by Richard Wake
“But—”
“It’s—”
“I know, it makes no sense,” I said, and then went on to spout my theory about how they were just trying to prolong their time away from their Gestapo bosses.
“But what if they go a different way?”
“I have that covered,” I said. “And if I’m wrong, we’ll do it your way on Tuesday.”
They all looked at each other, heads shaking back and forth.
“You want to do this tomorrow?” the Combat guy said. He checked his wristwatch. “Like, 18 hours from now?”
They all looked at each other again, seemingly uncertain. But then the guy from Liberation shrugged theatrically and said, “What the hell. Okay, what do you need? How many men?”
“I don’t need men,” I said. “I have some help, and I honestly believe that fewer men will be better.”
I explained what I needed. They said it would not be a problem. We talked about the mechanics a little more. Then we drank another toast — again, to the future.
50
Marcel said he would drive me back to the flat. I wanted to sit next to him in the front seat and enjoy the ride. He insisted I go back onto the floor of the back seat, again beneath the blanket.
I objected and said, “It’s a good disguise. I’m willing to risk it. It’s my ass on the line.”
He just looked at me, and shook his head, and said, “Self-absorbed much, are you?”
So I went beneath the blanket. We were at the flat in about 20 minutes. Marcel parked, and we both were standing on the sidewalk, when he flipped me the keys. Surprised, I fumbled them and then dropped them.
“What’s this?” I said.
“I listened to everything you told the council,” he said. “And I think you’re probably going to need another vehicle. You might need it in the morning. You might need it later. But I think you’re probably going to need it.”
“But—”
“Shut up,” Marcel said. “There’s about a half-tank of petrol left. There are two full jerry cans in the trunk. If I had to guess, you could go about 150 miles with all of that, maybe closer to 200.”
“But—”
“Again, shut up. You’re going to need options pretty soon, whether the rescue works or not. If you get her, you and Manon and probably Leon are going to have to hide somewhere for a while. If you don’t get her, you’re going to need to fucking run.”
“I’m not running without her.”
“You say that now,” he said. “But suicide doesn’t become you. You’ll need to survive if you’re ever going to have a chance to save her. And this will give you another option.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Just fucking say thank you,” Marcel said. We hugged and whispered simultaneously, “Vive la France.” I’m not sure I had ever said it before on my own, without prompting. Before that, it had always been as a polite reply to someone else.
He walked away, then stopped and turned. “Oh yeah,” he said. “If you get a chance, drop me a note at the shop to tell me where you leave it. Oh, and don’t think I forgot that you didn’t buy a stamp after your last visit.”
“But the last one I bought was shit.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said. “Don’t I know it.”
When I got inside the flat, Raymond was already there with Leon. They were drinking from a fairly full bottle of Calvados. I held it up and whistled in appreciation.
“We keep it for special occasions, but Marie made me take it,” Raymond said. “It being a special occasion and all.”
“I thought you weren’t going to tell her.”
“I had to,” he said. “And I was right — she wanted to help. And I actually thought of a way.”
“But you don’t even know the plan yet,” I said.
“I know. But you tell me, and then I’ll tell you if it makes sense.”
My original thought was that Raymond would have to be in uniform and “requisition” a vehicle from the police station in order to play his part. But now, with Marcel’s generosity, there was another option: Raymond could be in civilian clothes and drive Marcel’s car instead. We debated back and forth because there were pluses and minuses to each version. In the end, we decided on Marcel’s car and civilian clothes.
I didn’t have a city map, so I had to draw the key streets freehand on a tablet. I was pretty close to having it exactly correct, and certainly close enough — because Leon would have plenty of time to get in position, even if he got a little bit lost initially, and because Raymond had been posted all over the city during his career as a cop and knew the neighborhood pretty well already.
We went over the plan several times, and the truth was that it sounded more and more plausible as the bottle of Calvados grew emptier and emptier. After a while, the three of us settled into long silences that were broken only by the sound of refilling glasses and random questions.
“What about the lorry?” Leon said.
“They’re bringing it,” I said. “Right to the curb out front. Sometime during the night. And the gun will be in the glove box, a pistol with at least four bullets. It seems like the bullets are the hardest part.”
“And what about the other prisoners?” Raymond said.
“We let them go, and hope they run like hell,” I said. “It’s a risk if they get caught, and I know that. But if they do, we can only hope that they have shitty memories for faces.”
We turned out the lights at 10, so as not to draw attention to ourselves on a dark, quiet block, where everyone was likely trying to sleep before work on Monday morning. We kept our voices low. The random questions became less frequent. At around midnight, we all heard a vehicle park in front and the slam of a door. I peeked out from behind the curtain, and it was the lorry, as promised.
“Wait,” I said. “What was your plan for Marie?”
“Oh, right,” Raymond said, and he told us.
“But I thought—”
“Alex, think about it,” he said. “This is better.”
“I don’t know.”
We fell asleep undecided.
51
We all slept until sunrise, despite our nerves; God bless Calvados. Until about 7:30, we went over the plan a few more times until each of us could repeat the details flawlessly. We even synchronized our watches, mostly because it made sense but partly because it was something Raymond once saw in a movie.
We would leave the flat separately, not so much for any security reasons but because of the realities of our travel schedules. I would leave first, at about 8, because I was walking. Then Raymond would leave at about 8:15 because he needed to drive out of the way to pick up Marie before going to the prison. Leon would leave last, at about 8:30, because his was the straightest and shortest route.
One more time, I dusted off my old friends for duty — the cassock, the wide-brimmed black hat, and the breviary. I wondered if this would be the last day I wore them. It wasn’t a meditation on my own mortality, although I was about to put that mortality to a pretty severe test. It was mostly a law of averages calculation. The disguise had been so good to me, for so long and in so many situations, but how much longer could that possibly continue? How much longer before they compared enough eyewitness reports of a priest following Vogl on his route to Avenue Berthelot, and another priest gawking at his fallen body, and now another priest leaving the scene of the lorry hijacking, before some star pupil in a black uniform figured it was just one too many priests in wide-brimmed hats for it to be a coincidence?
Still, the disguise would have to serve me this one last day. I pulled on the cassock over my regular clothes, which included an added accessory: the pistol jammed into the waist of my pants. It had five bullets, one more than promised. It was my lucky day, although I was hoping to get away with firing only two.
I was oddly calm on the walk over. I knew I would be shitting myself in the moment, but for some reason, I felt great during the buildup. I just kept recitin
g the details, again and again and again.
Raymond would arrive at Montluc at 8:55. He was to park on the same street as the main gate, but a block away. When he stopped the car, he would pull up the hood as if there was a problem with the engine. He would take off his coat, and roll up his sleeves, and remove the tool kit from the trunk and begin tinkering. If anyone happened by and had a question, or offered help, he would say that it looked like one of the wires had come loose from the battery somehow, and that he would tighten it and be on his way. Marie would be waiting inside the car, reading a newspaper. Raymond had won that argument.
Raymond’s job was simple: to be in a position to see whether Manon was loaded onto the lorry with the rest of the prisoners. If she was, the original plan was for him just to drive away, his part completed. Now, though, if Manon was on the lorry, Raymond and Marie were supposed to follow the lorry on its journey, but not closely. They should stay at least a block behind, and maybe more.
But if Manon was not among the load of prisoners, Raymond needed to speed up and do everything he could to get in front of the lorry, blowing his horn loudly and angrily and often enough so that Leon and I would hear, several blocks ahead. A persistent horn was the signal to abort the mission. This was the part where a police car would have been a better option because of the siren. The downside was that Lyon police cars had identifying numbers, and Raymond would have been at more of a risk if someone remembered the number. All in all, this would work better — provided he really leaned on the horn.
As I made my way, the sidewalk began to fill with the people of Lyon, people heading to their jobs. No one gave me a second look. They all had their own problems, most of which involved finding enough to eat. It was the constant in Lyon and all over France. Pretty much every day, you went to work hungry. And pretty much every night, you left work and attempted to scrounge up some dinner. There were always two questions — how many coupons do I have left, and will the store have anything to buy except those goddamn Jerusalem artichokes?
That day, I felt privileged because I didn’t feel particularly hungry, mostly because I did feel slightly hungover. It was as if the hangover was a welcome distraction, not that it kept me from running the plan through my head in a continuous loop.
While Raymond was setting up at the prison, Leon was to drive the small lorry provided by the Resistance to Rue Saint-Hippolyte and wait at the corner where it intersected with Petite Rue de Montplaisir. The street was, as the named suggested, petite. For the lorry containing the prisoners, it was quite snug. If the driver could manage 20 miles an hour, it would be an accomplishment. It was much more likely he’d be doing 15, and maybe 10. It was the most insane stretch of the entirely insane route. If Leon was parked right at the corner, he would have no trouble seeing the lorry slowly maneuvering down the tiny street and pulling in front of it to block its path.
As I walked, there were enough people on the streets that I began to get worried. Leon would be parked about 150 feet from a relatively busy street. What were the odds, just after 9, that no bystander would happen upon the operation? It was tough to know. If we were quick enough, it wouldn’t be a problem. If we were unlucky, it would be the same risk as with the other prisoners. All we could do was hope they didn’t get a good look at any of our faces. There really wasn’t a choice because this was the best spot and we had no control over the timing.
So, at maybe five minutes past 9, Leon would pull out in front of the lorry, blocking its path. Then he would act as if he stalled out when trying to shift into reverse and was stuck, which wouldn’t be hard because Leon couldn’t drive for shit. But even if it was an act, it wouldn’t have to be for long.
Because while all of that was happening, I would step out from the alley that separated two of the buildings on Petite Rue de Montplaisir and do what I needed to do. One shot, two shots, fin. And then we would grab the keys from the guard, unlock Manon and the rest of the prisoners, and make our escape. Leon would take the truck alone. Manon would get in the car with Raymond and Marie, which was just pulling up from behind and parked, about 100 feet back, and ready to avoid the bottleneck by making a left turn onto Rue de la Promenade.
And I would walk back into the alley, pull the cassock over my head, push the black hat down low, pick up my breviary, and walk out of the other side of the alley a little farther down onto Rue Saint-Hippolyte.
52
I turned left onto Petite Rue de Montplaisir. My period of calm had passed, and the needle on the dial, which featured a scale from Zero to Shitting Myself, was moving persistently to the right. As I turned, I gave a quick peek over my shoulder, which was bad spy craft — but I didn’t care. I needed the reassurance that nobody was following me as I turned onto the quiet, narrow street, and nobody was.
I got a second look about 15 seconds later when I crossed the street and made the right-hand turn onto Rue Saint-Hippolyte. I was gloriously clean, and there was no one on the street ahead of me, either. After another 15 seconds, I ducked into the alley that formed two sides of the perimeter of the building that sat on the corner. I would walk in one side, on Rue Saint-Hippolyte, make the left at the alley’s deepest point, and then come out on Petite Rue de Montplaisir.
There were some big trash bins, and it was behind them that I removed the cassock and the hat, leaving me in ordinary work clothes. I checked my watch, and it was five minutes before nine. If the mission was to be aborted because Manon was not on the lorry, Raymond would theoretically begin blasting his car horn in five minutes. If there was no horn, the lorry from Montluc would be in front of me about five minutes after that.
I wanted to venture out to the end of the alley to take a quick peek and see if Leon was in position with the lorry that the Resistance had provided. I actually took a step in that direction and then stopped myself. What was the point? None, actually. If Leon wasn’t there, I would know soon enough — because the lorry from the prison would drive right by me if he wasn’t there. If he was there, the lorry would be stopped and I would do what I had to do. But to go out and look would just be to risk giving my position away to some bystander who happened upon the scene. There was no need for that. In fact, it was stupid even to have considered it.
I looked again at my watch. Two minutes before nine. My hands were shaking but only a little bit. I was actually surprised that my fear was not showing worse — because it was intense. The only way I could distract myself was to think about Manon. Of course, every time I did that, my mind would wander to the worst. At one point, I actually imagined what her left hand would look like with her pinky lopped off. Would I even notice if she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring anymore? A second after that gruesome sight filled my mind’s eye, I managed a focus, goddammit that I verbalized loud enough that I felt as if it might have echoed in the closed space.
My watch, again. It was 9 o’clock.
I crept out toward the entrance of the alley on Petite Rue de Montplaisir. I needed to stick my head out, at least a little, to listen for a blaring car horn, first in the distance and then growing louder. But there was nothing. I cocked my ear to the right, in the direction of the prison — and, nothing. But then I thought I heard something coming from the left. I looked, and the first thing I saw was Leon in his truck, sitting on the corner of Rue Saint-Hippolyte. So that was good. But what was the noise? I was pretty sure that it was a train blowing its horn, but the tracks were easily a mile away. Was it crazy that I could hear it? And was it really to the left, or was it a noise coming from the right and the sound waves were ricocheting off of a building?
Steady, steady. Focus, goddammit. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate some more on any sounds coming from my right, from the direction of Montluc. But there was nothing.
My watch. It was 9:03, and all was quiet. This was really happening. I looked quickly at Leon, and from 100 or so feet away, our eyes still managed to meet. We traded a nod. Yes, this was really happening.
I stepped back into the alley
to wait. Maybe two minutes later, maybe three, it all began to unfold. I could feel my heart in my chest but, at the same time, it felt as if everything was happening in slow motion. I felt like I was underwater.
The lorry from Montluc rumbled slowly down the street, its exhaust farting once in exasperation at the slow speed. Leon pulled out exactly as planned, and the prison lorry stopped. The driver threw his hands in the air as if outraged by the delay. Leon waved back in what appeared to be a sincere apology. Then he struggled to get the lorry into reverse and put on a very convincing show of looking very much like a new driver who was choking under the pressure.
That’s when I came out of the alley.
My thought all along had been to shoot the guard first and the driver second. The risk was that the driver would floor it in response to the shot and turn a relatively controlled situation for me into a total fucking mess. But the risk the other way was just as plain. I wasn’t sure that the driver was armed, but I knew the guard was — so shooting the driver first would give the guard more time to get to his weapon. I debated it, and even adding in that the driver would be closest to me as I approached the lorry, I still thought it made sense to shoot the guard first. And so I did.
One shot to the head. The driver did not floor it — he simply froze. He got the second bullet, also to the head. One, two. I felt nothing, other than relief. They were two Frenchmen, just working for a living, maybe true Nazi believers but more likely just a couple of saps who couldn’t think of another way to feed their families. It could have been Raymond if he had been a prison guard before the war instead of a city cop. But I really didn’t care. One, two.
Leon jumped out of his lorry and ran to get the keys from the dead guard’s pocket. I reflexively wiped the gun off on my shirttail and dropped it down a sewer on the corner. I didn’t really care if the Gestapo found the gun or not. Honestly, my first thought was to take the remaining three bullets out of the revolver so I could give them back to the Resistance.