The Maids of Chateau Vernet

by Steven Landry

  One of the men jumped into the driver’s seat of the lead truck and set the vehicle in motion. Without hesitation and, Trembley was sure, grateful to be as far from the French border as possible, the rest of the trucks followed. Trembley stayed behind, chatting with the Swiss guards as truck after truck rolled past. Cheers emanated from each truck as they passed the checkpoint. He’d catch a ride on the last truck, once he was sure everyone made it across the border.

  “Here’s the last of them,” he said to the guards as the thirtieth truck approached. “I expect a sidecar motorcycle bringing up the rear.” Hiram and Deborah had made the call to move through last. The final truck passed Trembley’s position and behind it stood only empty road. Trembley slipped on his NVGs and tried to search along the ravine, the contraptions not offering as much help as he had hoped. Hiram and Deborah were nowhere to be found.

  60

  0730 hours, Tuesday, August 18, 1942, Vichy, Allier Department, Vichy France

  Corporal Lafayette passed through six additional checkpoints on his way into Vichy, all manned by the LVF. At each stop, he offered information in hopes of getting something in return, a trick he learned from Captain Petain. And the LVF, proud of the current state of things in Vichy, wanted to talk. At the first stop, he learned that Rene Bousquet remained in office as the General Secretary. When they pulled into the second stop, he passed along the information about Bousquet, adding that “he’s been cooperative with the SS these past two years.”

  “I guess cooperation doesn’t mean much,” the guard said. “Look what happened to Prime Minister Lavall.”

  “At least they haven’t executed him yet,” Lafayette said at the third stop. “Detained for an undetermined amount of time I hear, but quite alive.”

  At the fourth stop, he heard Marshall Petain sat comfortably in a prison cell alongside Prime Minister Lavall.

  “The LVF control’s Vichy now,” a guard at the fifth stop said. “Except for the prefecture. The German’s hold sway over the government center. A Waffen SS battalion’s taken up residence there, or so we’ve heard.”

  “The German 15th Infantry Division made a move into Unoccupied France.” The guard at the sixth stop called out the information from his small hut, radio earpiece pressed to the side of his head.

  “Any word on the Pyrénées-Orientales?” Lafayette asked as the guard passed his papers back through the window. He had been out of touch with his family for a few days. He hoped trouble had by-passed his home.

  “No news today,” the guard said. “I supposed that is good news."

  At the prefecture, German soldiers formed a cordon extending two blocks out from the edge of the compound. The officer in charge, a grizzled Waffen SS Sturmbannführer, decided to let Lafayette pass after a careful review of his papers.

  “Just you,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.” Lafayette turned to Corporal Martin. “Find a place to park the vehicles, then come back here and wait for me. Stay alert.” Martin acknowledged his orders and led the vehicles away from the well-guarded entrance.

  Lafayette entered the prefecture with papers in hand. His papers passed through three more sets of hands as he made his way through the complex of buildings that constituted the seat of the Vichy government.

  Bousquet’s personal secretary appeared disinterested when Lafayette arrived in the ornate office suite. “Can I help you?”

  “I am here to meet Captain Louis Petain, Chief of Police for the Pyrénées-Orientales Department. I understand we have an appointment with the General Secretary.”

  The secretary stood and reached across her desk for his papers, leaning far enough to expose the topmost bulge of her large breasts that seemed to be squeezed upward by the same force that created her narrow waist. She had a pretty face framed by short, sculpted blonde hair. Rank does have its privileges.

  She reviewed his papers. “I am not aware of this appointment.” she said. Her accent confirmed Lafayette’s suspicion that she hailed from Marseilles, a place known for producing such beautiful specimens of the female form.

  “We captured an American spy that has provided advanced equipment to the partisans. Captain Petain sent me here with several of the weapons. The General Secretary will want to see the weapons for himself. Quite an impressive collection. I’m surprised Captain Petain has not arrived yet.”

  “I’m afraid the General Secretary-”

  “General Secretary Bousquet is meeting with the Führer and Reichsführer Himmler,” said a voice in passable French. His voice carried a strong German accent.

  Lafayette turned to face the man who had entered the room behind him. Black fedora, long black leather jacket, despite the moderate temperature, a Nazi armband, jackboots, wire-rim glasses, and dead blue eyes. Gestapo.

  “The Führer is here? In Vichy?” Lafayette asked, dumbfounded. “Why?”

  “The Führer is not accountable to you,” the Gestapo man said.

  “Of course not,” Lafayette stuttered. “I’m surprised that he has decided to honor the people of Vichy with a visit. Will there be a public celebration of the event?”

  “The only public event will be the execution of the French cabinet,” the man said.

  “Execution?”

  “If the Reichsführer’s investigators believe the French orchestrated the event in Saarbrücken, the entire French cabinet will find themselves lined up in front of a firing squad,” the Gestapo man said. “And the Führer might purge their families as well. Messy business.” He nodded back toward the closed door.

  “It was the Americans,” Lafayette said.

  “Perhaps they played a part. Is this what your American spy has told you?”

  “No. He didn’t say much of anything before he-” Lafayette stopped.

  “Before he died?”

  “No, sir. He managed to escape.”

  “Escaped. Hmm. You did say your captain’s name was ‘Petain’, correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lafayette said. “The Marshall is his grandfather’s brother. He barely knows the man.”

  “Except when he needs something, I’m sure.”

  “I-“

  The Gestapo man held up a hand, then pulled a small notebook from an inner pocket of his jacket and made a note. Before he finished writing, he said, “You’ll take me to see the advanced weapons you mentioned.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Lafayette said. “The cache has been secured in a heavily armored trunk in my truck outside. Captain Petain has the key.”

  “And where is Captain Petain, then?” the Gestapo man said.

  “I assume he arrived some time ago,” Lafayette said. “As I told Bousquet’s secretary, I was ordered to meet him here.”

  The secretary carried Lafayette’s papers around the desk and handed them to the Gestapo man. He considered the contents for a moment, then turned and headed toward the closed door to Bousquet’s office. Quietly he opened the door and walked in, closing the door behind him.

  “Friendly guy, isn’t he?” Lafayette said to no one in particular.

  The secretary straightened her skirt. “Kriminaldirektor Hans Huber,” she spat the name out as if it had gone sour in her mouth. “Friendly is the last word I’d use to describe that man, Corporal Lafayette.”

  Lafayette swallowed hard. Kriminaldirektor was the Gestapo equivalent of a major. He knew who had all the power here.

  61

  0830 hours, Tuesday, August 18, 1942, Les Bayards, Val-de-Travers, Switzerland

  Charlotte leaned against the tire of the lead truck, grateful to be out of the stuffy confines of the crowded vehicle for a while. The drone she had sent out hours ago had located three motorcycles travelling west. She zoomed in on the image. “Found them!”

  “Found who?” Danette leaned over her to see the display on the C2ID2.

  “Barbara, Maxime, and Team Bravo,” Charlotte said.

  Simone squatted in front of her. “They are together? Where?”

  “On the road to Vichy.”
Charlotte held the C2ID2 display so the others could see. “Barbara probably swung south to meet up with Team Bravo. They’re headed west.”

  “Why would they be headed toward Vichy?” Danette said.

  “I’d only expect one reason if Barbara’s involved,” Charlotte said. “Revenge.”

  Danette looked at Charlotte. “What do the six of them think they can accomplish?”

  Simone stood and crossed her arms. “Depends on the tools they have with them.”

  “What?” Charlotte and Danette asked in unison.

  “It’s possible that Team Bravo’s hyperbaric nuclear weapon is fully functional,” Simone said.

  “That’s not possible,” Danette said. “How would Team Bravo have gotten a hold of a fully functional nuclear weapon?”

  Simone let out a deep breath. “Do you remember when Team Golf was disarming the weapons Hiram intended to present to Captain Trembley? He wanted to show him we had the weapons but didn’t want them to be functional. After Saarbrücken, I can see why. I mean those weapons are quite unbelievably powerful.”

  Charlotte stood and faced Simone. “Spit it out!”

  Simone scratched the back of her head. “Emma may have switched out one of the backpack portals for one of the weapon portals.”

  “What?” Danette said.

  “Well, we thought it was a failsafe in case something happened to Hiram. I think Agnes ended up with the pack.”

  “Get Hiram on the radio, now!” Danette said.

  “I thought Hiram and Deborah were going to catch up with us here. Didn’t they follow us across the border?” Charlotte said.

  Danette shook her head. “They went after Barbara and Maxime.”

  “On their own?” Simone asked. “Do you think Hiram can stop Barbara and the others?”

  “Barbara’s got a good head start.” Charlotte calculated Hiram’s distance from the rogue team. “Doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Let Hiram know about the weapon,” Danette joined Charlotte.

  “He’s been monitoring my drone feed. He knows where they are,” Charlotte said.

  “Yeah, but does he know they have a nuclear bomb?” Danette said.

  62

  1130 hours, Tuesday, August 18, 1942, Oyonnax, Ain Department, Occupied France

  Hiram and Deborah moved south through the Jura Mountains. The railbike drew little attention despite traveling in broad daylight.

  They turned west toward the more heavily populated lowlands, careful to avoid checkpoints with the help of the drone scouting ahead of them.

  Danette’s harried voice boomed through the speaker in his helmet. He translated a few words on his own before Deborah was able to respond.

  “Hawk. Team Alpha. Bad. Barbara. Maxime. Team Bravo.” He turned to Deborah, her expression concealed by the helmet.

  When Danette stopped talking, Deborah translated, the calm in her voice forced. “Danette says Barbara and Maxime met up with Team Bravo.”

  “At least we’ll only have to track one group down,” Hiram said as he swerved around a large rock in the path.

  “Hiram,” Deborah said, her voice shaky.

  Hiram guided the railbike off to the side of the road. “What is it?”

  Deborah looked up from the overhead drone feed she monitored. “Agnes is in possession of a portal and electronics package from one of the nuclear weapons.”

  “What? How did they-“

  Danette spoke again.

  “Simone confessed that Team Golf switched out one of the portals for a backpack weapons portal and pocketed one of the electronics packages from the nukes.”

  Is it possible? Hiram tried to go back to the night Team Golf helped him prepare the dummy weapons for Trembley’s arrival. He remembered counting the portals…No, I counted the stacks – six stacks. But they had been in a hurry and he had felt as though a Mark XII had been detonated inside of him. It’s fucking possible!

  Hiram powered down the railbike and climbed off.

  “What are you doing?” Deborah asked as she maneuvered her way out of the side car.

  He ignored her and tapped an icon on his C2ID2. The portal in his pack activated and Hiram dove into the portal head first. He rolled as his body connected with the mat on the floor.

  He found the two bags used to store the parts from the six sample weapons. He tore the bags open and counted the contents with uncooperative, shaky hands. A single portal from one of the backpacks had been slipped into a stack of the weapons-grade discs. “Traveler” had been etched into the metal disc surrounding the portal. He found only five sets of the hyperbaric electronics packages as he fumbled through the electronics pile. It doesn’t matter. The weapon won’t function without the PAL code. He looked at his C2ID2. With a shaky hand, he withdrew the unit from its protective sheath. The titanium finish appeared brand new. The one he’d carried for the last three years had been scratched, dented and marred by continual use. At some point when he had been sleeping or fighting off Hagar’s ungodly curse, someone – Barbara – had switched his unit and he’d never noticed. He swallowed hard despite the sudden dryness in his mouth. The PAL code he had copied over from Jacob’s C2ID2 was stored on the device she had taken.

  Why? Why in the hell would they have taken them? But the answer was clear. His soldiers needed a contingency plan.

  Hiram hopped back up the ladder, doing his best to disregard the excruciating pain that had settled all the way up to his knee and now seemed so insignificant.

  Deborah rushed to his side as he collapsed on the ground beside his pack.

  “Agnes has a hyperbaric nuclear weapon portal and a firing mechanism. I can only guess that she’s reinstalled the disc in Team Bravo’s weapon. And Barbara has the code to set it off.”

  His stomach turned and saliva pooled in his mouth as the world around him twisted. “It was one of the big discs.” He took in a deep breath. “Six hundred kilotons. Fuck. Fifty times the size of the one used in Saarbrücken. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people could die if that weapon goes off.”

  “Then get up!” Deborah put an arm around him and helped lift him to his feet. “We’ve got to stop them.”

  * * *

  0730 hours, Wednesday, August 19, 1942, Bost, Allier Department, Vichy France

  The railbike sped west through the lowlands, past long stretches of idle farmland and a handful of small quiet towns. In the dark, Hiram and Deborah travelled unnoticed. As the sun came up, their odd vehicle caught the eyes of several farmers tending their fields and a petite old lady who sat at a small table in front of the burned-out husk of her home sipping from a delicate teacup.

  They followed a well-travelled trail through the mountains west of Vichy. The city came into view an hour after Barbara and her rogue soldiers.

  63

  0730 hours, Wednesday, August 19, 1942, Bost, Allier Department, Vichy France

  The hyperbaric nuclear weapon sat at the center of the warehouse floor. Barbara, Maxime, Agnes, Ida, Nathalie, and Isadore surrounded the metallic canister. They stared in silence as Barbara pulled up the weapon’s interface on the C2ID2.

  “I’ll give you all a head start to get out of here,” Barbara said. “I don’t know what the radius of the blast will look like, so you need to get as far away from here as fast as you can.”

  “You should come with us,” Ida said.

  Barbara shook her head. “I need to stay here to make sure no one interferes.”

  Maxime touched Barbara’s shoulder. “I’m staying too.”

  “No Maxime. You can’t. You’ve got a family out there somewhere.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t. Not anymore.” Maxime looked down at the floor. “The rest of you need to get out of here now. Drive the bikes straight out of town. Put as much distance away from this place as possible.”

  “When you see Hiram, tell him I’m sorry,” Barbara said to Agnes. “We need these people to suffer for what they’ve done.”

  Agnes nodded. “We can
all walk away. Pretend this never happened.”

  “Like all the others?” Barbara took Maxime’s hand. “Our fellow Frenchmen watched this horror play out. Our political leaders joined hands with the Germans. They tried to convince us that if we just played along, it would all work out in the end.”

  “I understand,” Agnes said. “We pray for your success.” Agnes and the others walked out of the warehouse, leaving Barbara and Maxime.

  “What now?” Maxime asked as she circled the device at the center of the room.

  Barbara climbed on to a stack of dusty wooden crates and sat with her legs dangling a few inches above the concrete floor. “We’ll give them some time to clear out and then we’ll activate the device.”

  “And maybe I’ll get to hold my little girl again,” Maxime said under her breath.

  Barbara wanted to sit back and enjoy the show, to feel the warmth of the explosion blanket her before taking out every living thing from here to who-knows-where. She would see the faces of those who had wronged her people when she crossed over into Olam Ha-Ba. Maybe then, just maybe, they would see how many lives had been extinguished by the hatred that had infected her homeland. And in that place, she prayed, war would cease to exist and the truly righteous would stand with honor a step – or two – above those who had turned their backs when France needed strength.

  “How much longer?” Maxime said as she peered out one of the windows.

  “Do you think ten minutes is enough?”

  64

  0734 hours, Wednesday, August 19, 1942, Bost, Allier Department, Vichy France

  Charlotte’s directions led Deborah and Hiram to a warehouse on the east bank of the Allier River. Peering across the wide river through his high-powered binoculars, Hiram searched for signs of Barbara and the others. He had trained them too well and saw no sign of the railbikes or the women. “They could detonate the weapon at any moment.”