Night Soldiers

by Alan Furst

  Khristo only pretended to mull it over. There was a debt to be paid, to a French priest, more particularly to those whose sacrifices had enabled him to appear at the Santé, and Khristo meant to repay it by service in the one trade he knew. Thus, on a clear night in December, he ate fresh bread and warm milk in the kitchen, accepted the tearful embraces of Sophie and Marguerite, and, long before dawn, walked out across the fields with the machine pistol slung over his shoulder. His boots crunched the hard crust of snow and he marched in time, the brilliant moonlight casting a soldier's shadow before him.

  They operated quietly in the first months of 1944.

  The plaque tournant operation had been one of an enormous range of Anglo-American actions concentrated over a period of a few days, including operations against railroads, factories, shipping, and communications: an intelligence feint, the first in a series leading up to the Allied landing in Occupied Europe. The Germans knew a major attack was coming but the when and where factors were critical, and the chief Allied intelligence mission was to create a structure in which deceptions could succeed. At the London intelligence bases, they knew that pins went up on maps in the Abwehr and Sicherheitsdienst (SS) analysis centers—where they understood intelligence feints and deceptions quite well themselves. Thus some of the operations had to be transparent, some translucent, and others opaque. In certain instances, all three characteristics could be combined in a single action. The technique was not new, the tactics of deception and disinformation and special operations behind enemy lines had been well known and used by Hannibal, in the Punic Wars against the Romans. All in all, it was like an orchestra led by an invisible conductor—sometimes the violins played, sometimes the reeds disappeared—and it drove the Germans slightly mad, which it was also intended to do.

  Locomotives were not the principal objective in the attack on the Bruyères railyards. This was not Sabotage, General—it was Sabotage, Specific. The actual target was an ammunition train making up in the yards from various parts of Occupied Europe and due to leave forty-eight hours after the attack, bound for the defense lines that protected a span of beaches in Normandy. There would be no major landing in winter, the Germans knew that, but they also knew about dress rehearsals, and the plaque tournant action, along with others that week, was ultimately read as a deceptive action, meant to mislead German planners into believing that a dress rehearsal was in progress for a future attack against the sheltered beaches at the edge of the Cotentin Peninsula—precisely where, six months later, they were to take place.

  German intelligence in the Épinal region was not able to find out precisely who had attacked the Bruyères yards, but gossip did reach them, was intended to reach them, that it was no more than a bunch of village toughs led by a low-level Special Operations technician. They sent a platoon up to Cambras—one of several villages that interested them—but the maquis lookouts on the road passed the word and the group took to the brush with time to spare, cramming themselves into a woodcutter's hut high up on the mountain and waiting it out. Cambras covered by a thin layer of snow was even less impressive than Cambras in its normal condition. The German officer looked in the houses and smelled the smells and saw frightened eyes peering from doorways and the chicken sitting on the fountain and, with Teutonic respect for symbols—of power or insignificance—wrote it off. So, ultimately, in Berlin it was a white pin they stuck in Bruyères and not a red one. The information was wired back from Berlin to counterespionage field units in the Belfort sector and, because a Polish factory worker had stolen a German cipher machine at the very start of the war and Polish and British cryptanalysts had broken the codes, the Allies knew they'd succeeded. And put a pin in their own map.

  Eidenbaugh's mission called for ongoing operations at a low level, so, in response to a coded Limelight message, he continued to harass the schleuhs. But gently, gently. A telephone pole cut down. Children's jacks with sharpened points strewn about to blow the tires of the telephone repair vehicle. The occasional tree felled across the road. Which halted supply columns while convoy troops plodded through the snowy woods, making sure there wasn't a nasty surprise around the curve. There was no ambush, just a tree, but it kept the Germans nervous, kept them busy, kept them frustrated. What they were getting, that winter, were pranks, at a level calculated to exclude reprisal against civilians. The Cambras maquis blew up the coeurs d'aguilles, metal castings that enabled the switching of locomotives from track to track. They pry-barred rails apart so that a locomotive plowed up hundreds of ties as it derailed, then left a charge behind for the railroad crane that would arrive to put the damage right. But only a small charge, meant to damage a wheel, to keep the huge thing out of action for a week.

  They also, under Eidenbaugh's close direction, recruited new members. Ulysse, in their second meeting—at a commercial traveler's hotel between Belfort and Épinal—altered the KIT FOX mission by relieving Eidenbaugh from any further attempt to install a courrier. That assignment had been an error—Eidenbaugh had all he could do to operate his own small group and find and train new maquisards.

  He got all sorts.

  There were soldiers of fortune—called condottieri in traditional intelligence parlance—former criminals who hoped to make their fortunes in wartime targets of opportunity. There were everyday citizens, who had held themselves out of the fighting until they saw which way the wind was blowing and now rushed to get in on things before it was too late. Service in the underground, they now saw, would count professionally after the war. Such types were called, with some contempt, naphtalènes—mothballs. Meanwhile the Cambras maquis—the original group in the immediate area, lest anyone forget—strutted about grandly with cigarettes stuck in one corner of the mouth, eyes well slitted, and Stens slung diagonally across the back, mountain style.

  Mountain style. Better because it left the hands free, enabling one to move swiftly and safely on the treacherous paths, better for riding a horse or a mule, and better because that was the way it had always been done there, since the time the village ancestors had slung muskets across their backs and gone off to fight as chasseurs, mountain troops, in the Grande Armée of Napoleon. Against the ancestors of the very Germans they were fighting in 1944.

  You had to learn the mountains. The new recruits, installed on straw mattresses throughout the houses of the village, were certainly patriotic and surely brave, but they were flatlanders, ignorant of the ways of the high forest—the sudden blizzards, the white mist that struck a man virtually blind. They had to be trained, and the Cambras maquis were pleased to take on the training mission.

  One day in late January, Daniel Vau and La Brebis took two of the new recruits—Christophe, the nephew of the old loon who'd built a house up on a neighboring mountain, and Fusari, a dark-skinned Corsican from St.-Dié—out on practice maneuvers. The objective was to teach them some mountain lore and to familiarize them with the network of deer trails that ran through the forest between the road and the village. The day was crisp and cold, the sky bright, a good morning to be in the forest, and Daniel Vau and La Brebis traveled down the path at great speed, testing the stamina of their pupils by setting a fast pace and, consequently, leaving them far behind. A good lesson, let them struggle. They had to learn to be part goat in this region, it could well save their lives. The two maquisards would glide down a section of path, then wait for the other two, who would arrive panting and red-faced. Just as they came into view Daniel would say, “Rest period over. Time to go,” and set out again, leaving the novices to get along as best they could, leg muscles twanging from the shock of a downhill lope.

  The German officer—no one really saw his rank—was bird-watching on his day off. Daniel and La Brebis came around a corner of the path and there he was, attended by a bored Feldwebel, probably his driver, who leaned against a tree and picked his nails while his superior alternately peered into the sky through binoculars and consulted a field guide on birds of the southern Vosges. He was in search of a species of mountain
hawk often seen in the region, which concerned the villagers only insofar as it competed for the available stock of brown hare. The two Germans and the two maquisards saw each other at about the same moment and, for a long second, they froze and nothing happened. It took each of them some time to realize they were in the presence of enemies because they were engaged in innocent pastimes—simply not at war that day. It was less than strange to meet a French boy and girl on a mountain path and all would have been well but for the Stens. The officer, a little to one side of the path for a better view up through the pines, got a good look at the weapons, and it wasn't very long before he came to understand exactly what they meant.

  There followed a moment of comedy: the officer scrabbling at the flap of his holster, the Feldwebel attempting to grab his rifle—resting butt down against a tree—and knocking it over, Daniel and Brebis having the most difficult time of all, trying to struggle free of their slung weapons. It took them a hopelessly long time to do so and, in fact, they never did manage it. The officer drew his pistol, thumbed the safety off, shot each of them once, then ran away down the trail, the Feldwebel galloping after, dragging his rifle along the ground by its strap.

  Khristo heard the shots and dove off the path, landing on his belly with the machine pistol pointing in the direction of the gunfire. Fusari he could not see. He heard, below him, the sounds of flight and a series of moans. It took him a minute to sort it out: someone had fired, someone else had run away. Since those who fled were headed downhill, toward the road, he assumed they were the enemy and that the moaning was coming from Daniel or La Brebis, one or both of whom were hit.

  Both. He circled wide of the trail and came in from the flank; Fusari arrived from the other direction at about the same time. Khristo gestured down the trail and Fusari took off in that direction, crouched, moving quickly and gracefully. It was clear to Khristo that he was not new at this.

  The guide to birds of the southern Vosges lay open on the ground, along with Daniel Vau's Sten gun. Daniel lay flat on his stomach. He looked at Khristo, a plea in his eyes: please help me. La Brebis seemed worse off, lying on her back across Daniel's lower legs, head hung backward, treading her feet like a nursing cat. She had covered her face with her hands and was moaning softly every few seconds.

  “Be careful with her,” Daniel said.

  “Are you hurt badly?”

  He shook his head that he didn't know. “She has my legs pinned,” he said. “It's somewhere down there.”

  “Is there a doctor in the village?”

  “A midwife.”

  He circled Daniel and knelt by La Brebis and gently pulled her hands away. It was very bad. She had been shot in the face. Just below and to the outside of the right nostril, a red bead of flesh extruded from a puffy circle shaded blue at its exterior edge. Suddenly, she grabbed hold of his wrists and gagged. He realized she was swallowing blood, shook one of his hands loose and raised her head. “Thank you,” she breathed.

  “Can you spit it out?”

  She tried but couldn't manage, a string of red saliva hanging from her lower lip. He took his other hand back and cleaned her mouth, then wiped away the water that ran from her eyes. “It is the wound,” she said. “I do not weep.”

  “I know,” he said. Very gently, he opened her mouth. There was a swollen ridge across the top of her palate. He reached around her head and probed gently in the hair at the base of her skull, looking for an exit wound, but couldn't find anything. God only knew where the bullet was, somewhere inside her face.

  He realized that Fusari was standing above him, breathing hard. “They're gone,” he said. “I heard the car take off.”

  Khristo nodded. It meant they would be back in force—perhaps in an hour or a little less. He said to Daniel, “I don't want to move her. Is she crushing your legs?”

  “I don't feel anything,” he said.

  “Can you move your feet? Your toes?”

  “No.”

  His heart sank. Fusari swore softly.

  From the trail above him, he heard running footsteps. The sound of the shots had apparently reached them—the cold air carried sound much as water did.

  Lucien—the American—and Gilbert came galloping down the path a few moments later. The former was pale and shaken. Gilbert carried a Sten and a tattered old book with its covers missing.

  “What happened?” Lucien asked, breathless.

  Daniel told him.

  La Brebis laid her head back in Khristo's arms. One side of her face had swollen so that her right eye was a slit, and she was beginning to struggle for breath as the damaged passages swelled shut.

  Khristo spoke to Gilbert, who was hunting through his book, a medical manual belonging to the village for many years, used primarily to set broken bones and to treat burns. “Is there a doctor?”

  “In Épinal,” Gilbert answered.

  “You better get him,” Khristo said. La Brebis was dying.

  Lucien spoke. “We must bring them down there,” he said.

  “No,” Gilbert said. “It's impossible. The schleuhs will be all over the place—and they'll be here soon enough. They've seen the Stens.”

  “Where is the truck?” Lucien said.

  “By the logging. On the other side of the road.”

  “Is there gasoline?”

  “A little.”

  “Let's go,” he said.

  “Did you not hear me?” Gilbert asked.

  “It doesn't matter. We're going. Christophe and Fusari, take La Brebis. Gilbert and I will follow with Daniel.”

  “Lucien,” Gilbert said, grim, “they'll get us all.”

  “No they won't.”

  Daniel said, “I am sorry, Lucien. We didn't …”

  They waited while Lucien ran back up the path and warned the village that a German search party would be coming. The remainder of the maquis and the new recruits took the arms and ammunition and moved up the mountain. Alceste Vau was not told of his brother's wound; he would have demanded to accompany them to Épinal and there were already too many of them for the old truck. When Lucien returned, they carried the wounded down the path, across the road, and loaded them carefully into the back of the truck. They covered themselves with a canvas tarp while Gilbert drove, alone in the cab.

  The ride down the mountain road seemed to go on forever. The brakes were virtually useless on the steep curves and every time Gilbert downshifted, the flywheel screamed and threatened to blow the transmission all over the road. The truck swayed and bounced, Khristo lay on his side in the darkness beneath the tarpaulin and tried to keep La Brebis's head from moving with the truck's motion, but it was a losing battle. In the beginning, she cried out when they were jolted by a downshift, but as they went farther down the mountain she made no sound at all, and Khristo could feel her skin growing cold. Let her die, he thought. His training told him to sacrifice one in order to save another—and to stop might put all their lives in jeopardy.

  But this was Lucien's decision, he realized, and finally he shifted over next to him and, raising his voice above the truck's roaring motor, said, “Lucien, Brebis is asphyxiating. She won't make it.”

  Lucien's voice answered a moment later. “Are you sure?”

  “No. But feel how cold she is.”

  “It could be shock.”

  “It could be, but I think it's her windpipe closing up.” When there was no immediate answer, he tried to help Lucien make a decision. “We can still save Daniel, if we continue.”

  “No,” Lucien said. He crawled along the truck bed, then reached out from beneath the tarp and pounded on the rear window of the cab. Gilbert slowed—they could feel him pumping the brakes gingerly—then pulled off the road onto the grassy shoulder. The truck was canted at a dangerous angle, and Gilbert raced the engine so it would not stall. On the other side of the road a German staff car and a truckload of soldiers tore past, but they paid no heed to the truck by the side of the road.

  “Hold her head,” Lucien said.<
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  Khristo cradled her head in his lap and pressed his hands against the sides of her face. Fusari crawled over next to him and raised the edge of the tarp to let in some light. Lucien reached into his pocket and brought out a cheap fountain pen. He unscrewed the two halves, then broke off the nib end and cleaned up the shattered edge as best he could with a knife. He pulled his shirttail out and wiped ink from the open tube he'd fashioned. Khristo could see that his hands were shaking.

  “Ready?” Lucien said.

  Khristo nodded.

  “Open her mouth.”

  Khristo pulled her teeth apart. He could see Lucien sweating in the cold air as he pressed Brebis's tongue down with his left index finger. When he forced the tube down the back of her throat, the pain brought her back from stupor and she screamed, a hoarse, choking sound that made Khristo shudder. When Lucien withdrew his hand there was blood on it.

  Lucien wasted no time. He pounded on the cab window again, and Gilbert moved back out on the road while Fusari resettled the tarp and they were in darkness once again. La Brebis tried to move her hand to her mouth, but Khristo held tightly to her wrist. “Just breathe,” he whispered by her ear. “Can you?” After a moment, she moved her head up and down to tell him that she could.

  In Épinal, they heard the sounds of other vehicles and bicycle bells and the truck slowed, bumping along the cobbled streets. At last, Gilbert made as if to park, swinging over toward the curb. Then, suddenly, he took off quickly, with all the acceleration the old engine could muster. Khristo let go of the wounded girl and found the grip of his machine pistol.

  But nothing happened. They drove for several minutes, then rolled to a stop. Khristo peeked beneath the tarp and saw the Épinal railroad station. At Lucien's direction, Fusari checked out the other side and reported that Gilbert was entering the Hôtel de la Gare, which was, Khristo knew, to be found across the street from virtually every railway station in France. Some minutes later Gilbert appeared at the back of the truck and spoke in an undertone. “There was a geste car parked in front of the doctor's office—they know there's been a gunshot wound. I'm going to drive around to the back of the hotel. Once we get there, move quickly and get them inside.”