The downed mare struggled to rise from the road surface, her hooves kicking desperately, her neck arching against the taut harness. A wagon lay on one side behind her, its cargo of hay strewn across the roadway. The farmer lay half-hidden beneath the overturned cart, his hands to his head, rocking and moaning.
Blocking the opposite lane was a farm truck, skewed on the pavement with its front end jutting over the narrow roadside ditch. Its driver slumped across the wheel, a bloody gash visible on his forehead.
The black Citröen slowed immediately as it approached the accident site. Ryan, his hands in cuffs and his thighs alternately cramping and aching from the hours spent suspended from the wooden rod, hardly noticed the deceleration. The soles of his feet were bloodied and raw, and he wore no shoes.
The Gestapo agent beside him cursed under his breath. This military type about Ryan’s own age wore a knotted tie despite the oppressive heat. Exhaustion and aggravation were apparent in his mood. He still seemed somehow familiar to Ryan, but had ignored any attempt at conversation. “Circle around,” he ordered the driver, “and make it fast. These oafish peasants haven’t a clue how to drive.”
“We can’t pass, sir,” replied the young man at the wheel, perhaps twenty at most, and deferential. He brought the sedan to a halt some ten meters from the collision site.
“My God, such imbeciles we have to deal with!” The Gestapo man loosened one of Ryan’s cuffs, ran the chain through the door grip to prevent any attempt at escape, and refastened the link. “Must I handle everything?” Stepping from the vehicle he ordered the driver to follow. “All we needed, verdammt nochmal, another delay.”
They approached the man caught beneath the cart until close enough to hear his moans. Keeping to any schedule was a challenge in this godforsaken France. They had been late escaping the insufferable heat and filth of the internment camp at Gurs due to engine trouble, had stopped at a garage in Pau when the Citroën threw a fan belt, and now this. He had promised delivery of the prisoner to Biarritz before dusk, and Die Maske wasn’t someone you disappointed. Ever. “Drag the imbecile out from under that wagon, and if you can’t move him, just run him over. His life won’t be any the worse for it.”
The driver glanced at the Gestapo officer in disbelief, looking for some sign of a jest. The superior’s glare and military bearing told him humor played no role in either comment or mood. “Yes, sir, right away, sir.”
The younger man grabbed the farmer under the arms and tugged fiercely in an effort to dislodge him. The injured man muttered something incomprehensible—that damned Basque tongue, thought the driver—and tried to extricate the trapped peasant, but his feet appeared firmly wedged beneath the wagon. The skinny dray horse whinnied softly, making feeble attempts to stand despite the restraining harness trappings.
“Forget him,” the officer said, “go move that damned truck—put it in the ditch if needed. Just get us on our way.”
He gently lowered the suffering man back to the roadway and strode over to the truck, its engine idling roughly, the trucker’s head still slumped over the steering wheel. The German opened the door, stepped up onto the running board and shoved the unconscious man aside to take control of the wheel.
The first two pops came in rapid succession, muffled by the cab of the truck and the folds of the trucker’s jacket hiding the pistol. But the Gestapo officer on the roadbed recognized gunfire and turned abruptly toward the source. The second two shots—aimed with obvious skill—thudded into him from the opposite direction. The first sent his hat flying as the round pierced his skull, the second thumped dully into his side. He wheeled to his right, disbelief flashing across his face as he sank to the pavement. Blood slowly saturated his jacket and spread onto the asphalt.
Summoned by the quick shots, two men in peasant clothing scrambled up the bank from either side to cover the sedan with their weapons. They trained their shotguns into the backseat as Ryan struggled with his cuffs.
“Well done, copains,” shouted the trucker. He kicked the lifeless body from his cab and resumed his position behind the wheel. Closing the door, he put the truck in reverse to back up onto the roadway and alongside the car. With a handkerchief he scrubbed the “wound” from his forehead.
“Not bad.” The farmer pulled his legs easily from beneath the wagon. He went to comfort his horse, which responded to the attentions with a whicker, quickly regaining her feet. She shuddered in satisfaction. The farmer briefly stroked her neck before examining the fallen officer for any sign of life.
“The first shot did the trick.” A woman in her mid-twenties emerged from the woods carrying a hunting rifle. “The second was my insurance policy.” She strode toward the sedan, her pony-tail bouncing with each step. “Now let’s examine our prize.”
The young men yanked open both sedan doors simultaneously and Ryan fell to the roadbed, his bound wrist twisted in the handcuffs. “Américain! Je suis Américain!”
“Merde!” The woman’s disappointment appeared shared by all. “Who the hell are you?”
“A prisoner of those damned Boches you just killed, and grateful for your help.” He struggled to find footing, but the cramping in his legs and the rawness of his feet dropped him to the ground again. He looked up in embarrassment and smiled at the woman.
“What good does an American do us?” She turned away to mutter instructions to one of the shotgun bearers. “Cut him loose and bring him along, though I see little value in it.” She turned to the approaching farmer. “One lousy American, impressing us with Parisian French—it’s not le Masque.” She shrugged. “Alors, the hunt continues.”
One of the partisans retrieved the handcuff key from the pocket of the dead Gestapo officer and removed Ryan’s restraints. The other tossed his shotgun into the back seat, slipped behind the wheel of the idling Citroën to reverse direction, and headed south toward the Pyrenées. Ryan suspected the car would bring good money in Spain for the partisan cause. Meanwhile, the other driver pulled the truck forward and helped Ryan into the bed, since he couldn’t manage on his own. With great heaves the men tossed the dead Gestapo agents alongside the American and covered all three with loose hay from the farm wagon and roadway.
“Shut up and stay put,” the lankier partisan said, “and don’t come out until we tell you.” Ryan gladly obeyed. It felt good to extend his legs. He rubbed his wrists, chafed by wearing the cuffs for hours, and distanced himself from the corpses to find a crack between the side boards for a better view.
The partisans drew long poles from the far side of the truck bed, using them as levers to right the farm cart. They moved with speed and precision, obviously well practiced. After two heaves, the wagon rolled back onto its wheels as the farmer reassured the nervous horse. Pitchforks quickly loaded the remaining hay from the roadbed. The farmer flicked the reins, and the skinny mare tossed her head, neighing. She put her back to the load and moved the wagon up a rutted dirt path into the woods.
Now only traces of hay and a glistening pool of blood were witness to the scene of the staged accident, and the remaining partisans clambered into the cab beside the driver. The truck headed north, halting a kilometer up the road to allow a lookout to jump onto the running board and join his crew.
The newcomer climbed up into the bed, stepping clumsily on Ryan’s tortured feet. He jerked them back and a thigh muscle protested with a painful spasm. “Careful, monsieur!”
“Shut the fuck up,” the man said, “or you’ll feel as little as the men beside you.”
Ryan settled in for the duration, his thoughts racing.
CHAPTER TWO
Espelette, Occupied France
14 August 1941
René downed the Armagnac in one swallow and poured himself another. He held up the bottle to get Erika’s attention. She declined with a smile. “Still a bit early for me, thanks.”
“We’re getting nowhere with all this, you know.” He leaned back against the wall, his chair at a dangerous angle, and hoisted h
is weak leg across the corner of the table. The amber Cognac caught the light from the window. He swirled the dense alcohol round and round against the stark sunlight. “We’re in this vicious circle, with never an end in sight.”
The farmstead near Morlanne had become insufferably boring after only weeks, but Jeanne had chosen to remain there with her ailing cousin Brigitte. Her age was catching up with her, and she was determined to avoid further sudden and strenuous moves. The farm required little effort from the two old women. The immediate neighbor leased the fields, providing Brigitte a modest income, and only the vegetable garden and the farmyard animals required daily attention. René and Erika had seen them well-provided with cash before moving on south with Leo.
Hardly a soul moved in the sweltering streets of Espelette. They had settled for the moment in this village less than two hours away but overlooking the heart of the Coastal Defense Zone. From this location it was easy for them to slip down to the shore and then disappear again up into the countryside. Below their window spread a still life of glaring white house fronts, green vines climbing rock walls, and shutters nearly as red as the sweet peppers harvested here near the Atlantic.
While the more-heavily populated areas along the coast were regularly patrolled, the Boches tended to ignore the small villages in the hills above, hesitant to get off the more heavily-trafficked routes. Partisan friends in Bayonne had provided the family with forged documentation showing residency in Espelette. René’s limp was a reasonable explanation for his lack of employment, and Vichy discouraged working mothers. Women belonged at the hearth, cooking and making a home for strong children. Leo had begun to attend the local school. Minor targets for sabotage and disruption this close to the Waffen-SS garrisons were everywhere, but opportunities for acts of significance rare. Several weeks had passed and they were becoming discouraged.
Erika knew the old chair would soon surrender in splinters to René’s large frame. Her eyes ran over his face with its newly-acquired mustache and beard, noting the deepening lines and furrows, witness to almost three years on the run—years of worry and care for her. And for their son.
“We’ve accomplished so much, René, more than anyone will ever know. It’s too soon to give in to frustration.” She felt it, too, but knew where his thoughts were headed, and it all revolved around Leo’s safety.
“All we do lately is relay information rather than put it to use ourselves. What good is helping a few cross the mountains into Spain, or cutting some phone lines, or even crippling machinery down at the docks?” René raked his fingernails down through the stubble of his beard. “But we don’t dare break heads around here or they’ll take it out on the civilian hostages, and we both know what these bastards are capable of.”
“Does it itch?” She thought the new look suited him, but more important, his face was becoming known on the Bayonne docks, and any disguise might help. The limp, though slight, was impossible to hide, and more noticeable when he walked slowly, so he always moved at a brisk pace. And when real speed was needed he could still impress. René had lost none of his agility or nerve. She came over and placed a hand on his shoulder. “What would you have us do, love?”
“Jacques says there’s plenty to do up near Nantes and Saint-Lazaire—large military and naval installations, anti-aircraft batteries, submarine pens under construction, and major supply lines to sabotage—opportunities for major disruption and damage, while we’re stuck here in this backwater. Jacques can introduce us to an established groupe-franc, so they trust us immediately.” It wasn’t the first time he had broached the topic, and she knew where all this was heading. “The English are bound to return before we know it, the Americans may finally come in, and you and I’ll be able to actually make a real difference again. The English value our help, and I want to make a meaningful contribution for once.” Just two weeks earlier a British agent had passed through to set up an intelligence communications channel into Portugal and Gibraltar.
“Leo needs something more permanent, René. He’s started making a few friends here, but his language and pride still get him into trouble with his classmates and teacher. Think about it—Colmar, Lyon, Morlanne, a few brief stops in-between, and now barely settled in here…he deserves more.” She looked him in the eye, pleading without words. “He really does, you know.”
René sighed. “It’s true, of course.” He obviously wished it weren’t. “You’re right, as always, my darling.”
He set aside the glass to massage his knee with both hands. Erika knew the beating he had suffered in Marburg at the hands of von Kredow and his Nazi thugs still plagued him, both physically and with occasional lapses of memory. She saw René’s spirits weakening daily. Just too little to do here, too few people in need of his physical help. The tedium of gathering intelligence for others to use went against his grain. He had always been hands-on and she loved him for it, but feared for his safety all the same.
The last years in France had been a trial for all of them. Her French was now strong enough to more than get by, but she occasionally encountered suspicion if not outright hatred. The French knew a German accent when they heard it, and things had gotten worse with the Occupation. Luckily, Leo was a natural genius in picking up the language—Ryan’s gift?—but he still occasionally used German, especially when tired or provoked. His teacher reported a week earlier that Leo told a classmate his father was secret police. The young bully had mocked Leo, calling him a foreigner and a Jew. No one here knew his real background, but there were so many Jewish refugees trying to find new homes in France, and most were as little loved by the French as the “Hebrews” who had lived in the country for generations.
“Leo needs stability; he’s becoming too much a loner.” She removed a Pyramidon tablet from the metal tin and stared out the window, wondering if her child was alone in the woods again. She ground the headache remedy between two spoons and mixed the powder into the white gin. Using a cotton ball, she rubbed one side of the writing paper to roughen the surface before using the secret ink and a sharpened matchstick to record their latest intelligence. Once the invisible communication was dry, she would devote the front pages to innocuous personal gossip in regular ink and send the nonsense off to a “cousin” in Lisbon. The recipient was actually MI6, the agent from whom they’d learned the technique had assured her.
She could see René about to take the final step. “Don’t hate me for suggesting this, darling, but what if you and Leo stay on the farm with my mother while I head north. She’s well settled there and must be lonely since Brigitte passed, the farm is self-sufficient so food rations aren’t a worry, and Leo made some neighborhood friends there. Bringing him north would be a mistake, and considerably more dangerous, especially if I must cut out in a hurry. The best alternative is for you two both to go stay with my mother for the time being.”
“You expect me to constantly worry about what trouble you’ve gotten yourself into? René, we’ve been through so much together, I owe you too much to let you go north alone!” She lowered his leg off the table to stabilize the old chair before tentatively taking a seat on his lap and burying her face against his chest. “Whether you know it or not, I adore you and I’m not about to let you go it alone.”
He stared out at the green hills to the west, and she knew he was once again imagining the Rhine of his boyhood and the call of the ocean, the roll of a boat underfoot, a future filled with distant lands and great adventures stolen from him by the Nazis. Nantes was on a river, Saint-Lazaire, as well.
He gently kissed the top of her head, his beard still short and prickly. “My mother does love Leo, you know. She’s now his grand-mère, through and through. And he loves her, too—that’s why he asked to stay at the farm when we decided to come here.” She nodded, lost briefly in the memory of her own dead parents. “Let Leo go back to the farm, we go north, and we’ll visit any chance we get. Leo gets a little stability, has his friends and animals, and we know he’s safe.”
“
But I’d miss him so much.”
“We’re not abandoning him. We’re giving him an actual childhood, and we’ll never be more than a few days away. Mother has her telephone, you know. Don’t you see? It’s all for his own good.” He kissed her damp cheek. “And we get on with making a difference in this damned war.”
Erika heard the truth in his words, but still she cried for an hour.
Leo had been alone in the woods again. A tick hung from the crook of his elbow, and he extended his arm to show it off proudly to René.
“A nice, fat one, Leo. You chose well.” René grinned at Erika, then back at Leo.
“I wonder what ticks do when no one feeds them.” Leo touched the parasite gently, rocking the swollen body to the side. “I forget—Maman, do we twist it to the left or the right before we yank?”
She reached for her son’s elbow and plucked the bug off in one quick motion before crushing it on the porcelain sink. The little splatter of blood spread on the aged white surface, and her tears surfaced again.
“What’s wrong, Maman?”
“Not a thing, Leo.” She dried her eyes. “It’s only that Uncle René and I have business away for a while and we think it best you stay with Grand-mère Jeanne at the farm for a bit.” She put down the dishtowel. “And I’m already missing you.”
“I get to stay with Grand-mère and see my animals? Formidable, Maman, ça c’est merveilleux!”
She saw a fleeting reminder of Ryan in Leo’s broad grin.
René removed the last of Leo’s clothing from the rucksack and arranged his few shirts and shorts on a shelf above the cot in the corner near the woodstove. Leo chose to sleep in the kitchen rather than the bedroom so recently vacated by the passing of Cousin Brigitte. The room had not been touched and still carried the faint memory of lavender perfume. He placed Leo’s underwear and socks in a separate stack. The farmhouse was small but spotless, its stone walls bearing witness to centuries of family living.
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