Flame of Resistance

by Tracy Groot

  He saw the joyful maniac face of Schiffer as he shouted something, displaying Rousseau to the world. Then insanity leaped to Schiffer’s face. He raised his fist and pounded Rousseau’s shoulder. Rousseau crumpled.

  Rafael grabbed the nearest guard’s rifle, hauled it to his eye, and fired.

  Into dampened sound came a voice.

  “Rafael,” someone whispered. “Rafael.”

  He opened his eyes. He could do no more than that.

  Welts lined Rousseau’s face, like a horse’s reins. Rafael wanted to touch those welts, but he could not move. He wanted to speak, but only a gurgle came out.

  So he looked into the eyes that were loving him into the next world, then mouthed what he wanted Rousseau to know.

  You have shown me France.

  Hauptmann Braun looked at Schiffer’s body and said to the man under the desk, “He was going to give me an escort, but I hate to leave you shorthanded when the Resistance is on the move. Call off the escort. My driver and I can handle Greenland.”

  The wide-eyed man nodded. He made no move to come out.

  “See to it Metzger knows of the great victory of Greenland’s capture. I’ll file my report at Fort de Romainville, then forward a copy. Metzger should know of Schiffer’s accomplishments.” Braun shrugged. “He wasn’t the one to capture Greenland—but at least he got a notorious accomplice.”

  The man nodded.

  Pockets of two or three all over the reception room talked in whispers, staring at the bodies of Schiffer and André Besson. A few soldiers talked animatedly over the opened suitcase of the transreceiver. Rousseau had not moved from André’s side. One of the women civilians wept with her fists at her mouth, two companions comforting her. Braun did not know whether she wept for Rousseau or André Besson.

  A guard’s bullet had taken André Besson through the throat. And because it would have been expected from him, Braun walked over to the man who had fired the shot, already recounting it to others, and said, “Well done, soldier. I’m sure I would have been next. You saved my life.” Braun saluted him, and the soldier, blushing modestly, saluted back.

  Braun strolled over to Rousseau, briefcase in hand.

  “Well, Greenland,” Braun boomed, “he was a brave lad. You’ve said your good-bye. Time to go.” He looked at the stretcher bearers and motioned them to take up their burden once more. “Put him in the backseat.” He turned to the nearest guard. “You, there—can you spare your handgun?” He jerked his head at Rousseau. “I don’t expect trouble, but in light of tonight’s action I told your CO to keep the escort Schiffer promised us. Might be wise for me to be armed.” The guard, a little in awe of Braun and his significant charge, hurried to unsnap his leather holster and handed the Walther butt first to Braun. He took it and started to slip it into his briefcase. The soldier very slightly shook his head, with a kind glance at Braun’s civilian rank. Braun put the gun in his coat pocket, and the soldier nodded. Braun winked.

  He went to Rousseau and hauled him up by an elbow. He gave him a little push toward the door, told a front guard to escort him to the car, and stood for a moment over the body of André Besson.

  He had given them a way out of Caen. He had killed an evil man. And as the transreceiver surely indicated, he had come here to single-handedly negotiate the release of Tom.

  Good-bye, you who wished my son well.

  He shook his head, as if in awe that he had escaped a similar fate, and without explanation, folded up the transreceiver under the noses of the two guards examining it and walked out the door.

  “Where to?” Alric Reinhart spoke into the brittle-glass silence.

  He hated to speak at all, but he needed a destination. They were long out of Caen, heading east toward Paris. He was fairly certain that was not where they should go.

  Next to him sat the Frenchman in the white suit—the one they called Wilkie—head on the suitcase, sobbing silently. The French girl sat in the back with the brutally beaten man in her arms. The bulk of the man’s body lay upon the little Frenchman. His feet lay upon Braun.

  “Le Vey,” Brigitte murmured. Such exquisite emotion on the lovely face, a confluence of two oceans: deep sorrow at the news about the feisty one, deep joy at the one from whom she could not take her gaze. The man had come to some time ago. He did nothing but look at her with his one good eye. A tear occasionally drained from the eye.

  “Where is Le Vey?” Alric asked apologetically.

  “North,” she murmured. “Then west.”

  He turned the car about.

  After a few moments, Alric delicately ventured, “When Kant died, he said a word: enough. Did the feisty one say anything?”

  The little Frenchman spoke for the first time, his voice thin. “‘You have shown me France.’”

  Alric drew a long breath and sighed.

  He ventured into the silence one last time. “You may have shown him France. You must have shown him the world.”

  They had stopped only once, at a village called Villons around midnight. They approached no home for aid, fearing barking dogs, but on the outskirts of town found a park with a picnic area near a bridge. The bridge spanned a canal half the width of the Caen Canal.

  With Tom moaning at the movement, they got him out of the car and laid him in the grass. Alric went down to the water’s edge with a flashlight he’d found in the car. He’d emptied it of batteries, filled the hollowed canister with water.

  Wilkie trained another flashlight on Tom while Brigitte and Braun washed his wounds and bandaged them as best as they could with strips torn from Wilkie’s shirt. They gave him water to drink from the empty flashlight, and when he asked hoarsely if anyone had powdered eggs, all felt relief.

  The ordeal had exhausted him, and once back in the car, he fell asleep.

  Rousseau touched Brigitte’s arm. “Two can fit in the back of the Lysander. You will go with him.”

  It wasn’t possible. She stared at Rousseau.

  “I think it wise if . . . Do not tell him of Clemmie or of—” He looked away.

  To England. With Tom. Her heart soared.

  She bent to him and whispered, “Did you hear that, Tom? We will be bluebirds.”

  In a sky lit by nothing except the moon, they finally heard the lonely sound of a single-engine plane.

  The Lysander approached the airstrip, lit at intervals by shadowy figures who had emerged from the darkness, swinging flashlights held aloft. After it landed—and Braun marveled at the impossibly short strip on which it had done so, surely no more than four hundred meters—the shadowy figures doused their lights and came running. The Lysander bumped over the cleared ground and came to a halt. Immediately, someone shone a light onto the plane. The rear cockpit hatch opened and a rope ladder shook down. Someone threw down a duffel bag.

  “The SOE agent,” Wilkie said, standing next to Braun. To Braun’s surprise, it wasn’t a man who emerged from the plane, but a woman. Someone came to hold the ladder, a resistant or a Maquis, Braun didn’t know the difference between the two. When she reached the ground, the agent shook hands with the helper, exchanged some words, then looked up at the pilot and gave a smile and a salute.

  Wilkie went to meet her, Braun at his side.

  “How was the flight?” Wilkie asked in English.

  “Excellent,” she replied in a cheerful British accent. “Bit bumpy on the landing. Can’t complain, especially when I saw the length of the landing strip. Had to close my eyes. You are Greenland? I’ve waited ever so long to meet you.”

  “Wilkie. Greenland is in the car.”

  “Is he the agent for extraction?”

  “No, he’s in the car also. He has been tortured. There was no time for more than bandages to stop the bleeding. He will need medical attention as soon as possible.”

  “Right. I’ll speak to the pilot; he’ll radio in when he’s over the channel. Don’t worry, they’ll have assistance for him straightaway. Just the agent, then?”

  “And a gi
rl.”

  She looked at the car and shaded her eyes. The headlights were still on. They had helped to light the strip. “Bit of a squeeze back there for two, but they’ll manage. Back in a jiff.” She shook hands with Wilkie and went to talk to the pilot.

  “How will we get him up that ladder?” Wilkie wondered.

  “I’ll do it,” Braun said.

  Rousseau got out of the car to join Wilkie and Braun. They stood in the headlights’ beam, and while they watched the SOE agent talk to the pilot, Brigitte watched them.

  “Rousseau is a dead man,” Brigitte said to Alric in German.

  “I believe so.”

  “And Braun has exposed himself, has he not?”

  “Yes.”

  “What will he do? Where will he go?”

  After a moment, Alric said heavily, “I do not know, fräulein.”

  The SOE agent trotted back to the three. She spoke to Rousseau and took his hand in both of hers, admiration clear on her face.

  Brigitte held Tom in her arms a moment longer.

  She left a trail of whisper kisses on his brow, smoothed down the damp thatch of hair, and against his swollen lips breathed good-bye.

  Brigitte stepped into the headlight beam. “Excuse me,” she called over the drum of the plane, “I am GP. Flame’s newest agent.”

  The woman shook her hand. “Wren.”

  “Greenland has been exposed,” Brigitte said. “He must leave with the other agent.”

  Before Rousseau could protest, Braun said quickly, “I am afraid it is true.”

  Wilkie raised his head. He looked at Brigitte, then said to Wren, “If he stays, he’s dead.”

  Rousseau stared at them. “No. No, don’t be—”

  “Get them aboard,” Wren said to Braun. “I’ll tell Captain Blakeney. He’ll call it in. They’ll want to be there when this one lands.” She winked at Rousseau. “I know how much de Gaulle wants to meet you.” She trotted off.

  Wilkie nearly took Brigitte off her feet with a fierce hug. “This is what he—this is what—” he tried to whisper in her ear.

  “I know,” she whispered back.

  “He cared about the pilot. But he loved Rousseau.”

  “I know.”

  Wilkie kissed her cheek several times, then let go. He pressed his face against the sleeve of his white coat, then turned to Rousseau and put out his hand. Rousseau looked at it.

  “I get no kiss?” he said dryly. “No embrace?”

  “She’s pretty,” Wilkie said. Rousseau shook his hand with both of his, then turned to look for Braun, but Braun had gone to the vehicle.

  “Help me,” Braun called to the others.

  The injured man came to again as Braun slowly carried him over his shoulder up the rope ladder to the rear cockpit. He groaned a few times as they settled him in, wedged into place with Rousseau’s arms about him. He muttered something about a radial engine, then sank to unconsciousness once more.

  Braun helped Rousseau tuck a thick woolen blanket around him. The space was indeed tight. Tom lay slumped against Rousseau. Only Rousseau’s face showed in the swaddle of blanket and pilot.

  “Can you breathe?” Braun asked over the plane’s engine.

  “No. And I’d shake hands but I can’t move.” He eyed Braun. “I hear an invasion is coming. Stay safe, Hauptmann Braun.”

  “You will owe me fifty francs if it is May 15.”

  “I will pull some strings, make sure it’s the eighth. We will meet again, my friend, when this is over.”

  “How will you find me?”

  “Through Brigitte, of course.”

  Braun studied the Frenchman’s face, gave a little salute, and closed the hatch.

  Only twelve minutes after it had landed, the Lysander bumped over the ground, gained speed, and at the last moment gained lift, leaping to clear the treetops.

  They watched the spies fly away.

  They turned back into the headlight beam. Wilkie slid into the front seat, Braun and Brigitte slid in back. After a smile and a salute, Wren left with the Maquis on a mission of her own.

  “Where to?” the driver asked quietly, hands on the wheel.

  “Bénouville,” Brigitte said.

  She looked at Braun, who leaned against the window. “How will I hide you?” she murmured. “You stand out as much as Tom.”

  Father Eppinette came to mind, and a tall bell tower with a bell that never rang. She looked at Alric the driver. Madame Vion came to mind, and a position on the grounds at the château. Wilkie . . . Wilkie could be her “pimp”! She covered a smile. He could move in with his transreceiver, take Colette’s room. Colette would move in with Brigitte.

  And Colette and Wilkie will fall in love.

  Simone and Alric will fall in love.

  Marie-Josette and Guillemot will fall in love.

  And someday, Braun would reunite with his wife, and she would be restored, and his son would be healed, and then this exhausted German with the desolate face, who carried her love up the ladder, who sacrificed everything to save two enemies, would be happy.

  And someday, when there is freedom, and bluebirds, they will all visit Tom and me. And we will have a son, and we will name him Rafael.

  Until then, there was a lot of work to be done. There was an invasion to prepare for, a bridge to gather intelligence on. There was a sign to nail back on the door, for what might possibly be the only Resistance “brothel” in the nation. No better way to hide than in the open.

  “Who will take over Flame?” Wilkie said bleakly, watching the sky.

  Was the bridge rigged to blow? Had the charges been set?

  She glanced at Wilkie, surprised. She patted his shoulder.

  “Don’t worry. I already have.”

  NORMANDY, FRANCE

  JUNE 7, 1994

  The tourist bus rumbled for Colleville, the American cemetery near Omaha Beach. Corporal Rick A. Harmon, a paratrooper with the Eighty-Second Airborne Division, leaned over to talk to an old man and his wife.

  “You’re Americans?”

  “Yes.” The old man smiled. “From Michigan.”

  “Isn’t it great here?” The young soldier pushed his cap up. “Different feeling in Normandy, you know? I’ve been to Paris, been all over France, and they don’t treat Americans there the way they treat ’em here.”

  “Are you here on your own, or with your men?” the old lady asked politely, in a charming French accent.

  “Goin’ to Colleville to look up a grave of one of my dad’s buddies. We were here for a commemorative jump with my platoon on D-Day, at Sainte-Mère-Église. They dropped us in the same location they dropped the Eighty-Second, fifty years ago. It was pretty cool. Did you see it?”

  “No, we were in Bénouville for D-Day celebrations,” the old man said.

  “Where?”

  “It’s a little town not far from Ouistreham—near Sword and Juno.”

  “What’s in Bénouville?”

  “A bridge called Pegasus. Used to be called the Caen Canal Bridge.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Not many Americans have.” The old man reached to shake his hand. “Tom Jaeger. This is my wife, Brigitte.”

  Tom and Brigitte visited the Colleville cemetery, where, in the acres and acres of white crosses, and with the aid of information guides, they tracked down the graves of Lieutenant Kirk Oswald and Captain Bill Fitzgerald, both killed in action on June 6, 1944. They went down to Omaha Beach, and for one of his fellow fighter pilots who flew missions over Omaha on D-Day, but had never set foot in France, Tom scooped up some of the sacred ground and put it in a film canister.

  On D-Day, they had strolled around Bénouville. Brigitte’s home had not lasted long as one of the few Resistance brothels in the Occupation; it was burned to the ground in the fierce fight for the city, fifty years earlier. Some had called it a fitting end for the house of sin. Others, including a Madame Bouvier, were curiously silent.

  They went to the place
where Tom had stood in the middle of the road, caught between running forward and running back. The hedgerow where he had tried to hide was still there. So was the Mairie, the town hall that had housed German soldiers and Milice.

  They went to Pegasus Bridge, renamed in honor of the British Sixth Airborne Division, which had taken the bridge with a small contingent in what turned out to be the spearhead action of D-Day. From there they could see the stately Château de Bénouville along the west bank of the canal, where Madame Léa Vion had run a maternity hospital—and where she had operated Century, a cell of the Resistance. Just past the château, the little stone chapel that had hidden downed Allied pilots still stood.

  Before they left Pegasus Bridge, Tom thought about a hill in Gettysburg, called Little Round Top. Tom looked toward the sea, toward the beaches, Sword Beach in particular, the easternmost end of the D-Day operation. Had Chamberlain allowed Little Round Top to be taken, the Rebel army could have flanked the Union army; had the brave men of the British Sixth Airborne not taken and held this bridge, the operation could have been flanked with panzers on those beaches, a horrifying addition to the horror of that day.

  Tom smoothed his hand on the steel guardrail, and whispered, “Thanks, fellas.”

  There wasn’t much left they remembered of Caen. The city had been leveled in diversion attacks on D-Day and in the weeks of battle that followed. The Gestapo headquarters was gone. The Cimenterie office was gone. So was the grave of André Besson.

  They visited Cabourg.

  It was easy to find her grave in the little churchyard. A distant avalanche of red plastic poppies, some bright and new, some faded pink, showed the way. On the way there, Brigitte stopped at another grave and read the inscription.

  A. W. Whilty

  June 6, 1944

  Age 19

  Yours is the Earth, and everything that’s in it.

  And what is more, you were a man, my son!

  They chose this grave to represent Rafael’s and laid upon it a garland of white carnations.