The Devouring

by James R Benn

  “We have little choice, Father,” Kaz said. I nodded. Decent men seldom do. The Father left us, and Kaz blew out the candle. Blackness shrouded us, the smoky odor of tallow lingering in the air.

  “So,” Kaz said, “our Swiss contact probably thinks we are dead. The pilot who flew us in is dead. The Jedburghs are dead. Lasho’s family are all dead. Do you sense a common theme?”

  “I hope you’re dead wrong, pal.”

  I heard Kaz chuckle, and felt sleep overcome me like the slumber of the dead.

  In the morning, the monks brought us our duds. The clothes were clean, or clean enough. They felt rough and smelled of wood smoke, probably from being dried in front of a fire all night. We gathered in the kitchen and were served ersatz coffee and bread fresh from the oven. One of the monks said Father Rochet would be with us shortly, which earned a sharp look from the black robe tending the stove. He’d forgotten the no-name rule.

  Father Rochet—who I figured for the abbot himself, but knew enough not to ask—came in with Lasho and sat him down with a smile and a pat on the shoulder.

  “Anton will be going with you,” he announced, as if the idea had just occurred to the both of them. “You have no objections to traveling with him?” Yeah, he was the head man all right.

  “None at all,” I said, noticing a monk standing behind the abbot and holding our bags. Which contained our identity papers and weapons, and probably would have been kept if we hadn’t agreed.

  “Good,” the Father said, flicking his finger for the monk to come forward. He handed over our revolvers, ammo, and identity papers. We stuffed everything into our coat pockets as the empty rucksacks went into the oven. Probably not too smart to carry bags in the open with us army stenciled on the side.

  “What is the plan, Father?” Kaz asked, as he finished off a piece of warm bread. I watched Lasho, who drank and ate mechanically, as docile this morning as he was mad and ferocious yesterday.

  “Through the forest today, to a village fifteen kilometers from Cessens. After dark you will board a train when it stops to take on water for the boiler,” he said.

  “Is the train guarded?” I asked.

  “Not unless it carries military goods, which it does not today, although the Gestapo may conduct identity checks at any time. It is a small provincial line and terminates at Annemasse, near the border. We have contacts among the railway workers, all good Frenchmen.”

  “What if they do check?” I asked.

  “Trust God and your pistols,” he said. “Do not be taken alive.”

  I was wondering if the church had a special blessing for pistols when shouts echoed from the hallway. Someone was giving the alarm.

  Boche! Gestapo!

  “Go!” the Father shouted, grabbing Lasho by the collar and pushing him toward the door. We scrambled for our coats, making for the rear exit in hopes of getting into the trees before the Krauts saw us. We burst out into the open and ran along the side of the abbey, stopping to check the road for Germans. Nothing.

  “Trucks,” Lasho said, catching the noise before we did. “Come.”

  We ran, hard on his heels. The monks must have kept a lookout in the church steeple, which gave us enough of a head start to get clear of the abbey and halfway up the hill before we heard the noises.

  Shouts. Brakes skidding on gravel. Boots hitting the ground. This wasn’t a social call.

  Higher up the hill, we stopped and looked back, catching our breath. Two trucks and a staff car had pulled up. About a dozen Krauts fanned out around the abbey, blocking the exits. Another dozen stormed inside, followed by a couple of officers and a guy in a brown leather coat. The Gestapo boys liked their leather.

  “They might be searching everywhere after the shooting yesterday,” Kaz said.

  “Father Rochet sent a courier. To ask for a guide,” I said.

  “The maquis will not help,” Lasho said. “He should have known that. If the courier was caught, he may have talked. It was not worth the risk.”

  “Father Rochet wishes to help you,” Kaz said. Given the situation, I guess it didn’t matter much if we knew his name. “He feels responsible.”

  “I know,” Lasho said. “As do I.”

  Gunshots came from the courtyard. The pop-pop-pop of pistol shots echoing off granite.

  “The courier,” Lasho said. “He talked.”

  Pop-pop-pop.

  We couldn’t see into the courtyard, but it was easy to guess what was happening. They’d shoot monks until Father Rochet gave up the radio and surrendered us. Since we were gone, and the shots kept up, it didn’t seem like good news for the monks of Abbey de Hautecombe.

  Lasho ran off, heading farther uphill, stopping a few times as if getting his bearings. We stayed with him, wondering if he’d finally gone off the deepest end. He stopped at the foot of a pine tree and climbed up the bottom branches. I saw him untie and lower a canvas bag from the upper limbs, all of which was camouflaged by the thick covering of green boughs.

  It was a rifle, wrapped in oilskin. Lasho grabbed it and pushed past us, going back downhill.

  “No!” I hissed, not wanting to risk a shout. “Lasho, no, it’s not worth it.”

  “Lasho, stop,” Kaz pleaded, slipping and sliding through the undergrowth. “There are too many of them.”

  I knew we should let him go his own way. He’d get himself killed soon enough, and the good people of the Haute-Savoie would have one less terror to worry about. But we’d promised Father Rochet, after a fashion, so we careened down the slope, hoping to restrain Lasho before he put another notch in his gun.

  He halted behind a boulder jutting out from the hillside. By the time we got there he was lining up a shot, waiting for the Germans to come outside. My money was on the brown leather coat.

  “Lasho, it will only make things worse if you pull that trigger,” I said. “They’ll kill anyone who’s left.”

  “You don’t know the Germans,” he said, tucking his cheek snug against the stock. “Things are already worse.”

  Soldiers began to return from the perimeter, standing around the trucks, smoking and chatting. Others came out of the abbey, prodding ten or so monks with their bayonets, loading them into the vehicles. I didn’t see the Father.

  Two more shots sounded from the courtyard, a deadly afterthought. Maybe those were for him.

  No. Father Rochet was pushed out the door, his black robe ripped and hanging off his back. Even from this distance I could see he’d been beaten, the blood bright red on his chin.

  The Gestapo man in the brown leather jacket followed him, shouting orders at his men.

  “Lasho, don’t do it. There’ll be plenty of other Germans—”

  He pulled the trigger.

  The shot took Father Rochet dead center in the chest. He folded at the knees and fell, as if in prayer, coming to rest on his side.

  Lasho left the rifle in the cleft of the rock and calmly walked back into the deep, dark woods. We kept up with him, not saying a word, matching his deliberate pace to the east.

  It had been the only decent thing to do.

  Chapter Seven

  We debated trying for the train. If the courier gave up information about Father Rochet under torture, that was at least understandable. But why would he volunteer the train rendezvous?

  “Because he wanted to live,” Lasho said. “It is a great failing of many people.”

  “So he gave them more than they asked for?” I said.

  “Yes,” Lasho said with a quick nod. “And then they killed him. Even the Germans would not trust such a man.”

  God help me, I understood his logic.

  “No train then?” Kaz said. “Eighty kilometers is a long way without food, not to mention evading German patrols.”

  “Yes, we take the train. But not where they expect us,” Lasho said.


  We double-timed it through the forest, reaching our original rendezvous point midday. The plan had been to board a boxcar when the steam locomotive pulled in for a water stop that night. We were early, but so were the Germans. From our vantage point we watched as a truck rumbled down the road and crossed the tracks, screeching to a halt. An officer jumped from the cab and directed his men to various positions, well-concealed and covering the approach to the water tower.

  We eased back into the woods and kept walking. They’d have a long, boring night waiting for us.

  “Twelve kilometers,” Lasho said. “There is another water stop.”

  “That’s more than seven miles,” I said, my feet already sore from the day’s march.

  “But there will be no Germans,” Lasho said.

  “That’s worth the shoe leather,” I said. “But how can you be sure they won’t be there too? Or onboard the train?”

  “I use the train,” Lasho said. “I know the signs. A rag tied to the latch of a boxcar means no Germans on board at the start of the trip, and that the car has room to hide.”

  “At the start,” I said. “What if they board later?”

  “The railroad men are brave, but not stupid. It would be too obvious to remove the rag if the Gestapo boards, yes?”

  I had to agree. Brave and stupid was a deadly combination. The hanging rag was not an ironclad guarantee. “You’re sure of the railroad workers?”

  “Very sure. Brave men, to risk death from the Germans if they are found out, and death from your bombs as well. If we see the rag, we get close to the border.”

  “Then what? We don’t have a guide.”

  “I have been to Switzerland,” Lasho said. “The Father told you?”

  “Yes,” Kaz said. “He told us. Is that route still open?”

  “No. The Germans put up wire along the river. And mines. I know another way. No more talking. Walk faster.”

  We did both. Maybe Lasho didn’t want to talk about his last trip over the border, or maybe he wanted us to save our strength. Or both.

  After a couple of hours hoofing it uphill, we saw the next water tower in the distance. The tracks ran along a good-sized stream, with a mill and a couple of buildings clustered around the tower and an open field on the far side of the tracks. If there were Germans, they’d be hidden in the buildings.

  “Let’s take a look,” I said. “We have another hour or so of daylight.”

  “I do not think the Germans are there,” Lasho said. “They are very predictable. If the courier told them about the rendezvous, that is where they go, nowhere else. But we should look.”

  “There may be food,” Kaz said. That sounded good; breakfast had long since worn off.

  “No. No one lives there. The mill has not been used in a year. The Germans took all the grain, so people stopped bringing it. The farmer’s son was killed in 1940, and the father died last winter. He was a kind man. He gave me shelter and asked me to shoot a German in his son’s name. Come.”

  We crept up on the buildings, listening for the sounds of soldiers who didn’t expect company for hours. No whispering or canteens clattering against leather belts. No cigarette smoke.

  The buildings were empty.

  We took up watch on the second floor of the mill, which afforded a good view of the road in both directions. Lasho slumped to the floor. I moved a chair close to the window, keeping my face in the shadows. Kaz pulled a chair to the side of the window, watching the road in the direction we’d come from. The evening was silent.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “About your family.”

  “Yes,” Lasho said, his voice soft with weariness. “I sometimes dream about them. Not so much anymore.”

  “Father Rochet wanted you to go to Switzerland,” Kaz said. “To stop killing.”

  “I see little reason to do either thing,” Lasho said. “But he was a wise man. It is my fault he is dead, so I will do what he wished.”

  “Lasho, you saved him from horrible suffering at the hands of the Gestapo. Those brutes call their torture chambers kitchens, after all,” Kaz said.

  “I do not mean he is dead because I shot him. He is dead because he helped me. If I had never gone back, none of this would have happened.”

  “He was helping us as well,” I said.

  “Yes. You are to blame also,” Lasho said. “No more talking.”

  That pretty much shut down the conversation. We waited, which usually I didn’t mind. I’d gotten used to it in the army. Waiting generally meant no one was trying to kill me, and I’d learned to treasure those moments. But hiking all day with no food I did mind.

  It was a relief when the whistle on the steam locomotive sounded in the distance.

  “Maybe there is food in the boxcar,” Kaz said.

  “Quiet,” Lasho said as he gazed out into the darkness. Wind rustled the leaves, and the noise of the engine began to fill the night air. He nodded for us to follow and slipped down the stairs in silence.

  We took up position about thirty yards from the water tower. The engine would stop there to fill the boiler, which was ancient and constantly in need of filling. Or so the railway men claimed to the Germans, according to Lasho. There were generally two passenger cars and then as many boxcars as needed. But never more than six. We’d be able to spot the signal easily enough.

  The train pulled in, steam escaping as the engineer applied the brakes. The passenger cars were blacked out, but there were no guards visible. If any Germans were on board, they might be nothing more than passengers.

  The boxcars pulled into view. They looked tiny compared to American trains, due to the narrow-gauge rails. Forty and eights, my dad used to call them, having ridden in one to the front during the last war. He said they’d gotten the name since they could carry forty doughboys or eight horses. Tonight, we only needed room for three.

  There were four cars, and sure enough, an oily rag was knotted around the latch on the last boxcar. We waited until the cars came to a full stop, the last one clanking against the steel bumpers. Lasho held up his hand, peering down the track, waiting for the engineer to swing the giant spigot around and yank the chain to let loose the water. The second the water flowed, we darted to the last car. I grabbed the latch and slid the door open, Kaz going in first and then Lasho. I hoisted myself up and closed the door, my eyes adjusting to the dim light.

  Kaz and Lasho stood still in front of me, crowded by crates and canvas bags on one side. I pushed between them, wondering what was holding things up.

  I was looking straight into the eyes of a German soldier. Holding a submachine gun aimed at my stomach.

  “Langsam,” Kaz said, using his most soothing voice to tell the Kraut to take it easy.

  I gave Lasho a quick glance, having a hard time taking my eyes off the barrel of the MP 40. He was as still as stone, his hands at his sides. Kaz’s were raised, but in a placating gesture, not surrender. The German stepped back, stumbling on the boxes at his feet. I winced, hoping Lasho wouldn’t go for his throat. One pull on the trigger and we’d be sprayed with a dozen rounds.

  Lasho didn’t move, which gave me time to look at the Kraut.

  First thing: he was wearing his backpack. Second thing: no helmet, only his wool field cap. Third thing: he was a kid, dressed for travel, not battle. Fourth thing: he’d been sitting on the box he tripped over. Hiding.

  Fifth thing: we were still alive.

  The train lurched forward, the boiler evidently filled. The German lost his footing for a second, but it was long enough for Lasho to snatch the MP 40, giving him a kick in the stomach that doubled him over. He sat on the box, clutching his midsection, gasping for air. Lasho held the gun to his head. The locomotive chugged forward, the steam whistling, the steel wheels rolling on the rails. No one would hear the shot.

  Lasho smacked the German on the head, sending his
cap flying. He grabbed him by his sandy brown hair and pushed the barrel against his cheek, which was covered in tears.

  “Wie alt bist du?” Kaz asked.

  The kid didn’t answer, likely distracted by the gun barrel pressed under his eye. Lasho lowered the submachine gun, smoothing the hair that he had gripped so savagely. Then he handed the weapon to me.

  “Achtzehn,” the kid answered, wiping his cheeks dry. Eighteen, said with enough conviction to tell me he was probably a couple of months short.

  “A deserter, yes?” Lasho said.

  “Deserteur, ja,” he said, glancing between us to see what we’d do. Lasho sat on the box, head in his hands. I searched the kid while Kaz grilled him. He carried a wirecutter in one pocket and a bunch of letters and photos in the other.

  “His name is Hans Amsel,” Kaz reported. “He was conscripted three months ago and sent to France right after the invasion. A few days ago he got the news that his parents were killed in a bombing raid. His older brother was already dead in Russia. He decided to desert because he has no family left for the Nazis to retaliate against.” I looked at the photographs. Smiling parents posing proudly with their two boys on the steps of a house that had probably been blown to bits by now.

  “Let me guess,” I said, handing the papers back to Hans. “He wants to go to Switzerland.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Kaz said. We both studied the kid, who sat with his arms crossed against the evening chill. Enough moonlight filtered through the slats to see his eyes widen as he stared at Lasho.

  “Sind Sie der Zigeuner?” Hans whispered, his voice trembling with fear.

  “What?” I asked.

  “He’s asking if Lasho is the Gypsy,” Kaz said, and spoke to Hans for a while. “He says they have all heard stories. A tall, dark Gypsy with cold black eyes and a big mustache. He kills and vanishes like a ghost.”