We hustled to the rear window.
One thing was going to plan. I’d parked my Opel under the right window. I lifted Marie in my arms and smiled. “We’re going to jump onto that mattress there,” I said. “It’s going to be fun. And Pancho is waiting down there for us.” He was—I could see his tail whipping out the cracked passenger side window.
With luck, the boxes and mattresses would keep the car’s roof from caving in.
I took a deep breath, then made the leap. We hit the mattress and the cardboard boxes collapsed under us. Startled, Pancho began barking. I rolled off the mattress, down the boot and onto the street, still holding tightly to the girl.
“Fun, like I said, yes?”
Wide-eyed, Marie shook her head no.
There was an explosion then. It was quickly followed by a second blast. I twisted around, getting myself between Marie and all the falling glass from the overhead windows.
Adieu to the Lamberts and more than a few Germans, with any luck.
I cast the mattress off the roof of the Opel and knocked off the cardboard boxes. I got Marie in the front seat of the Olympia. There were shouts throughout the building now, screams. People were yelling “Fire,” and “It must be a gas explosion!”
More shouts in German, very angry Nazis.
Smiling at Marie, I got the car in gear. I ripped off down the alley with the headlights off, on my way to meet up with Jimmy Hanrahan: Marie whimpered softly to herself, until she fell asleep.
5
Jimmy had scrounged up his own German uniform. He loaded in his bags, then swung into the passenger seat. He looked me over and said, “Ah, you’re on the right side of the flivver.”
“What do you mean?” I got the car in gear and slid off the curb.
“I outrank you, Hector.” He tugged at his coat’s sleeves. He said, “If only the boyo I took this from had been half-an-inch taller. Maybe I should be in back. To further the ruse you’re my chauffeur, I mean.”
“Not much room back there between the child and the dog,” I said. “Besides, with those two in the back, you looking the convincing Nazi is the least of our problems.”
“No travel papers, then?”
“None that would explain this motley quartet.”
Jimmy nodded and looked over his shoulder. He smiled at the child and said softly to me, “Does she have any English?”
“Of course not.”
“Then here’s a thought or two in our lingo. The dog is well-trained? Won’t growl if he smells Nazi scum?”
“He’s excellently trained,” I said.
The Irishman squeezed my shoulder with a big hard hand. “She’s already nodded off. No problem getting her out of that void in the wall, then?”
Jimmy had worries enough; couldn’t see heaping on more by confiding what I’d blown up extricating the child. “It went well enough,” I said. “We got away without any tagalongs, that is to say.”
“Ah, you may fool some, but to me, you’re such a cruddy liar, Hector.” Jimmy ran a hand back through his graying hair. He rolled his window up tight. “There was something on the radio before I headed out. How much, exactly, did you blow up?”
I shifted in my seat. “Not so sure about that. I wasn’t that close to the detonation site.” I clicked the car heater up a notch. “It wasn’t at all gratuitous on my part, Jimbo. The Germans were all over that place. I needed a distraction. And far fewer Nazis.”
“The girl didn’t see—?”
“We were outside, like I said.”
Jimmy grunted and reached into a knapsack at his feet. He pulled out a long silver thermos and a couple of cups. “Did some more digging on your friend Höttl,” he said, pouring us each some steaming brew. “Our boys seem to think he might actually have had some hand in shaping Mein Kampf.”
“They’re likely right about that,” I said cagily. “There were some indications in old days of that.”
Jimmy handed me my cup. I sipped and said, “You Irished it up.”
“A dash of Jameson, yes,” Jimmy said, replacing the thermos and sipping from his own cup. “Single malt and coffee seems an uneasy mix. So it’s Jameson for this duty.”
“This stuff with Höttl makes little sense to me,” I said. “Höttl’s not a career soldier. Not even much of an idealist, in my experience. He’s an artist. Well, at least he’s the creative type. Cinema. What in hell is he doing here?”
“Who knows?” Jimmy said. “Frankly, a lot of stuff that the Germans do flummoxes me. And look at the boyos Hitler surrounds himself with: Goebbels, Goring, Himmler, Bormann, Hess, Speer and von Ribbentrop? Can you believe some of his crew?” Jimmy shook his head and sipped more spiked coffee. “And Hess and that crazy flight to Scotland? You know, I heard a rumor that you were tied up in that whole—”
Spooked, I cut him off, said, “We got into this fight at least a year too late, Jimmy. Should have gotten in back in 1939, I think.”
“Spilt milk now, Hector.” He drank more java, whistling through the burn. He said, “You knew Höttl in Paris, in the 1920s.”
“We weren’t friends by any stretch, Jimmy, if that’s what you’re implying.” I checked the rearview mirror. Maybe I was wrong about having no tagalongs. I said, “Someone is back there, Jimmy.”
“Christ, and we’ve hardly even begun.” He drained his coffee and cast the cup out his window. He reached for his gun.
“Whoa there, buddy. He’s flashing lights.”
The Irishman checked over his shoulder again. “Funny pattern to those headlight flashes. Code?”
I palmed the wheel, pulling curbside. “Just in case,” I said, “go ahead and have that gun out, but hidden.”
Two men exited the light transport parked behind us. The men were carrying German rifles. They approached along either side of the Olympia. The one on my side of the car rapped on the window with his knuckles. He let the rifle drop at his side, hanging there from a strap. “Jean sent us. I’m Bertrand. Please, Monsieur Lassiter, there isn’t much time.”
I rolled down the window. “There’s a problem?”
“Oui. We picked up radio chatter. You were recognized. The Germans are looking for you, a blond girl child and an Olympia with Nazi insignia.”
“Wonderful,” Jimmy said. “Truly grand.”
Motion in the rearview mirror: a third person was exiting the light transport. From the gait, and the silhouette, it looked like a woman in pants.
Bertrand said, “I’ll take your car. We’ll lead the Nazis away from the old city. My partner will drive you in our truck to your next rendezvous point. Please, we have to hurry, Monsieur Lassiter.”
Cursing, I slipped out of the car. Jimmy started handing bags to the second man who hustled them back to our future ride.
Pancho leapt out of the back seat. Marie was still asleep. I lifted her in my arms. I said, “Where are we going to be while these vehicles are being moved around?”
“We’ll be escaping, moving through the city clandestinely,” a husky female voice said.
“You’re American,” I said, turning to face her.
“So are you. Small world.” She was tall, nearly six-feet and all of that topped by strawberry-blond hair, blue eyes. She looked like she was dressed for a fox hunt: jodhpurs, riding boots and a tweed jacket. All she needed was a riding helmet and crop. Fetching though… very attractive. She looked down at Pancho sitting there and wagging his tail. She said, “Really? A dog, too? You sure don’t make it easy.”
“When you’re starting out at impossible…” I shrugged and smiled and put out a hand, balancing the child on my forearms. “Hector Lassiter.”
“I know who you are,” she said. “Don’t wake the child. Now, we need to hustle.” She leaned into the Olympia and snatched up the doll on the backseat—the girl’s only toy. She thrust it into the pocket of her jacket, one arm and its head hanging out. “Let’s shake a leg, boys, the Krauts are hard on our heels.”
She trotted across the street
. Jimmy and I exchanged glances, then followed. Trying not to jostle the girl awake with my running, I followed at some distance, but stepped it up a little as I heard the rumble of heavy trucks echoing off those sleeping storefronts.
I ran up a short flight of stairs toward a very old building. The woman was holding the door for me. Pancho was again sitting at her feet, looking up at her and wagging his tail. Sucker seemed strongly drawn to her. Well, he wasn’t alone in that. I said, “I didn’t catch your name, sweetheart.”
She nodded and toed Pancho through the door behind me. “Duff Sexton,” she said. “Now more walking, sweetheart, and less talking.”
6
We were moving through a tall arched passageway, following Duff. Jimmy said, “What is this thing? Where are we going?”
“It’s called a traboule,” Duff said. “Lyon, particularly in the 1st, 4th and 5th arondissements, is honeycombed with them. These tunnels were built by textile merchants long ago, to move silk and other fragile fabrics in the rain.”
Jimmy said, “And now?”
“Mostly used by the resistance, to move around the city at something like will,” Duff said. “Very few Germans know about them, and the few they’ve found they haven’t really explored fully enough to realize they form a secret means of navigating the city. Hell, plenty of Lyon residents don’t really know about them, or how extensively they spread.”
“But you do,” I said. I was a little short of breath from lugging around sixty pounds of child down the long, echoing corridors. “Seems strange a Yank would know this route. Seems the devlish maze.”
“I’ve lived here since 1938,” she said. “My late husband was an architect. The traboules fascinated him.”
I said softly, “How were you widowed?”
“The Germans,” said she flatly. “He was a Jew.”
***
“We’re in the Croix-Rousse quarter, now,” Duff said. “This is the Traboule de la cour des Voraces, or the Traboule of the Voracious Court.”
Jimmy said, “By the way, my name is—”
“James Butler Hanrahan,” Duff said. “Born March 17, 1902 to Stephen and Molly Hanrahan in Rathgar, Ireland. Your father was an English professor who moved the family to the States when he accepted a teaching position at Western Reserve University in Ohio in—”
Jimmy cut her off. “Your scaring me now, lass.”
She shrugged and said, “It’s just that you’re in your brash friend’s KA file.”
I said, “KA?”
“Known associates,” Jimmy said.
“Just so,” Duff said. To me she said, “Although in your case it could as easily be called a Rogue’s Gallery.” She gave Jimmy a faint smile. “Compared to some others in Lassiter’s file, you seem pretty okay, James.”
Jimmy nodded. “Damning with faint praise?”
She smiled again. “Could be.”
“All this information on Jimmy—you’re not just an ex-pat resistance fighter,” I said. “Not with all this information you have on us. And I don’t care how good you are, or how strong your local ties are, the resistance would not be working hand-in-glove with you unless you’re something more.”
“Same as you, I’m OSS,” Duff said. “Well, as much as they’ll let me be a part of the team. It’s still kind of a boys’ club.” She stopped us and said, “You’re clearly beyond spent from carrying that child. You need to rest.”
Her voice made it sound like that would be a very bad idea. Jimmy said, “I’ll take her a while, Hec.” I passed the child over into Jimmy’s arms. I shook my burning arms and wiggled my fingers to get the circulation going again. I dipped a hand into my Nazi uniform for my cigarettes and lighter. Duff said, “Put those away. No wonder you’re short of breath.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Duff narrowed her eyes and then poked my belly through the bullet hole in my jacket.
“Took this the hard way, eh?”
“It’s one less German in the world. You truly care?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Let’s get moving again.”
After twenty minutes of brisk walking, we hit a fork. Duff led us to the right. Jimmy huffed, “How much farther?”
“Quite a ways, I’m afraid,” she said.
I said, “Those men you were with. They said they’d heard on the radio I was identified by name.”
“That’s right,” Duff said. “It seems Werner Höttl was there at the building, setting up cameras around the site. He was there at the direction of Leni Riefensthal.”
Riefensthal: she was Hitler’s designated filmmaker. Her name had come up before, in old days, when she was friendly with director Josef von Sternberg.
Duff said, “They seemed to be intent upon filming the raid for propaganda purposes – to try and dampen the mood of the resistance. Instead they accidentally filmed your rather flamboyant escape.” That seemed to please her.
“They took the trouble to film the back of the building?” I scowled and said, “That makes no sense.”
“Struck me as queer, too,” Duff said. “Anyway, he recognized you from your old Paris days. Guess you haven’t changed much, since then. Men are fortunate that way.”
“I’m only not different on the outside,” I said. I added, “Despite the cigarettes.”
“You seem to know everything,” Jimmy said to Duff, sounding very short of breath himself, now. “Any notion why Höttl is so driven to get this particular child in his clutches?”
Duff put out her arms. “I can take her a while. I’m stronger than I look.” Jimmy didn’t argue—he handed the child over to the woman. She smiled sadly at the little girl in her arms who had now fully awakened, eyeing this new stranger. Duff reassured her in French and the child nodded and then put her arms around Duff’s neck, her head on the woman’s shoulder. “I do have a notion,” Duff said in English. “But it falls into the realm of rumor, really. Still, if it’s true, it explains everything.”
Jimmy rubbed his biceps and said, “What do the wagging tongues claim?”
Duff set off again. “They say this child’s true father is the Butcher of Lyon’s right-hand man, Werner Höttl.”
7
Jimmy said, “You believe the rumors?”
Over her shoulder, Duff said, “It would explain a lot.”
“But to kill a whole orphanage to slay one little girl?” Jimmy rubbed his shoulders. “That is goddamn cold.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time someone committed a slaughter to murder one child,” she said.
“Sunday school stuff aside, it’s coldly calculating,” I said. “What better way to make it look less than personal? Kill two-dozen children to ensure the death of one girl.”
The tunnel system was looking gloomy up ahead. Duff slowed and said, “Can you take her again, Hector?”
“Sure.” We traded-off the girl and Duff pulled a flashlight from her coat pocket. Her pale skin glowed eerily in the torch’s light. She aimed down the center of the traboule and Pancho wandered out a few paces ahead of us. I said, “How’d you draw tour guide duties for us?”
“Goes a good bit further than me playing tour guide to you fellas,” Duff said. “I’m with you into England.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I’m closing out my life here. And a female child making this trip exclusively in the hands of a couple of childless Neanderthals like you mugs? That won’t do.”
I said, “So you’re coming along to play nanny?”
Duff shot me a look. “And they call you a gifted writer. You’re not impressing me as the silver-tongued devil I was warned to expect.”
Ouch. “It’s already been a long night,” I said. “You’re catching me at ebb-tide.”
“Well, pull it together, Ally Oop. Night’s far from over.” Despite herself, she smiled at me. “It was some fine mayhem you caused getting that little darling out of that place. I hear those neighbors were vaporized by the blast.”
“Enough,” I said. “Please. I’m alre
ady feeling some guilt for that. I wanted to trash the two apartments. Knock down both walls and erase any trace of the hidden room in case this child’s protectors got caught. I probably could have done it without locking those snitches in there with the grenades.”
“I wouldn’t have had you do it any other way,” Duff said. “Not after what they did.”
There was a flash of light at the end of the traboule. Duff flicked off her light. She whispered urgently, “I hope that dog can be quiet.”
“The dog can,” I said. “He can also take down the person holding that other light, if need be.”
I passed Marie back to Duff. Jimmy and I drew our Mausers from our holsters. “Wait here, dear Duff,” Jimmy said. “We’ll be back in a jiff.”
I pointed and Pancho sat down next to Duff. I said, “Just whisper the word A-T-T-A-C-K to him if we go down. Pancho will do the rest or he’ll die trying. The word S-T-O-P will break off his attack.” I paused, then said, “Do you have a gun with enough ammo in case?” I looked from her to the child sleeping in her arms.
“I do,” she said earnestly. Duff’s eyes searched mine. “And I will if I have to. Now go handle this so I am not faced with that awful choice.”
***
Jimmy and I were slowed by having to run on tiptoes to suppress the click of those Nazi boot heels on tile in the long, vaulted, high-ceilinged tunnels.
The flashlight’s glow from the intersecting tunnel was getting stronger.
I could hear German being spoken, now. Two men. There were no alcoves or doorways to duck into for an ambush. The two tunnels, ours and theirs, met at right angles. We might surprise one of the Germans as they turned the corner, but not both. Both sides would likely take casualties.
And the sound of gunfire in the long echo chambers of the tunnels might draw down a platoon of Nazis.
I whispered, “Your uniform come with a knife, Jimmy?” I held up my own blade. “This one did.”
Jimmy smiled thinly. “Yes, mine has a silver death’s head and crossbones on the pommel. Delightful SS toys for something close quarters. You’ve a plan, Hector?”
Roll the Credits: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 4
