“Where are you going, Monsieur Hector?”
“To trick our friends,” I said. “Now, stay there and be quiet. Promise?”
She said, “Promis, craché, juré,”—“Promised, spat, sworn,” and then spit on the ground.
I said, “Here’s something better, a pinky promise.” I held up my hand, little finger extended. She reached down her tiny hand. I wrapped her littlest finger around mine and said, “There, pinky promise. Now, hush please, honey.”
Moving tree to tree, I worked my way back to the Juvaquatre.
Duff and Jimmy had spread a blanket out on the grass. Duff had broken out sandwiches she’d made for a late lunch. She’s also conjured up a bottle of white wine. Pancho lay next to the blanket, eyeing the grub, salivating and beating his tail against the grass.
Overall, they looked like a couple and their dog out for an autumn picnic. But from my vantage point, I could see the gun hidden under Jimmy’s napkin; the hand grenades that bulged the pocket of his leather jacket. I assumed Duff had a gun hidden close by, too.
Three brown-uniformed Nazis were crossing the field on motorcycles. One of those bikes had an attached sidecar, and a fourth Nazi squatted inside it, clutching a machine gun.
I drew my Mauser.
God willing, these Nazis would just pass on by.
But it wasn’t to be. The motorcycles slowed, then rolled to a stop near the picnic site. The soldier in the sidecar leveled his weapon at Duff and Jimmy.
One of the Nazis turned off his engine and knocked down the kickstand with his boot heel. “Don’t waste time lying to me,” the solider said in German, stalking toward them. “I know you know who I’m looking for.”
Silence… then birds, a cricket.
Jimmy shrugged, saying nothing in English, German or French. The soldier repeated his words, this time in faltering, ungrammatical French. Duff said in French, “What are you talking about? Who are you looking for?”
Under the edge of the blanket, I saw Jimmy pull the pin on a grenade.
Well, well. Reckless Jim. Now we were fully committed:
Five seconds, tops, until detonation.
The solider said in his schoolboy French, “It’s no use to lie. You are with the ones we seek. Where is your friend, Hector Lassiter? Where is the girl?”
Good Christ, they were convinced that Jimmy and Duff were with me. Well, that had torn it.
By my count, there were three seconds left before that grenade hidden in Jimmy’s big mitt detonated.
If I was Jimmy, I’d sling the thing into that sidecar. I’d lob it in there between the German’s legs and blow it and the attached motorcycle to hell.
Just the shockwave of that explosion would knock the other soldiers off their bikes. Hell, they might even be incinerated in the resulting fireball when the gas tanks ruptured.
The flaw in that plan was the standing Nazi. He had his gun pointed at Jimmy’s head. Jim would never get the chance to pitch that grenade before the Nazi put a bullet in his head. Jimmy’s dropped grenade would then blow his corpse and Duff to rags and jam.
Two seconds.
Jimmy was going to have to do something rash and damned quickly.
I put my fingers to my lips and gave a whistle no bird known to nature ever made.
Jimmy’s posture changed. He grabbed Pancho’s collar; aimed to keep the dog from fetching, I guessed.
The standing Nazi looked quizzical, searching the trees.
I shot the man between the eyes.
Jimmy pitched his grenade. The man in the sidecar began frantically swatting at the grenade as it flew toward him. Unfortunately for the man, Jimmy had pulled the pin so many seconds before there was no time to bat the grenade back.
It exploded about a foot from the man’s face, shredding him and his partner sitting on the attached motorcycle. Then the gas tank of the motorcycle triggered a second fireball.
The other Nazi was blasted off his bike and slammed to the ground, bleeding from his ears. I drew down on him, just as Jimmy was also taking aim.
Both guns barked. Hard to say which shot did the job, but both were fired to the face.
Jimmy, still holding tight to Pancho’s collar, rolled over, sprawling half atop Duff as a second motorcycle’s gas tank exploded.
The fireballs touched off the dried overhead foliage of the old oaks.
I shouted, “Duff, move our car away from this fire. Jimmy, forage what you can that might be useful from these corpses. I’m going to fetch Marie. Then we best get moving again. If this fire should spread tree to tree, we could still end up dead.”
13
We reached the town of Bellac in the late afternoon. Storm clouds were rolling in and we’d been hearing thunder for at least ten miles.
Duff said to me, “Just in case they’ve put out leaflets with your picture by now—with all those books of yours in print your image isn’t particularly hard to come by, after all—I’d better secure our rooms.”
From the back seat, Jimmy said, “I’ll see what I can do to scrounge up some more gasoline. I’ll almost certainly end up siphoning it off from some other Kraut heap.”
I saw the church then in the gathering gloom. It was gray and tall and imposing. “You leave Marie and I there,” I said. “Once you’re settled, you can come back for us.”
I palmed the wheel, steering curbside. Duff smiled. “Seeking sanctuary? Somehow that doesn’t tally with my image of you.”
“I’ve always loved European churches,” I said. “I find them comforting. Even inspiring.” I smiled. “I fear you’ve spent way too much time with my clearly distorted files.”
Duff looked at the church. “Funny, you don’t strike me as the religious type, not at all.”
“You’re partly right. I mostly like to write when I’m in a church.”
“Well, as you’ll be entertaining a child this time, we’ll try to be quick,” she said.
It started to drizzle. I sensed this deteriorating weather was only the start of something. I grabbed Marie’s hand and we ran up the steps together.
As we reached the door, the harder stuff started pounding down.
It always seemed to be raining now.
***
We were sitting in a front row pew. Marie was wide-eyed, surveying the statuary and the vaulted roof so far overhead. It seemed more than she could take in.
I said, “Been a while since you’ve been to church, hasn’t it, honey?”
“Ours wasn’t this big,” she said. She pointed. “I like the windows.”
“Me too. Each one of them tells a story.”
“I miss my Mommy and my Daddy,” she said suddenly.
I hugged her close. “I know, honey. Let’s go up there. We’ll light two candles for your mom and dad. It’s something you do in churches like this one to remember or to honor people.”
As we finished lighting the second candle, I saw she was misting up. I hugged Marie again. “I lost my parents when I was just about your age,” I said softly. “You’ll always remember them, but it won’t always hurt like it does now, I promise you that’s true.”
She looked up at me, very solemnly. “What happened to your mommy and daddy, Monsieur Hector?”
Hell, I couldn’t tell her that story. I said, “It was like what happened to you in the most important way. I was very suddenly left all alone. My grandfather, Beau, took care of me. He raised me.”
She spread her arms and I knelt. She wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my cheek. I could feel her tears, warm against my skin. She said, “Who’s going to take care of me?”
“It’s like we’ve told you. Jimmy’s sister, Fionnula, is going to be your new mommy. Jimmy’s going to be your uncle. I expect you’ll be seeing a lot of Jimmy, especially after Jimmy and I beat Hitler.”
Her voice choked, Marie said, “You and Jimmy are going to do it yourselves?”
“With some help.”
Marie said, “Daddy thought this war mig
ht never end.”
I shook my head. “It will end, honey. Soon. I think the end has already started. When it’s over, you’ll be safe. You’ll never again have to worry about people hunting you.”
I held out my pinky. “Promise.” She smiled and wrapped her pinky around mine again. Then she threw her arms around my neck again. Still hugging me, she said, “Was it lonely for you? I mean when your mommy and daddy went away?”
“Sometimes. You lonely now, Marie?”
“Not as much since we left Mr. and Mrs. Babinot. At nighttime, in my room there, it got very lonely before I fell asleep. It was bad at night. And so dark.”
I stroked her hair. I said, “And now, honey?”
“I hug Pancho. It’s not so bad if he’s beside me.”
“Then you’ll never have to worry about being lonely like that again. Pancho’s going home with you. He’s your dog, now.”
“But he’s yours. You’ll be lonely.”
“No, I’ll be very pleased knowing he’s safe and happy with you,” I said. “Fighting Hitler, it’s too dangerous for a dog to come along while I do that. I want Pancho to have a yard and a little girl to love him and play with him. If you’ll take care of him, it will make me very happy. You will take care of Pancho for me, won’t you?”
“I’ll take very good care of him, Monsieur Hector.”
I hugged her back. “Thanks, darlin’. I’m delighted to hear that.”
“You will visit, too, won’t you?”
“Every chance I get.”
I picked her up and carried her back to a pew. She watched the two candles we lit flickering in the warm darkness. She said, “We forgot to light two candles for your mommy and daddy.”
“It’s okay, I’ve lit a lot of candles for them,” I lied.
“When will I get to my new home?”
“Soon. It’ll go faster once we cross the water to merry old England.”
She repeated the phrase, Merry old England, and smiled. She said, “That’s where Jimmy and his sister lives?”
“No, but it’s a stop along the way,” I said. “Then you go across a lot of water. You and Jimmy and Pancho. You go the safest place on earth. Then you’ll be home.”
Getting that dog back with them without some kind of quarantine was going to require some string-pulling I figured, but between Duff’s connections, Jimmy’s and my own, I was wagering we could get them on a military boat or plane that would let them travel as a trio. “Soon you’ll be home,” I said, “I promise. There, you’ll never have to worry again.”
This voice, old and warm: “My son…”
An elderly priest rested a slender, shaking hand on my shoulder. He had rheumy green eyes, thinning white hair and gin blossoms at his cheeks. His hassock was stained with something that might be spaghetti sauce. “You aren’t in some trouble, are you, my son?”
Stomach tightening, I said, “Why do you ask, Father?”
“Some men are gathering out front. Sister Bernadette is talking with them now.”
“Men. You mean Nazis?”
“Yes,” the priest said. He looked very worried. “They are asking about a man whose description matches yours. A man named Lassiter.” Softer, in my ear, he said, “They’re looking for you and this little girl. This is a large old church, with many corners and crevices. Perhaps if we hide you really well? Maybe in a confessional or the bell tower?”
I shook my head. “I suspect they won’t hesitate to look in those places, or anywhere else that strikes their fancy.” I stood and pulled Marie to her feet. “Father, does your church have any interesting architecture of other kinds? Some tunnels, maybe? Hidden rooms or exits? I’d prefer tunnels leading to other structures. Even a sewer system access could do.”
“You don’t have to deal with anything that sordid,” the priest said. “Follow me, my son. I can get you to the other side of the street, but after that…” He shrugged.
“I’ll take it from there, Father. And thank you for warning us.”
He squeezed my arm. “Let’s go now, and fast, my son. Sister Bernadette is indomitable, but these are Germans after all.”
***
Two blocks from the church we turned the corner into two German soldiers who leveled their guns at us. Marie squealed and leapt into my arms, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck.
One of the Germans looked to be about twenty, the other was maybe just a shade on either side of thirty.
They both looked at Marie, now trembling in my arms. I muttered, “Goddamn it.” I bit my lip, said in German, “She’s just a child, brothers. Let us go, please. I don’t have much money on me, but I’ll give you what I have if you’ll just let us go. She’s done nothing.”
The young one sneered. The slightly older German looked heartsick. He drifted back behind his young cohort. I figured then he was just going to let his bloodthirsty young friend work us over, shoot us or turn us over to superiors. Maybe the young one meant to do all three of those things.
The elder German reached for the pommel of a knife.
Goddamn it!
I turned Marie’s face to the hollow between my neck and shoulder so she wouldn’t see what was coming.
Then, eyes wide, I stepped aside to avoid the blood-spray as the German soldier sliced open the throat of the younger Nazi. The German who had just murdered his fellow soldier said to me in his own language, “You did that. Do you understand me?”
“Sure,” I said carefully in German. “I cut his throat.” As I said it, I watched the boy on the ground bleeding out, twitching and damning me with his eyes and he clawed at his neck.
The other German knelt and wiped down the blade of his knife on the dying soldier’s tunic with two practiced swipes. All the while, he watched me—as though I might actually somehow do something with my arms full of whimpering child.
“I have a daughter about her age,” he said, rising and slipping his knife back into its sheath. “I hope to survive all this desolation and see my little girl again.” He nodded at Marie. “I couldn’t see her…” His voice trailed off without saying “killed.”
“Right,” I said. “I couldn’t either, positions reversed.”
“You better go, fast,” he said. “Go that way. We were the last coming from that direction. But know this—if you get caught, I’ll shoot you before you can betray me.”
“No need to even think about that, brother. I wouldn’t do that after the chance you’ve given us here,” I said. “I’m going, but first, what’s your name?”
He narrowed his brown eyes. “Why?”
“Because as you say, someday, a day soon, I hope, this goddamn pointless war is going to be over. When that happens, I mean to look you up one day. Buy you a drink and meet your little girl.”
We shook hands. He said, “I’m Frederick Schmidt of Düsseldorf.”
“I’m Hector Lassiter of coastal Texas. Stay alive, Frederick, and thank you.”
***
“My legs are getting tired,” Marie said.
“I know, honey. Come here.” I lifted Marie and held her so she could bury her face between my shoulder and neck again. We’d been walking in a needle-spray rain for nearly twenty minutes. We were both soaked through and shivering. Marie’s teeth chattered against my neck. She said, “Your skin is scratchy.” It had been a couple of days since I’d shaved.
Marie asked me for a story. As a writer, my stuff usually walks darker, bloodier ground than even the unexpurgated Brothers’ Grimm and Mother Goose tales tend to traipse.
Soaked to the bone, I told her some cockeyed fairytale about a pretty little orphan girl menaced by an ogre with a scar down his face. The little girl was saved by a wandering warrior bard who distracted the ogre with fanciful tall tales until the bard could ice the son of a bitch ogre with the big bastard’s own writing quill.
Werner Höttl meets The Thousand and One Nights? I couldn’t deny it. Like the old scribe said, “Bad writers imitate; good writers steal.”
&n
bsp; Marie said, “Where did that story come from?”
“I made it up.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Made it up just like that?”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s my job. I am a storyteller. I am a writer.”
“I used to tell my stories in my room in the dark, the room without windows.” Marie bit her lip then shook her head firmly. “I think I’m going to be a writer, too.” I sensed she truly decided it to be so, right there.
A black sedan, a Renault, was slowing. It began to pull over toward us. As it reached the curb, I reached for my gun. My left arm was curled under Marie’s bottom, supporting her weight. So I slipped my right hand into my coat pocket and wrapped my damp palm around the butt of the Mauser.
The driver cracked the window of the Renault.
Jimmy said, “Don’t shoot, Hector. Seemed time for some new wheels. Now you two get in here before you catch your deaths.”
***
I finished dressing in dry clothes, then sat down at a window-side table to eat the meal Jimmy had scrounged for us from a neighboring market while I took a hot shower. The room was gloomy, just a stark light over the table, spotlighting it. A knock at the connecting door. It opened a crack and Duff said, “Are you decent?”
“Just.”
“I finished giving Marie a hot bath,” Duff said, sliding in. “I think she’ll be okay. She was sopping wet, but I don’t think she’s going to catch cold. It was a very lucky thing you and Jimmy crossed paths out there in the rain when you did. Jimmy agreed to sit with her so you and I can have dinner together. I mean, if you don’t mind the company. No pressure for you to agree, but I am famished.”
“I’d love the company,” I said. Duff was wearing a dress. It was tasteful, nothing showy. I could see for the first time she had very nice legs. I pulled out a chair for her. She sat down, and I scooted her chair in. I said, “Jimmy said he’d ordered for two.”
“Certainly looks that way,” she said. “I love Jim more with each passing hour. I was just teaching him how to fix Marie’s hair. After all, he’s got to see to such things between England and Ohio. He was a good sport, but said he hopes all this domestic stuff doesn’t pull his teeth. His words, not mine.”
Roll the Credits: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 9