The Alice Factor
Page 49
All hell broke loose. Some of the men were on fire. Hagen had disappeared into the canal.
The girl was gone—she’d be racing toward the bridge!
Arlette slid down the muddy embankment and ran in under the timbers. Clawing, dragging herself up, she fought to find the matches and reach the fuse.
Three minutes … that was all Richard had said he’d have. Forty seconds a foot for the fuse. Four and a half feet of it!
She tried to light a match. Black powder from the end of the fuse spilled over her shaking fingers. The matches … Steady, she must keep steady.
The sound of hobnailed boots rang on the timbers above her.
Too slow … too slow … she dragged out the Browning and fired at them. The fuse began to splutter. Run … she’d have to run!
When the thing went off, the blast pitched her along the canal and tumbled her head over heels in the water.
Dazed and bleeding, she got up and ran.
Hagen saw her crawl out of the canal. Suddenly everyone had gone to ground. She ran for about one hundred meters—they let her get that far. The tac-tac-tac of an MG-42 came to him. The earth was kicked up around her and she fell to lie there.
He turned and ran himself. “Arlette!” It was a scream, a cry. Hagen raced for the next canal and leaped into it. At a crouch, he made for the farmhouse. She’d be about three hundred meters out in that no-man’s-land. Krantz would have a rifle, too.
Oily black smoke and flames billowed from the truck and the two cars. All but one of the bridges had been blown.
Arlette hadn’t moved.
Quickly the Berliner and the others took up positions behind the embankment of the road. Reports filtered in. The Hauptmann was dead. Several others had gone with him. Six were badly burned or otherwise out of action.
The girl still lay out there. Hagen would try to reach her. Krantz asked for a rifle and rested it on the edge of the road, cursed his luck for not having the use of his left hand.
“Herr Krantz, the briefcase is on the last of the bridges.”
So it was. “Send someone for it.”
“Hagen will only kill him.”
“Get it, damn you!” The girl—had she tried to move?
The man reached the bridge. A length of fuse ran from the briefcase down between the timbers to join up with another length that stretched away along the canal in which Hagen was hiding.
Krantz waited. The man stooped to pick up the briefcase. Hagen fired. Krantz leaped and fired. The man crumpled into a heap, and the reports of the shots chased each other over the moors.
The Berliner cursed. He’d torn the bandages from his hand, had tried to use the thing. The pain was excruciating. Damn Hagen. Damn the girl. “All right, you bastard. We’re coming for you!”
A man stood up at a crouch and fell to the road. The girl had moved. She was now nowhere in sight.
Hagen lit the fuse and together they ran toward the sand hills. Arlette flung herself down behind some cover as the dynamite went off. Richard went past her and on up into the hills. Higher and higher still …
She heard the crack of the rifle twice and then again.
When she threw herself down beside him, he fired twice more. Reloading the Mauser, he pinned the Germans down.
“Are you okay?” he asked, not looking at her.
“Are you?” She touched his cheek.
Krantz scanned the tops of the hills. Again there was that feeling of utter loneliness the battlefield at Ypres had brought. The girl was now with Hagen but lying some distance to the north so as to cover that flank.
There was only one thing to do. He had to nail Hagen, but when he looked again, the salesman was nowhere to be seen.
An hour dragged by. Finally the Berliner could stand it no longer. The pain in his hand … he’d need a shot of morphia.
He took out the cigarette case. As so many times since the First War, he ran a thumb over the dented head of the kaiser.
Then he asked for a light and drew in gratefully. Ah, that was better.
Hagen shot him through the head. The report echoed like a cannon. The man who had caught the Berliner in his arms died as well.
Then Hagen faded back along the canal and up into the hills.
Arlette lay still. For an hour now the sun had been up. Dragonflies came and went, or hovered overhead. The reeds were thick, warm, the sound of water near, that of the dogs more distant.
A shout came and then another. Across the moor, at gaps of thirty yards, men were spread out, and the line of them stretched for at least a thousand meters on either side of them.
At five-minute intervals the men would change places, cutting diagonally to the left and the next time to the right. They were wading through the tall grass with their rifles held before them. Fresh troops, far too many of them.
Hagen reached for the Schmeisser, easing the satchel of ammunition toward himself.
Exhausted, Arlette slept on. The wind came to touch the reeds but made no sound. Her chest rose gently. Another breath.
He hated to awaken her and wondered if he should, if it wouldn’t be better to let her die like that. Happy to be with him, secure in the knowledge he was beside her.
When he turned away to part the reeds, Arlette opened her eyes to lie there tensely listening. Opalescent in the early light, the transparent wings of a dragonfly were so very beautiful. The thing hovered directly above her—she’d have sworn it looked down—but then it zoomed away.
Richard had such a nice smile. It spread gently from his lips to fill his eyes and made her feel warm inside.
He jerked a thumb toward the south. Blinking, she turned over onto her stomach and reached for the rifle. The sound of the dogs came again, then a shout from the Feldwebel.
Would they die together? she wondered anxiously.
Hagen motioned her to retreat. Stubbornly she indicated the flattened reeds. The dogs would only find them.
Silently he said, Trust me. She moved away reluctantly, pulling herself through the reeds until perhaps ten meters separated them and she was faced by a barrier of water.
It was a canal, about five meters wide. If only they could cross it. If only …
Just downstream of her a small flat-bottomed punt lay tethered to a pole. The rifle would have to stay.
Sliding into the tepid water, Arlette swam silently toward the punt and was soon in the slim wedge of shade that lay behind it.
The canal wasn’t all that deep. She could just touch the bottom. When Richard reached the bank, she signaled to him and at once he slid into the water.
Carrying the guns and the satchel just above his head, Hagen swam slowly downstream until he had joined her. There were some burlap bags in the bottom of the punt, things that had been used for eels perhaps. Quickly Hagen hid the guns and the satchel under them, then broke off two lengths of reed.
Together, each holding on to the other, they sank below the surface. The sun began to climb, the dogs to bark again. At a shout from one of the men, the barking ceased.
At dusk they gave up the search.
Spring came early to the Dorset hills. On Black Down Heath the wild-flowers were in bloom, and if one shut one’s eyes it was so very far from the war.
Out on the moor Arlette heard Richard call her name. He waved. He’d a letter in his hand. Orders now to report for duty. Damn!
The days of their escape came back—Ostend in ruins, her parents dead, the Vega still in the harbor, tied up with all the fishing boats.
Was it all about to begin again? Another nightmare?
He took her by the hand. She said, “Well, what’s it to be?”
“Mbuji-Mayi and the Congo. Churchill’s convinced the Germans are still being supplied with diamonds.”
She turned to face him. Reaching out, her trembling fingers touched his cheek. They had made love time and again, each with an eagerness that had only seemed to get greater.
“Then I must tell you something, my husband. If it’s
a girl, I’ll call her Cecile, if a boy, then Bernard first, I think, and after that, why, Lev.”
Hagen took her in his arms. The tears were there, the sadness in her lovely eyes, the yearning. He lifted her up and let her slide down to the ground so close to him it made them both think of things.
Hand in hand they walked out over the moor. She knew of a place. They would sit quietly in the sun, just the two of them.
“Make love to me,” she said. “Out here. I haven’t told your mother yet. I … I was waiting until I’d told you first.”
“Kincalda … Churchill will want you to go there, to help them train others.”
“Yes … yes, I’ve already thought of that. I’ll have the baby there and when you come back …”
She was in his arms, he in hers. It was as if they had started all over again, it was as if there could be no tomorrow for them.
Acknowledgements
This book could not have been written without the help and patience of Niagara’s librarians. To them I owe my sincere thanks.
The Alice Factor is entirely a work of the imagination, though it deals with a very real situation. For historical and industrial authenticity, the names of real places and some companies have been used, but these are seen in totally imaginary ways that suit the story and no offense is meant. Occasionally, for the same reason, the name of an actual person will occur, but all are deceased and, again, their use is totally imaginary.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1991 by J. Robert Janes
Cover design by Mauricio Diaz
978-1-4804-0065-8
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