Scorched Earth

by Robert Muchamore

  The bullet split Robert’s head like a boot stomping a ripe pumpkin. Bullet fragments punched through the bistro’s window as PT took his second shot. Everyone was diving for cover, so PT lowered his aim and shot the guy with the ginger beard.

  At such close range, any half-decent marksman could take PT out with a pistol, so he slung the rifle over his shoulder and began a sprint.

  Inside the bistro, Marc and Luc dived as glass flew and pieces of the bullet that killed Robert shattered glassware behind the bar. Marc led a fast crawl towards the stairs and they charged up while the gangsters huddled on the floor near the entrance. Luc had a crowbar hooked on his belt in case the boss’s office was locked, but the door was half open.

  There was no sign of the boss, but the elderly accountant sat in his alcove with his ledger and his stacks of money. As Marc stood on the landing, covering the stairs with his pistol, Luc opened his suitcase and ditched the bundle of tatty clothes inside.

  ‘Fill the case,’ Luc ordered the old guy.

  Downstairs, a couple of the gangsters had worked out what was going on. But it was a straight staircase, so Marc could easily take out anyone who tried coming up. There was more money than would fit in the case, but they couldn’t take more than a case full without seriously impeding their getaway.

  ‘I’m ready,’ Luc shouted.

  As Luc opened a window behind the desk, the boss came out of the toilet, with his braces dangling and tailored trousers held up with one hand.

  ‘Can’t I take a shit in peace?’ he yelled as he stepped on to the landing. ‘What’s all this bloody noise?’

  His expression turned to shock when he saw Marc right in front of him.

  Startled, Marc took a low shot, hitting the boss in the thigh. As the boss collapsed, Marc sent him tumbling downstairs with a knee in the back.

  ‘I’m done,’ Luc shouted. ‘Let’s move out.’

  Marc backed into the office and kicked the door shut. The accountant had his hands in the air and Luc had one leg on the window ledge, ready to jump down into an alley behind the building. He made the 3-metre leap, then Marc passed the suitcase down before jumping himself.

  The pair belted down an alleyway that emerged much closer to the depot than they would have liked. PT had made a long sprint and covered the pair with the sniper rifle as they turned left into a sloping street. Once the trio met up, they turned right and sprinted between rows of tiny houses built for factory workers.

  The boys ran half a kilometre together, with no sign of a chase. When they reached a turning into a large road, PT stopped and did a quick disassembly job on the sniper rifle. Luc took a right and strained from the weight of money as he strode towards three waiting taxi-carts.

  Marc whispered, ‘See you back home,’ to PT before crossing the street and walking briskly down the first turning.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  PT walked the opposite way to Luc and had less luck finding a taxi-cart, but he was astonished by an open Métro station. People were so used to it being closed that he rode four stops in a near-empty carriage, while the trains going back towards the city were crammed with German infantrymen carrying their full kit.

  Marc was the only one who made the journey back to Saint Cloud on foot. The roads were still full of Germans heading out of town and he had to make a long diversion because they’d closed the bridge nearest home for a movement of military vehicles.

  Marc expected a bollocking as he stood inside the apartment’s front door, gently sliding boots off his blistered feet.

  ‘Living-room,’ Henderson said brusquely.

  Maxine rarely stayed in one place for long, so Marc was surprised to see her in the middle of a sofa. PT and Luc sat on another sofa facing towards her and the money-filled suitcase rested on the coffee table between them.

  ‘Sit,’ Maxine snapped, sounding like she was ordering a dog.

  Paul and Edith hovered in the doorway as Marc squeezed on to the sofa between Luc and PT. He’d been on his feet all day and would have loved a glass of water and a cool flannel.

  ‘I’m told Pierre Robert and another man are dead,’ Maxine said. ‘Plus one critically injured.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Marc asked.

  ‘Telephone,’ Maxine said. ‘The network is as useful to us as it is to the Germans, so we’ve done nothing to damage it.’

  The boys knew this, but gave respectful nods like they were learning something.

  ‘The Ghost Circuit has put significant efforts into tracking down Milice,’ Maxine said. ‘If you’d had the common sense to ask, I could have easily found out where Pierre Robert sleeps at night. And if I’d known you planned to kill him, I’d have ordered you to wait. Robert’s girlfriend is a member of a resistance group. She was using him to gather intelligence on Milice members.’

  The three boys all gawped.

  ‘We had no idea,’ Marc said weakly.

  ‘How can you know if you don’t ask?’ Maxine said irritably. ‘Fortunately, Commander Robert’s involvement with the Milice had almost come to an end and the overall Milice threat is a fraction of what it was. They’ve been deserting in droves now they’ve worked out that they’ve sold their souls to the losing team.

  ‘But that doesn’t excuse your cavalier behaviour. Paris belongs to the Ghost Circuit. No resistance operation goes down without me, or one of my senior commanders, approving it. Even the communists wouldn’t commit murder and robbery without letting me know first and my circuit has only lasted this long because we have strict rules and severe punishments for those who break them.’

  The boys looked anxious as Maxine let the threat sink in.

  ‘Just this once I’ll turn a blind eye,’ she said finally. ‘Especially as you’re making such a generous contribution to resistance funds.’

  Maxine stood up and pulled the suitcase of stolen money off the table.

  ‘Paul, come here,’ Maxine said.

  Paul approached warily, though he was only guilty of lying to Henderson about Marc, Luc and PT’s whereabouts. Maxine opened the suitcase and pulled out a 3-centimetre stack of twenty-franc notes.

  ‘Rosie was a hero of the resistance,’ Maxine said. ‘When things calm down, you can use that money to give her a proper funeral, and buy her a headstone.’

  Paul had learned to cope with Rosie being dead, but he wasn’t over it and his eyes glazed as he took the money.

  ‘Now I have other matters to attend to,’ Maxine said, as she stood up and strained under the weight of the suitcase.

  She stopped to kiss Henderson’s cheek on her way to the door. ‘See you at the cinema later, Charles.’

  Marc looked back at Henderson once Maxine had left. ‘You’ll have a hard job finding a cinema that’s open.’

  ‘An even harder time getting one where the power stays on for the whole film,’ PT added.

  Henderson grunted. ‘If there’s one lesson you boys should have learned today, it’s that Maxine is a lady who gets what she wants. And thank you so much. I trusted you lot and you’ve repaid me by making it seem like I can’t even control my own people.’

  ‘We didn’t mean to cause trouble,’ PT said. ‘But I’m not gonna apologise for going after a Milice scumbag who killed Rosie.’

  For a moment Henderson looked as if he was about to blow up, but his voice was calm when he spoke.

  ‘You’ve been through a lot, but you’re still young,’ Henderson said. ‘I was doing espionage work while you lot were in nappies. I know you think you know it all, but you don’t.’

  *

  Two hours later, Henderson led a 9-kilometre bike ride from the eastern suburb of Saint Cloud to l’Odéon in central Paris. He was trailed by Marc, Luc, Paul and PT.

  The district was known for restaurants, bars and especially cinemas. Managers had kept Parisian cinemas open through all the shortages and power cuts by switching to candles or gas lanterns, and converting projectors to run off car batteries. But as the Allies closed on Paris, c
ity administrators became concerned that any public gathering might turn into an anti-German demonstration and had ordered all screens to close.

  Despite shuttered cinemas and extortionate prices in the few cafés and bars that had something to sell, there were hundreds of people out for an evening stroll as Henderson and the four teenagers padlocked their bikes to railings around the Métro station.

  They passed the major cinemas on Rue de l’Odéon and cut into a back street. Their destination was a basement news theatre. These places were much smaller than main cinemas and typically showed short programmes of news and documentaries, for customers who dropped by during lunch breaks, or after work.

  The cinema lobby was padlocked, so they went down a staircase that stank of drains and entered through an emergency exit that brought them in right beside the screen. Fifty rows of seats stretched down a narrow space, lit only by paraffin lanterns hanging on a side wall.

  Henderson nodded to Maxine, who sat in the front row next to the American liaison officer, Colonel Hawk. There were a few other people scattered in the front three rows. The ones Henderson recognised were either Maxine’s most trusted lieutenants, or influential members of other resistance groups.

  PT, Marc, Luc and Paul went to grab seats, but Henderson smiled and shook his head. ‘Maxine has a special job for you four. Go right up the back, and knock on the projection booth door.’

  ‘Why?’ Marc asked.

  ‘Just do what you’re bloody told for once,’ Henderson snapped.

  The rear of the cinema was pitch black. PT led the way, brushing a hand along the wall to guide himself. A pretty teenaged projectionist led them up to the projection booth. It was cramped, but there was a small skylight and a wall had been crudely knocked down so that the space continued into what had once been the cinema manager’s office.

  The four boys were nearly flattened by a stench of BO. There was an array of car batteries wired up along the office floor and two standing bicycles. These had their back wheels off the ground and rigged up to drive large dynamos.

  ‘You need to get a move on,’ the projectionist said. ‘The American said that his film lasts thirteen minutes. Pedalling both bikes for three minutes makes enough charge to run the projector for one minute.’

  The boys looked appalled, not so much by the prospect of forced exercise but by the smell of those who’d gone before them.

  ‘I’ve already walked twenty kilometres today,’ Luc moaned.

  Paul shrugged. ‘Look on the bright side – Maxine didn’t have you shot.’

  The projectionist picked a voltage meter off the floor. ‘Don’t make this needle go into the red,’ she explained. ‘If you generate too much current you’ll fuse the charging circuit.’

  PT and Marc put their legs over the stationary bikes and both almost shot head first over the handlebars when they gave their first push on the pedals.

  The projectionist smirked. ‘It is heavier turning the dynamo than riding a bike.’

  ‘Now you tell me,’ Marc said, before shaking his head and giving the pedal a slower but more powerful push.

  As PT and Marc began making their contribution to the room’s aroma, Paul looked out of a small opening and watched more resistance leaders arriving. An argument broke out as one man turned up with a retinue of bodyguards and hangers-on. Maxine furiously ordered them to the back of the auditorium, hemmed in by members of her own security team.

  By the time Maxine was satisfied that everyone had arrived, PT and Marc were stepping off the bikes.

  Marc pulled a wringing-wet shirt over his head before giving Paul a slap on the back. ‘Your turn, old pal.’

  Paul was weedy and, with a hangover and weakened from eight weeks in a cellar, he could barely get the pedals turning.

  Luc showed his typical lack of sympathy. ‘If I have to do all the work I’m gonna beat the shit out of you.’

  The projectionist saw Paul’s struggle and took pity on him. ‘I can take over from you,’ she said.

  PT was the oldest and couldn’t stand by while a girl did the work, so he quickly drank some water and stepped back to the bike. Paul felt humiliated as he got relieved.

  ‘I don’t know what Henderson was thinking after what you’ve been through,’ PT told Paul. ‘Get out of here, go watch the show.’

  As Paul stepped down from the projection booth and took a seat in the back row, Colonel Hawk was finishing a brief introduction.

  ‘… My role is to ensure that Allied command and the resistance in the Paris area are all working to the same end. The military values all the work the resistance has done, but you must now work with us if we are to avoid unnecessary loss of life.

  ‘Over the past few days, groups inside the police, the railways and communist resistance groups have increasingly called for a general uprising among the people of Paris. Today’s mass evacuation of German administrative staff and non-essential personnel is sure to ramp these feelings up further.

  ‘As I’m sure none of you need reminding, at the start of this month a similar resistance uprising took place as Soviet troops neared the Polish capital. But the Warsaw resistance acted too hastily. The Soviets didn’t advance into the city and the Nazis staged a merciless crackdown. Entire streets were dynamited and thousands of civilians rounded up and slaughtered. The resistance was forced down into the sewers and incinerated with flamethrowers. Those captured alive were hanged, or strapped to German vehicles and used as human shields.

  ‘As soon as the projector batteries are charged, I’ll be showing you some remarkable film footage smuggled out of Warsaw by a Swiss journalist. This footage is extremely graphic. Once you’ve seen it, I hope that you’ll drop any thoughts of a premature uprising.’

  A communist leader in the audience shot to her feet. ‘The Germans have massive reinforcements heading to Paris from Germany. If we give them time, they’ll wire our city with explosives and we’ll be left fighting over rubble.’

  ‘The Warsaw resistance was weak,’ a voice out of the dark added.

  There were several murmurs of agreement before another leader shouted, ‘Colonel Hawk, is it true that the Americans plan to bypass Paris, leaving us to our fate while your tanks ride on towards Germany?’

  ‘I don’t know the intimate details of the American battle plan,’ Hawk replied.

  ‘Then what’s the point you being here?’ someone shouted.

  ‘It would be ludicrous for me to be dispatched behind enemy lines if I had detailed knowledge of the Allied battle plan,’ Hawk explained.

  Henderson got to his feet and spoke in Hawk’s defence. ‘The prime goal of the Allied armies is to reach Berlin and end the war in the shortest possible time. The idea of bypassing Paris and leaving its population in a siege situation with desperate German forces is not a pleasant one. But the Allies can’t afford to get bogged down in a street-by-street battle through a city of five million people.’

  ‘Is that the official British position?’ someone shouted.

  Henderson sounded irritated. ‘Of course it isn’t. I’m just stating the obvious fact that there’s no tactical reason for the Allies to spend weeks fighting through the streets of Paris.’

  ‘And the Parisians are left to starve and be slaughtered?’ someone shouted.

  Henderson and Hawk both sensed that they were losing the argument as applause broke out.

  ‘I for one will not stand by while Paris burns,’ a beefy communist woman shouted.

  Hawk sensed the room turning against him and tripped on his words. ‘I … You must, er, watch the film. I beg you to watch the footage from Warsaw. If you rise up too soon, thousands will die unnecessarily.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ the beefy woman shouted, stamping dramatically with each word. ‘I have no wish to sit through your American propaganda film. The Allies are within twenty-five kilometres of Paris. If they don’t have the guts to take our city, we’ll take it for ourselves.’

  Cheers and clapping erupted as the woman set off
for the exit. Paul was surprised to see that even a couple of Maxine’s Ghost Circuit deputies were applauding the communist.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ the communist woman shouted. ‘I say we strike, we bomb, we harass. Better to die fighting, than die of starvation after a siege like Stalingrad.’

  Maxine stood up and blocked the woman’s exit. ‘No,’ Maxine said. ‘Please listen. There should be no resistance uprising until the Allies give us a signal. We have no heavy weapons. If we start fighting the Germans will rip us apart.’

  The beefy woman was a good ten years younger than Maxine and looked genuinely sad as she faced her off.

  ‘Maxine, you’ve been a great leader for Paris,’ the communist said. ‘But you are wrong about this. It’s time to stand up and fight. You’ve become so addicted to British and American assistance that you have become their pawn.’

  Maxine looked devastated as the woman left the meeting, followed by a dozen other communist leaders, plus representatives of resistance groups within the railways and public utilities such as electricity and water.

  When the walkout ended, a representative of the police officers’ union stepped up to Henderson and Maxine.

  ‘I’m inclined to agree with your position on this,’ he began. ‘But things are moving beyond our control. The city’s civilian administrators have been sent home and replaced by a fanatical Nazi general named Von Choltitz. One of his first orders was to disarm all French police officers, because they can no longer be trusted. There’s a meeting later tonight, but our men aren’t going to hand over their guns. The police will be going on strike. The railway workers have promised to do the same and I expect other groups to follow.’

  Maxine looked shocked. ‘With a general strike and no police on the streets, the communists will start an uprising for sure.’

  Colonel Hawk had overheard and hurried over to them, sounding desperate. ‘Is there nothing you can do?’

  ‘There’s going to be a vote,’ the policeman said. ‘But the mood is militant. I’d be astonished if it wasn’t overwhelmingly in favour of a strike.’