by Fiona Brand
Adrenaline almost stopped her heart. She checked out the window. Dengler was returning with the patrol. She couldn’t see either Stein or Reichmann.
She had to leave, quickly, and not by the front door.
Walking swiftly, she took the narrow servants’ stairs. They were dark and dusty and in a state of disrepair, too dangerous for everyday use. The stairs came out at a small door that opened into one of the kitchen pantries. The small, dark room was hung with hams and sausages.
She slipped her shoes back on. The tang of rich, smoked sausage made her mouth water uncontrollably, reminding her that she had barely eaten all day. It had been more than a week since she’d had meat, but right now food was not a priority. She paused in a darkened alcove just short of the main kitchen and glimpsed a familiar lined face framed by wisps of gray hair tucked beneath a scarf. Nanna Guignard, the cook. Raisin-dark eyes met hers. A hand signaled that she should stay out of sight.
The old woman turned and snapped out an order. She needed herbs, various kinds, and she needed them now. And more potatoes. The two women from the village helping prepare the meal scurried out to the vegetable garden, snatching baskets as they went. A German soldier, a tall, gangling boy of no more than fifteen or sixteen who supervised the cooking, gestured at the half sack of potatoes propped against one wall.
The woman was unmoved. The Oberst had a special guest tonight. A special effort was required. Those old potatoes were for the men in the barracks.
Shrugging, he ducked his head to avoid the low lintel and disappeared in the direction of one of the garden sheds.
The woman jerked her head. “Allez,” she whispered. Go.
“Attend! La couleur. Rouge.”
Mouth now bone-dry at the mistake she had almost made, Sara unwound the red scarf and handed it to the old woman. Seconds later, she stepped outside and walked swiftly to the cover of the thick tangle of overgrown shrubs that marked the beginning of what had once been exquisitely groomed gardens.
Keeping low and taking care to always keep shrubs and trees between herself and the Château, she scrambled over a low stone wall and started across a bare expanse of field.
Her stockings were ripped, her shoes wet and her feet were already numb with cold.
The jagged croak of a raven jerked her head around. The birds launched, black wings beating the air. The sense that someone was watching her was suddenly overpowering.
The ravens wheeled, swung east then settled in the distant, skeletal branches of a tree.
She stumbled on, calculating the distance. Two more fields, an icy stream to cross, a short walk down a lane and she would be at the back of Armand’s house.
She checked behind her constantly. Her spine felt tight, her skin crawling with tension.
The cold water from the stream froze her feet and ankles. She slipped as she climbed the bank. Her flimsy shoes were worse than useless; they were an impediment. Leaving them behind a tree, she walked to the edge of the lane and checked the road.
The roof of Armand’s house, smoke curling from the chimney, came into view. She broke into a run, clasping her purse and the book to her chest, relief making her clumsy. Home. Freedom.
Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how badly she needed out of Reichmann’s and Stein’s twisted world.
Fourteen
Armand wasn’t in the house.
Stripping off her office clothes, Sara dressed swiftly in thick woolen trousers and a woolen shirt and sweater, with a double layer of socks for her feet, which were still frozen. She didn’t have time to warm them, which was dangerous, but not as dangerous as staying one second longer than she needed in Vassigny.
She took her knapsack out of the closet and stuffed it with Reichmann’s ledger, spare socks in case her feet got wet again, her gun, a well-oiled Luger and a supply of ammunition.
Shrugging into a thick, dark coat, she ran downstairs and packed the food and drink she had prepared before she had left for work that morning. She wasn’t taking much. They would be on the move for a day, maybe two if they encountered problems, then Switzerland, and home.
Although where home was now was a moot point. She loved France, and she had transplanted easily. If she had to label herself, she was more French than either English or German, but staying wasn’t possible right now. She would go to England. Perhaps even America.
Excitement of a different kind made her heart speed up, and her face burned as she laced on leather boots, shrugged into the knapsack and checked her watch. Cavanaugh would be waiting.
Her pulse jumped another notch. What she was feeling was crazy. It shouldn’t matter who was waiting.
Armand stepped in the door, removing his hat and scarf, and walked through to the kitchen. “You’re ready to leave.”
“And you’re not.”
Armand was also packing, although he wasn’t coming with her. He was joining de Vallois and the Maquis. It had been decided that the entire unit of the Resistance had to pull out of Vassigny. It was regrettable, but there was no other way.
She gripped his arms and kissed him on both cheeks. His hug was brief and hard.
“Don’t wait, Armand. Leave now.” He should have left this morning. Instead, he had deliberately waited until she was safe.
He grinned. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right behind you.”
Her eyes were burning. “I’ll miss you.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll see me again. I’m a survivor.”
She blinked back tears and reluctantly let him go. They were married on paper, but Armand was the brother she had never had. For the past two years they had shared a waking nightmare and she had a vested interest in his well-being. “You need to leave, now. Stein’s up to something.”
His expression was unmoved. “Soon. Yvette and Pascal are due to arrive shortly. I can’t leave until they get here.”
Yvette Dutetre was his daughter, Pascal, his seven-year-old grandson. They lived on a farm, closer to St. Laurent than Vassigny, and south of the escape route. Armand had to get them out. If Armand were hauled in for questioning, Stein, without doubt, would use Yvette and Pascal as collateral. But with the compressed time frame and the difficulty of movement on the roads, retrieving his family was fraught with risk.
“Don’t delay. I’ve got a bad feeling about Stein.” It had chased her across the fields and was still sawing at her nerves. If possible, she was even more on edge than she had been at the Château.
She hugged him again, tears burning behind her eyes. “Bonne chance and Godspeed. I’ll never forget you.”
Armand pushed her toward the back door. “Et tu m’amie. Now go. Vite, vite!”
Cavanaugh was waiting in the tunnel. The first touch of his gaze intensified her fierce need to survive and correspondingly filled her with fear. Always before she had risked herself for others, never herself. She hadn’t wanted or needed anything but the work she was doing, and she had been prepared to pay with her life.
Now, she wanted to live, so powerfully that raw panic filled her. She couldn’t help thinking that something she needed so badly could so easily be taken from her.
Sara lifted a lamp off a hook on the wall and used matches from her knapsack to light it. Their shadows flickered wildly over the rough walls of the tunnel. “Keep your head low, and don’t talk until we stop walking. Sound travels along the tunnels. Sometimes conversations can be heard in unexpected places.”
“Does anyone else besides you use these tunnels?”
“No, only the Maquis. The villagers know about it, but no one would jeopardize us.”
She gripped his arm, halting him. “If I’m caught and I can’t shoot myself, you’ll have to do it.”
His dark gaze was steady. “We won’t get caught.”
She didn’t relinquish her grip. She had seen Stein at work, heard reports of the atrocities at Lyon and Clairvaux. He was brutal, efficient. If he had a shred of humanity in him, she had never been privileged to witness it. If he dis
covered that she had not only stolen their codes, but written an Allied cipher, he would be merciless. “Don’t hesitate. S’il vous plaît.”
Cavanaugh shrugged into his coat. His gaze met hers, and she had a brief moment to wonder what his story was, why he was here risking his life. As powerfully as he attracted her, she only knew him on an instinctual, visceral level. She trusted him with her life. Perhaps it was the best way to know someone, but that didn’t change the reality that she knew nothing of a personal nature about him.
“Don’t worry, madame. I’ll take care of you.”
“Not madame, not anymore. Just plain Sara Weiss.” This part of the war was over for her. She wouldn’t miss the deprivation, the fear and brutality, but she would miss the comradeship. Armand and his band of Maquis, de Vallois and the SOE operatives she liaised with, had become more than friends—they were her family.
Minutes later, they exited the tunnel and stepped out into the damp chill of evening. Two of Armand’s best men were waiting, dark, lethal shadows who went by the names Rene and Guillaume.
As they entered the edge of the massive forest that fringed the eastern slopes of Vassigny, the sense of foreboding that had dogged her even before she had left the Château coalesced into knowledge. In the distance the sound of vehicles jerked her head around. From their vantage point she could clearly see Armand’s house, and two vehicles parked outside it. One of them Stein’s.
Panic gripped her. Stein knew what Reichmann was up to and he had been spying on him. She hadn’t seen him this evening, which was unusual. She should have paid attention to her gut instinct. When she was crossing the open fields the sensation that she was being watched had been almost suffocatingly strong. Because Stein had been watching her.
Fear hammered in her chest. She had an urge to retrace her steps. To run.
Armand should have left by now. He should be behind them, although he wasn’t leaving France. He and his daughter and grandson were joining de Vallois and his men in the forest. They would remain with them until it was safe for Yvette and Pascal to be moved south to stay with relatives.
A second later Armand stumbled out of the house, one of Stein’s troopers following behind. A small figure was hauled out of one of the cars and Sara’s heart contracted with shock.
“I need to go back. I’m the one they want. They’ve got Pascal. He’s seven years—”
“No.”
Cavanaugh gripped her arms, his gaze locked with hers. “If you go back, you’ll make things worse. You’ll put the proof they’re looking for in their hands. Armand knows the game. Let him play it.”
Her jaw clenched. If Armand were captured he wouldn’t talk, no matter what they did to him— or his family. That was how they survived, the code of silence combined with absolute trust and absolute loyalty. But his death would be on her head. He had harbored her, protected her. She would be the reason he died.
Cavanaugh shook her. “De Vallois will get him. Ne souci pas.”
Don’t worry. Tears were streaming down her face. She couldn’t hear what was being said, the wind was too strong up here, snatching away all but the loudest sounds. Pascal, despite being pushed around, was upright and stoic. He was seven going on thirty. He had seen things that no child should ever see, and he knew what a monster Stein was.
She could see Armand gesturing. She knew what he would be telling them, that she had gone to Bourg-En-Bresse to tend her sick aunt, and that she would be back in a few days.
A fist caught him on the cheekbone. She flinched, sound erupted from her throat as he crumpled, blood streaming down the side of his face.
Cavanaugh’s grip tightened as one of the vehicle doors was flung open and Yvette was pushed out. Pascal darted across the road to his mother and they clung together as Armand pushed to his feet. Surrounded by Stein and his armed squad, all three looked pitifully frail.
A flicker of movement caught her eyes.
An old man was drifting along the road, ostensibly returning home from the fields. Abelard, one of de Vallois’s lieutenants.
Fierce relief filled her.
Cavanaugh was right. De Vallois was there and he had control of the situation. It was possible they would fight. There were no guarantees, but with Armand and his family involved, they couldn’t afford to lose.
Abruptly, Cavanaugh hauled her close. The heat of his body engulfed her, she could feel the steady beat of his heart. His hold loosened. His gaze caught hers, held, and the secret she had pushed aside and tried to stamp out, because it was an impossible luxury, was suddenly as clear and sharp as the icy winter sky.
Emotion pierced her, raw, urgent. Something altered in his gaze, and in that moment the secret was shared. His hands framed her face and his mouth came down on hers, touched, clung. The numbing cold dissolved and for a few dizzying moments she burned.
When he lifted his mouth, his gaze was once again implacable. “Now we go, n’est-ce pas?”
Not a question. A command.
They walked in silence as full dark fell, following goat trails, each step careful. A twisted ankle or a broken bone now would spell disaster.
Two more of Armand’s men met them at the intersection of two streams that ran through the forest. Here the trees were thinner and the moonlight illuminated the open areas. Rene and Guillaume squatted down to top up their water bottles. Sara indicated she needed privacy.
Cavanaugh’s gaze was sharp, his voice toneless. “Don’t go far.”
She retraced her steps until she found a secluded area not far from the water. They would be traveling for two days, minimum. In that time there wouldn’t be any luxuries, and few opportunities for her to relieve herself out of sight of the men. She pushed her trousers down, squatted and systematically emptied her bladder. When she was finished, she used one of several cotton squares she had brought to dry herself. When her trousers were refastened, she buried the scrap of cotton under a thick layer of pine needles.
A breeze rustled through the trees, the cold penetrating her layers of wool clothing as she washed her hands in the stream, then, on impulse, splashed water on her face. When she straightened an arm clamped around her throat, choking off her breath.
Cold steel jabbed into her side. “Don’t make a sound.”
Stein.
She drove back with an elbow and wrenched at his arm. He jerked her back, the movement short and vicious. Long seconds passed, her chest burned, her vision began to blur. Stein was pressing on her carotid.
Then they were moving, her feet stumbling, dragging. The viselike hold on her throat eased, oxygen flooded her lungs. She gasped. Stein’s hold tightened, once more cutting off her air supply. Distantly she could hear shouts, gunfire.
Moonlight dazzled her eyes. They were out on a road. Stein pushed her into the back of a truck. Two soldiers she didn’t recognize gagged her and tied her hands behind her back. Two more clambered over the tailgate, their weapons clattering on the rough wooden deck. Then the truck was moving.
A sharp pain in her wrist and shoulder catapulted Sara out of sleep. Moonlight glowed off white muslin drapes, white embossed wallpaper and lavish white bed linen.
She was standing beside the bed in her room in Bayard’s house, her arm rigidly extended, held in place by the belt.
Heart pounding, her mind still locked in a paralyzing no-man’s-land between dream and reality, she loosened the belt and slipped her wrist free. A small shudder ran through her at the thought of what could have happened if she hadn’t tied herself to the bed. The Bayard house was enormous, the towering landing and the sweeping staircase potential death traps.
The digital clock on the beside table read just after two. If there was any form of rationality to the dreams it was that they always seemed to occur at the same time within her sleep cycle.
Fragments of the dream resurfaced as she massaged her wrist, sharp edged and vivid enough to make her heart pound. Too awake to attempt going back to sleep right away, she padded downstairs into the sitti
ng room. Moonlight washed through the windows, almost as bright as day. Flicking on a lamp, she found the knapsack and the envelope, which Bayard had stored in an armoire. She slipped the photographs out of the envelope.
A color photo in a silver frame on a carved oak desk.
Blond ringlets, blue eyes, milk-white skin.
Reichmann’s daughter.
Helene Reichmann would be in her seventies now, but that didn’t change the fact that she had been involved in the execution of Todd Fischer and seven other naval divers. The impact of that one single crime on Sara’s family alone had been immense. Now, suddenly, the dreams that had haunted her since she was small weren’t just a weird mental aberration; they were connected. She didn’t know how or why that had happened, just that it had.
She had never met Helene Reichmann in the flesh, but she had met her father, Heinrich.
Maybe it had been a mistake to look at the photos, with the night chill biting into her skin, the old memories and old fears biting even deeper, but now that she’d started she couldn’t stop.
She flipped through the photos. All the hairs at the back of her neck lifted as she stared at a snapshot of a lean, tanned older man, his hair bleached white by the sun. His bearing was erect despite the fact that he was out of uniform, the hawklike cheekbones unmistakable. Reichmann, the author of Reichmann’s Ledger, the book that had almost cost Steve and Taylor their lives.
A soft footfall brought her head up.
Bayard glided into the room, large and catlike in the shadows. A sharp jolt of recognition went through her and suddenly the dream was back, clear and cold, as real as the solid walls around her—part of her.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
Not since I was seven.
She glanced away from his muscled chest, the unconscious seduction of dark trousers clinging to narrow hips, the heightened awareness forced on her by the dream. “I sleep better in my own bed.”