by Terry Deary
‘That’s where my plan comes in,’ Brigit said patiently. ‘It was you that gave me the idea, Monsieur Caron,’ she went on.
The little man’s chest swelled. ‘Yes, I am full of ideas. I am the brains of this group.’
‘Pah,’ Marie Marcel said with scorn. ‘If your brains were explosives, you wouldn’t have enough to blow your cap off.’ She turned to Brigit. ‘So what is your idea?’
‘Monsieur Caron said he used to be a trainspotter. If I pretend to be a trainspotter I can get close enough to the engines to plant a bomb. No one is going to suspect a girl with a notebook, collecting engine numbers.’
‘They are,’ the reporter said with a sigh. ‘I went trainspotting for twenty years from the age of seven and in all that time I never saw a girl collecting numbers.’
Brigit shrugged. ‘Fine. Then I’ll have to become a boy.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘I know trouble when I see it’
Friday, 6 June 1941: Berlin
General Fischer sat at his office desk. Colonel Roth stood to attention at the other side. ‘Bray, Colonel. You told me it was a quiet sector.’
‘That’s what our Major Strauss said, sir,’ Roth replied, and jerked his chin upwards nervously.
‘A second train accident in a week. A shipment of tanks destroyed. And does Strauss still say there are no Resistance workers operating in the Bray sector?’
‘Yes, sir. He visited the engine driver in hospital …’
‘The engine driver?’ Fischer growled. ‘A train and fifty tanks were destroyed yet the driver survived?’
‘Yes, sir. It seems the driver heard a driving wheel crack and the whole engine shuddered. He knew it was going too fast to stop with all that weight pushing it downhill. He told the fireman to jump and he leaped after him.’
‘A German driver?’
‘No, sir, a French crew.’
Fischer slammed a meaty fist on the desk. A tray of pens rattled. ‘Even more suspicious.’
‘It could be an accident, sir.’
‘Two in a week, Colonel Roth. Two in a week. Have a team of Gestapo men ready as soon as you can. One more “accident” in Bray and we send them in. Not bus inspectors and pensioners. I want killers. Ruthless killers.’
‘We don’t want to upset the local people, sir. Sending in a brutal gang could turn them against us.’
Fischer leaned forward and strained against his tight black uniform. ‘Wrong, Roth. We do not want to upset Herr Hitler. We are invading Russia in the east. Millions of men are taking part. He is too busy to bother about the people of Bray. But if he hears about fifty precious tanks being wrecked he may just ask you, and me, and Major Strauss how that could happen. So, Colonel Roth, do you want to risk turning the people of Bray against us? Or turning Herr Hitler against us?’
‘Understood, sir,’ Roth replied with a click of his brilliant black boots.
Bray
Brigit walked through the empty streets of Bray. She came across an old woman on her doorstep. ‘Where is everyone?’ Brigit asked.
‘Are you a stranger, lad?’ the woman asked.
‘Just visiting my grand-maman,’ Brigit said quickly.
‘The workers left at sunrise,’ the woman explained. ‘And the shoppers won’t leave their homes till they hear the shops have something to sell. They’re too afraid to be seen outside.’
‘Why?’ Brigit asked.
The old woman looked at her as if she were stupid and spoke slowly. ‘Everyone knows about the German train that was wrecked last night. We’re just waiting for the Gestapo to arrive and punish the innocent as well as the guilty.’
‘They will try to catch the Resistance workers … but they won’t harm the ordinary people.’
‘Ha,’ the woman spat. ‘Haven’t you heard about the village in Central France – Oradour-sur-Glane? Six hundred and forty-two French men, women and children were killed in just a few hours.’
‘No I haven’t heard about that,’ Brigit said quietly. ‘What happened?’
‘The Germans were angry at the way the Resistance was sabotaging their supplies. The local Resistance even had the nerve to kidnap a German officer. The Gestapo acted. The women and children were locked in the church and the enemy placed a fire-bomb beside it. When it was lit, two hundred and forty-seven women and two hundred and five children died.’
‘How terrible!’ Brigit gasped.
‘One survivor lived to tell of the horror. She was called Marguerite. She escaped through a rear window of the church, followed by a young woman and child. All three were shot, and two of them died. Marguerite crawled to some pea bushes and stayed hidden overnight until she was found and rescued the next morning.’
A cat joined the woman on the doorstep and she stroked it. The sun was warm, but the houses seemed to shiver with fear.
‘But we must fight the invaders,’ Brigit argued.
‘Why?’ the old woman asked. For the first time she looked up at the child and squinted. She showed her pink and toothless gums. Before Brigit could think of an answer she went on. ‘Not everyone agrees with you. Some people in this town want to just keep their heads down. Survive. Wait for the war to end then carry on like before. And some people in this town will happily tell the Gestapo who the Resistance workers are.’
‘Would you?’ Brigit asked quietly.
‘No, lad, I won’t betray you. I’m just saying, trust nobody. Now get about your business and if the Gestapo knock on my door I’ll forget I ever saw you.’
‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ Brigit objected.
‘Not yet, you haven’t. But you’ve mischief in your eyes. I’ve seen three wars now – I was your age in 1871 when the Germans beat us – and I know trouble when I see it. Now be on your way.’
Brigit looked around anxiously. The dark windows of the houses and cottages seemed to be watching her. If the old woman knew she was planning something, then who else did? She could turn around and go back. Blacksmith Legrande would understand, but Marie Marcel and Henri Caron would say it proved that she and her mother were German spies.
The girl reached the railway station and walked past it to the depot where the trains were being loaded and shunted. She carried five lumps of explosive, each painted black to look like a lump of coal, and each with the tip of a pencil bomb sticking out, ready to be crushed. They were all on a twelve-hour timer. They would go off at around midnight.
‘Put them in the fire door of the engines before the drivers light the fire,’ Henri Caron had told her. ‘No one will notice an extra lump of coal in there. And it will blow out the back of the boiler. It will take weeks to fix each one. Pick the largest engines – not the little shunters. The big locos are the ones that pull the supply trains.’
‘What if someone lights the fire before the timer goes off?’ Brigit asked.
The reporter gave a wheezing laugh. ‘Then they’ll be blown up with the engine. And serve them right. If it’s a German driver then he’s the enemy. If it’s a French driver then he shouldn’t be working for them, should he?’
But Brigit was shocked to think her bomb could kill a Frenchman. Before she left Colette’s farm she wrote five notes, in French, with a heavy charcoal stick. Each one read:
My friend, if you are French do NOT light this engine fire before morning.
So it didn’t look odd, she added:
The firebox needs a small repair and is dangerous.
She would stick the notes on the doors to the firebox and hope the French drivers would understand.
She began to cross the lines towards the engine shed. ‘What are you doing, boy?’ a voice asked. ‘Get off the lines. There are trucks being shunted back and forth all the time. Have you ever seen someone crushed between two trucks? Not pretty.’
Brigit turned to see a man in a soot-stained, navy-blue uniform and cap. He had blackened hands and grease and ashes on his cheerful face. ‘I just thought I’d try and collect some engine numbers,’ she
said quickly.
‘Then come to the back of the shed and I’ll show you around. What’s your name, son?’
‘Call me Thomas,’ Brigit said.
As they walked by the old blackened brick of the shed the man chatted. ‘I’m Albert Moreau. And you remind me of one of my sons, Martin.’
‘How many sons do you have?’ Brigit asked.
‘Three sons and two daughters, all fine young people,’ he replied proudly. ‘But none of them interested in trains. It’s good to see a boy who is.’
Brigit nodded and they entered the cool gloom of the shed with the sharp scent of burned coal that made her eyes sting.
The man patted the two-metre-tall wheels of the first locomotive. ‘This is a four-cylinder compound 4-6-0 no. 230.637. One of the Ouest series 2701–2820 built between 1908 and 1912. But you probably know that better than I do, Thomas. I can see you love trains.’
‘I do.’
Albert Moreau gave a great sigh. ‘Last night the Resistance wrecked a train carrying German tanks, you know?’
‘I heard,’ Brigit said.
The engine-driver lowered his voice. ‘I have to work for the enemy, so I don’t mind their supplies being damaged. But that locomotive was one of ours… a class 40 TA. I drove her many times and I was close to tears when I heard they’d destroyed her. But that’s war.’ He sniffed. ‘Want to look inside the cab?’
‘Oh, yes please,’ Brigit said, and he lifted her up on to the footplate. She took in the maze of pipes and levers, dials and handles. To her joy the fire door was open. Before the driver could climb up to join her she pulled a piece of fake coal from her pocket, squeezed the copper tube till the cupric chloride was released, then threw it deep inside the firebox. In twelve hours it would explode.
Monsieur Moreau climbed up beside her. ‘I’ll show you some of the other locomotives now. I have a few hours before I leave. Just time to run home for supper before I fire up my engine.’
Brigit looked out of the cab window at the dozen locomotives crowded into the shed. ‘Which one is yours?’ she asked.
‘Ah, this one is,’ the man said with a smile and patted the engine where she had left the bomb. ‘I love her as much as my children.’
Brigit groaned. And she wanted to scream.
Chapter Thirty
‘You leave in a coffin or not at all’
‘What’s wrong?’ Albert Moreau asked, seeing Brigit hold her head in her hands.
‘I’ve just thrown a bomb into your firebox. It will explode at midnight – unless you light the fire first and then it will blow you up with it.’
The driver shook his head. ‘So why are you telling me?’
‘I thought we were just destroying machines, I never meant to kill my own people.’
‘Then I shall have to make sure you do a better job,’ the man said eagerly. He reached into the firebox and pulled out the bomb. ‘There are quite a few engines in here that won’t be leaving before morning. I know which ones they are. How would it be if I planted your bombs in them? They’ll go off in the night, no one will be hurt, but the German supplies will be badly hit.’
Brigit looked up at his soot-smudged, kindly eyes. ‘Why would you do that?’
He shrugged with both shoulders. ‘For the same reason as you. I don’t like being told what to do by the invaders… but I don’t want to kill anyone, Thomas.’
Brigit held out a hand. ‘I am proud to shake your hand, Monsieur Moreau. And you can call me Brigit.’
He grinned. ‘I thought you were an odd sort of boy.’
*
That evening, when the saboteurs met in Colette’s barn, Brigit spoke first. ‘I have planted the bombs. They will explode at midnight.’
‘I’ll go and watch,’ the blacksmith chuckled.
‘Better not,’ Aimee said. ‘The Germans don’t know we have these pencil timers. They will look for anyone who was hanging around the engine sheds at midnight.’
The others nodded.
Brigit went on, ‘But I almost killed a man today.’
Henri Caron looked up sharply. ‘Aren’t we supposed to do that?’
‘Not Frenchmen,’ the girl said. ‘Anyway, I thought soldiers were the ones doing the killing. We’re just here to make the job of the German soldiers harder.’
‘Mr Churchill didn’t send us to kill the invaders,’ Aimee put in. ‘He certainly never thought Brigit would be do any killing.’
‘But we killed the engine-drivers on the tank train,’ Henri Caron objected. The light from the oil lamp lit him from below and the smoke made him look like a devil fresh from Hell. ‘Who knows if the driver and his fireman were French or German?’
‘I do,’ Marie Marcel said quietly.
The others looked at her in surprise. ‘What were they?’ the blacksmith asked.
‘They were French.’
‘But…’
‘How did I know?’ the teacher asked. ‘What do you think I do all day? Sit at home knitting socks for soldiers? Planting potatoes for victory? No. I go around and talk to people. In my time I taught a thousand boys and girls at the college. Most of them still live around Bray. I visit them or meet them in the cafés that are still open. We talk about the old days and we talk about what they are doing now. Some are working for the Germans because they must. Some work for the Germans because they believe they will rule us forever and we may as well make friends.’
‘Collaborators,’ Henri Caron hissed. ‘When the war is over they will pay for their treachery.’
Marie Marcel shrugged her narrow shoulders. ‘Some of my old pupils pretend to work in places like the factories, but they do as bad a job as they can.’
‘What has that to do with the train crash?’ Aimee asked.
‘One of my pupils, Jacques Defarge, was having a coffee and I started talking to him about his job. He said he was taking a locomotive to Amiens to collect a train of important German supplies. He said he hoped the Resistance would put a log on the line and wreck it.’
‘But he could be killed in the crash,’ Brigit said.
‘I said that if the Resistance heard about Jacques’ train, they might just arrange it,’ Marie Marcel went on. ‘And they’d do it at Leclerc Woods that night. The lad looked at me and he knew what I meant.’
‘What are you saying?’ Blacksmith Legrande asked and his low brow wrinkled.
‘I’m saying that Jacques knew that I could arrange it. I told him the woods near Leclerc would be a good place for the Resistance to strike, and when.’
‘I told you that,’ Henri Caron said. ‘We agreed it the night before. You betrayed our plan. You betrayed us all!’
‘Don’t be foolish, Caron,’ the teacher snapped. ‘Sooner or later we have to trust someone. I had to give him some idea of when and where the crash would happen, so he could be prepared to get off the train before it killed him.’
‘Did he make it?’ Brigit asked.
‘He broke a leg. I saw him in hospital this morning. He was quite happy to have a few months off driving trains for the invaders.’
‘I still say you put our lives at risk,’ Henri Caron grumbled.
‘Brigit risked her life this morning planting bombs in engines. If you are afraid to do what a child can do, then leave the group.’
Blacksmith Legrande jumped to his feet. ‘No one leaves,’ he roared. ‘You leave in a coffin or not at all.’ His face turned red with rage. The group fell silent. The blacksmith looked around. He lowered his voice. ‘No one leaves,’ he repeated and sank back to the floor in the circle of lamplight.
‘Thank you, Charles,’ Aimee said. ‘Now, can we agree on our next target? And do we agree we want no French people hurt?’ They all nodded. ‘Then I have an idea.’
The saboteurs turned towards her.
‘Let me tell you something that I remember from the last war. We were living in the farm when the German lorries arrived. By the end of the war they were making a terrible noise because they had no tyres le
ft. Germany was running out of rubber. There is a tyre factory on the other side of Bray. If we can destroy it then it will be a big blow to the invaders.’ She looked across at the teacher. ‘Do any of your pupils work in the Albert factory?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Marie Marcel. ‘But I can’t just walk up to the factory gates and ask, can I? The Germans will probably have it guarded anyway.’
‘Today I pretended to be a trainspotter,’ Brigit said. ‘What if I pretend to be a pupil at the college? I could say I was doing a project on rubber and wanted the factory to tell me about how it works?’
Aimee smiled. ‘You could make a plan of the factory and the best place to plant a bomb,’ she said.
‘While I talk to the workers and see if there are any of my old pupils who might leave a door unlocked at night,’ Marie Marcel said.
‘Do we all agree?’ Aimee asked.
‘It is a great plan, but do we have time?’ Henri Caron said. ‘I’ve heard the Gestapo are preparing to send in a fresh set of men. Hard men who will root out the saboteurs. When they hear about the locomotives being wrecked in the engine shed, they’ll know we’re here and won’t delay it any longer.’
‘Then we have to do as much damage as we can while we still can,’ Aimee said. ‘Then we’ll take a break and make sure Bray is the most peaceful town in France, till these hard men go away.’
Blacksmith Legrande sighed. ‘The Gestapo don’t scare me,’ he said.
‘They scare me,’ Henri Caron whispered. ‘And sometimes it’s being scared that saves your life.’
Chapter Thirty-One
‘Our lives will be much harder from now on’
Night fell, and the German curfew kept the people of Bray off the streets. Corporal Rudolf made his weary patrol around the moon-shadowed streets. A pair of soldiers from the army camp had been sent to help. But it was a punishment for them, so they spent as much time resting in the warmth of the church as they did looking out for saboteurs.
The Bray Resistance group had agreed to stay away from the engine sheds, but they made sure they were looking from the highest windows they could find when midnight drew near. Brigit, Aimee and Colette had a clear view of the town from the farm on the hill. They watched silently.