other, and then at the vent, and then at each other again. Then a voice from the periphery, an older, quiet voice, said, “We need a couple of shirts, and we need to wet them and twist them.”

  “What for?” This, from a half-dozen men.

  “Wetting them will make them stronger.”

  “Says who?” This from one guy. “What are you, some kind of fucking engineer.”

  “A chemist, as a matter of fact,” the quiet, old voice said. He had moved from the periphery to the center of the circle, and he was indeed a quiet, old man.

  “Shirts, cotton,” he said. “We need two.”

  A couple of men in the circle unbuttoned and contributed.

  “Now, wet,” the old man said. “I can only think of one way, given the circumstances.”

  We all looked at each other and came to the same conclusion. And so, the shirts were placed in the corner where the unused bucket sat, and we lined up and pissed on them until we had nothing left. It turned out to be enough. Both shirts were dripping.

  The old man explained the plan. You twisted each shirt as if you were making a wire. The excess piss would wring out, but the shirt would still be wet — and, he said, stronger than a dry shirt. Then, the shirts would be threaded through separate bars and, with four men pulling on the four ends, the goal would be to bend the bars. If not that, then to take turns pulling in opposite directions and wiggle the whole covering loose.

  After the pulling began, nothing much happened for the first couple of minutes. A second set of four men replaced the first, and still, nothing. Then a third set of men took over, and Karl was the first to notice.

  “Look,” he said. And then he held out his hand and caught something. He examined it under one of the tiny shafts of light.

  “Look, red snow,” he said.

  “What?” Again from a half-dozen men gathered around him.

  “Red snow,” Karl said. “Rust. From the bars. It’s working. Keep fucking going.”

  Five minutes later, rocking back and forth with alternating pulls, the bars came down with a crash, and then a cheer. I lifted Karl again on my shoulders and, with his screwdriver, he had the vent open in a minute. Sunlight shined through, lighting up the boxcar. The hole was definitely big enough for a man to get through.

  But the reaction was odd. They were tunnel diggers, after all. They had all been prepared to escape from Drancy, to run that risk. You would not have expected hesit
ation once the vent had been removed, but it was there. They all were just looking at each other, waiting for someone to say something. So I did.

  “Give me a boost,” I said, and Leon did. I poked my head out through the hole and looked both ways. We were in the French countryside. It appeared to stretch as far as I could see in every direction.

  “There’s no town nearby,” I said. “I don’t think we want a town. Well, maybe a small town — but not a city of any size. We jump in small groups — no more than two or three together. We sleep rough. We find farmhouses. Maybe a small town. And we work our way back home.”

  “On what?” Some voice in the corner of the boxcar.

  “On our wits, I guess,” I said. “I mean, what other choice do we have?”

  Leon said, “We need to decide one thing, though. Because somebody has to go last.”

  Immediately, the muscular kid who had tried to hang from the bars and bring them down spoke up. “Us three,” he said, looking at two young-ish guys on either side of him. “I’ll be last. They can pull me up.”

  The other men all looked at each other, then at their feet. All right, that was settled.

  “We’re the third to last car on the train, before the caboose,” I said. “I don’t know if there are any guards in the back or not. If they’re all up front, we’re home free — they’ll never see us. If there are some in the back, well, that’s when the risks increase. So once we start, it has to be quick. Three or four at a time, through the hatch and jump. We can’t hesitate.”

  I looked at Leon. Leon looked at Karl. We all looked at Max’s father, who had no idea where he was.

  “You three are last, and thank you,” I said, looking at the younger guys. “The four of us will be second-to-last.” I stopped and pointed at Max’s father. Everyone nodded. If he was going to be a problem, there was no sense in holding up everyone else.

  No one moved.

  “I think we should start now,” I said. And with that, the first three men were hoisted through the vent. Then the next three. Then the next four. It was going pretty smoothly, although none of us had any idea what was happening after they jumped. The boxcars were 10 feet from top to bottom. Add a couple of feet for the wheels and then a couple of feet more to account for the grade down from the tracks, and maybe a couple more if there was a ravine, and there would undoubtedly be some sprains and broken bones. But what was the alternative? Pitchipoi?

  Mostly, I just listened for rifle shots or felt to sense if the train was braking — because that would be a sure sign that the escape had been spotted. But there was none of that. And when it was our turn, Karl went first through the hatch, then Leon, then Max’s father — it took three of us to manhandle him through the opening — and then me.

  The four of us sat on the edge of the roof, our feet dangling over the side. We caught a break, it seemed, because as I looked toward the front of the train, I could see we were going uphill and the train was struggling just a bit. Whatever speed we had been going, we had slowed to a little more than half of that.

  And then it was time. Karl jumped first. Leon and I sandwiched Max’s father as best we could and leaped together. We landed in a heap, and in a bush. Miraculously, nobody appeared to break anything. Somehow, Max’s father was on his feet before the rest of us.

  On my knees, I looked at the train as it grew smaller. And then I saw the last three, the younger guys, leaping together. I heard no rifle shots. I heard no screech of locomotive brakes.

  51

  We were living in a barn. It was on a small farm outside Lérouville. The farmer said Lerouville wasn’t that far from Nancy. He also said he had never been past Nancy in his life.

  The first place we had stayed, after our great leap, was in a Catholic parish rectory. We came upon it after walking for an hour and, well, we took a chance. The priest opened the door, and I explained exactly what had happened. They had torn the yellow stars off their coats, and I had unpinned my armband, but the old man wearing a worn cassock said he understood and took us in.

  “But just for tonight,” he said. “We have patrols all the time. Usually between 6 and 7 in the morning. So you’ll need to be up and out by 5.”

  He fed us fresh bread and milk and cheese. We slept in beds with linen. If 5 a.m. came early — and it did — the night had given us hope.

  The priest gave us an introductory note for the priest in the next town. We had two nights there before moving to a more permanent arrangement that the priest had worked out. I asked him if he knew of anyone with a telephone, and he did — the town butcher. He agreed to place a call to The Flip, whose owner would get the message and the particulars to Max.

  And then we waited at the more permanent arrangement, which was the barn at the farm outside Lerouville. We ate pretty well, slept on hay, got used to the constant smell of cow shit. We did all of that, and we waited. Days turned to a week, and we waited.

  And then we heard the lorry, heard it before we saw it, belching and backfiring outside the open barn door. Leon and I got up and peered out, and it was Max. We rushed to him when he opened the door, and we hugged him, and we all cried a little. Karl hung back a few steps, and we made the introduction.

  And then Max said, “Where?”

  I pointed into the barn. Maybe two minutes later, the father and the son walked out together, arm in arm. Max looked older somehow. The Croix de Guerre remained pinned in place on Martin’s uniform coat.

  And then the father said to the son, “But where will we go?”

  They were the first words I had heard Martin speak since we found him at Drancy. But where will we go? It was the question that hung there, for hours and days, for all of us.

  ENJOY THIS BOOK? YOU CAN REALLY HELP ME OUT.

  The truth is that, as a relatively new author, it is hard to get readers’ attention. But if you have read this far, I have yours – and I could use a favor.

  Reviews from people who liked this book go a long way toward convincing future readers of its worth. It won’t take five minutes of your time, but it would mean a lot to me. Long or short, it doesn’t matter.

  Thanks!

  I hope you enjoyed The Agony of France. What follows is the first three chapters of the first book of a new series, A Death in East Berlin. The protagonist is Peter Ritter, a detective on the East Berlin murder squad in the summer of 1961, just prior to the Berlin Wall being built.

  The book is available for advance purchase now. You can find the link, along with the links to my other books, at https://www.amazon.com/author/richardwake.

  And don’t worry — if you’re a fan of Alex Kovacs, there are more books coming in that series, too.

  Thanks for your interest!

  Chapter 1

  We entered my apartment and I flipped on the lights. My date for the evening opened her mouth as she looked around, and it formed the sweetest little circle. I didn’t hear the inhale, but the exhale was both soft and long. This was going well.

  She walked across the living room, the red sheath of a dress clinging to all the right places. She leaned over, and the cling became a revealing stretch. At that moment, I was more than ready for her to begin fooling with the buttons — on the front of her dress, on the front or my shirt, or my pants, it did not matter much. It was with some disappointment, then, when I saw that the buttons she fondled instead were on the front of the television set.

  “Turn it on. Which one? Show me.”

  I leaned over and grabbed a kiss, which she permitted. But then it was to the knob that turned on the television, as she would allow no further delays. As the console hummed and warmed up, I cooled, just a bit.

  “There’s nothing on, you know,” I said.

  “Telefunken?” she asked. She clearly did not care that nothing was on.

  “No, it’s a Grundig.”

  Again, she did the thing with her mouth, the round thing. It was as if she knew the difference between the manufacturers. I didn’t. All I knew was that Grundig
had classier billboards in the West sectors.

  The Grundigs just looked more expensive, but I had no idea if that was true. The cost of the number that was warming up in front of us, in its cherry wood cabinet, was a mystery to me.

  After a few seconds, the picture came to life. There was, indeed, nothing on. It was nearly midnight, and the programming for the day was over. We watched a test pattern.

  “Our’s or their’s?” she said. Her right arm was hugging her torso, her left hand was cupping her chin, and she was studying the unmoving image as if it were a Van Gogh.

  “Their’s.” I leaned over and turned the channel to the GDR station. It was another test pattern, but different. It featured a picture of the national flag.

  “Our test pattern is better,” she said.

  “The rest, not so much — unless you enjoy stiffs sitting behind desks reading the Party news in between documentaries on animal husbandry.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders and nibbled a bit on her left earlobe. It was permitted.

  “Animals, huh?” she said. Then she pried my hands away and took herself on the tour.

  Her name was Elke. We had been fixed up by a friend of mine, Cobie — or rather, by Cobie’s latest, whose name didn’t seem to matter much. Cobie was an old friend but not a close friend, and we just happened to run into each other. Cobie’s real name was Harald, but his nickname from when we were 13 was Cobra because of, well, what he was packing in his gym shorts. We saw him in the shower, and decided that Python should be the nickname, except he asked for Cobra instead. It went against the generally accepted rules — people don’t get to pick their own nicknames — but my friends and I allowed it. I mean, who could deny him the right? Certainly no one who had even seen Harald’s accomplishment.