‘Exactly, chérie. Bertin was becoming too troublesome.’ She gave me a slow smile intended to provoke. ‘You’re not the only one who knows how to pick a lock.’ She turned to André but my brother wouldn’t even look at her. ‘A lesson for you too, mon ami. I stole Durand’s gun and set your baby brother up to take the fall for that job, so that you’d know not to step out of line in future. Especially when your lovely sister was in such danger now. But somehow the little Houdini got out of there before the police arrived.’ She switched her attention back to me with sharp suspicion. ‘Did you have anything to do with that, Eloïse?’
‘No.’
Clarisse was a killer. A cold-blooded killer. This woman who had helped me and cared for me and brought flowers when I was ill. Who was she? It was only extraordinary good fortune and lucky timing that had saved my younger brother Isaac from rotting in a gaol cell right now. The pain of it cut too deep and left too many parts of me in tatters. Oh André, what have you done to me?
‘After the accident—’ Joel started to say.
‘It wasn’t an accident.’
‘Okay, after your brother was injured, we had to change to doing the handover in church on a Sunday and Clarisse came down to set up a new courier to Paris.’
‘So now you know,’ Clarisse said. ‘Satisfied?’
‘No,’ I said. I wished André would speak. He sat silent, eyes on the concrete block. ‘Who killed Goliath and burnt down our stables? Was it you, Clarisse, giving more of your “lessons” to my brother?’
She looked surprised. ‘No, I had nothing to do with it. But I know who did it. Don’t you?’
I shook my head, but André looked up, his face part dead already. I could not bear to see him so defeated.
‘I can guess,’ he said.
‘Who?’ I asked quickly. ‘Who?’
‘Mademoiselle Madeleine Caron.’
‘The headmistress? Why would she do that?’
Clarisse nodded. ‘You always were a good guesser, André. Yes, it was Madeleine Caron. She loathed you Caussades. Claimed you represent everything that is unequal in Western society and wanted your farm broken up and distributed among the gardians.’
André groaned. ‘Her four nephews are gardians, aren’t they? They will be the bastards who killed Goliath. You and your Communist principles are evil, Clarisse.’
Clarisse’s tone suddenly flipped into one of cold anger. ‘You think your cosy world down here with your horses and your bulls is so safe, don’t you? But you’re wrong. A new world is coming, one we are fighting for, dying for. At war for. We have cells like this one in every American base in the country, with people passionate about our cause. Don’t you understand that? Communism will bring justice and equality to the people of France at last, it will bring freedom from the crippling yoke of capitalism – even your brother Isaac understands. He is one of us. This is just the start.’
She took my chin in her hand and turned my battered face towards hers. ‘You could still be a part of it, Eloïse.’
I spat in her face.
She leaned closer and kissed my mouth. ‘I never wanted to kill you, chérie,’ she whispered.
‘You drove the van, didn’t you?’ I said bleakly.
There was a silence in the saloon. The boat’s engine rumbled in the background while the rain continued its incessant hammering, and the waves slapped at the hull outside, but no one spoke inside.
Slowly Clarisse nodded. Her face was sad and suddenly looked older. ‘This job is not easy, chérie. I didn’t know you were in the car, I swear. I thought André was driving. I didn’t trust him anymore, I suspected he was feeding more and more details of my organisation back to the CIA, so he had to go.’ Her hand reached for mine. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
I leaped at her. My hands closed on her throat before the Russian could make a move, but Joel was the first to react. He slammed his beer bottle against the side of my head, but the American was a gentleman by nature and would never hit a woman hard. I rolled to the floor and backed up towards André, who nudged his leg against me. It was like old times. I knew immediately what he was telling me.
Clarisse glared at me as she clutched her throat. Her mouth was a tight hard line.
‘Throw them overboard,’ she ordered.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
It was cold on deck but the air scoured my lungs clean after the filth in the saloon. The rain was falling hard and I was grateful because it washed her kiss from my lips as I emerged from below. The wind had eased and the night wrapped around us like a barrel of pitch, except for the thin gleam of lights from the fishing village still within sight on the shoreline.
My senses absorbed these things. But my mind was sharp and clear and focused on André coming up the short companionway behind me. He was stumbling. Making it awkward for the Russian behind him. In his arms he clutched the concrete block to which he was attached and the other Russian, who had followed me, leaned down to yank him up. In that moment I shrugged off my oilskin and kicked off my shoes, ready for what was coming.
André struggled out into the open, battered by the rain and releasing the block on to the deck with obvious relief. His eyes found mine. What did I see there? In that brief flash I saw the same look he’d given me when we would hurl ourselves off the bridge into the mighty Rhône. The certainty that we were immortal. And just as I did back then, I believed him.
One of the Russians came at me with a rope to tie my hands, and I fought him off so savagely that the second one, clearly not a good sailor, lurched over and grabbed my arm. That was his mistake. He thought he could take his eyes off my brother for even one moment.
I saw André brace his feet against the wet deck, lean back and start to turn. Within seconds he was yanking the concrete block at the end of the rope up into the air. Spinning like a hammer-thrower. Using his body as a fulcrum, he swung the block, whirling it through the pouring rain like Thor wielding his hammer and slammed it into the back of the Russian who was trying to break my arm. I heard ribs crack. He dropped like a sack of shit. The second one abandoned the rope he was holding and was reaching for his gun when the block came round for a second swing. Lower this time. It took out his legs. He went down with a scream.
The third Russian came charging up the companionway and fired wildly into the night, but he had the sense to stay within the safety of the hatch to avoid the swinging block. Balancing himself against the pitching of the boat he squinted against the rain and tried to take more careful aim.
Now. It was now. Or it was never. I jumped up on to the side of the boat. André scooped up his block in the cradle of his strong arms, took a grip on the wrist I offered him and we pushed off. Down into the blackness.
He was trusting me.
*
Shock numbs the brain. Cold numbs the limbs.
For a heartbeat I froze. But instincts are strong. I kicked frantically to try to slow our descent but the block was like an anchor dragging us down. I could see nothing. The blackness as dark as a tomb, but I kept my grip on my brother. I would drown before I let go of him.
We fought the weight of the concrete, though our lungs were starting to beg for air. It should only have taken a second for me to seize the sheath knife strapped to my brother’s shin under his trousers, the one I’d felt when he’d nudged his leg against me in the saloon. He’d often worn one as a boy in the wilds of the marshes, to skin a snake or build a thatch. It should have taken me a second to extract it. It took me five.
My muscles were slowing. My brain was sluggish. The cold water stealing their strength. Bright lights were sparking behind my eyelids, my brain fighting for oxygen. Blackness curling in at the edges.
I started to cut the rope with the knife. Laborious aching movements. Jerky. Blind. Lungs burning and thoughts losing track as we descended deeper. But I should have known that any blade of André’s would be sharper than a scalpel and before I’d realised what I’d done, it had sliced right through. Suddenly we
were flying up. An illusion. Of course. We had stopped descending, that was all. I told my legs to kick for the surface, but they didn’t hear. A hand wrapped itself around my arm and we started to rise.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
We lay on the muddy shore. Stretched out on our backs, gazing up into the murky blackness of the night sky as if it were the most beautiful sight on earth. Rain was pouring down on our faces and it brought my skin and my thoughts back to life. André had proved it again – the Caussades are immortal.
We were both breathing hard from the swim but one thing struck me. ‘Your legs did well,’ I said. ‘They didn’t seem to slow you up.’
A chuckle at my side startled me. ‘Oh, Eloïse, I thought you’d have guessed. I have been working them hard for months and regaining use of them steadily.’
‘But the wheelchair? The stumbling?’
‘A front. To make others believe I was finished, washed up.’
Always a pretence. Always hiding something. As if he was frightened to let anyone see him, really see the person he was. Did this brother of mine even know himself who he was?
‘You could have told me,’ I pointed out.
‘No, I couldn’t. You of all people had to believe I was crippled to convince others it was true.’
‘You were using me again.’ It was an accusation.
He turned his head. In the darkness I could just make out his gentle smile. ‘Yes, I was. Thank you, Eloïse. Thank you for everything you did to help me. I’m glad I trusted you. I never stopped working for the CIA. The rest – all the passing information to Clarisse – was a front, like the stumbling I did to confuse others. Bertin and Piquet always believed I had been completely turned and gone over to the MGB, but it wasn’t true. I want you to believe me, Eloïse.’
It sounded like a goodbye.
But he didn’t wait for a response from me. He sat up quickly. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s go find that boat.’
*
The rain turned to drizzle as I ran barefoot along the coastal path that led to the lights of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. André raced ahead of me and though his legs might not yet be quite what they used to be, his eyes certainly were. He could pick his way at night as sharp as a fox and he led me across the long soft stretch of sand to the jetties where the boats were moored.
No one was about in this filthy weather, the small village hunkered down till the morning. Under cover of darkness we padded silently in wet clothes down the jetty where the smaller boats bobbed quietly, pulling at their ropes. The creak of masts like old bones and the rattle of sheets and mooring rings murmured around us, but nobody came to challenge us. André selected one boat. Small, neat, but fast-looking. He jumped on board, put his foot straight through the hatch lock and slipped down to the engine room.
I stood on the jetty, tense, keeping watch. Now that the dense veil of rain had thinned, I could see a light out in the distance on the black expanse of water, so fiercely black tonight it looked like a hole in the earth’s crust. The light came and went, flickering in and out of my vision, and my heart tightened in my chest as the conviction grew inside me that it was the boat from which we’d jumped. Returning to its mooring. Clarisse was coming back for me.
At my feet an engine barked into life. André had managed to get it going and was untying its ropes. I hopped down on to its deck.
‘No,’ André said immediately. ‘You’re not coming.’
‘Of course I am. You can’t think that at this stage I’m backing out when—’
He didn’t argue. He came over to me. Gave me a smile and pushed me overboard.
*
I stood on the beach, sand cold between my toes, the surf swirling around my ankles, turning them numb. I didn’t notice. My eyes were locked on the light in the distance, nearer now, growing larger, my ears straining for the sound of its engine.
Don’t, André, don’t. I beg you.
I didn’t know whether the words were inside or outside my head. If I’d known how to start a boat I would have gone hurtling after him, but I didn’t. So I waited, gaze fixed, mind churning, and felt fear again slink its way under my skin.
The night had swallowed André’s boat because he was running it with no lights, but I knew precisely where it was headed. If he tried to climb back on board Clarisse’s boat he would be torn to shreds by her three Russian bears. He had no gun. Only a knife. A knife against a Tokarev gun.
But she was a traitor to France. My brother was not a man to walk away from that.
The low boom of the waves, churning and growling like a live animal, merged with my thoughts, pounding inside my head.
‘André!’ I shouted out to sea. ‘Don’t! Please don’t.’
But my words were lost, it was too late. A vein of lightning ripped the night sky apart and I saw clearly the two boats. The smaller one was racing towards the larger one, almost there, so close now. The white glare of the lightning flash vanished, robbing me of my night vision, but I blinked and found the boat’s light again. My toes dug deep into the wet sand.
Then an explosion shattered the night. A violent sheet of flame roared up into the black sky as André’s boat slammed at full speed into Clarisse’s vessel. I couldn’t hear the noise of it. I couldn’t hear the waves at my feet. I couldn’t hear the beat of my own heart. All I could hear was the scream from hell spilling out of my mouth.
*
Dawn trickled over the horizon, grey and soulless. I’d stood on the beach all night, waiting for my brother. But he didn’t come. Dimly I was aware of movement around me, of people, of uniforms, of voices. Some spoke to me, some left me alone as if I looked like a leper. They all merged in my mind, all lost in the mists of my grief.
Only Léon was real. Only his voice reached me and only his tender grey eyes brought a flare of warmth to the cold sorrow that lay behind my ribs. He wrapped a warm blanket around me and stood at my side hour after hour while his men questioned local inhabitants and trawled the sea for wreckage.
And for bodies.
‘How many?’ I asked.
‘Five.’
‘Are they recognisable?’
‘Some. One, sad to say, is Major Dirke.’
I nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’
I watched a seagull stalk the surf with its feet like yellow plates that it slapped on the sand till a tiny pink crab emerged. The orange beak devoured it.
‘The other four men I don’t recognise.’
‘Do three have tattoos?’
‘Yes, they do.’
‘They’re Russian. They were on Clarisse’s boat.’
‘That is important to know.’
‘No women’s bodies? No sign of Clarisse?’
‘No. The fourth man is in marine clothes, so he might have been the pilot.’
I licked my dry lips three times before I got the words out. ‘No sign of André?’
‘No, Eloïse, I’m sorry.’ He curled his arms around me, drawing me close, rubbing his hands up and down my back to build some heat within me. His breath was soft on my ear. ‘He might have jumped.’
I jerked back my head. ‘What?’
‘André might have jumped from his boat just before it hit Clarisse’s.’ He gave me a smile and my heart started to beat steadily. ‘He might be alive.’
I breathed deeply, the early morning air scented with the salty tang of the sea and I caught a glimpse of the first glimmer of hope.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Two months later
The blush of pink wings filled the sky, skinny legs trailing behind, long necks thrust forward like rosy walking sticks. The flamingos were lifting off the water in the last rays of the setting sun, when the lagoon looked on fire and the shadows lengthened. We were all caught on the cusp between night and day.
I sat astride Cosette and ambled peacefully around the dense beds of reed that fringed the lagoon. A lurid green tree-frog crossed our trail and Cosette whinnied softly to tell me about it. We took this track every e
vening, sometimes with Léon at our side on Achille, to watch the thousands of flamingos leaving their feeding grounds to fly to their roosting sites for the night. I watched the scene with infinite pleasure and each time I saw the birds leave, I thought of how I had left for Paris because I thought my world lay there.
Foolishly, I’d thought I could live without the place that formed the bedrock of who I am. I gave Cosette’s neck a pat and with no direction from me she stepped off the trail into a dense knot of tamarisks and undergrowth where a silvery white egret was preening its feathers on the roof of a dilapidated hut. It was draped in sea-green moss and silvery lichen, leaning back into the foliage behind it as though trying to hide. Exactly like the person who built it.
I dismounted and loosened Cosette’s girth, so that she could graze in comfort.
Inside the hut lay some lengths of timber and a box of nails. I took a hammer off the rickety windowsill and continued the task I had started yesterday, replacing the rotten planks at the back. It was not my hut. It was André’s. He had built it in the days when he ran free on the marshes, but it had slowly shed its sturdiness over the years.
I hadn’t heard from André. I didn’t expect to.
It had taken me a long time but I had finally learned what manner of man he is. A man of blind devotion to his country. I won’t say what manner of man André was because I choose to think of him as alive. Still on the prowl out there. Of course I know I could be mistaken. But he is still a fundamental part of my family, and I hold on to that.
I continued to bang in nails contentedly and looked out through the grimy window at the first clouds bunched on the horizon, moody and gold-tipped. Dark political clouds were rolling from the east too that would test France to the limit, but I had faith in my country. In my country and in my fellow countrymen and women.
Traitors like Clarisse will not succeed in dragging France into servitude under the yoke of Communism, because we will root them out, every last one of them. I hit the shiny head of the nail with my hammer, driving it into place, just as we will drive people like Clarisse into the place they deserve.
The Guardian of Lies Page 28