by Thomas Wood
Slowly, I got up from where I had been laying for the last hour or so, basking in the fleeting rays that were trying so hard to warm the face of the earth before disappearing behind the horizon. I checked that I still had the pistol that I had taken from the now-dead boy in the woods, the magazines still full and tucked safely away in my pockets. There was only going to be a real need for one bullet this evening, I thought to myself. All the while I was scanning the entire perimeter for any tell-tale signs that a platoon of Germans was arriving, to provide backup for their most valuable intelligence source.
Now, everything would gain a little bit more pace. I wanted to get into the factory as quickly as possible. Hastily, I began to make my way to the bottom of the ladder, my feet landing on the solid concrete for the first time in an hour, feeling at home straight away.
Stopping to check for sound at the bottom, I hurriedly began to make my way to the factory.
23
I scarpered from one side of the massive complex to the other, like a rat that was being chased by a housewife back towards the hole in the floorboards. My knees did nothing but howl at me as the stabbing pains increased with every pace that I took, the burning sensation taking no longer than twenty seconds before it had returned in my thighs. The only part of me that didn’t seem to ache was, surprisingly, my head. It was the first time that I could remember having a clear mind, with no headache, for a long time.
I ran alongside the train track, knowing that was the most direct route into the factory itself and because that way, hopefully Joseph would see me coming, knowing that I had kept to my side of the bargain. He knew that I would have been there because he knew how deeply in trouble I was. I had no other options anymore, except to agree to his demands and decrees, just the way that he liked it.
Double checking that my pistol was still in my waistband, making certain that it was concealed, I carried on running although every fibre in my body wanted to stop. I hadn’t eaten anything or taken any fluids on board for at least twenty-four hours now, and my body was simply struggling to find the resources to cope with the things that I kept throwing at it. It was probably why each time that I had returned to London so far, I had discovered a massive appetite, probably my body’s way of preparing itself for another period of starvation and thirst.
After what felt like an age, I made it to the door of the factory that I had managed to scope out earlier on, leaving it half open so that I didn’t have to bother yanking at it and advertising to Joseph that I had just arrived. I slid in sideways, stopping just inside to listen out to determine where it was he stood.
He had told Louis that he would meet me on the second floor, in the central most hall of the factory floor, which is where I would immediately head to. But I knew that this was not a man that I could trust, and certainly not one who was known to have kept his word. So I drew the pistol out slowly and methodically, telling myself that he would be around every corner, every closed door, simply waiting to put bullets into my back as soon as I was to walk past him.
I tapped my way over the uncarpeted floor, making it over to the staircase that ran up the side of the building. Pulling open the door, I found myself at the bottom of the stairs, that zigzagged their way up to the second floor, double backing on themselves until they made it to their destination.
Pointing the pistol up and in between the gaps, I half-expected to see his weaselly little face staring back at me, smirking, knowing full well that he had the upper hand here, and that he intended fully to make the most of it. But there was no smug face there, so I began to make my way up the staircase, keeping the pistol raised and ready for the entirety of my ascent.
My legs were now howling at me, telling me off for taking everything so slow, my joints creaking badly with every deliberate step that I took, hovering my foot above the ground for half a second too long each time. My hands began to slip over the grip of the pistol, my sweat levels suddenly being ratcheted up by several notches the closer I got to my meeting.
Upon making it up to the second floor, I stopped and listened. I could just make out the tapping of footsteps on the slightly sodden floor, as he paced his way up and down the room. Clinging to the wall, I kept the pistol up and raised, making my way slowly through the first great hall and towards where there were once giant, sliding doors, like a hangar, that could separate the workers if needs be.
The footsteps stopped for half a second and I made out the faint hiss of a cigarette, as it was dropped into a small puddle of rainwater, before being fully submerged courtesy of the bottom of a shoe.
I bided my time a little bit more, as I was certain that he was growing increasingly nervous with every second that ticked by, something that I was taking an immeasurable amount of pleasure from.
Clinging to the wall, I eventually made it to the corner of where one hall met the other, shielded only by a small section of wall that used to be the home to one of the large, sliding doors. Once I had edged my way around it, there would be no going back. I knew that as soon as I left the comfort of this room, I would instantly see Joseph Baudouin standing there, quite possibly another cigarette already hanging in his mouth ready to go. This was the moment that I had been dreaming of ever since I had got back to France.
Slowly, pistol still firmly in my grasp despite the plentiful beads of sweat that now dripped off the palms of my hands, I edged my back along the wall, ready to swing round into the main hall, to come face-to-face with the man that I wistfully dreamed of murdering. I wondered if, when the time came, whether or not I would have a smile on my face when I watched the colour drain from his body.
I would need to be quick, as I was sure that he would have come armed himself, so it would be a case of shooting on sight and hoping that I spotted him before he got me. As I inched around the wall, I realised that the pacing footsteps had stopped, but couldn’t quite remember how far away they had been when they had ceased, meaning that it was going to have to be a lightning quick glance around the room to determine where he was.
But I never got that far. As soon as my hands were visible around the wall, something was gripping around them, hard and unforgiving, dragging me into the room that I had been listening to for so long. Immediately, I felt the wind explode out of my chest, as a knee connected almost perfectly with one of my lungs, which sent me buckling over in pain, but still holding tightly onto the pistol.
I was dragging him down with me, his hands gripping tightly onto the very same pistol as I did. In an attempt to get them off, I yanked the pistol down with all my might, towards the ground, which sent his knees crashing into the concrete directly opposite me.
It was only then, that I got a glimpse at his face; it was Joseph alright, his snarling lips and sweat soaked brow staring back at me, teasing me with the fact that he was still very much alive. Grunting, and with an abominable pain in my lung, I tried to get to my feet, in the hope that he was in far too much pain himself to follow suit.
To my dismay, he staggered to his feet, pulling with one hand at the pistol and succeeding in dragging me closer into his body. He had brought me in too close and he couldn’t bring his free arm up to strike me in the face like he had clearly been hoping.
Now face to face, I could smell the sweat on his skin, the heat from his breath fusing with my own as we fought for the oxygen around us as well as one another.
Suddenly, his head rocked backwards and, before I had any time to do anything about it, he had brought his head down on my nose with a sickening crack, as I felt my nose somehow disconnect with the rest of my face and hang there limply.
I knew that I would be bleeding just by looking at Joseph’s face, great lines of blood splattered up against it, courtesy of my nasal passage. He too had a small cut on his forehead where he had made contact with my skin, and I could only assume that he had a similar sickening headache to my own as he recoiled away.
Still, we fought valiantly for the pistol, at which point I realised he must have been terribly co
mplacent, which made me despise him all the more. It was clear that he hadn’t brought his own pistol, otherwise he would have pulled it out and made use of it a long time ago. He must have expected me to have turned up empty handed, ready to simply hand me over to the Germans that were surely on their way to pick me up. The longer I was forced to wait, the more I wanted to kill the man who was grappling away at the pistol, trying to pry my grip from it like an older child, bullying another simply to have a go with a toy.
As my head fell backwards from the headbutt, I managed to get my finger in through the trigger guard and onto the trigger itself, the temptation far too great to keep pulling at it in the hope that one round would strike Joseph luckily.
I managed, with my two hands against his one, to traverse with the pistol slightly so that it was directly in line with his gut, all it would take now would be one final squeeze, before I felt the kick of the pistol in my hand and I would be able to watch Joseph Baudouin sink to his knees, as he realised that he had lost, I had won. All it would take now was one final sq—
The space between his arm and my head that had been created by the recoil from the headbutt, was sufficient to land a blow right on the side of my jaw, and I instantly felt my entire mouth fill up with the metallic twinge of blood, and I was certain that another tooth had just become loose.
I staggered backwards, all my senses scattering into nothing, apart from the one that told me to keep a firm grip on the pistol. I was losing this fight, and badly, but the one thing that was in my favour was the fact that the pistol was still facing away from me, it was still in his general direction.
With an almighty tug, as I stumbled backwards, I heaved his large frame in towards me. Lifting my knee up as I did so, I hoped to deliver a blow straight into his rib cage, similar to the one that he had gifted me just seconds before. Instead, I must have caught him in his groin, as he began to howl a childish scream, the kind that someone makes before immediately finding that the injury was not as bad as he had first thought.
His face paled dramatically, and I began to repeat my movements over and over again, hitting him in the same place but also moving up to his chest as I began to turn the tide of the fight. Eventually, his grip loosened on the pistol just enough and I, sensing the slight relief in the pressure, yanked it up and away from him, with such a force that I nearly completed a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree pivot on the spot.
As I came back around to face him, I found myself possessed, hammering the body of the pistol into the side of his face hard, spraying myself in his blood. I hit him again and again, to the point where his eyes began to roll back into his skull, and I feared that I might end up beating him to death.
Panting and spitting blood over the floor, I had Joseph underneath me, straddling him to keep him contained as best as I could. He was still alive, he was still conscious, and I was glad that he was. I wanted him to see what was going to happen next.
I brought the pistol up towards his head, pressing it forcefully into the skin that had been broken by his headbutt. He winced pathetically as I pressed the cold steel into the wound, twisting slightly to increase his level of discomfort.
His eyes widened, like a petrified rabbit’s, and I found myself smirking at him, taking great pleasure from pressing it further into the surface of his skin, as if his eyes would continue to widen until they burst.
I moved my finger from the side of the pistol and onto the trigger, gently stroking it up and down as I began to savour the moment where the man who was responsible for so much pain, so much death, was completely at my mercy.
As I increased the pressure on the trigger, the faces of all those that had died as a result of his actions, began popping into my head; Jameson, Louis’ son and wife, Jacques and Julien the men that I had been on the escape plan with, Rudolf Schröder, the lot, even Cécile and my brother Bill popped up for a moment, as I somehow pinned the blame on him for their demise.
My finger jerked momentarily as I got closer to the biting point of the pistol, when I made out that his lips were trying to bend upwards in a smile.
“You’re not going to kill me Alfie,” he said, with a bloody grin. “Don’t you want to know about Geranium? I have all the answers that you want.”
I froze for a moment, wondering whether this was a genuine offer, or if it was just another opportunity to deliver a headbutt to my head and knock me out once and for all.
“Come on, Alfie. Lower the pistol,” he groaned, each syllable seeming to drag out longer than the last. “I’m not exactly going anywhere, am I?” He said, his arms attempting a shrug but failing, trapped in between my thighs as I sat on him.
Frustrated with myself, just as much as I was angry with him, I lowered the pistol so that it was pointing upwards, a swift flick of the trigger all that would be needed to push a bullet up through his lower jaw, hopefully taking out the majority of his brain in the process.
He seemed to take my gesture as his signal to start talking, as he began to try and clear his throat of all the blood and saliva that was crackling away at the back of his mouth. He was only able to cough it up as far as the side of his mouth, which then began to dribble down his cheek as he spoke.
“I knew that you’d pick up on Geranium eventually. You didn’t believe me when you asked me when we first met, did you?” I didn’t give him the satisfaction of giving him an answer, opting instead to prod the pistol into the underside of his chin, trying to prompt him into spilling the beans a little bit faster, if I was to have any chance of getting out of there before the Germans turned up.
“I also knew that Rudolf would have told you about Geranium, or at the very least mentioned it. He always did have a big mouth. He was always a bit of a coward compared to the rest of us too…a little bit like Louis I suppose.”
My rage suddenly boiled over, and I found myself ramming the pistol down his throat so hard that it would have been easy to mistake the pistol for his own tongue. I had pushed the pistol into his mouth so hard that I felt the resistance of his teeth simply break away, as they chipped and snapped and fell down the back of his throat. Just as I thought that my knuckle would soon be touching his uvula at the back of his throat, I began to weigh up whether the satisfaction that I would gain, from seeing this man’s insides splashed out all over the concrete, would be worth the never knowing what really happened with Geranium, especially as it had got pretty much everyone that I had loved killed, seriously wounded, or missing. I quite quickly realised that I had to calm down if I was to get any answers.
Panting, and snarling, I slowly gave in, the pistol retreating from his mouth covered in a diluted concoction of blood and saliva, which I let drip from my hand in stringy, reluctant streams. I panted and sucked in as much air as I could as I tried my best to fill my head with the oxygen needed to bring my heart rate back down.
I had hated this man from the very second that I had met him, which had, no doubt, pushed me closer to Louis as a result. To brand the man a coward after consistently stepping in on the side of the good and moral, to be rewarded by having nails driven through his palms and water poured over his hands was a complete distortion of the truth. Louis was quite simply the bravest and most courageous man that I had ever met, no one would ever rubbish his name like that in front of me again, not unless they wanted a steel pistol to replace their tongue too.
He finished coughing and spluttering, the final few rasps bringing in enough oxygen for him to begin speaking again.
“My, my. You have got a temper now Alfie. Haven’t you?”
I felt my mouth beginning to twitch, but I resisted the urge to begin screaming in his face by biting at the inside of my lips, a half-hearted attempt to keep them clamped shut, for fear of saying anything stupid.
He took my silence, and what I was hoping was a steely glare, the kind that said if he was to push me one more time then I would settle for the no answers option, as a sign to begin to talk about the thing that I wanted to hear coming from his mouth. I w
anted to know about Geranium.
“Geranium was,” he began, beginning to talk more like a human now, rather than some evil demon who had only been put on this earth to kill and maim, “a covert operation. Between three countries. It was hoped that it would avoid another war in Europe.”
I detected a hint of remorse in his voice, and I wondered whether it was because he was hoping that he would never have to tell anyone out loud ever again what Geranium was, or whether it was out of a genuine sincerity and regret that he possessed over the operation.
“It was unsanctioned, no one in the higher echelons of government even knew that it existed. The only ones that knew it was happening were the ones somehow directly involved in the operation. I was in French military intelligence. A few weeks before war was declared, we were issued with a memorandum that forbade all of us from talking with the German intelligence agencies, denying us all access to our assets. It was the same with the Brits; they weren’t talking to the Germans either.”
“So, what’s this got to do with Geranium?”
“The three main proponents in Operation Geranium were British, French and German, each one having spoken to the other in contravention of government orders. That is why Geranium was unsanctioned.”
He paused for a moment, a time I took to make sure that I still had a firm grip on the pistol, and that a sudden, overwhelming effort by him to break free wouldn’t overpower me. I needed to make sure I stayed on my guard. I began to grow ever so slightly twitchy about the fact that soon this place would be swarming with German troops, particularly as I wasn’t expecting to get the early warning signals of truck engines rolling into the courtyard or brakes squealing to a halt.