Beacon of Vengeance

by Patrick W O'Bryon

  “Nikki, this young man came all the way out here just to see you.”

  “Well, here I am.” She gave her father a perturbed look. “Let him have his look.” She turned in place, her skirt swirling and ponytail trailing, then headed back toward the house. “Thanks for coming,” she called back, and was gone.

  The next evening he and her father sat outside again, talking and smoking, and every day at sundown for two weeks they discussed hunting, shooting and politics. Nicole hated staying inside the house on such beautiful early summer evenings, and soon she found reason to loiter nearby, feeding chickens or rabbits, or reading a novel that didn’t really interest her. The more she heard Antonio talk, the more she found herself drawn to him.

  Generalissimo Franco’s horrific retaliation against supporters of the Republic had driven his family out of Spain. While the democratically-elected government reeled in its death throes, Antonio’s French father had situated his wife and children in France before rejoining his overwhelmed Republican comrades. He fell in battle, his body never returned.

  Antonio was a committed Socialist like Nicole’s own father, and the two spent hours condemning the fascists. Soon they were practicing with firearms, preparing for the imminent ground war in France. It did not take long before Nicole joined them. She had been hunting with her father from her youngest years, and when Antonio challenged her to outshoot him, she did.

  One evening they found themselves alone. Her father had left early to help a neighbor birth a calf. Antonio suggested they take the rifles and go down into the meadow for target practice. The setting sun bathed the fields and woods in golden light, and the air was warm and humid. Antonio pulled off his shirt. She liked what she saw, and soon she lay in those well-muscled arms. They made love in the meadow with her skirt around her waist and her backside itching from the grasses. They became lovers.

  By the end of summer they were married, finding a common hatred of bullies and an appreciation of the beauties of nature. Her father was thrilled to have a politically like-minded son-in-law who could run the farm, since his arthritis had made significant inroads. Antonio moved his mother and younger sisters into the stone building across the courtyard from the main house. Sophie was born, a beautiful baby with dark hair like her father and blue eyes like her mother. And when war finally came, Antonio was granted an exemption from military duty because the crops had to be brought in. The Third Republic needed foodstuffs. And then France fell, and the family farm ended up in the Occupied Zone.

  Antonio and her father began to plot resistance against the German occupiers, while Nicole sat nearby with Sophie at her breast and worried. She knew how hot-headed her young husband was, filled with stories of his own father’s guerilla battles and untimely death under Luftwaffe fire from the skies, as Hitler prepared for his own war of conquest by assuring Franco’s army the victory over the Republicans.

  “You keep this up,” she had cried, “and you’ll leave us just as your father abandoned your family. Doesn’t our child mean enough to you to stay out of it? Don’t I?”

  But Antonio wasn’t willing to compromise his honor, even for the sake of his wife and child. Then she had lost them both, her husband and her daughter, and the memories of holding her darling baby in her arms brought tears of sorrow and loss. She hated Antonio for having left her all alone and for what he had made her become, yet she still loved him.

  Lost in these thoughts, Nicole cried beneath the canvas tent as the military train rolled on toward Bordeaux and Poitiers. The stench of oil and grease from the massive assault vehicle nauseated her, and the American at her side snored in the growing heat, his head against the metal tread. He had tried to smoke the pipe left by the yard master, but knocked out the ashes when he sent her into a fit of coughing.

  Ryan used the penknife to open a small slit in the canvas just above their heads. It wasn’t much, just enough to allow a draft of air as the train rumbled along toward Bordeaux. He had dozed off for a while, but now the heat was building as morning dawned and the tenting gave their skin a sickly greenish cast. The planking beneath them became ever harder to endure, and his back was sore pressing against the hard track of the motorized gun.

  He thought of offering Nicole his lap, since she moved restlessly as if dreaming, and he knew his own backside was already aching from the hard surface so she couldn’t be comfortable. But he also knew she would misinterpret the suggestion, and he didn’t want to offend her. She clutched her handbag to her chest and in the growing light of dawn he saw tears in the corners of her shut eyes. He wished he could put his arm around her.

  Kilometer after kilometer clicked past, the train braking noisily for occasional unscheduled stops. He once heard a trainman or soldier—he couldn’t see which—walk past below their car, complaining to a colleague of a broken turn-out ahead. An hour or so later it happened once again, but this time someone spoke of a malfunctioning signal light holding up rail traffic in both directions. Laurent’s mention of a slower-than-typical journey began to make sense.

  He was getting hungry and longed for a sandwich and some wine, but wouldn’t disturb Nicole until she was ready. He hoped they would soon arrive in Poitiers to change trains. Ryan already looked forward to Nantes. Jacques had shared a few details about his friends’ resistance activities in the Bayonne region, where René and Erika had earned respect despite their German heritage.

  The rail journey seemed to take forever, his traveling partner still shifting about constantly on the planks, and his stomach grumbled from hunger. In desperation, he uncorked the wine bottle to tame a raging thirst.

  Nicole cried out in her fitful sleep.

  They had come in the night, of course. They always came in the night. A biting winter storm had settled in, muffling sound and fraying nerves. The bitter cold robbed the old farm house of any warmth. Nicole had barely put Sophie in her crib—a head cold had troubled the baby for days—and now the anxious young mother slipped beneath the comforter and snuggled close to Antonio. She wanted a bit of his body warmth, to feel deeply loved by him again.

  Lately he had been so distant, his thoughts devoted to a grand scheme to strike hard and fast against the Nazis in the heart of their local operations, the Waffen-SS forces stationed between Bayonne and Biarritz. Their top officers partied nightly in the fine restaurants overlooking the beach in the resort town. Antonio and his partisans would plant a bomb, decapitate the troop leadership, and bring the war back to their enemy, since the Allies didn’t seem anxious to return to mainland Europe.

  Nicole hadn’t been able to let it rest, and she knew her nagging aggravated Antonio and pushed him away. But her intuition got the better of her and she feared for them all. Her father could barely walk now, even with a cane. Antonio’s mother had her hands full with his two sisters, eleven and thirteen, who still thought of themselves as Spaniards and ached to return south, an impossibility given the fascist rule. “Why not just be satisfied with what we’re doing here?” she asked again and again. The farm was a good, secluded way station to guide fugitives across the border, they shared intelligence with friends of the cause, and they were making a difference. It was never enough for her Antonio.

  And then that brutal night. Few vehicles made it up their long drive to the house and farmyard, so the sound of engines shutting down and the boots on frozen gravel grabbed her attention.

  She shook Antonio awake. “Darling, there’s something going on out there!”

  “I need my sleep.” He turned away from her, his mind fogged.

  Her whisper louder now and insistent. “Antonio, something is happening outside!”

  “Go back to sleep, I’ll take a look in the morning.” He pulled the covers over his head. “Probably just some animal—now get some rest.”

  Nicole climbed from bed and peered out into the dark night, her limbs shaking with cold. Nothing moved. An owl hooted somewhere deep below in the wood. But then she knew something was amiss. Her big Labrador Sasha was a light
sleeper. Any unusual noise and she would alert them with a throaty bark. Nicole knew her own ears hadn’t betrayed her, and Sasha was quiet. Too quiet.

  It was all over quickly. The tramping of boots up creaking stairs, the door to their bedroom giving way as Antonio tried to escape the twisted covers. Nicole lunged for the crib. Sophie awoke to the terrible racket and bawled in terror. She lifted the child in her arms and backed into a corner, cowering before the men in black uniforms and helmets, rifles aimed at their bellies and her daughter.

  From the courtyard below rose the screams of her mother-in-law and the two girls rousted from their sleep. Antonio reached for his pants but a soldier prodded him with a bayonet and he raised his hands instead, his hatred gleaming in the dim light as he unleashed a torrent of Spanish curses. The soldier brought the rifle butt down and blood streamed from a torn ear.

  Nicole had screamed “No!”

  The monstrous night remained a strange blur in her memory, every moment sharply in focus when recalled, and yet as a whole amorphous, bathed in mental fog. Perhaps her mind simply refused to accept the tragedy in its entirety.

  The soldiers drove them all into the courtyard dressed in nothing but nightclothes. A tall man waited, his face a terrifying mask, frozen, showing nothing, clearly feeling nothing as he ordered his men to herd Antonio and her crippled father to the stone wall. They fell to the gunfire before they could even say good-byes. She remembered Sasha next to their crumpled bodies, her eyes open and glassy as flakes of snow slowly covered them.

  Then one SS soldier clubbed her mother-in-law with his rifle and beat her again as she went down. Two others stripped the nightdresses from the girls and tears streamed down their faces as they sought to cover themselves with their hands. Their comrades laughed at the sport and waited their turns. Another man grabbed Nicole and tossed her to the ground. She fell to the icy gravel with the baby in her arms, but the cruel, stone-faced officer intervened and ordered her baby daughter taken from her. Nicole screamed in protest, but the man in charge said nothing. Gripping her hair, he yanked back her head and forced her into the kitchen ahead of him. He slammed her face-down over the table. When he finally left, blood ran down her legs as she crumpled to the floor.

  Her father was gone. Antonio was gone. More gunshots stilled the screams of the sisters. And her beloved Sophie, her most precious love, she too was gone.

  Somehow, Nicole survived, but she was not the same. She would play it well or die trying. Hers was now to be cruel, emotionless, and brutal. She would use men as they had used her. She would be like the men she so hated, for she, too, was now a ruthless killer.

  As their train left the Bordeaux yards they crossed the Garonne and soon a bridge over the Dordogne River rattled beneath them. She watched through the slit of the canvas as the river waters flowed toward the Gironde Estuary, the Atlantic Ocean, and freedom. When the Allied Powers came at last, would they come from the west, attack here at Bordeaux or perhaps somewhere farther north along the Atlantic Wall? Would they come with planes and tanks and landing craft and huge ships to free France from occupation and tyranny?

  Would they please come soon, so she could end this life thrust upon her?

  The rail yard at Poitiers was in constant motion, loud and dirty. Engines chuffed by relentlessly in all directions, rolling stock coasted past; shrieking train whistles split the muggy air. Their train finally ground to a halt and they waited impatiently as a group of workers gathered alongside for discussion punctuated by bawdy insults. Once the workers went their separate ways, Nicole tore the slit in the canvas a bit further to sight down the train in either direction. Nothing but smoky sky and constant movement met her stinging eyes. It was time for them to switch trains.

  Abruptly she lurched backwards. “Oh my God!”

  “What is it?” The American scrambled to his feet.

  “Troop train,” she whispered, one eye glued to the opening in the canvas. “Next track over…just sitting there!”

  He moved to take a look but she put a hand to his chest to hold him back, unwilling to surrender the frightening sight. In either direction stretched a string of drab coaches filled with soldiers. Destined for the Eastern Front, she knew. She could see them inside the nearest railcar, so close she felt she could reach out and knock at the windows, and she feared they might spot her at the peep hole. Most men sat idly, some reading letters or newspapers, others laughing and joking, a few looking out directly toward their flatcar. Others gathered in the aisle, smoking and chatting with comrades.

  She allowed the small flap to drop. “Nothing to do but wait.” The American took his turn at the spyhole before quickly sitting again. Frustration darkened his features. In the pale khaki light of their canvas canopy she thought of Antonio, and knew a similar fervor drove this foreigner. Then she thought of her daughter and her mind clouded, but she refused to allow the tears.

  The minutes ticked relentlessly by. A half hour came and went. Unless the neighboring train moved out soon there would be no escape from their sweltering tent, no control tower to seek out, no “Trocadéro” to buy passage to Nantes, no end to all this. They finished the stale cheese sandwiches and the wine, but remained dehydrated and hungry. She sensed the American’s frustration seething beneath the surface, but what outlet could he find for his anger, since who could blame fate and ill-timing? Another quarter hour passed and she checked the peephole once again. The Wehrmacht soldiers next door appeared equally restless, anxious to be on their way, even if toward that great killing field now splitting Eastern Europe into bloody halves.

  With a sudden jolt their armaments train lurched forward again and crept out through the yards, signal lights ahead turning green to speed their advance.

  Ryan appeared glum. “Forget our connection for Nantes.”

  “Tours, then?” She distractedly ran a fingernail beneath each of her others, trying to dislodge the dirt and grime. Despite the canvas cover they both wore a dark film of soot and cinders.

  “That’d be my first guess.” He drew out the heavily-worn map taken from the dead English agent. “Tours, and then on to Paris. I’ve heard they route all the trains heading east through Paris. But that’s the last thing I need—we need—right now.” He squinted at the map in the pale light, shaking his head from time to time.

  My God, she thought, this does change everything. She sat again and sought in vain any marginally comfortable position. Her butt ached, her legs ached, she found her mind aching with exhaustion and frustration. They had both finally surrendered to the inevitable and taken a turn sidling along the huge armored gun to take a piss on the forward planks of the flatcar. Now the American leaned his head back against the vehicle track and shut his eyes. Over the constant rumble and rattle of the flatcar and the endless click-clack of the rail joints, she thought she heard him sigh.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Tours, Occupied France

  20-21 August 1941

  By late afternoon their train reached the yards in Tours. From a distance he spotted the heavy damage the Allied bombs had wrought on the lovely medieval city on the Loire. He remembered the pre-war beauty of this short-lived French capital. Now the sight of this once-charming river town in rubble saddened him. When their train pulled aside to allow passage of a troop transport, perhaps the very one that had thwarted them in Poitiers, they made their break. Below the track bed lay a wooded gully, and no railway or military personnel were visible in either direction. Ryan yanked the tie-down binding their canvas prison and the cord released, just as Laurent had predicted.

  Sore from hours of sitting, Ryan and then Nicole dropped clumsily past the canvas flap to the gravel and scrambled beneath the railcar. When all remained clear, they crouched low and ran down the embankment into the trees, all senses alert for the first cry of alarm or a gunshot. None came. So far, so good.

  They waited until the train moved on. Beyond the woods lay a paved roadway and they made themselves as presentable as possible. Nicole still carr
ied her handbag, but they had left the valise in Bayonne, expecting to be in Nantes by day’s end to easily replace what little they needed. She brushed out her gritty hair and tied up the ponytail with the lavender ribbon. Ryan used his fingers to rake the cinders from his curls. He desperately needed a shave. Their faces, stained by the grime of rail travel, appeared coarse under late afternoon light. On the trek into town Ryan finally found an opportunity to smoke his pipe.

  As they approached the ruined center he spotted the control point and grabbed for her elbow. At a narrowing between two piles of building rubble two armed gendarmes smoked, bored, waiting for someone to harass. The officials hadn’t yet looked their direction when Ryan pulled Nicole into an alleyway.

  So exhausted and on edge, she hadn’t paid attention to what lay ahead. “What the hell?”

  “Gendarmes, looking for trouble.” His voice low and steady. “I’ll go through first. We’re bound to face this sooner or later, so let’s just get it over with. I’m too beat to look for an alternate route. If there’s a problem, head back south. Your papers are good. Mine? Who knows?”

  “Non, better we stay together. Let them check mine first—you’re right, mine are solid. Maybe then they’ll be less concerned with yours. Men tend to believe what I tell them.” Her look dared him to comment, but he kept silent. “Besides—” she opened her handbag for Ryan to glance inside, “—any problem will be theirs.”

  He saw the grip of a small pistol. “You’ll shoot them?”

  “They wouldn’t be the first.”

  He remembered the Gestapo agent lying on the roadway, holes in head and side. “No, leave it be—we certainly don’t want a manhunt when they find two dead cops. Let me run the gauntlet. The Englishman’s papers should be good, and I look enough like him now. I’ll say I lost my wallet so I’m on foot, then once through, I’ll wait a couple of alleys farther along until you join me. And keep that damned gun out of sight, okay?”