“And our friends have no papers!”
“I know,” said Logan grimly. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, as if the action might magically prompt some solution to their fix. “We need a diversion,” he said at length.
“What do you suggest?” said Lise.
Logan had expected some opposition, or at least some hesitation on her part in going along with him. But she seemed perfectly willing to follow his lead, perhaps because she was wise enough to know this was no place for a debate, or because she had no idea of her own to suggest.
Logan thought a moment more, then said, “How are you at being hit by a car?”
She cocked a questioning eyebrow toward him, perhaps already regretting her decision to allow Logan to play out his hand.
“I have never had the experience, so I do not know,” she replied.
“You’ll do fine. I’d do it myself, but since I know the dodge, I’ll have to play the eyewitness.”
He glanced once more up and down the street. There were few cars, so the timing would be even more crucial, and the chances of having their deception seen all the more dangerous.
“Okay,” he said finally, “we’ll all amble slowly toward the barricade as if we don’t know one another. When a likely vehicle pulls up to the barricade, just step out and drop in front of it. But please make certain it’s already almost at a stop. You’ll also have to try to gauge a moment when the soldiers are absorbed with someone else and not noticing the car as it approaches.”
“Oui,” replied Lise. “I see what you are getting at. It’s crazy, but it just might work.”
Then Logan turned to Paul. “You must get into the line, Paul, and get the people stirred up. A discreet word here and there ought to do it, and keep moving so no one can pinpoint the trouble to you. Can you handle that?”
The boy nodded, warming to the excitement of being thus used to outwit the Boche.
Logan then returned to the alley, briefed his countrymen on their part in the ploy, and verbally gave them the address of the safe house should they become separated.
Paul moved into place in the line where already thirty or forty pedestrians were shuffling about, along with two cars. Logan judged it would not take much to incite them, for they were already cross and surly at this bothersome inconvenience. Soon Lise crossed the street, hoping that by doing thus she would divert attention from the side where the airmen would be making their escape.
A shiny black sedan pulled up to the roadblock. It would be the perfect pigeon. Out of the corner of his eye, Logan watched Lise. She was making no move. Why was she waiting?
The glare on the windshield shifted and Logan saw that the car was occupied by a German officer—nothing less than a general!
Good girl! thought Logan. She had her head about her!
The general’s car pulled around the crowd, up to the barricade, and was allowed to pass. As the soldiers, four of them in all, were replacing the barricade, an older gray Renault pulled up. Logan held his breath. Lise stepped off the sidewalk.
In a moment she was down in such a commotion of squealing breaks, agonized screams, and crowd noise that Logan feared she might have actually been hit. He berated himself for coming up with the fool plan, but no matter what happened he couldn’t fold now. Back in England, he and Skittles only faced a few days in jail if their scam failed. But now five lives depended on success, and there was no place to bolt to even if he wanted to.
“Someone’s been killed!” came a cry from the crowd; Logan thought he recognized Paul’s tenor voice.
“Mon Dieu! she’s been hit!”
“There’s blood! Someone help her—the girl’s dead!”
“No, she’s still breathing, she needs a doctor.”
The voices were from many different quarters now, as the throng pressed in around the scene.
“Hey, don’t push . . . someone took my wallet!”
“It’s the Germans’ fault!”
Curses and accusations and commotion grew, leveled both toward the Boche and between the volatile Frenchmen themselves. Pushing and shoving gave way to an occasional outbreak that looked as though it could turn the scene into an ugly mob, enough to draw two of the S.S. men from their posts into the disorderly fray. A third stepped well away from the barricade to better view the melee. A quick glance to his right showed that Wainborough and MacGregor were inching their way closer to the roadblock. Just as he was about to make his move, Logan remembered his jacket, still reeking of sherry. Tearing it off and dropping it on the ground, he rushed up to the fourth soldier, who was still firmly planted at his post.
“Please,” he said, his face and tone filled with frantic entreaty, “I’m a doctor. I must get to the girl, but I can’t get through the crowd. Help me!”
“Folge ihm!” the soldier grunted, pointing to the third S.S. man.
Logan shook his head, pretending not to understand, and grabbing the man’s arm. “Please help me!” he said, and managed to get the man a few steps away from his position.
“Hans!” called the German to his comrade. But the third soldier was too engrossed in the noisy spectacle to hear.
“Stupid Französisch!” he said, swearing an oath vehemently at Logan, then striding hotly up to the man he had called Hans. “Take this doctor and see what he can do.”
A surreptitious glance showed Logan that he had given his airmen enough time to get past the barricade. But they still had to get the few yards to the next street and around the corner out of sight.
“Oh, merci . . . merci!” exclaimed Logan effusively. He put an arm around the man, plying him with what hollow praise he could dream up.
Mac and Wainborough had broken into a trot, and Logan caught a glimpse of pain etched onto Mac’s homely countenance. But the Scot hadn’t made it this close to home to give up so easily. If they were spotted now, running, they would be dead ducks. Logan had to keep the German’s attention another twenty or thirty seconds, yet his experience told him he had already carried the con beyond its natural limits. The soldiers would get suspicious before long.
“If you want to help,” shouted the German in broken French, “then go help!”
Logan could stall no longer. The third soldier had taken him in tow and was shoving him through the crowd. He couldn’t even chance a look over his shoulder. He breathed a quick prayer that he had bought his charges sufficient time. When he heard no outbursts at the barricade, he realized he had—the flyboys had made it! He also saw that Paul had made his exit too, sneaking to the head of the line, and passing through the quick inspection; perhaps he would be able to help the Anglais.
Now Logan could turn his energy to getting himself and Lise out of there.
Scarcely a minute or two had elapsed since the gray sedan had slammed on its brakes. As Logan elbowed his way through the crowd with the aid of his S.S. escort, he saw that Lise was only just then pulling herself to a sitting position. She shook her head groggily, while rubbing her face with her hands. Her nose was smudged, and a scrape across her cheek looked real enough, with genuine blood oozing from it. She is definitely no amateur, thought Logan to himself.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, kneeling down beside her, “I am a doctor. Where are you hurt?”
“I will call an ambulance,” said the German, seeming to be genuinely concerned.
“Non . . . non!” replied Lise. “I will be fine. I only had the wind knocked from me.”
“Can you walk?” asked Logan.
“Oui. Just give me a hand.” She began to pull herself unsteadily to her feet as a cheer rose from the crowd. Then she winced sharply in pain as her left knee buckled. “I think it is my hip,” she said.
“I should examine you in my office,” said Logan, the conscientious medical man. “It is not far—only around the corner.”
“I’ll call a car,” offered the helpful German.
“Do not trouble yourself,” said Lise, rising again on her feet. “I can manage to walk that far.” She bravel
y smiled her thanks, then limped off with Logan’s steadying arm around her. The barricade was parted for them and no one even bothered to look at their papers.
The half-block past the barricade and around the corner seemed to take hours. The urge to make a run for it was almost overpowering. But Lise and Logan kept up the ruse of doctor and patient until they were well on their way down the next street. They hoped they would be in time to catch Paul and the two refugees, but speed was always a sure way of arousing attention. They did not break into a jog until they were well out of sight, when they saw the tram coming to a stop a hundred yards ahead.
Two minutes later Logan sank gratefully onto a backseat of one of the vehicles. MacGregor, Wainborough, Paul, and Lise were all safely aboard as well, scattered throughout the car.
Barring any further interference from the Germans, they were home free, at least for this particular episode.
25
New Compatriots
Logan stirred the saccharin into his coffee.
The adventure of the day was successfully over. MacGregor and Wainborough were settled into their new safe house. They could now look forward to several days of recuperation before they were moved along to the next stage of the escape line—probably Marseille in unoccupied France—and then, with the help of a guide, over the Pyrenees into Spain. Their trek was far from over, but if they were lucky they’d be home for Christmas. The snow would be piled high in the glens of MacGregor’s Balquhidder, and icy wind wafting down from the mountains. His little cottage would be filled with the warm, sweet, comforting smell of peat, while his mother tended a bubbling pot of tatties and neeps. . . .
“You are deep in thought, M. Tanant,” said Lise, setting a plate of bread and cheese on the table.
They had come to her flat after leaving the airmen. It was closer than the bookstore, and she thought Logan might want to see the wireless that was secreted there. He glanced up absently, hardly realizing his mind had wandered so far from the present.
“Oh, I was just thinking of home,” he said. “Scotland, you know,” he added with a light ironical laugh. “I suppose I was thinking more of MacGregor’s home than of any home I have ever known. You know, country kitchens, peat fires, heather blooming on the hills, a cow mooing softly in the byre—the poverty-stricken but romantic Scottish highlands which everyone since Robbie Burns has loved to write and sing about?”
“What was your home like?” asked Lise.
“More along the line of soot-covered brick buildings for miles on end, air filled with the sharp metallic sounds of industry, smokestacks spewing out black smoke, and that singular odor only a seaport slum can produce,” replied Logan. “I’m a city fellow, born and bred. Glasgow. But I’m not complaining. The city was good to me, and I rather liked it. Maybe I would have been better off in the open air and barren hills and fields; who knows?”
He paused and lifted his eyes to Lise, who had been listening with great intensity. “What about you? Are you from Paris?”
“I too am a city girl,” she replied, then paused. She looked as if she was about to say more, but instead rose to refill their coffee cups.
“And . . . ?” said Logan.
She took the coffeepot from the stove and began pouring into the cups, appearing not to have heard him.
“What is there to say?” she sighed at length. “What there is of my life is all too apparent—intrigue and death, killing, deception . . . a hell of uncertainty. As for my past life, what good does it do to remember when I was alive and my days were filled with laughter? Those times are gone, and it seems they will never return.”
She had spoken with such sorrow and pain; Logan had not expected the emotion it roused within him. Yet her voice contained courage too, consistent with the tough shell he had begun to associate with her.
“You are so sure the past will never come again?”
“The old France is dead, M. Tanant,” she replied with sadness. “And I died a year ago when the Germans marched beneath the Arc de Triomphe,” she replied, “and the fragrance of the chestnuts along the Champs-Elysees was replaced with the stench of Nazis. I died when they took my family to a concentration camp.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Do you want to know about my life now, M. Tanant?”
“You are Jewish?”
“Perhaps you object to helping us?”
“Why should I?”
“Many people do, even fellow Frenchmen.”
“I am not one of them.”
“Jewish educators were among the first to be ‘purged,’” she went on, apparently satisfied. “Naturally the Nazis fear the intelligentsia, for it is the thinking man who can see their vile propaganda for what it is. My father was a professor of Talmud—a very subversive threat, that! He cared only for his Torah and keeping the Sabbath.”
She paused and shook her head. “My poor parents—I haven’t kept the Sabbath since their death, and somehow I think that fact grieves them as much as all these atrocities in the world.” She set down the coffeepot and sat down in a chair across the table from Logan. “Even after they removed him from the university, he said we must forbear in peace. Then two or three of his colleagues disappeared, men who had spoken out against the Reich. He made the mistake of trying to intervene. He believed, right to the end, that all men were basically good, and he tried to deal with the Nazis as if they were reasonable men. A neighbor who watched the Gestapo carry them off said my father wore an incredible look of surprise on his face.”
“How did you manage to keep out of their clutches?”
“Pure chance, I suppose. I was away when they raided our home. When I returned, it was over and my parents were gone. I would have waited for them to return, except that a neighbor told me what happened. She said the Gestapo would surely come back for me. I called Henri—he and my father grew up together. He made inquiries for me and learned that my parents and sister had been taken to Drancy, a camp just outside Paris. After that we heard no more until the letter came to Henri informing him that my parents had died in what they called an influenza epidemic. Nothing was said about my sister. I still don’t know if she is alive or dead—”
She broke off suddenly, her voice faltering, but she tightened her jaw and did not let her emotions take control.
“I would like to change the subject,” she said after a brief pause.
“I’m sorry,” said Logan again.
Lise attempted to smile, but the action was by no means a bright one; it did not even reach up into her eyes, but was filled with gentleness and sincerity.
“Do you mind if I call you Michel?” she finally asked. “After what we have been through today, formalities seem ridiculous.”
“I don’t mind,” he replied, “especially since I only know your first name.”
“Some life, oui?” said Lise. “And that is not even my real one. I cannot tell you my name, and I must forget yours.”
“Forget mine?” said Logan, puzzled.
“You surely are not unaware of your error today at Mme. Guillaume’s. You were so intent on giving courage to your countrymen—”
“I’d already forgotten!” exclaimed Logan, chuckling as he recalled his slip up.
“I did not want to say anything and draw further attention to it. But do not worry, I have already forgotten it also.”
“I won’t worry,” he replied playfully. “I think I can trust you.”
“You British!” she scolded. “You are so naive! But you will learn your lessons soon enough if you remain long in Paris. You should have left your trust back in England. It is too heavy a burden to carry here in France. Even the best intentioned comrade could spill his guts under the tortuous thumb of the Gestapo. Trust your companions only as far as you must—for your sake and theirs.”
“That’s what they mean when they call this a lonely life?” said Logan. “Though it has not seemed such to me yet.”
“It will, Michel, it will. Then it wil
l begin to eat away at you.”
She stopped, trying to shake off the gloom that had begun to settle about her.
“So tell me about La Librairie,” said Logan in a lighter tone. “How did such a menagerie manage to come together under one roof?”
Again Lise’s lips twitched into a smile, this time accompanied by a soft chuckle.
“If you did that more often, maybe things would not appear so grim,” Logan commented.
“Perhaps . . .” She seemed to meditate a moment on Logan’s reference to her hidden emotions, then shook away the reflective mood to answer his question. “You think us an odd assortment? It’s all quite logical, actually. Of course, you already know of my connection to Henri. Antoine is Henri’s brother-in-law, married to Henri’s sister before she was killed by the Gestapo. They are not as different as it appears on the surface. Henri is the mild and gentle one; Antoine is boisterous and gentle. But both have soft hearts and nerves of steel. I would trust my life to either of them.”
“Quite a statement coming from one who trusts nobody.”
She cocked an eyebrow at his friendly jibe. “There are no consistencies in this business,” she said smugly. “That is another thing you will have to learn.”
“Speaking of inconsistencies, tell me about Claude.”
“He is a shadow that stands out, even in a world of shadows,” replied Lise. “The only thing I know of him is that he turned up one day with Antoine’s daughter. He was with Antoine’s wife and daughter when they were all three captured, and Claude was the only one to escape. I think he is a survivor, and manages to do so by keeping to himself.”
“Was he in love with the girl?”
“She was most certainly in love with him. But I find it difficult to imagine such an emotion as love with the heart of one such as Claude. Though, who can say what may lie under that stone wall of his? And who am I to talk, you would perhaps say?”
“There is something immensely different between his wall and yours,” said Logan. “At least that is how I perceive it. I can’t quite describe it yet, but ask me when I know each of you better.”
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