The boy eyed him closely, a glow of recognition spreading across his face. “I know you! You’re Mutti’s friend from the train.”
Memories of that dangerous flight from Berlin flooded back, and Ryan nodded. “That’s right, Leo. So you can remember that from when you were only three-and-a-half?”
Leo looked very serious as he bent close to whisper in Ryan’s ear: “I’m not a secret policeman anymore.”
“Neither am I, Leo. That was a long time ago.” He gave his son a hug and broad smile, and the boy hugged him back.
“So, time to tie this up.” Erika’s eyes held Ryan’s for the briefest of moments. “The sooner we’re rid of these two, the sooner we’re out of here. Jean-Philippe and Henri—go crack open a couple of those shipping crates. Stash this guy and the two you took out up front and seal them tight. No one will be the wiser till they show up somewhere on the Russian front, and we’ll have no reprisals against the civilian hostages.” Jean-Philippe dragged the dead agent out of the room with Paul at his heels. Erika shouted after them: “And take all identity papers and weapons off them first. We can always use them later.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nantes, Occupied France
24 August 1941
Oh God, please don’t kill him—let him live a while longer. Don’t let the bastard die, not yet…not yet…
In her formless world of half-consciousness, Nicole knew le Masque still lived. She could hear the talk of what should be done with her and that demon. She willed her hands to move, to somehow draw the others’ attention, but the muscles refused to obey. She felt the boy nearby and wanted to tell him of the child she loved, a child for whom she had sacrificed everything, including her soul. Instead she drifted back into the nightmare that had haunted her every waking hour for the past six months.
In the morning light she awakens on the kitchen floor. None of the previous night’s horror makes sense. Her brain refuses to piece the events into a coherent whole. The screaming and shouting still resonate in her mind, the loss of all she holds dear is too much to bear.
She opens her eyes and sees nothing, then gradually focuses on the planking of the floor, the individual grooves and scratches carved over the many years. She sees broken knots lifting from the wooden surface. Dust and debris have gathered beneath the iron stove. Sasha’s hair. How that dog sheds!
And then it all comes rushing back. She lets loose a long, plaintive cry and bolts upright, feeling searing pain between her legs. She rises and steadies herself at the table, her vision clouded by a torrent of tears. The empty kitchen mocks her. It should be alive with activity at this early hour: Antonio picking at his omelet, planning his next sabotage; his sisters bickering; her mother-in-law bent over the stove; her father chain-smoking as he plots the day’s business, political and agricultural. And in her arms, her baby girl.
My God, why? A desperate plea, but no answer comes.
Outside, only silence. Nicole stumbles toward the door hanging askew with its broken hinges, out into the frozen light of the courtyard. No bodies lie strewn about. Only Sasha lies exposed to the cold, rising sun. Nicole collapses beside the dog’s body and gently runs her fingers through the frost-covered fur, the animal a surrogate for all she has lost.
And then, through her tears, he comes striding up into the courtyard through the open gate, exhaling cigarette smoke through his nostrils and that cruel slit of a mouth. He stops before her, his scarred face even more frightening by light of day. She scoots back along the icy ground until she hits the stone wall, and beneath her lies the smeared and thickened blood of her father, and of her beloved Antonio.
“From this moment you belong to me,” his voice low and free of emotion. “I know you’ve suffered great loss, but isn’t that what life is about? He crushes the cigarette, the toe of his boot scraping in the frozen gravel. “You brought it on yourselves, you know, by defying the Reich. By defying me.”
Nicole finds no release for her fear and revulsion. She wishes also to have died in the night. Her head shakes in denial, back and forth, slowly at first, and then ever faster until it seems her neck must break. The man bends down and places his hands on her cheeks, steadies her, speaks again: “Hear me out, young woman. I’ve special plans for you.”
She wants to lash out, to kick him, stab him, bite him, tear his heart from his chest as he has torn out hers, hurt him beyond all imagining, worse than she suffers now. But she is powerless, so she must listen.
“Your child lives.” Her eyes spring open in desperate hope. “But only as long as I say she does, and while you do my bidding exactly.”
Nicole pulls herself free of his hands, nodding. She knows he’s capable of anything, no matter how vile.
“Now listen carefully, ma petite.” He towers over her. “Your terrorist station here will continue to welcome traitors to the Reich, only now you work with my people, do I make myself clear?
Nicole continues to nod, focused on that flickering hope of Sophie still alive.
“I know you’ll wish to harm me and my cause—were I in your position I’d do the same. But you will do nothing to stand in my way, because you now know what I’m capable of. One wrong move, one moment questioning my word or going behind my back believing you know better, and your child dies, painfully. Understood?”
Nicole tries to control her breath, her body racked by dry sobs. She trembles in both fear and hope.
“I’ve had my eye on you for some time. I know you shoot and shoot well. As any good country woman you can slaughter animals without flinching, so you’re accustomed to death. I won’t ask anything of you I wouldn’t ask of myself.”
Nicole bites her lip, her mind blank to all but the knowledge that Sophie still lives.
“You, madame, will be my surrogate. You will kill for me when I say ‘kill.’ You will betray and lie to those I wish to control. You are now my marionette.” His mouth takes on the semblance of a grin. “In fact, from now on, that shall be my code name for you—Marionette.”
He touches Sasha’s stiffened head with the toe of his boot. “Nature is strangely fascinating, don’t you think? This was a living, breathing creature, now gone at my whim. All of them—” he makes a broad gesture across the courtyard, “—the living and the dead, all gone at my command.” For a moment he remains silent, savoring the thought, and now he squats down before her, his voice barely a whisper: “Listen carefully—your daughter is mine until I no longer need you, Marionette. Then she comes back to you. Whether I bring her to you alive…or dead…is entirely in your hands.”
He stands upright and straightens his overcoat. She stares at him, at evil incarnate.
“So…we’ll meet again soon. Now go clean yourself up and be ready for my call.”
Le Masque strides through the gate and down the drive to a black sedan waiting below. He signals the driver, and the growl of the engine reaches her in the hollow of the courtyard, a space devoid of all life, including her own. He does not look back. There is no need. He holds his enemies in the palm of his hand. And she is forever his tool of death.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nantes, Occupied France
24-25 August 1941
“I say we kill them both, and now.” Erika’s finger was on the trigger of the pistol taken from Nicole’s handbag. The woman’s identification papers had joined the growing collection on the table.
“Agreed, we’ve no choice, but first I need to know why she betrayed us.” Ryan turned to René for support.
He shrugged, flinched, and reached for the sore shoulder. “I don’t know about the woman, but the sooner we eliminate von Kredow, the better. And taking the woman with us will only slow us down.”
Erika nodded. “Leo shouldn’t see this, René. Take him far out into the warehouse. Wait at the rear entrance while the young men are busy up front. Ryan and I will handle these two.” René limped out, holding Leo by the hand. The boy looked back in silent protest, hesitant to leave his mother.
R
yan pleaded his case: “Look, let’s first find out what she knows. It makes no sense she’d kill Horst’s men and then turn around and betray us—there’s a piece missing to this puzzle.” He shook his head. “Nothing here makes sense—I know she despises men and their wars. Her pacifist tirade I witnessed wasn’t a show—no one’s that good at acting!”
“Frankly, Ryan, I don’t give a damn. Go ahead—get her to talk, then we kill them and get out of here.”
Ryan fetched water from the tap at the end of the room, pulled the adhesive from Nicole’s mouth and doused her face. Groggily with eyes still shut, she struggled against the tape at her wrists. He pushed her down as she tried to sit up while mumbling incoherently.
Horst also began to stir. Erika kicked him in the ribs, and he groaned. “That’s for threatening my son!” She knelt beside him and examined his face. “And to think you were once so handsome...” her voice barely audible, her mind momentarily in a different time and place, “…and I such a fool.”
Ryan lightly slapped Nicole’s cheeks. “Come on now, wake up, dammit!”
Her words suddenly came in strangled bursts, and he held his ear close. “Don’t kill him…not yet! He has my Sophie…the stinking bastard can’t die…not till I know where my baby is!”
Ryan looked over to Erika. “She’s saying Horst has her child, her baby!”
Erika turned at once, wrenched from her memories by the thought of another child at risk. “Get some details. I don’t trust her after all she’s done, but I’ll be damned if I’ll risk another kid’s life!”
Ryan sat her upright against the wall, encouraging her to continue. The story emerged in a dull monotone, then gathered speed as the truth tumbled out. “That devil there…he slaughtered my husband, my father, my family…and took my little girl and won’t give her back if I don’t lie for him… kill for him.” Her conviction tore at Ryan’s heart. “I want him dead more than you ever will, but first he has to tell where he has my baby.” Tears streamed as she pounded her bound hands against Ryan’s chest.
“Do we dare believe her?” Erika’s eyes moved from Ryan to the bawling woman. “She may be as devious as Horst.”
“This would explain what she did, and why, and it all sounds like his evil. Erika, you’ve done everything to protect Leo. In all honesty, would you take innocent lives to protect our son?”
The sheer brutality and cruelty of the concept released anew her tears. She dropped to her knees beside the trembling Nicole, stared her in her eyes and warned: “You lie, you’re dead.”
“It’s all true…” Her breath came in great sobs. “He’s holding my little girl!”
“Wake the bastard, Ryan. Either he tells where he’s stashed the child, or I’ll feed him his balls. I swear to you, I’ll do it! If he gives us the child, he dies quickly, agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Ripping the tape from Horst’s mouth, Ryan brutally slapped him back to consciousness. Finally focused on Ryan, Horst oozed disdain. “Can’t bring yourself to kill me after all?”
“The child you stole from Nicole, where is she?” He held the dagger beneath Horst’s eye and nicked at the soft flesh, each cut raising a droplet of blood.
Horst chuckled. “You fool—you’ll never have the guts. You can’t stop me.” He forced his own head up against the tip of the dagger, encouraging the blade to pierce more deeply. A crimson rivulet ran down his scarred cheek. “I write the rules, and the rules say that little girl of hers is mine forever.”
Ryan slid the razor-sharp edge repeatedly across Horst’s throat, raising bloody welts with each emphasized word. “Where…the hell…is…she?”
Horst dropped his head back to the floor. “Do your worst, weakling. Pain means nothing to me, death itself means nothing. I’ve explored its entire morbid scale. You’re a neophyte—you’ll never know the joy, the slow release that comes of making the killing act a thing of beauty.” His chuckle a macabre sound through barely-moving lips.
Henri appeared suddenly at the door, breathless, a harsh whisper. “Douse the lights! Cops everywhere out front—someone’s reported the shots.”
Ryan looked to Erika, now comforting the sobbing Nicole. “Erika, off with the lights—now!” She hit the switch, leaving the room bathed in a soft glow from the filthy panes high above.
“How many?”
“Two squad cars, seven or eight men, approaching from the street but still outside.”
“The bodies?”
“Stashed but not yet sealed.”
“Room for one more?” Ryan nodded toward Horst.
“Yes, but no gunfire. Keep it quiet.”
“Can we get out of here without a battle?”
“The back entrance, maybe, but hurry! They’re checking out the main loading docks now.”
Ryan bent close to Horst and growled his demand. “Final opportunity. Sing, or I start with your eyes! The little girl…where is she?”
Horst enunciated each word clearly, raising his voice for Nicole to hear: “In an unmarked trench with the remains of her mongrel family.” He gloated, his mask filled with malice. Nicole wailed in heartbreak and Erika raced to keep the horrifying sound of a mother’s worst loss from betraying them all.
Erika’s whisper was venomous. “Kill him now, or I will!” She rocked Nicole in her arms, her own tears flowing.
Ryan’s mind raced. A gunshot would bring the Gestapo and they’d all die, including Leo. But to slit a breathing throat, even that of a monster?
“Do it!” Erika, cold and brutal.
Be as vicious as your worst enemy, he told himself. Strangle the bastard. He looked across the room for a wire or cord, then went for the belt at his waist.
“The pill, dammit, Ryan, the cyanide in your ring!” Her eyes cut through the darkness.
Ryan shook the capsule from its compartment. Gripping Horst’s hair in one hand, he struggled to force the pill between those detestable lips. Horst fought it with his tongue, and Ryan’s fury rose with each attempt. He straddled Horst’s chest, beating his head against the concrete floor. The Nazi’s mouth opened with the impact and Ryan jammed the pill in and slammed the jaw shut with two upper cuts, then ground his enemy’s jaws together to break the rubber seal and glass vial and end that miserable, hate-filled life.
Ryan felt the bucking and jerking as Horst’s body reacted to the toxin flooding his bloodstream. His head thrashed from side to side and he gasped for breath, saliva foaming. Ryan held the jaw tightly shut as the poison did its work. Long minutes passed before the body gave a final violent shudder. Ryan leaned back, still straddling the body, drained by the act of killing, relieved to finally end the years of mental and physical struggle. His knuckles were bruised and bloody. “It’s done.” He looked at Erika, still cradling Nicole in her arms. She had unbound her wrists. Ryan rose and helped them to their feet. “Come on, we have to get out of here.”
He dragged the body into the warehouse, calling out quietly to the partisans. Only Jean-Philippe appeared from the darkness. “Here’s one more for the eastern front. Where’s Henri?”
“With Rénard and the kid out back. I was just coming for you.” He pointed Erika down the aisle, her arm around the sobbing Nicole to hurry her along. Jean-Philippe took a closer look at the size of Horst. “Sir, I’ll need your help getting this big one into a crate. We stuffed two in one box and gave the third guy one of his own. Hammering them shut will bring the cops, so be prepared to shoot it out.”
Ryan felt for the Browning in his belt, mentally counting the remaining bullets in the police-issue weapon. Then he recalled the semi-automatic he took from the first man he’d killed that evening. It was getting easier to do the necessary.
René and Leo waited at the rear of the warehouse. Henri had a pistol drawn and his ear to the door, listening for activity outside. When Leo had first appeared in Horst’s clutches, René had feared the worst for his mother. “Your grandmother, Leo, what did they do to her?”
“I’m sorry, u
ncle. Grand-mère Jeanne died. Just a few days ago—she never woke up.”
“Died? Before the police came?”
“Yes, uncle, that’s why I came to find you and Maman. I almost made it but the policeman arrested me.”
René nodded without really comprehending. His eyes glistened. The rest of the story would have to wait. He hugged Leo tightly. “Better so—we should all go peacefully in our sleep.”
“I gave her flowers before I left. She loved flowers.”
“Thank you, Leo. That was the right thing to do.” He rose with a deep sigh. “Time for us to go. Just remember how much she loved us.” Grieving would have to wait.
With Nicole sagging against her, Erika joined them. “She’s to be trusted after all?” René sounded doubtful.
“Why’s the pretty lady crying, Maman?”
“Her little girl Sophie is dead.” She cradled Nicole to her shoulder as a new wave of grief overcame her.
“But Maman—”
“No time to talk about it, Leo. Right now we must be going.”
“But Maman—Sophie’s not dead, she’s fine! I was teaching her to spell with colored blocks just yesterday—she’s in Bayonne with the other kids, in the house where the Gestapo kept me.”
Nicole dropped to her knees before Leo, words tumbling forth in desperate hope. “This Sophie—how old is she? What color’s her hair, her eyes.” She shook him by the shoulders.
Leo became cautious, sensing the importance of his answers. “Agnès says Sophie’s almost a year-and-a-half, though she’s not really sure. But Sophie does talk a lot already.”
Nicole shot Erika a look of hope. “Her hair and eyes—what color?”
“Brown hair, and her eyes are blue…like yours!”
“Then it’s possible! It could be my little Sophie!”
“I think Sophie likes me, she follows me everywhere. Of course, I’m too old for blocks, but it’s good for her to start learning to spell early.”
Beacon of Vengeance Page 30