He remained on the ground for several more minutes, making sure that the terrorists were far away. He thought of the big monster in the black beret who’d kicked him out of the cab. He’d never forget that man’s face, so ugly and gnarled it was, with fire spurting out of his eyes, it had seemed. He fervently hoped that someday he’d meet that man again. He’d rip him apart and feed him to the carrion crows.
Coughing and spitting blood, Richter remembered with shame how he’d cowered against the wall of the locomotive cab, paralyzed with fear, unable to do anything, a disgrace to the high ideals and great traditions of the SS. Fortunately, there was no one alive to tell the story except those terrorists, and they’d never be in a position to do that. Richter’s awful secret was safe. But now he wanted revenge against those terrorists who’d shamed him and smashed his face. Somehow he’d get them. There had to be a way.
He stood up and dusted himself off. He ran his hands over his face, and it was raw with pain. He couldn’t breathe through his nose and when he touched it he nearly screamed. His nose bone was protruding through the skin. It was too horrible to contemplate; he almost fainted at the thought of it.
“I’ve got to get moving,” he said. “I’ve got to get help.”
He limped toward the field radio lying twenty feet away, and picked it up. He depressed the button and pressed the receiver to his ear, but nothing happened. Cursing, he shook the radio and held it up to his ear again. It still wouldn’t work. In a rage, he hurled it to the ground, where it bounced off a rock and went rolling down the hill.
Richter let out a scream of curses. He wanted to beat people over the head with hammers and slice them up with knives. He wanted to stomp on their faces and kick their balls. He swore that if he ever got out of this alive he’d kill a hundred, no, a thousand Frenchmen by the most agonizing methods possible.
Contemplation of that gave him enough energy to start moving. He thought he’d walk backwards to Tours and get help there. Maybe he could find a road and catch a ride.
He looked back at the section of woods where the terrorists had fled. He made a mental note of their direction, so that he could plot their likely destination afterwards.
“You won’t get away from me,” Richter said aloud, “and then I’ll kill you all!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rouget was a little town with a population of less than a thousand, nestled amid the forest and farmlands in the province of Mayenne. Its citizens worked on the farms in the area, or were merchants in town. They lived in two-story homes made of stone or wood, most of them painted white, and spent their leisure hours in one of the town’s three cafes. On Sundays, everyone who could walk went to Mass at their town church, the prelate of which was Father Henri, a member of the Resistance.
Mahoney and his guerillas arrived in town at ten o’clock in the evening, and Louise led them to the rectory of the church. When they knocked on the door it was opened by Sister Marie, who admitted them quickly into the rectory. Sister Nathalie, who also happened to be in the rectory at the time, held her palms against her cheeks and looked horrified when the pale and dying Cerizet was carried in by Mahoney and Cranepool.
Sister Marie was a pretty young nun with a cute, upturned nose. “I’ll go get Doctor Lambert,” she said, taking her waterproof cape off a hook and dashing toward the door.
“I’d better get Father Henri right away!” said Sister Nathalie, a pudgy nun in her late thirties, who waddled toward a door.
Cranepool and Mahoney lay Cerizet on the floor. Mahoney felt his pulse, which had become weaker. In fact, Mahoney himself was feeling weak, for he hadn’t eaten anything since early that day.
Sister Nathalie returned with Father Henri, who was fifty years old with a husky build and a bald spot on top of his head. He knelt beside Cerizet, looking at the blood-soaked bandage over his stomach.
“Sister Louise has gone for the doctor,” Sister Nathalie said.
“Good,” Father Henri stood up. “Who’s in charge here?” he asked, looking at the guerillas.
“I am,” said Mahoney. “Do you have a radio?”
“Yes—downstairs.”
“I have to send a message to London right away.”
“Yes, of course. The rest of you might as well come with me, too. Sister Nathalie—stay with the sick man.”
“Yes, Father.”
Father Henri led them through a door, and down a spiral staircase to a small chapel with an altar and a large sculpture of crucified Jesus behind it. Father Henri crossed himself as he passed the altar, and so did the Frenchmen in the guerilla group. Mahoney realized he was supposed to be a Catholic too, so he crossed himself also. To the right of the altar, against the wall, a white marble statue of Mary was mounted against a background depicting a biblical setting in a city that might have been old Jerusalem. When Father Henri pressed a hidden button underneath the plaster background, the whole scene swung to the side like a huge door, revealing another flight of stairs.
“This was built around three hundred years ago,” Father Henri said, “to protect local villagers against marauding bands of lawless hoodlums.”
He led them down the stairs to a room about fifteen feet square with a radio on a table, surrounded by six chairs, in the corner. On the other side of the room were four double-bunks.
Mahoney sat at the radio, turned it on, put on the headphones and dialed a frequency that he knew Bletchley listened to at this time of night. Waiting for the tubes to warm up, he took out a cigarette and lit it up. He was tired and had a headache. His stomach was one big cramp. Finally the radio was ready for transmission. He addressed the message to Falcon, which was Colonel Fairbairn’s code name, and his message said:
Destruction of bridge not feasible. Destruction of tunnel between Vernisset and Athanase accomplished approximately two hours ago.
He signed off with Parrot, his code name, and took off the headphones.
“Did you get through all right?” Father Henri asked.
“Yes,” replied Mahoney. “Do you have anything to eat around here?”
“Yes, but not enough for all of you. I’ll have to go out to get something.”
Louise said: “I can go to my husband’s bakery and get some bread.”
“Good idea,” said Father Henri.
Cranepool didn’t think it was such a good idea. He looked away from Louise angrily. She noticed his reaction but didn’t dare say anything in front of the others, although most of them knew what was going on by now. She left through the secret door, and on her way through the parish, Louise saw the doctor and Sister Marie bending over Cerizet.
“How is he?” asked Louise.
The doctor, who had a fedora on the back of his head and a mustache like a walrus, looked up. “Very bad,” he replied.
“Will he live?”
“I don’t know.”
Louise made the sign of the cross and left the rectory. It was still raining outside, but not as hard as before. She pulled the hood of her poncho as low down over her face as she could because she didn’t want anybody in the town to recognize her if she could help it. They all knew that she was in the Resistance, and it was possible that someone might report her to the Gestapo, for there were collaborators in Rouget just as there were collaborators in most of the towns and cities in France.
She made her way through the streets of the town, so familiar to her and yet so strange. She’d been born here and baptized by Father Henri who’d also given her her First Communion. Father Henri had married her too, and she’d always been a good Catholic until she went into the Resistance. Separation from her husband, an excess of hormones, and the fact that death was always lurking around the corner, all combined to turn her into an adulteress. She felt certain she would die before long and wanted to have as much fun as she could before then. She also wanted to kill as many Germans as possible, for she was a patriot and wanted to see the Germans expelled from her country. She hated Marshal Petain and Pierre Laval, the rulers
of her country who had set the pattern of collaboration with the Germans.
She turned onto the street where her husband owned the bakery. It occupied the front portion of their white house, halfway down the street. A little wood sign near the front door said Bakery, but the lights were out this time of night. Her husband Jacques would be sleeping now, for he had to get up early in the morning to start baking that day’s bread and pastries. She had been his helper, but he’d hired an apprentice after she’d gone off with the Resistance. He’d pleaded with her not to go, but she told him she had to do it for France.
She carried the key to her house along with some other keys on a chain around her neck. She removed it and inserted the key into the door at the side of the house, opened it up and entered her kitchen. It still smelled the same way, and the fragrance of meals cooked in the room made her dizzy with nostalgia. She’d been a happy little housewife once, but that had been long ago.
Closing the door, she pulled the blinds and turned on the light. How strange it was to live in a place that you could call home, she thought, for she’d been living the guerilla life for two years, always on the move, sleeping in barns and open fields, risking her life for France, and there’d been so many men. Too many, she sometimes thought.
She heard a rustle of footsteps from the bedroom, and then the door was opened by Jacques, who she hadn’t seen for a year and a half. He had a pistol of World War One vintage in his right hand.
“Louise!” he shouted, his face lighting up with joy. “You’ve come back to me!”
He rushed toward her and embraced her, but she felt strange, because she’d betrayed him many times. She hugged him and let him kiss her, letting the stubble on his cheeks scratch her face. He was big and fat, almost twenty years older than she. At that moment she didn’t love him anymore, and had married him only because there was a limited choice of eligible men in little Rouget.
He moved back and looked down on her, beaming with pleasure. “My little sweetheart,” he said. “My angel. Have you come back to me for good?”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”
“No?” he asked sadly.
“No.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “Because you love your country more than you do your husband. Sometimes I think I should be there with you, but who’d run the bakery? What would the people of this town do for bread? It’s true that it says in the Bible that a man should not live by bread alone, but it doesn’t say he shouldn’t have any bread at all. So here I stay alone, missing you very much. Are you going to stay the night?”
“No,” she replied. “I’ve come for some bread, and then I must be going.”
“So soon?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You can’t even stay a little while? An hour?”
“No, Jacques. There isn’t time.”
“Where are you going?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Can you come back later?”
“No,” she said, although she knew she could if she wanted to, but she didn’t want to. She’d rather be with Cranepool, the young blond American with the pale blue eyes, with whom she was smitten.
“Aw Louise ...” Jacques complained.
“I’m sorry, but I dare not take the chance,” she lied.
“No one will ever see you.”
“You never know who might tell the Germans. Everyone in this town knows I’m with the Resistance.”
“They won’t see you.”
“We can’t know that for sure.”
“I’ll kill anyone who says you’re here.”
“It’ll be too late for me then, won’t it? How selfish you are, Jacques. You want me to risk my life for a few hours with you. What kind of a husband is that?”
He stepped back and looked contrite. “You’re right—it is selfish of me. But I’ve missed you so much, Louise. I think of you all the time. I need you, Louise. There’s been no one else for me.” He peered into her eyes. “Has there been anyone else for you?”
“Of course not,” she replied, not batting an eyelash.
“I’m so glad,” he gushed, clasping his hands together.
“I’m in a hurry, Jacques,” she replied, heading toward the bakery. “I must get some bread.”
“What for?”
“I can’t tell you.”
He followed her through the curtain that separated the kitchen from the bakery. “Why can’t you tell me?”
“You know why.” She passed the table where he rolled the dough and went to the racks, where the long thin loaves of bread were kept. There were a dozen loaves left over from the day, plus a tray of pastries. She began putting all these into an empty flour sack. “I’ll need to borrow your raincoat, Jacques.”
“My raincoat? Why?”
“To keep the bread dry, silly.”
“But I need my raincoat. It’s been raining all the time.”
“It will be returned to you in the morning.”
He watched her dump the bread and pastries into the sack. When he’d married her she’d been a sweet young girl and very affectionate. Now she was like somebody else. “I don’t think I know who you are any more,” he said.
“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” she replied. “I’m sure you have much better things to worry about.”
“Nothing is more important to me than you, Louise.”
He gathered her up in his arms again and kissed her on the lips. She felt nothing for him but put up with it. After the war was over she’d figure out some way to deal with him. The Church said she couldn’t get a divorce, but it didn’t say that she’d have to live with him.
“I’ve got to go now,” she said, pushing him away.
“Oh, Louise,” he whined.
“Bring me your raincoat.”
“Yes, Louise.”
As he ran out of the bakery, she tied the top of the flour sack. She was sure that Cranepool would love the pastries, because he was so much like a child. He was mad at her because she hadn’t told him she was married, but she’d smother him with kisses and make him happy again.
Jacques returned with his oilskin raincoat and she wrapped the flour sack with it, and then slung it over her shoulder.
“I’ve got to be going now, Jacques. I’ll see you another time,” she said, looking into his damp eyes.
“When?” he asked.
“How should I know?”
“Make it soon,” he said urgently.
“I’ll do the best I can.”
She returned to the kitchen and he followed at her heels like a big dog. “Let me come with you,” he said. “I can carry the bread for you.”
“Do you know what will happen to you if you are caught with me?”
“Nobody will see.”
“You never know. There is a price on my head, and they will assume you’re in the Resistance, too.”
“Maybe I’d better not go with you after all.”
“Now you’re being sensible.”
“Let me kiss you goodbye, my dear.”
She raised her face to him and he kissed her again, but she turned away quickly and opened the door. “I’m sorry, but I’m in a hurry,” she said.
He looked hurt. “Goodbye, my love,” he said.
“Goodbye.”
She closed the door and walked briskly down the sidewalk toward the church, feeling sorry for her husband, but what can you do when you don’t love somebody who loves you?
I can’t be expected to sacrifice my life for him if I don’t love him, she told herself. People like him have to learn that they can’t have everything that they want. She couldn’t wait to see Cranepool again. She’d feed him pastries and kiss his earlobes. That ought to dispel the bad mood he was in.
Turning a corner, she nearly bumped into Picard, a wizened old man with a white mustache and goatee, who rented houses to some of the families in town. They did not say a
nything to each other; Louise kept walking along, hoping the old man hadn’t recognized her.
But he had, and he was most surprised to see her in town, because he knew she was in the Resistance. I wonder what she’s doing here, he thought. Like many Frenchmen in Normandy, he was a secret collaborator with the Germans and an agent of the Gestapo. He hated the English, hated the Jews, hated the Communists, and admired Adolf Hitler, who he considered the greatest man Europe had produced in the twentieth century.
Picard stopped and looked over his shoulder at Louise. What does she have in that bag over her shoulder, and where is she going? he wondered. Then he noticed she was wearing boots and slacks, like the women in the Resistance. Is she here on some sort of terrorist business? He knew that her husband’s bakery was nearby. Had she been to see her husband?
Picard decided to follow her. He ducked into a doorway and waited until she was too far away to notice him, then came out of the doorway, but she was nowhere to be seen. She must have turned a corner somewhere, or cut through somebody’s yard to another street. He ran quickly to the corner and looked around, but couldn’t see her. She had given him the slip. Crafty little devil, he thought. He wondered if the matter was of sufficient importance to report to his contact at Gestapo headquarters at La Roche-Guyon.
He clasped his hands behind his back and walked home, the rain dripping from the wide brim of his fedora. He seldom had anything to report to La Roche-Guyon, and this might give him the excuse to check in and let them know he still was on the alert.
As he neared his home he saw Doctor Lambert walking quickly on a street perpendicular to the one he was on. The doctor was carrying his little black bag and appeared to be deep in thought. If somebody in town was sick, Picard would like to know, because he was the town busybody and felt he had to know everything that was going on.
“Doctor Lambert!” he called.
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