Liberation

by Imogen Kealey

  Henri released her waist, held her hand and lifted it high. “Bernard, mes amies, more champagne and Vive la France!”

  The crowd re-gathered its bravery and cheered. The band launched into a fast, frivolous dance tune and the dancers kicked away the dust as they spun around the floor. Nancy laughed out loud, her head thrown back, and let herself be carried away by the lights, the drink, the feel of Henri’s hands.

  Even after four hours of dancing, Henri would have no argument. He would carry his wife over at least one threshold this evening. He picked up Nancy in his arms and carried her into the bedroom, then set her gently down on the thick carpet.

  “Henri,” she said, putting her hand on his chest. “I have something very important to ask you. I need your help.”

  He frowned. This was Nancy’s way, to find her moment and then ask for something outrageous and dangerous. More money. Using their home in the Alps as a refuge for prisoners. Using his business to smuggle arms and men. A bond to buy one more Jewish family safety in England. She watched him prepare for the onslaught and grinned before turning round.

  “I can’t reach the zipper…”

  He laughed softly and very slowly reached for the delicate catch and unhooked it, then eased down the zip, tracing her exposed skin with his knuckle. He came close, kissed the back of her neck.

  “Henri, I’m not going to apologize for who I am. You knew who you were marrying,” she said, leaning back against him.

  “I wouldn’t ask you to, Nancy.” His words were muffled, his voice low with desire. He ran his hands around her waist, pressing his palms against her stomach.

  Nancy felt the need for him, an ache under his fingers.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I can’t be like those other wives. The thought of hurting you is awful, but so is the thought of letting those bastards win. They cannot win. So I’m not going to lie to you and promise to quit. I can’t.”

  He sighed and turned her round to face him. “Promise me only that you will try to be careful. Can you do that?” His voice was warm, indulgent again.

  She nodded.

  He led her over to the little sofa and table in the corner of the room by the windows and sat her down beside him.

  Nancy twisted in her seat and hitched up her skirt so she could sit astride him. She lifted her hands to let her hair free of its diamond clasp and let the silk slip down her body to pool at her waist.

  “Henri Fiocca, I fucking love you.”

  He put his hands in her hair, pulled her toward him and kissed her. Hard.

  4

  Major Markus Fredrick Böhm replaced the telephone receiver into its cradle. The call had been to tell him the final reports of the clearing of the Old Quarter would be waiting for him at his office in Rue Paradis in the morning, but it was clear the operation had been a success.

  Before Böhm’s arrival in Marseille, it seemed every day the German occupying forces were losing men in that rats’ nest. Follow a suspect in there and you left, if you managed to leave at all, empty handed or covered in shit poured from an upper window to the delight of the loitering workers in the street. Böhm had listened to the reports and complaints of the men, and the excuses of the French authorities, then issued his orders.

  Perhaps half of the inhabitants of the Old Quarter gathered together their blankets and pots and left when the official notices of eviction were posted up on the walls. Most of the rest found themselves arrested and loaded onto trains for processing at the camps. The large number of foreign or French Jews discovered still living in the Old Quarter provided final proof, as if any were needed, of the slapdash way the new laws had been enforced in the preceding months. Those who fought or ran or hid were shot. Böhm was a Hercules who had cleansed the shit out of the city in three days.

  He glanced into the mahogany-framed mirror above the telephone table and smoothed his hair. Behind him in the reflection he saw the door to his daughter’s room was ajar. He crossed quietly to it, and looked in.

  The telephone had not woken her. Sonia was curled under the blankets, a stuffed rabbit cradled in her arms, still dreaming. Her soft, pale features wore an expression of light concentration, the same expression she wore sitting at the dining table in the quiet hour before dinner as she drew, or wrote letters to her friends back in Berlin in her huge looping handwriting. The fragile innocence of a child. He took the risk of waking her and stepped into the room, smoothed her whisper-soft hair behind her ear and kissed her forehead. That she might be safe, that she might live protected and at peace.

  He closed the door as quietly as he could and returned to the drawing room. On his arrival in Marseille, he, his wife and his daughter had been billeted in this neat apartment close to the Gestapo headquarters in Rue Paradis, and it was a luxury to be savored after the conditions he had endured in Poland. The little family shared five comfortably furnished rooms, a tribute to his successes smashing the foreign spy rings in Paris and enforcing some discipline on the Einsatzgruppen in the east and, he was not afraid to acknowledge, to his wife’s excellent connections in the party.

  In the low light, sitting by the fire, at work on some elaborate piece of embroidery, his wife looked almost a child herself. She put her work aside as he came in and went to the dresser to pour him a drink. He took his seat in the armchair on the other side of the fireplace, admiring her slim figure and shapely legs in comfort.

  “Captain Heller asked me to apologize for calling so late, Eva. He hopes he did not disturb us.”

  She brought him his whisky, bending down to kiss him as he took it. “That is very good of him, but I do not mind at all. You know that.”

  Her voice had been the first thing about her that he had fallen in love with; it was low and tuneful, confident without being brassy. He caught her hand and brushed her slim fingers lightly with his lips.

  “What are you smiling at?” she asked as she returned to her place and picked up her workbasket.

  “I am grateful that providence has sent me such a helpmate.” He tasted his whisky. Drinking it was a habit he had picked up while studying for his doctorate in England. Its flavor took him back to his college rooms, the late night conversations with his peers.

  “Me or Heller?” She looked up at him under her eyelashes.

  He raised his glass toward her. “You in this instance, my dear.”

  She nodded, pleased with the compliment, then looked suddenly thoughtful. “Heller is a good deputy though, I think.”

  Böhm considered his deputy as he sipped his drink. Heller wore little round glasses but was otherwise a healthy-looking young man. Clear skinned, and well muscled without showing a tendency to run to fatness. Böhm had been working with him since his arrival in Marseille, and he had so far proved extremely competent. Heller had learned excellent French studying the law in Grenoble and was, naturally, a staunch believer in the Nazi cause. His little round glasses gave him a scholarly appearance, but he was a fierce and inventive interrogator. Böhm admired that—a man who could seem so mild, yet had a well-spring of violence within him. The surprising discovery that this slight bookish young man could cause such terrifying pain had shocked some captives into talking, perhaps even more than the pain itself.

  “He is. Very good.”

  Eva snipped a thread and shook out the embroidery she had been working on. It was, he saw, an image of a little farmhouse with chickens in the yard and a backdrop of layered trees and hills. It reminded him of the landscape around Würzburg. Perhaps, after the war, if he did not return to Cambridge, he would complete his research there and take just such a modest home for Eva and Sonia.

  “We should do something for him, don’t you think?” she said. “I’ll write to Uncle Gottfried, mention his name.” She realized her husband was looking at her handiwork. “It’s Sonia’s latest masterpiece, I’m just neatening it up. She is going to put it in a frame and give it to you, so remember to look surprised.”

  “I shall.”

  She began tidyi
ng away her work, and her voice took on a slightly hesitant note. “I had a letter from Gottfried today, as it happens. He says there is no hope for the Sixth Army at Stalingrad. You should see what he writes about their sacrifice. It’s terribly moving.”

  Böhm drained his drink. What a terrible sacrifice it had been. He set his empty glass down on the polished side table. But Böhm had no doubt that the war would be won in the end. The British would eventually understand that their only hope of defeating communism would be to join with Germany against Russia. Any military setbacks in that vast and savage country could only be temporary. The Slavs were beyond redemption with nothing but a capacity for suffering to recommend them.

  “Do you think it’s wrong of me,” Eva said, still not looking at him, “to be very grateful we are together in France, and not there?”

  He felt a fresh affection for her. “No, my love. We can honor their sacrifice, without wishing to share in it.”

  “Would you like another drink?”

  Tempting. “No, thank you. I must keep a clear head, there is still so much to be done.”

  He said it with a smile in his voice, but it was true. The clearance of the Old Quarter was an excellent start, but he knew the roots of the Resistance ran deep and wide in this city. Perhaps the French were not beyond redemption, but they had undoubtedly grown decadent and corrupt. The Germans had absorbed the wisdom of the Far East, and used it to fully comprehend their destiny, but the French had collapsed into luxurious visions of the orient—sensual, feverish dreams which had rotted them from within.

  “Your supper will be ready. Do you think you managed to catch your mouse?”

  That legendary mouse who had led so many escapees and refugees to Spain, nibbled so many holes in the net that the Germans had cast across southern France.

  “Perhaps. Only time will tell.”

  5

  The moon silvered the sea. Nancy hadn’t had much choice about the “when” of this operation, but they’d been lucky. It was a clear night with just enough moon to follow the path to the beach without waving their torches around.

  Antoine had brought them the message from a contact in Toulouse. A British submarine would creep along the coast, ready to take a crop of escaped prisoners off their hands by sea. The submarine could take up to fifteen men and would row to this beach to pick them up on this date, at this time, give this signal, wait for this response.

  Then it was a matter of trust. That the message was genuine and hadn’t been garbled, that they had the right place, time and codes, that no one Nancy had spoken to as she contacted the men to be rescued and gave them their instructions on where and when to meet her had talked.

  Oh, and that when the British said they could take up to fifteen men, they’d left a bit of wiggle room. Waiting in the dark at the edge of the beach with Nancy were twenty men who needed to get the hell out of France. They were British mostly, and a couple of American airmen, Iowan farm boys with an infectious sense of humor which made Nancy love them. Three of the Brits had been stuck in a safe house outside Montpellier for a week, talking in whispers and trying not to move around the apartment in case the neighbor, a definite Vichyist, heard them. Most of the others had broken out of a transit camp to the northwest. Nancy, Philippe and Antoine had expected six men through the wire, but news had got out in the camp and the rest insisted they get their chance too. The last man they’d picked up from a safe house in Marseille itself, though none of the houses seemed that safe since this man Böhm had arrived in town. The prisoner was called Gregory. He was a Brit with a French mother, and the English had parachuted him in behind enemy lines to help out the loyal French or something, but the Gestapo had grabbed him off the street in his second week. It turned out his contact in town had come to an understanding with the authorities.

  He’d been a guest of the Gestapo for a month, until he’d taken a mad chance during a round of questioning, throwing himself from a first-floor window in front of his astonished guards. Somehow he’d managed to escape into the market crowd, and they saved him. One man gave him his cap, another his long blue coat which most of the farmers wore, another the clogs from his feet. The Gestapo officers who poured out of their headquarters in pursuit found their way blocked, accidentally of course, by confused stallholders, a fight over a heavily laden cart. The news of his escape got to the members of the Resistance still at large in the town, and he was scooped up and dumped in Nancy’s lap.

  Gregory had mumbled this story out to her through broken teeth. Normally they would have sent him on the route out over the Pyrenees, but he didn’t have a cat’s chance in hell of making the walk. He was missing all the fingernails on his right hand, his ribs were cracked and his wrist broken. Every inch of him was purple with bruising. Nancy had no idea what to do with him other than feed him and keep him hidden until the message about the Royal Navy pickup came in. Praise the Lord. She fetched him herself, and they had strolled along the streets of Marseille, arm in arm, his broken face wrapped up in Henri’s scarf, his thin frame bulked out by one of Henri’s coats, peering out at the world from under the brim of one of Henri’s hats. They took the bus toward the coast to join the others and he thanked her. Quietly. Sincerely. Then he didn’t talk much.

  Nancy checked her watch in the moonlight. Bloody Royal Navy were late. Not disastrous, they-are-definitely-not-turning-up late yet, but still late. How long could they wait here? How could she get all these men into safe houses before dawn if the British didn’t arrive? The coast here, east of Marseille, was rocky and steep, mostly limestone, which looked ghostly in the darkness. This small beach, fringed with wild sage bushes and pines, was one of the few places a boat could come in. She hoped nothing had gone wrong. If all had gone to plan a submarine was out there now, half a mile off shore, dark and silent, waiting to whip these men through the Strait of Gibraltar and back to Britain to rearm, regroup and re-join the fight.

  “They’re late,” Antoine said softly at her shoulder.

  “They’ll be here,” Nancy said firmly.

  There was a rustle in the darkness and Philippe joined them. “Any sign yet? They are late.”

  Jesus.

  “Are you certain about the signal, Nancy?” Antoine asked. “Should we signal them?”

  “Hold your nerve, guys, for fuck’s sake,” she whispered. “We’re not standing on the beach flashing torches at any German patrol which passes by. They signal us first.”

  “Maybe the message was fake,” Antoine breathed. “What if the message was from the Germans? Easy for them to pick us all up then, prisoners, us and the famous White Mouse. All just sitting here on the shore like we’re having a moonlight picnic. God knows, the message came just when we needed it! Was it too good to be true?”

  It had crossed her mind, of course it had. They’d all heard the rumors: Germans stealing radio sets and sending false messages back and forth to London and then scooping up Resistance fighters, prisoners, supply dumps, casually as kids scrumping apples in the orchards.

  “If it were the Germans coming,” she said clearly now, and with angry precision, “they’d have bloody well been on time.”

  Philippe grunted, but she could almost see his swift, reluctant smile.

  “Fine, Nancy,” he said. “But you can’t tell me things aren’t getting harder. Major Böhm has picked off a dozen men I know about. How long until he picks up someone who knows about us? There are too many people involved now. That man Henri told me to talk to at the factory, Michael—I don’t like him. Too hot.”

  “You’re complaining now the French are finally getting their shit together and fighting back?” she said. He was pissing her off now. “If Henri told you to talk to him, he’s fine.”

  “Henri is a good man, but he’s romantic,” Philippe persisted. “He thinks every Frenchman is a Resistance fighter at heart. He doesn’t want to believe we have fascists of our own. One of those gendarmes we’ve been using your husband’s money to bribe is going to say somethin
g eventually. We shouldn’t have paid them to keep the road above us clear tonight. It would have been better to risk the police patrols.”

  Antoine tutted, but Philippe was right. Which didn’t help. Antoine had made the decision and paid the bribe without even telling them. He swore he could trust the man he paid, a true French patriot, but if he was that much of a patriot why did he need paying in the first place?

  “Nancy!”

  She looked out into the darkness and saw it: the flash of a torch about a hundred yards off shore. Three quick flashes then one longer one. She clicked on her torch and pointed it out into the dark. Two longer flashes. She clicked it off again. Waited.

  It seemed to take forever before she heard the shiver of the water, then the quiet shift of gravel on the beach as a wooden boat was pulled to the edge of the gentle surf. She went forward alone. The crew consisted of two oarsmen and a man she assumed to be an officer, all wearing the woolen trousers and canvas overalls of the local fishermen.

  “Ready for the parade?” she asked.

  “Mother sent balloons,” he replied. “God, are you English?”

  “Australian. Long story.”

  He nodded. It was not the ideal time to chat. “How many packages?”

  “Twenty. One special delivery from the Gestapo, and Auntie sent extra from the camp. Can you take them all?”

  He hesitated. Then spoke firmly. “We’ll manage. And sorry to be late, patrols have stepped up all along the coast. This route is not going to work in the future. Navy can’t risk a submarine here now to pick up escapees.”

  She turned and waved the men in from their hiding places round the edge of the beach as she replied. “Bastards have made the Pyrenees route almost impassable too. Just hurry up and win the damn war, will you?”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  He nodded appreciatively as the men emerged in orderly fashion from their hiding places among the low undergrowth above the high-water mark and were helped into the boat.