by Richard Wake
“And where will I be?” I said.
“You wait at the opening in the middle of the hedgerow. Manon will be in the same place on the other side. And when you see the plane land, you run for it and she’ll do the same thing and, if it all works out, you’ll be eating a plate of that godawful British food in no time.”
“It’s got to be better than what we have here,” I said.
“Maybe,” Marcel said. “But think about it. It takes the fucking Nazis to turn their culinary crap into something desirable.”
The idea of leaving Leon behind still bothered me. I tried, for the third time, to talk him into tagging along. He declined, for the third time, each attempt increasingly more pissed off.
“First off, I wasn’t invited,” he said. “But even if I was, I couldn’t go. I belong here. I belong in Paris, really. Nobody’s looking for me. My picture isn’t on any wanted posters. I don’t have a pregnant wife who just spent a couple of days in a Gestapo cell. It’s just different for you.”
“I know, but—”
“No buts,” Leon said. “Just fucking get on the plane and send me a postcard. Maybe one with those guards in the red outfits.”
Marcel checked his wristwatch again. It was time for Leon and him to get in their places. They each grabbed a torch and scuttled their way to either end of the hedgerow. I scuttled, too, the short distance to the opening. I looked through it in an attempt to see Manon, but it was too dark. I would be able to see her on the field, but the hedgerows threw enough of a shadow to leave me, and I assumed her, in a deep green darkness.
And then I just listened. I heard the faintest bit of wind in the trees behind us where the car was hidden. I did not hear an airplane engine. I counted to 60, and then I counted to 60 again, and nothing. The plane was late. I began to fidget. I needed to take a nervous piss. I wanted to crab-walk my way back over to Marcel to see what he thought, but that would be stupid. I decided on the piss instead, figuring that one of the rules of human existence would kick in. It was the same rule that said you could stand at a bus stop and lean out expectantly seemingly forever, but that the bus would not show up until you gave up and sat down on the bench.
And so, I was halfway through the piss when Leon was the first of the four to switch on his torch. I had not heard anything. But then the rest came on, and the box’s four corners were lit, and the noise of the airplane grew uncomfortably loud. At a certain point, I could see it, moonlit at times, and then in the clouds, and then moonlit again. It passed over the field, and I wondered if the pilot had seen the lights, but then it banked and turned. He saw us and was just getting his nose turned back toward England as he landed.
He was coming in crazily steep, it seemed to me. Then again, I didn’t know shit about flying an airplane. Still, he landed hard and bounced noticeably, once, then twice. But he had the thing under control, and was braking to a stop, much closer to Manon’s hedgerow than to mine. I probably had 350 feet to run. She would have about 150 feet. That was good. She would get to the plane first and get set, and then I would dive in we would be gone.
As soon as it became clear that the brakes would hold, I began to sprint. I was maybe 10 strides into my run when the three floodlights were switched on at once. The first thing I did was stare at the lights, which were perched on the back of vehicles hidden on a hill, in another row of trees behind the other hedgerow. The second thing I did was look for Manon, and I did see her. She must have started running before me because she was nearly to the plane.
I could see her face, just for a flash, and it did not show fear, not a bit. It just showed determination, the will that defined her. It was the face I had fallen in love with.
It was the only thought I had when I heard the first gunshot, and when I felt that I had been hit in the right leg.
I fell to the ground and instinctively covered my head. I heard several more shots — rifle shots, not a machine gun. That’s when I heard Manon scream.
Suddenly, amid the firing, the airplane was accelerating and gaining altitude, flying right over the lights. They must have been searchlights, employed specifically with this purpose in mind, and they followed the plane into the sky, and the shooting continued. Because of that, the field was dark again. I did my best to get to my feet, but immediately fell back down. From my back, I turned to where the plane had been, but I couldn’t see anything. It was too dark. I thought I yelled Manon’s name, but I wasn’t sure. The only thing I was sure about was that I did not hear a reply.
I was in the process of passing out. The last thing I remembered was Marcel and Leon getting me upright and carrying me, one beneath each armpit.
56
I was in and out of consciousness for the better part of a day, I figured. I remembered bits of the ride in Marcel’s car, with me stretched out on the back seat and Leon kneeling on the floor and applying pressure to my wound. The bullet caught me on the back of the thigh. At least, that’s where he was pressing.
The next memory was of being stretched out, face-down, on a long table. A doctor, or whatever reasonable facsimile that the Resistance could provide, was peering into the wound while holding a flashlight. He said, to someone, “He’s fainting because of the blood loss but I think he’s lucky as hell. Doesn’t look like anything major was hit, and there are two holes. Bullet went in one hole and out the other. He’s going to be fine. Just let him sleep. If he wakes up, give him a little whiff.”
I assumed it was chloroform, or some such thing. I didn’t remember anything after that until I woke for good. Leon was sitting in a chair next to the bed.
“Manon,” I said.
He couldn’t look at me. I had known Leon since I was 17, and he couldn’t look at me.
“Tell me,” I said.
“We don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I’m telling you, we don’t know.”
“But how is that possible?” I said. I was sitting up by then, sort of. Actually, I was propped up on my left elbow. All the weight would be borne by the left side of my body for a while, I guessed.
“How much do you remember?” Leon said.
“I remember being shot, and I remember hearing Manon scream.”
“Okay,” he said. “Here’s what we know. After you went down, Marcel and I dragged your ass out of there as fast as we could and back to the car. The field was dark again by then — the lights all followed the plane. So we couldn’t see anything.”
“You mean you couldn’t see Manon,” I said. “So she probably made it on to the plane, right?”
“We’re hoping, but we don’t know,” Leon said. “The next morning, this morning — it’s all running together — we went back to the field. There were two bodies there, the men from Le Franc-Tireur who had taken Manon to the site and were holding the two torches on that side. They were in a terrible spot — the search lights were hidden in the trees behind them. They were completely lit up. They never had a chance.”
“But you didn’t find Manon, right?”
“Right,” Leon said.
“So that means she made it on to the plane,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said. “But what if she was wounded and the Gestapo scooped her up for more questioning? Or what if she escaped on her own and is hiding someplace? Or what if—”
“What if she was wounded and died on the plane,” I said. It shocked me how matter-of-factly I spoke the sentence.
“Yeah,” Leon said. And then the silence crushed us.
We listened to the BBC that night, and there was no message. We didn’t know what we were waiting for — there wasn’t a pre-arranged code — but we figured we would know it when we heard it. The group surrounding the radio was intense on the one hand and wasted on the other. My pregnant wife was missing, but I still had hope. The other three huddled along with Leon and I had lost close friends on that field, comrades in the greatest brotherhood in France. When they signed up, they knew that danger and death wo
uld always be just through the next door, but that never made it any easier. One of the dead men was the brother of the kid sitting to my right. The kid was borderline catatonic.
We listened to the list of favorite new songs, and the recipe for apple pie, and the various birthday greetings, and the snippet from some Shakespeare play, and all the rest, but none of it seemed to apply to us, or Manon, or an airplane under fire. On that much we agreed.
The next night, the same.
The next night, the same.
I was growing frantic. I wanted to find someone willing to go to Montluc with a bundle of women’s clothes, on the hope that they would tell us that Manon was there. But it was impossible to ask the men who were hiding in the same cellar as Leon and I. It was just too dangerous. In truth, it likely was suicide.
When the time came on the fourth night, we gathered again around the radio. I still had hope, but I couldn’t tell if anyone else did. Even Leon seemed resigned to… something. He was almost as catatonic as the kid.
He stayed that way through the entire broadcast, through the soft snap the knob made when the radio was switched off.
If you enjoyed this book, the fourth book in the Alex Kovacs series — “The Limoges Dilemma” — is currently available.
Please check it out, along with my other work. Here’s the web address of my Amazon author page:
https://www.amazon.com/author/richardwake
Thanks!
ENJOY THIS BOOK? YOU CAN REALLY HELP ME OUT.
The truth is that, as a new author, it is hard to get readers’ attention. But if you have read this far, I have yours – and I could use a favor.
Reviews from people who liked this book go a long way toward convincing future readers of its worth. It won’t take five minutes of your time, but it would mean a lot to me. Long or short, it doesn’t matter.
Thanks!
About the Author
Richard Wake is the author of the Alex Kovacs thriller series. His website can be found at richardwake.com. You can connect with Richard on Facebook or you can send him an email at [email protected].