“I wish I knew the story behind that, too,” I said, raw-voiced. “Every time I make a pitch to end Höttl, I get a terrific tongue-lashing. They want Werner watched, and they seem to want him contained as it can be arranged, but they don’t want him harmed. I’d dearly love to know why that is.”
Yawning, I shut down the engines. We’d nearly lost the light. “Let’s get her sea anchor down, then we’ll get below and pull the shades. Biggest danger to us then should come from the stray pod of whales or some other damn ship running into us in the dark.”
Jimmy sighed and clapped my back. “Ah, that’s my Hector, every uttered syllable a comfort.”
He began to sing then. The tune was one I knew as “The Minstrel Boy,” but the lyrics weren’t the ones I was familiar with:
A glorious band, the chosen few
On whom the Spirit came;
Twelve valiant saints, their hope they knew,
And mocked the cross and flame.
They met the tyrant’s brandished steel,
The lion’s gory mane;
They bowed their heads the death to feel:
Who follows in their train?
19
This shaking: “Hector? It’s first light, Hector. You said to wake you as the sun rose.”
Exhausted as I still felt, all dry-mouthed and cotton-headed, I groaned and said, “Yeah, right.” I was grateful for Duff having woken me. I was having a bad dream that I was tied naked to a table and being “interrogated” by Werner Höttl and Klaus Barbie.
Duff said, “Some nightmare you were having, huh? You nearly cuffed me.” She brushed the hair back from my damp forehead and then kissed each of my eyes. “I can’t wait to get you to London and in a room away from the world. You make me a wanton.”
“I desperately want that, too,” I said, brushing her cheek with an unsteady hand. “Any luck last night with the radio?”
“We have some coordinates,” Duff said. “A British submarine will meet us there. Based on our present location, or at least what you determined it to be last night, because Jimmy thinks we’ve dragged anchor some distance from that point, at top speed they estimate we should reach the rendezvous spot by six tonight.”
“Splendid. Then all we need to do is stay alive and free about twelve more hours.”
No mean feat with the German Army, Navy and her Luftwaffe potentially looking for us. Duff, I knew, knew it. But she smiled and snapped her fingers. “Easy enough.”
Kidding myself a moving target is at least marginally harder to hit, I swung my legs off the bunk and stretched. My head was spinning. I said, “I feel like I’ve got one of the world’s greatest but completely unearned hangovers.”
“That’s because you’ve hardly slept in days,” Duff said. “I suppose more coffee is out of the question?”
“I can still taste the last couple of gallons in my mouth. But no, a bit more would be quite nice. I take mine black, but this morning, anything you can do to soften it would be appreciated, honey. My guts are a mess.”
I stood up, very unsteady, pressing the palm of my hand to the low ceiling until I caught my balance. I figured it shouldn’t take terribly long to reacquaint Jimmy with ship’s steering. In the 1920s, in the Keys, Jim had shown some natural facility for piloting my pleasure boat.
Teaching a novice like Duff might take a good bit longer.
***
After an hour spent at the wheel with Jimmy and Duff, I’d staggered back downstairs to catch some more sleep. Marie was still asleep on an adjacent bunk. Pancho looked up at me from the floor where he was sleeping, then dropped his head again, looking sullen and sick. He clearly hated being at sea.
Poor Pancho—all the crazy things he’d seen with me these past couple of years. He must still question his own insistence to climb into my car that long-ago rainy day in the shadow of the Alps.
I collapsed on the cot, plumped my pillow, and closed my eyes. What seemed like a few seconds later, Duff was shaking me awake again, this time more roughly. “Dammit, wake up, Hector!”
“I just fell asleep,” I grumbled.
“It’s nearly four. We’re two hours from the rendezvous site. But we have company, Hector! Two boats closing fast on us. German boats! Jimmy needs you up top, now.”
Holy Christ!
Half-running, half-crawling, I rolled off the bunk and scampered up the steps to the deck.
Squinting in the light, I called up to Jimmy, “How far away?”
“Five minutes at most,” he yelled down.
I hadn’t often heard fear in Jimmy’s voice, but I did now, and it unsettled me.
But he was out of his depth, so to speak. If we’d been on shore and armed, even pinned down, he’d have been in his element. Out here?
Jimmy said, “I’ve opened her all the way up, but they’re sleeker and faster. Built for speed. I might have something that can help us, but I need you up here to steer, Hec.”
I took the wheel at the flying bridge where I could see better. It also made me an easier target for a rifle shot, but if Jimmy didn’t pull a rabbit out of the hat in the next four minutes, it would hardly matter how I died.
Jimmy scrambled to a tool compartment under a passenger deck in the pilot’s cabin.
He tugged out what looked like some kind of ordnance box and something long and thick wrapped in oilcloth. Whatever was bound up in the bundle was just slightly longer than a rifle.
“You’ve been keeping secrets,” I said, smiling at Jimmy. “That what I think it is?”
“Probably,” Jimmy said.
Duff poked her head up top, said, “Anything I can do?”
I said, “Make sure Maria and Pancho are safe below, then I need you to come up and take over at the wheel. I think I may need to give Jimmy some tactical support with this weapon of his.”
***
The two pursuing crafts had halved their distance from us in less than two minutes. Duff called down, “Can we run this fast, this long, without burning out the engine or bearings?”
“Probably not,” I called back, “but we just need a couple more minutes at this speed.”
I lifted the binoculars back to my eyes. Trevor Lord was on the lead boat, waving his arms and yelling at the German sailors, probably besieging them not to shoot his stolen boat full of holes.
Jimmy had finished prepping his weapon. It looked more than lethal, but I figured it would take at least six or seven shots for Jimmy to get the range right on the Springfield rifle with its attached M1 grenade launcher. There would likely be several misses required to really get a feel for the targeting and the trick of compensating for the pitch of the ocean and the relative speeds of our respective boats.
Hell, Jimmy might have to let them come nearly alongside and then try and take them out at something like pointblank range.
The recoil from the grenade cartridge affixed to the M1 was notorious for its wicked-ass recoil, enough to seriously damage a shoulder or even the stock of the weapon. Jimmy put the butt of the rifle to the seat of one of the boat’s exterior, bolted down chairs, and set the stock on side—that angle was textbook recommended firing strategy. He guessed at the distance between us and the first boat, then set the range ring.
To my astonishment and delight—Jimmy’s too, I could tell—he deposited the first grenade squarely on the deck of the lead boat.
Wide-eyed, Trevor pointed at the grenade as it plunged toward the deck. None of the Nazis had the presence of mind, or the selflessness, anyway, to throw themselves on top of the grenade to muffle the imminent explosion and maybe save the boat catastrophic damage.
Evidently the grenade had also landed close by some fuel or ordnance containers; the primary grenade explosion was swiftly followed by several larger secondary blasts that vaporized the boat down to the water line.
Adios, Trevor Lord. That first explosion ripped him cleanly in half.
I figured Jimmy had the bead and could make short work of the second boat.
&
nbsp; But his first two shots went wide.
I saw now there were men running movie cameras on the second boat.
Goddamn Werner Höttl!
Jimmy’s third shot just missed the deck, but blew a hole through the hull of the second craft somewhere under water where I couldn’t see. The boat rolled sharply on its side, then began to sink, nose down.
Most of the Germans scrambled to the back of the boat, just delaying their inevitable sinking into those cold, rough waters.
Jimmy loaded another grenade and started to take aim at the sinking boat.
Scowling at my raised eyebrows, Jimmy shrugged and said, “Nazis, Hector. Never leave ’em for seed. Anyway, it would be cruel to let even them drown, wouldn’t it?”
Argue with any of that?
I couldn’t. Not with the blood up. Not in that time and place, and not so fully in the moment.
20
We’d been in London for several days. Duff had been growing increasingly morose as the time for our parting had drawn closer. Now, well into our last day together as a quartet, quintet if you counted our four-footed member, she’d taken Marie out on the town. She was committed to get Marie’s hair “fixed,” as Duff put it, as well as to finding the girl some new dresses and another doll.
I was a couple of minds about all that. It was nice they could wander the streets at something like will, but as I also pointed out to Duff, “Despite all the Nazis swarming around, Lyon was relatively intact. London’s been being bombed for years. Seeing all that rubble may unhinge the child.”
“Trust me to be judicious about where we go,” Duff had said. “I don’t want to unsettle her, you know that.”
After they’d left, Jimmy and I had moseyed down to the hotel bar, where we remained. Marlene Dietrich on a radio: “See What the Boys in the Backroom Will Have.”
We’d been in London nearly a week. I finally felt like I was truly catching up on all my lost sleep.
“It’s finally all official,” Jimmy said. “All the maddening i’s are dotted and the irksome t’s are feckin’ crossed. We’ll leave tomorrow at seven. We’ll be taken home on a transport plane.” He paused. “I’ve pulled some strings in the other direction, too. I mean for me, personally. I’m going back to my old post in Cleveland, Hector. This past week has been enough mayhem for me in-theatre. I’m no kid anymore. There’s also an old pet case back home that may be heating up again. You know, Kingsbury. The Mad Butcher. I’m resuming the hunt. Afraid you’ll just have to beat Hitler without me, boyo.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “And I’m glad you’re going home, Jim. Glad you’ll be in situ to watch over Marie. Just in case Höttl should have any lingering connections to Buckeye Bund members or the like.” I hesitated. “I can’t thank you enough for making this run with me, Jimmy. It was well past above and beyond, my brother.”
He waved a big hand. “None of that, Hector. Given what this will do for my sister, we’re more than even.”
Jimmy tapped the bar twice with his knuckles and said to the bartender, “Two double-deep shots of your finest single malt, can do?”
Watching the bartender pour our drinks, Jimmy said, “And you, Hector? Are you hell-bent on going back to France to further nettle Werner Höttl?”
“I need to play lip-service to my status as war correspondent for at least a few weeks,” I said. “Besides, these past few days haven’t left me with too-warm feelings about the condition of the newly-formed OSS, or about the internal security of the resistance. Often as we were sold out from somewhere while running this hellish gauntlet, I’m going to be a good while regaining my trust in the spymasters.”
I accepted my whiskey and tapped glasses with Jimmy. “Besides,” I said, “I’m still resenting having my hands tied where Höttl’s concerned. So, I’m going to follow your example for at least a while and go back to what I do best. I’m going to write. Dispatches. Some stories and maybe another novel. I’m getting the itch for the latter.”
“And you’ll spend some quality time with Duff Sexton,” Jimmy said.
“And I’ll spend some time with Duff,” I confirmed.
Jimmy smacked his lips and said, “Ah, to be in England now that war is here.” He smiled and shook his head. “You just remember to obey the cautions you were urging on Duff before she ventured out onto the streets with Marie. This isn’t safe territory by any stretch of the imagination. You never stray far from the cover of a bunker or a tube tunnel, right? The Blitz may be over, but those damned Germans, they’re said to be experimenting with rockets.”
I’d heard those rumblings, too, but in recent months, the Germans had shifted their air–attack focus. The Nazis were now bent on making so-called “Baedeker Blitzes” on tourist towns: Bath, York, Exeter and Norwich. Those were also much softer targets.
Jimmy shook his head and squeezed my arm. “When you do finally make it back to the States, I expect you to make Cleveland a first stop.”
“Hell, it’ll be the very first,” I said.
***
We said our goodbyes to Jimmy and Marie at the airfield.
I scratched Pancho between the ears, surprised to find myself rather shaken to see him go. We’d traveled a lot of treacherous European ground together, that dog and I.
Marie hugged me hard. Then she wrapped her arms around the dog.
Jimmy said, “Remember, Hector—don’t screw things up with this one.” He pointed at Duff, then kissed her goodbye. He said, “Keep Hec north of the dirt, luv.”
Jimmy thought about it, then hugged me so hard my ribs hurt. He said, “I dearly hope the world turns in such a way you get to kill Werner Höttl, up close and personal. And soon.”
***
Two nights after we were left alone in London, three-sheets to the wind and huddled in a subway tube during a false alarm that had us all thinking the Blitzkrieg had resumed, I proposed to Duff.
She kissed me passionately, then said, “Give me a day or two to think about this, you lunatic.” Her eyes searched mine. “Agreed?”
Then she went back to kissing me.
***
Three nights after that, during still another bombing run that turned out to be a another false-alarm, we decided to file for a marriage license:
“Just in case,” as Duff put it.
***
A week later, following a romantic interlude in Leicester Square, with no threat of bombs falling, Duff and I were married.
BOOK TWO
The Death of Paris
August 1944
21
Paris, August 15. Technically, the city was still squarely in German hands. But the Nazis’ grip was slipping. I had been in Paris more than a week. I was taking the battle directly to the Germans with my own ragtag recruits.
My crew included resistance fighters, fellow “foreign correspondents”—mostly Scots and scrappy Irish who’d ditched their reporters’ duds and gone to war. Some soldiers and pilots cut off from their units… a handful of World War I vets and local Parisians at last emboldened to take up arms.
And we had a few very proficient, recently left leaderless, Maquis I’d dragged along with me from various previous forays into the hinterlands through late 1943 and the spring of the present year.
These motley “French Forces of the Interior” were equipped with grenades and cartridge belts. Also liberated weapons of English, German and American manufacture. They were adept at living rough. Capable hunters and fishermen. And consummate killers.
In all the heady to-and-fro, I couldn’t quite decide whether they’d all chosen me to be their leader or if I’d more or less stepped into the void.
Either way, I was leading the charge.
And we were making real headway in Paris.
Still, we had our failures, too.
Today we’d just missed in our efforts to stop a convoy of several thousand prisoners being shipped to Buchenwald.
On the other hand, the Paris Métro, Gendarmerie and police had simulta
neously called a strike. The postal workers were said to be planning to follow suit in the morning.
It felt like the momentum to free Paris was mostly on our side.
All the while, as I directed my irregulars and fought in skirmishes and hand-to-hand tussles in the streets, I was also hunting one particular man, and trying very hard to avoid another. The first was a sworn enemy; the latter, a former friend.
My ex-pal, a frighteningly capable man when he set his mind to such things, was said to be closing in on Paris with his own guerilla unit, actually running a good distance ahead of Leclerc and his forces. Through channels, I heard that after taking and holding Rambouillet until our boys could take over, he was now boasting he was going to liberate the Ritz. I had no reason to doubt he could do just that, and pull it off with grand panache.
Soon, it seemed, we’d all be here in the City of Light once more.
Hector Lassiter.
Werner Höttl.
Ernest Hemingway.
Paris was far too small for three such as us.
***
Bernard Reboul was one of my Paris resistance boys.
In an alley not far from the Rue Vavin where I lived in 1924, he said, “The Germans still holding out have been given orders to plant explosives in key locations all over the city. Hitler wants to decimate Paris, to burn it as his forces leave it. It seems if he can’t have it—”
“Then he means to annihilate Paris,” I finished for him. “Word of that ambition has come our way from many directions. How are you doing in the counter-efforts on that front?”
Bernard scratched his unshaven cheek. He was pretty ripe all on his own, but his clothes also stank of stale cigarette smoke. He reeked of cordite, and, yes, of dried blood. Bernard was a teacher before the fall of Paris, an instructor in military history. From an apartment somewhere above I heard music, Le bar de l’escadrille.
“Some more circumspect of his followers, already anticipating the war crimes trial to come, are stalling and some fewer of those even refusing,” Bernard said. “Others are at least tipping us in time to disarm the explosives they’ve placed.”
Roll the Credits: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 13