by Ariel Lawhon
We look like ridiculous mimes stumbling about the empty room as Rake shouts at us. “Ho there, Duckie! You’ve just walked straight into a wall!” or “Farmer! You won’t find anything while standing on the sofa!” There is no beginning or end, and I finally stand up and march over to Denis Rake.
“Here!” I say, grabbing his hand and pulling his fingers flat, “are your damn papers. I found them in the toilet. I hope you have a bit of soap because whoever was in there last messed the bowl up properly.”
* * *
—
“Now,” Denis Rake says, strapping a pack onto each of our backs as we stand at the edge of the obstacle course, “you need to do it in the dark.”
“What the hell did you put in here?” I ask, shifting the weight of my pack from one shoulder to the other, only to realize that it isn’t comfortable either way.
“Four tins of Spam,” he says.
“I detest Spam.”
“You don’t have to eat it, Duckie. Just carry it.”
John Farmer notes this pet name, looks from Rake to myself, and makes some calculation that I cannot read.
“But,” Rake announces, “that’s not all. Find a partner.”
Given that I am the only female and Farmer is the tallest among us, we are left to one another. Everyone else pairs up instantly. Rake hands out three neckties.
“What are these for?” Farmer demands.
“A bit of fun. You will do the course again, in the dark, with a partner, while wearing a pack, and your legs will be tied together.”
“Why?” I demand.
“To see how you work together and if you’ll help one another.” Denis Rake steps backward into the shadows. “Begin when I blow the whistle.”
“I hate him,” I hiss to Farmer. “This is bullshit. We won’t need a bit of it in France. The Nazis don’t care about obstacle courses or Spam. They just want to cut your throat while you sleep.”
“You’ve been there?” he asks.
“I just came from there.”
“Okay, then,” he says, setting the tie at our knees instead of our ankles and pulling it tight. “We get through this—it has to be together, though, or we’ll fail. And I hope to never see you again. Deal?” He sticks out his hand.
I shake it. “Deal.”
Denis Rake blows his whistle. It tears through the darkness and John Farmer and I move very carefully through the obstacle course. We aren’t the first to finish but we are the only uninjured pair.
* * *
—
By the time I’m allowed back into the Mad House, I am exhausted. I am filthy. I want to go home. And thanks to that last midnight run through the obstacle course, I’m fairly certain there is pond scum in my bra. Possibly my underwear as well. The thought of what I’ll find when I get to the shower makes me a little uneasy. But I strip off my clothes in the locker room and scrub myself clean regardless.
When I emerge, Denis Rake is waiting for me.
I glare at him. “If you tell me I have failed this test I am going to wring your neck.”
He looks at his clipboard. Tries not to smile. “I was instructed to wait here, not give you the results.”
“Why?”
“Because,” says a voice behind me, in the door, “I wanted to give them myself. I recommended you for this program after all.”
I cannot hide the smile on my face at the sound of that voice. The pure elation. The relief. I mean, what are the odds? A million to one? I turn and, despite my best efforts, burst into tears.
“Well,” I say, “if it isn’t Simón Bolívar, alive and in the flesh.”
He grins. “Welcome to the Special Operations Executive, Nance.”
Denis Rake straightens his back, lifts his hand, and salutes. “Lieutenant Colonel Garrow, sir!”
Madame Andrée
MONTLUÇON, FRANCE
August 16, 1944
Wolff and I stand facing each other. I am stunned to find that he is shorter than me, that I have to tilt my chin down to meet his dark, sunken eyes. I’ve never before seen eyes so soulless that the pupils are swallowed whole. The outer corners are pulled tight with recognition and I know that I have run out of time.
Wolff utters a single, guttural word. But German is a language I do not speak. And honestly, there is nothing he could say that I would care to hear. I have watched this man commit unspeakable acts without a hint of remorse.
I am not sorry for what I do. And I spend no time debating. I take a quick breath and lay my hand flat against my collarbone, as though afraid. Then I let that hand fly flat and hard through the air until it strikes the side of his throat, two inches below the ear, where, I have been taught, the spinal cord is most vulnerable. I feel the crunch and collapse of Wolff’s windpipe. It is so different, in reality, than it was in training, when we sat in the library at Inverie Bay and banged our hands against the wooden tables for hours at a time.
Wolff’s airway is demolished beneath the force of my hand. The impact hurts but not so much that I can’t bend my fingers. I am startled by the way his neck flattens, and how he begins to claw at his Adam’s apple. The simplicity of it is breathtaking.
I allow myself one moment to be amazed. It worked! Then I place that same hand on one of his shoulders and drive up hard, with my knee, right into his crotch. He drops to his knees, then on his side, thrashing on the elevator floor.
Wolff’s lips are turning blue. His face red. His eyes bulge as small capillaries begin to burst. But I am not done with him yet, and I do not care if he cannot understand English. I will speak in my mother tongue and it will be the last thing he hears.
“That is for Janos Lieberman. And for the old woman in Vienna who you tied to that waterwheel and whipped within an inch of her life.” A deep breath as my own pent-up rage begins to boil, then spill over. “It is for Olivia Soutine and her unborn child and the little girl you left without a mother—for the man you left without a wife. That is for every person you have killed. For every child you have left an orphan. For every Jew you’ve carried off to your slaughterhouses. For Patrick O’Leary and for Alex.” I take a step toward Wolff and put my foot on his neck, then press harder, hastening the process. “That is for France.”
When Wolff stops jerking and the foam fades from his lips, I realize that the elevator hasn’t moved, that I never pushed the button for the top floor. I am strangely elated by this, by the fact that I still have work to do.
“Going up?” I ask, stepping away from his still form and pressing the pad of my thumb to the number eight.
It is 12:57.
* * *
—
The elevator opens to reveal a short hallway—maybe thirty feet long—with a door at the opposite end leading to the stairwell and a second door, on the right wall, leading to the suite. A Gestapo agent is posted outside the suite, spine straight, hands folded. His head swivels to look at me even as one arm goes up in salute, and I think he must be expecting Wolff or another officer. Finding me instead, he drops the arm and gapes. It takes me two full heartbeats to realize that his eyes are not on my face but on the body at my feet. I can hear the din of conversation and laughter in the suite behind him. I can hear the hammering of my own heart.
His mouth opens, and I see the word Halt! forming on his lips when there is the creak of hinges and the blur of movement in the doorway at the end of the hall. He turns as Hubert and Denis step from the stairwell, guns drawn.
It takes only a fraction of a second for Hubert to assess the situation, and I see him mouth the word down. I drop even as Denis Rake moves forward, his Welrod pistol extended at the end of his long arm. My knees hit the elevator floor and Rake’s pistol makes a tiny crack—not much louder than the sound of knuckles being popped. The guard stumbles backward into the wall and begins to slide do
wn as a red splotch, the size of a saucer, spreads across his chest. A thin stream of smoke rises from the long barrel of Denis’s pistol and he looks startled, as though he can’t believe he pulled the trigger. It is the quietest gun I’ve ever heard. It suits Denis Rake perfectly.
I keep one hand pressed to the elevator door to keep it open as Hubert sprints down the hall to catch the guard before he crashes to the floor and alerts the officers in the room behind him. He grabs the man under his arms and lowers him to the floor. The soldier’s mouth opens and closes like that of a dying fish. Blue lips. Clenched fists. His face turns gray. He twitches at Hubert’s feet.
Denis Rake skirts them and rushes to me.
“Are you okay?” he hisses.
The entire thing has taken ten seconds. Maybe fifteen. But it played out in such excruciating detail that I feel as though I am caught in slow motion. “You shot him,” I say.
“I never said I couldn’t shoot. Just that I don’t like to.”
“But you’re not even drunk.”
“Don’t worry, Duckie, I will be soon.”
I move aside to show him the body on the elevator floor. “Wolff.” I nudge his body with one of my feet. “I promised you I’d kill him.”
His eyes are locked on the gruesome corpse. “How…?”
Denis helps me up and I hold my hand out flat and make the chopping motion he taught me.
“I told you it would work,” he says in a strangled voice as tears of gratitude flood his eyes.
“Quite effectively at that.”
Hubert is kneeling beside the dead guard, pulling a grenade from his pack and setting it on the floor. He glances at us, then to the body in the elevator, and offers a quick nod of approval.
“Where is Tardivat?” I ask Hubert.
“Guarding the stairwell. Come on, we don’t have much time.”
And then there is nothing left but the job we’ve come to do. It is 12:59.
Hubert and Denis move to either side of the door to the suite. I set my purse on the floor and carefully pull out a grenade. Hubert holds up one hand and begins counting down with his fingers.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Then he kicks the door open. There is a moment of startled silence as the Nazi officers within stare at him. They freeze, drinks in hand, cigarettes dangling from open mouths. Then bedlam. But there is only one door into the suite, and Hubert blocks the way out.
“Vive la France!” Hubert screams, and pulls the pin on his first grenade.
He tosses it into the room and turns away so Denis has room to do the same. Five seconds before it detonates. Shouting. Curses. Furniture being knocked over. Dishes breaking. Four seconds. Denis lobs his grenade directly into a group of men standing beside a buffet table. They swat at the device, then scatter. Three seconds. I pull my pin. I roll my grenade so that it lands three feet within the room and blocks the path of anyone lucky enough to escape. And then we run like mad toward the stairwell. Two seconds. The sound of four dozen grown men cursing, screaming, and crying is the last thing I hear before the ear-shattering boom Boom BOOM comes in quick succession. The windows explode outward and the air reverberates. Dust fills the hallway but no coughing, gurgling, or cries for help can be heard from within the room. For ten seconds we are surrounded by morbid silence and the salty, iron smell of blood.
Then I hear the sound of distant gunfire as Jacques begins picking off Nazi officers as they try to escape from the lower floors of the Hôtel d’Orcet.
FRAGNES
August 30, 1944
With the Nazi headquarters in Montluçon destroyed and the Germans facing assault from all directions, we decide to move our camp to more comfortable accommodations. But no sooner have we taken up residence in an empty château in Fragne, a few kilometers from Montluçon, than we get the news that Paris has been liberated.
On August 30, the morning of my thirty-second birthday, I wake to the blaring sound of a trumpet. I thrash out of bed, thinking that we are under attack, only to find Denis Rake standing in the doorway, face solemn.
“What is it?” I demand.
“Gaspard is here,” he tells me, one eyebrow cocked at the sight of my blue satin nightgown. “Get up. Get dressed. Meet me out front.”
I lie back for a full ten seconds, allowing myself to simmer with rage. That man! What the hell is wrong with that man? It seems as though every time something starts to go right, Gaspard steps in to ruin it. Tardivat’s Maquis have waged full-on war with the Germans stationed in and around Montluçon. Without their leaders they are unorganized and demoralized. Without escape routes, reinforcements, or a weapons supply, they are all but defeated. The maquisards have had more victories in the last two weeks than they have in the last two years combined.
Cursing, I pull off my nightgown. Yank on my underclothes. Trousers. Boots. Blouse. I run the brush so hard through my hair that I rip out knots. Scrub my teeth and leave my gums sore. Mine is a level of fury that requires two coats of lipstick and a fully loaded revolver.
Men run out of my path as I stomp through the château, murder in my eyes. Hubert and Denis stand on either side of the double front doors and they both take a step backward at my approach.
“Nance—” Hubert says.
“I don’t know what Gaspard has done this time,” I interrupt, “but I’ve had enough. I’m going to kill him.”
There is no time for further explanation, so he and Denis each grab a door handle and pull them wide. I am greeted by blazing sunshine and another blast from the trumpet.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light. And I see that Gaspard is indeed standing in the front drive. So are Fournier and Tardivat, along with Judex, Louis—newly released from the hospital and with his arm in a sling—Anselm, and every lieutenant in the French Resistance whom I have worked with over the last six months. My eighty maquisards are there as well, along with at least one hundred other men, all of them standing in the large circular driveway, straight as pins, arms at their sides, waiting.
“Happy birthday, Duckie,” Denis says, and then he and Hubert walk down the steps and join the others.
They turn sharply on their heels and stand at attention. There is one last trumpet blast, then every man before me raises his hand in salute. It is a show of respect. Of honor. Deference. They are acknowledging, one and all, that I am their leader.
MARSEILLES
September 1, 1944
“The Germans have evacuated Vichy! They are on the run!” Louis shouts two days later, stomping into the kitchen the moment I sit down to eat.
We gather our eighty maquisards and give them the news. Vichy is only an hour away, so we free them to go join their countrymen in taking back the last German stronghold in France.
“Aren’t you coming?” Louis asks when I don’t immediately run off with the others.
“No.” I shake my head and look at Hubert, Denis, and Anselm, daring them to defy me. “I am going to Marseille.”
“Your husband?” Louis asks.
I nod.
Louis lifts his chin and I see that he is trying not to cry. “He will be very proud of you.”
I say good-bye to Tardivat, Jacques, and Louis on the front steps of the Château de Fragne. I watch as my maquisards drive away, hanging out the windows, whooping and hollering, and I think that I have never loved any group of men more than I do right now.
“Are you sure you want to go?” I ask Hubert.
“Yes. We go where you go, Nance.”
* * *
—
Hubert, Anselm, Denis, and I drive south together, but the roads are clogged with countless other vehicles and it takes us twice as long as it should. It is a haphazard journey at best since the Allied air forces have destroyed every
major bridge and the Resistance has taken out most of the Routes Nationales. But we move forward through highways and byways the best we can, and I stare out the window in silence as Hubert drives. I am afraid to think. To speak. To hope. I am afraid of what I might find—or might not find—at home.
At sunset we reach the outskirts of Marseille and I do not even recognize my beloved city. The harbor has been bombed again and the boat docks are empty. Most of the buildings—the one that houses Henri’s shipping company included—are nothing but rubble. The streets are quiet. Half the lights are out. Everything is overgrown and unkempt.
“Where do you want to go?” Hubert asks, hands tight on the steering wheel.
“Just find somewhere to park,” I say, and he does.
And then my friends follow me as I begin picking my way through the broken streets toward the Hôtel du Louvre et Paix.
* * *
—
There are no swastikas hanging above the front columns. No Germans in the lobby. No Brownshirts in sight at all. But Antoine’s is full, and I can hear the sounds of celebration even from a distance. I wonder what we look like as we enter the bar. Warriors? Refugees? How ragged and weary and dirty. We clearly make a scene, because all conversation fades.
Heads turn.
Mouths drop.
And Antoine, my friend and coconspirator, looks up. He is not used to seeing me like this and it takes him a beat to recognize me. One long second. Then he tosses his towel onto the bar and grins. He limps his way toward me, arms outstretched.
“Madame Fiocca!”
“Where is Henri?” I ask. “Is he okay?”
Hélène
INVERIE BAY, SCOTLAND
October 15, 1943
Ian Garrow escorts our little group to Scotland. It’s me, John Farmer—much to my chagrin as we had agreed to part company—and four other men, none of whom have decided how they feel about my presence. It takes sixteen hours by train and Garrow and I talk the entire time. Of Patrick O’Leary. He can’t get any news out of Dachau and doesn’t know whether our friend is still alive. It grieves us both that we failed him when he risked so much for us. We speak of Françoise. Bastian. Of Jean and Pilar. Garrow’s own journey across the Pyrenees, which, while not enjoyable, wasn’t quite as miserable as mine. No snow or scabies for him.