Michel And Axe Bury The Hatchet (The French Bastard Book 2)

by Avan Judd Stallard

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kranz had no intention of postponing his own work for the sake of Dudendorff, the supposed war hero. The final test before they deployed the mustard gas shells had been scheduled for that afternoon. There could be no delay now. Confirming that the mustard gas was effective and that the shells were reliable and safe was utterly critical. It could be the very thing that turned the war in Germany’s favor.

  The three-legged dog was a stroke of luck. Kranz had set a number for how many animals were required. When a Doberman attacked a laboratory assistant that morning and received a bullet to the brain, it left them one short. Of course, one less dog did not matter from a scientific perspective, but it was a loose end. Kranz did not like loose ends.

  51

  It had been easy to find. Between what Orbart told Michel and what Godewyn already knew about the area, there had been no doubt as to the compound’s location, hidden behind a forest and string of hills on the road to Houthem. The Germans they encountered on the way paid no heed to an old man in a buggy. A few recognized Godewyn, a retired veterinarian who occasionally did the rounds at the local farms. They waved.

  When the coast was clear, Godewyn gave the word. Michel cast off the blanket under which he hid and slipped from the buggy. He hurtled a stone fence and crept toward the trees, using the rock wall as cover. When he reached the intersecting fence he hurtled it, and with a few more steps he disappeared.

  Michel moved carefully, listening for the slightest of sounds. He heard birds and lizards and the wind ruffling leaves, but nothing suspicious. He soon found a narrow trail. Probably deer. He followed it.

  After twenty minutes he came to a wide dirt road that looked well-travelled. He stayed within the cover of forest and tracked it north. About a kilometer along, the road forked. Michel heard vehicles and crouched low as they passed. German military. Both cars turned right, so Michel went right.

  The land rose in a series of low hills. As he gained height, Michel heard a noise in the distance, like the wail of competing sirens.

  He reached a high point and found himself gazing on open pasture spread through a long valley. At one end, not far from where pasture terminated in forest, he saw hundreds of animals in the field. They were the source of the noise, which only grew louder and more unpleasant.

  Michel’s initial thought was they were bleating sheep, but the animals comprised all sorts of different colors and sizes. They seemed perfectly spaced throughout the field, which would be unusual for the panic-prone herd mentality of sheep.

  He watched the two cars stop at the far corner of the field. Several men got out. There appeared to be a discussion, inaudible to Michel, then a man dragged an animal from the car and across the field. He fastened a rope or leash that held it in place.

  The animals were collectively raising hell. Barking … howling … and Michel realized what now seemed obvious: they were dogs.

  He moved quickly to get closer. He was skirting the forest when the men returned to their cars and sped back the same way they had come. Michel continued until behind the pack. There were only fifty yards between where he crouched in the cover of the trees and where the animals were tied. A few saw or heard him, and directed their barking and howling in his direction.

  Michel observed that each animal was tied to a steel peg sunk into the ground. Many lunged and fought, furiously and futilely, against their restraints. Michel counted the rows: twenty deep, fifteen wide. Three hundred dogs.

  So that’s where all the mutts in the district disappeared to. But why?

  Something made Michel look again at the very corner of the grid, at the animal that had just been tied up.

  “Oh fuck.”

  Michel stood. He saw a medium-sized dog sitting on its haunches. Shaggy black hair. It faced away from him.

  “Monster?” Michel called.

  He threw caution to the wind and whistled. He called louder: “Monster!”

  The dog stood and turned in a hopping motion, its tail already starting to wag. There was now no doubt in either animal.

  Michel sprinted to Monster. He wasted no time with pats. He unbuckled the tight leash from her throat. Michel turned and ran for cover, shouting, “Come on, Monster!”

  Monster was hot on his heels as an appalling cacophony of strained barking and howling filled the long, low depression of grassed land that ran all the way to a series of warehouses two kilometers in the distance. Michel stopped once satisfied he was hidden by the foliage. Monster bounded through the underbrush and came to him, her tail wagging furiously. She nuzzled her head along his side and Michel scratched behind her ears.

  “What are you doing here, girl? Where’s Axe? What the fuck is all this?” said Michel.

  The words were for his own sake. Monster could give no answers. But Kranz could.

  Michel moved through the wood in the direction the cars had driven. Two hundred and ninety-nine dogs knew the man was still there; they barked and strained against their leads, following his semi-circular path the way a wind sock follows the breeze.

  The last row of dogs were a hundred yards behind when Michel heard a different noise: a succession of low, sharp explosions that was the unmistakable firing of artillery. He stopped, listened, waited.

  He heard the distinctive whine of shells speeding through the air. About thirty yards from the closest row of dogs, the ground thumped with impacts, which were closely followed by dozens of small explosions. A dirty yellow mist grew and thickened with the landing of each shell, until a fetid cloud of poison stretched the breadth of the field.

  The breeze blew gently to the east. The cloud went with it, seeming to spread without dissipating, shrouding the tethered dogs.

  Gas … maybe this is the sick fuck’s idea of target practice. Or it could be a new poison. Trying it out on dogs before trying it out on men.

  Michel got to his feet and ran as fast as he could. “Monster,” he called, and the three-legged dog followed with her rolling gait. Behind, the cloud of mustard gas burned skin into bubbles, blinded eyes and cooked lungs.

  A frenzied dog fighting for its life is an animal returned to its state of nature. To its wildest and most dangerous state—fearsome and ferocious—and at the same time pitiable, perhaps the most pitiable thing in all the world for it is still at heart just a dog that wants a pat, to be told it is good, to be given purpose and receive affection and to lavish love and devotion in return. But none of these dogs would survive.

  Michel knew not to look, but he could not avoid the sound. There would never be another sound like it. He ran into the breeze, away from the gas, in the direction of Kranz’s compound.

  Yesterday, Orbart had made Michel think. Even doubt. But he was certain now. Kranz was evil. And Michel intended to make him suffer.

  52

  Sven was a strange-looking man.

  His skin, the complexion of maturing sheep cheese.

  His features, small—eyes, nose, mouth, chin—while his forehead was as big and flat as a Greek stone stela.

  Close-cropped brown hair pomaded his balding pate. His face drooped from the mental exhaustion of the past day and a half. His eyes were shallow pits populated by shrunken beads of black.

  The soldier posted on guard had spent all of four words on Sven the entire morning: “Shut the fuck up.”

  And he had. Now, his right leg shook in such a manner that the toe of his shoe stayed on the ground while his heel jerked up and down in the air. It generated no noticeable noise. Nor did his weep. He shook and cried in perfect silence, the way bullied children cried once they learned that their tormentors were merciless sharks and the sound of pain and anguish was so much more blood in the water.

  He heard a car outside. Footsteps. A door slammed and he heard a female voice full of anger and righteousness.

  Axe.

  He heard her struggle. Sven flung himself at the bars.

  “Axe! Axe! Don’t you hurt her! Don’t you hurt her!” he called, his voice h
igh, pitching somewhere between threat and plea.

  “Sven! Where are you?” called Axe, and then they saw each other.

  The terse soldier unlocked the grill and pushed Axe inside. Sven embraced her. Both burst into tears and cried the uninhibited cry of love, relief, joy—and desperation.

  53

  He really had come. She had begun to doubt the strength of his feelings for her, and her own feelings for him, but he had come. So he loved her. Which meant she still loved him. Yes, of course she did. He was her world now.

  Sven, still oblivious to the craziness that had swept into Axe’s life, spoke of his travails at length. He thought he had been doing the right thing in not convincing her to stay in Rotterdam. Letting her follow her heart and make her own grand life decisions without emotional blackmail from the man who loved her. He professed that the only mistake was his own vacillation—in not having the courage to throw in his comfortable life and follow her.

  He had been miserable, and that had convinced him to abandon his ivory tower existence. He would rather move to war-torn Belgium and learn to be a farmer than be alone, without Axe. He realized all that, then was tormented by indecision and doubt—and did nothing.

  Weeks after Axe left, a letter arrived. It had been delivered to two other Sven Valentijns of Rotterdam before finding him. It was from Axe’s father, Daan Lancelin. A short letter, just a few lines. It contained his blessing of their marriage and money from the sale of the family farm to help pay for the ceremony. Which meant, if the family farm had been sold, that Axe was returning to nothing.

  He said that he knew she would need him. And whether she needed him or not, he needed her. So he had taken the plunge.

  He was there to take her home—if that is what she wanted. If not, then they would build a new home. Somewhere. Anywhere. Whatever she sought from life, he was ready. Assuming, that is, that she would have him. If she still wanted him.

  “Sven, I wish it were that simple. Some of it is. Of course I still want you! I love you, I do. That has not changed. But … other things have.”

  “Then we can change with them!”

  “Listen to me, my sweet. Things have happened. Things that cannot be taken back. I don’t know if we will be getting out of here. I—”

  “We’ve broken no laws, Axe! Whatever this is, it is a mistake. I tried to explain to the captain yesterday. They just need to listen!”

  “Sven, you need to listen first. What I have to tell you, it may change how you think of me.”

  “Nothing could do that,” said Sven. He took and held Axe’s hands.

  Axe lowered her voice to a whisper. “Captain Dudendorff. He is the one who put you in here?”

  “Yes.”

  “He confronted me yesterday. I have been hiding a French soldier at the farm.”

  “What!” said Sven.

  “Shh!” hushed Axe. “Yes, it’s true. He just showed up. And a Chinese boy with the British Army. I had to help them.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s complicated. But Dudendorff, he knew. He came for Michel. That’s the French soldier. And … he’s dead. Dudendorff. He’s dead.”

  “You mean … What do you mean? You killed him?”

  “No. But I was there.”

  “The Frenchman killed him in front of you?” said Sven.

  “No. My neighbor, Elmo, he killed him. I think he had come to … it doesn’t matter why. He killed him.”

  “Oh God, oh God,” said Sven, and began rocking his body.

  “Now Colonel Kranz knows that I lied. About you.”

  “Wh… what about me?”

  “I, I said that Michel was my fiancée. That he was you.”

  “Oh God. Then, then, then he thinks I killed him!”

  “Shh! No. He doesn’t know yet. But he will find out. And he’ll shoot me for it. Maybe you, too. We have to get out. We have to escape.”

  “What are you talking about, Axe? This is … madness!”

  Axe looked around, then hoisted up her shirt to reveal Yetzel’s Luger pistol tucked into her pants.

  “I have this. We can use it to escape.”

  Sven looked at the pistol, then up at Axe’s face. He stared into her eyes. “Who are you?”

  “I’m not sure I know anymore. I, I thought I was different, but I’m not. I’m like everyone. Trying to survive. We do that. We survive, then … I don’t know, Sven. We keep surviving and I guess if you do that long enough …”

  Axe did not finish her thought, not aloud.

  If you do that long enough, that is a life. Not the life you wanted. Not the life you asked for. The one you have. The one I have. And I won’t apologize for it and I won’t waste another second bewailing it, and be damned if I give it up without a fight.

  54

  The shells had been fired and the test run. Four hours passed, enough to make it safe for Kranz’s staff in protective masks and gloves to tally the bodies.

  Two hundred and sixteen animals dead. The remaining eighty-three dogs were all badly affected, and it looked like most or all would be dead by morning.

  It was stunning. No other weapon in the army’s arsenal enjoyed anything close to that sort of effectiveness—one hundred percent coverage, with a kill ratio of 18 : 25.

  Kranz’s men brought back a selection of specimens. The dogs that died quickly were obvious, mouths and noses bloody and covered in froth. Their eyes appeared rabid—swollen, red, crazed. Even in death, their bodies remained twisted and contorted, some having broken bones in the fight to escape their leash and with it the air that smelled of mustard and horseradish and then melted the nerve endings inside their exquisitely sensitive noses.

  For Kranz, the animals that took longer to die were the more interesting. Their bodies showed something the others did not: rampant blistering.

  Especially on the belly, where the skin was most exposed, swathes of skin had been replaced by hemispherical eruptions filled with putrescence. The men reported the same on the dying dogs still tethered in the field.

  Kranz imagined the effect of the gas on enemy soldiers in the trenches. Even if a man did not die from the immediate burns to their lungs, and did not subsequently die from the infection of their wounds, they would be rendered utterly incapacitated. It would not matter if they wore gas masks; in the subsequent hours and days their skin would begin to seethe and bubble like a pot of milk on the boil.

  It was horrible—Kranz would not deny that to himself, his staff or the generals who had final say on the use of the gas—but also perfect, the exact weapon an industrial war demanded. In just days they would have enough gas loaded into enough shells for widescale deployment along the Ypres salient.

  And yet Kranz was not entirely pleased. Of three hundred animals in the test, one remained unaccounted for. The three-legged dog had somehow escaped its bonds. Which meant it was, in fact, a kill ratio of … well, the math with two hundred and ninety-nine dogs just did not work in any satisfactory way. A loose end.

  Strangely, they found its collar open, not broken or snapped. Probably fastened incorrectly in their haste. Kranz wondered, if he returned to the farm of the Lancelin girl, would the dog be there? The animals possessed a remarkable sense of direction and a desire to be with their human masters that surpassed any form of human emotion. He admired it.

  He would find out in the morning. If the dog was there, he would finish the test.

  55

  Fitz opened the door and looked inside the reception room. The army generals and media men were chatting and laughing, armed with elegant glasses sporting generous splashes of good brandy. They seemed to be having a fine old time.

  Naturally enough, attention focused on General Haig, he of the dainty legs who had a habit of standing hand to hip, one foot forward. Fitz watched the commander of the British Expeditionary Force speak and gesture with an effortless finesse that had always eluded himself. He was Fitz’s opposite in every sense—physically, temperamentally an
d in the sheer comfort he showed while holding court.

  Fitz thought about turning around and walking right back out. There was no need for him to be there, not really. But even major-generals were obliged to follow orders, so Fitz marched inside.

  Haig saw him coming. “Ah, there he is, Major-General Fitzgerald. Perfect timing. Have you met these chaps, Fitz? No, didn’t think so. This is Roy Higgins from News of the World.”

  “Evening,” said Fitz, as he shook an outstretched hand.

  “This is Peter Broadbent from the Daily Express.”

  “Evening.”

  “And this is Donald Beaverbrook from the Daily Mirror. No riff raff amongst this lot, is there, General Plumer?”

  “Certainly not. Just the men to be penning history,” said Plumer, and stroked the side of his magnificent white moustache, a moustache twice the size of General Haig’s, probably the biggest moustache in the entire British Army.

  “I’ve briefed them on plans for the morning, under embargo, of course. They’re looking forward to getting a few words from our all-conquering man on the ground. Well, gents, you’d best have at it. The major-general doesn’t have all day. He’s the one who gets the job done. And it’s a fair old job,” said Haig.

  The journalists put their brandy glasses on a table. Each took out pad and pen or pencil.

  “What’s the feeling like among the men, sir?” asked Broadbent.

  “Eager. Nervous. Tired. They’re good men. Every one of them. They know how important this offensive is. They want to do a good job. And they will.”

  “Have the Germans picked up on movements of our troops? Do they know we’re coming, what we’ve got in store for them?” said Higgins.

  “We expect they have an inkling of something. You can’t hide forty thousand men. They’ve moved thousands of their own troops up. If we’ve done our job properly, that will play out for us. As for the mines, no. They’ll not know the extent of our works till it’s too late,” said Fitz.