As I reached the courtyard, I heard raised voices. Bertrand, Keller, Engel and my father were all gathered by the open door of the garage.
When I joined them, I immediately saw the reason for the heated debate. The ambulance—or rather, the Tin Snail—had gone.
“Congratulations, Signor Fabrizzi,” Keller snarled. “All you have achieved with this futile exercise is to waste fifteen minutes of your own time.”
Like me, my father was completely at a loss. “This is no trick,” he assured Bertrand. “It was here.”
“Then may I suggest that you find it,” said the major. “If I’m right, it wasn’t designed for speed, so it shouldn’t have gone far,” he added sarcastically.
I edged out of the garage, my mind whirring. No one apart from me and my father knew about the secret prototype being hidden here—so who would have known to take it? Then, all at once, I remembered how Camille had been outside when I was talking to my father earlier.
Of course! Camille. Why hadn’t I realized it? She had disappeared from the square soon after Bertrand had appeared. And as one of the pioneering test dummies, she would at least have some idea how to drive the disguised ambulance. But where could she be? Suddenly a thought leaped into my head.
Minutes later, having sneaked unnoticed out of the courtyard, I was tearing up the hillside at the back of the house. I was soon hidden among the trees, but there was no time to slow down. I raced on, gasping for breath as my lungs burned.
I ran as hard as I could until I emerged from the woodland onto the potholed lane near the racetrack. Then I dived into the woods on the other side and down the hill toward the river where Camille, Dominique and I had spent those precious few weeks swimming.
At last I reached the riverbank. Down below, the black stream chattered its way over the rocks.
Finally I saw what I was looking for: the old water mill. There, on the edge of the steep embankment, where the wooden beam jutted out above the river, stood the ambulance. Camille was standing beside it.
I raced down to her. “What are you doing here?” I cried.
Camille rushed to the back of the car and began to lean her shoulder against it, pushing with all her might.
“Help me!” she shouted. “I’m going to hide it in the water.”
“We can’t,” I protested. “If we destroy it, what will happen to Benoît?”
“You and your father and I are the only ones who know about the car,” she said. “If we hide it in the water, it can stay that way. Now help me!”
I hesitated for a moment, then realized that she was right. I threw my weight into trying to heave the car forward, but the grassy mound leading up to beam was in the way. The car refused to budge more than a few inches.
“It’s no use,” I huffed. “It’s too steep.”
Camille cried out in frustration. Suddenly my head jerked to the side: I’d heard something. I hushed Camille and she fell silent, straining to listen. The noise came again—this time clearer.
“Dogs,” I hissed. “It’s Keller’s men. They must have followed me.”
Camille’s eyes were wide with panic. “We can’t let them take it.”
Suddenly I had an idea. “We can drive it to your father’s forge and melt it down.”
“There isn’t time,” she protested, but I was already ahead of her.
“The most important thing is to destroy the suspension. The rest they can have.”
“But how are we going to drive through a village full of Nazi storm troopers?”
Suddenly we caught a glimpse of gray tunic and steel helmet. It was now or never.
“Come on!” I shouted. I turned to clamber into the driver’s seat, only to find Camille had beaten me to it.
“What are you doing?” I protested.
“You think I’m going to let you drive after last time?” she scoffed. There wasn’t time to argue. I leaped into the passenger seat and she rammed the gearstick into reverse.
Farther along the riverbank, a German shout went up and several hounds were released. Spittle flying from their jaws, the animals tore their way through the undergrowth, gaining on us fast.
“Hurry, come on!” I screamed.
“I’m trying—it won’t move!”
The wheels were spinning uselessly in the leaves. Suddenly a shot rang out. It fizzed through the leaves, snapping a branch just beside us.
“They’re shooting at us!” I shouted.
At last the wheels dug into solid earth and the car shuddered into life.
The race was on!
Bullets pinged past us, clanking off the metalwork and thumping into tree trunks. I cowered behind the dashboard as Camille floored the accelerator.
Gathering momentum, the Tin Snail careered through the undergrowth. With a massive crash of splintering wood, we burst out of the trees, crunching down onto the rutted track ahead. The force of the impact crumpled the bonnet, shearing the bumper clean off.
“Go!” I cried. A shower of sparks flew up from the front axle as Camille swung the steering wheel round and the car nearly keeled over onto its side.
“Why can’t this thing go any faster?” she screamed.
“It’s not designed for speed, remember?” I shouted back over the noise of the engine as we bounced our way along the potholed track. I glanced over my shoulder to see if anyone was following us, but the road was clear. “I think we’ve lost them.”
My words were cut short by Camille slamming on the brakes, sending my face thumping into the dashboard. Coming the other way, its tracks chewing up the fencing beside the road, was the tank.
I spun round and saw a plowed field to our right. “Quick! Through there.”
“We won’t be able to outrun it.”
“This is the one thing it is designed for!”
“And that isn’t?” Camille shouted back as the tank rumbled toward us, its barrel swiveling terrifyingly in our direction.
“Just do it!” I snapped.
Camille had no choice. She slammed her foot to the floor and yanked the wheel round. The car heaved itself over the edge of the road and onto the track. With every rut we hit, the bodywork rattled and shook where it had been hurriedly welded on by my father.
“It’s not going to make it!” Camille cried.
“It has to!”
Behind us, the tank had come to a stop before swiveling toward us and lurching forward. Its enormous caterpillar tracks simply flattened every rut it went over.
Inside the Tin Snail, the metalwork was now groaning in protest.
“We’re not going fast enough,” Camille said despairingly. No sooner had she said it than a large section of the ambulance’s paneling sheared off and sank into the mud behind us. Freed from the excess weight, the car surged forward with renewed vigor.
“We have to get rid of the other panels,” I yelled over the cacophony.
“I’m kind of busy here!” Camille shouted back, desperately trying to navigate her way across the field. I leaned back and put both feet across her lap.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked, confused.
By way of an answer, I kicked hard against the door next to her. After three or four heavy blows, it flew clean off its hinges. I now turned my attention to the back panel. With each piece of bodywork that flew off, the car gained momentum.
By now the tank, which until a moment ago had been gaining ruthlessly on us, had begun to fall back.
The Tin Snail—reduced now to little more than an engine on wheels—was sailing across the field. If ever proof was needed of its revolutionary suspension, this was definitely it.
The track on the other side of the field loomed ahead, and Camille threw the car right and gunned the engine again. We only had to cross the river at the bottom of the hill, and then the village would be less than a hundred meters ahead of us….
Suddenly Camille and I exclaimed at the same time: “The bridge!”
The only way across the river was the rickety old
structure Christian’s sports car had destroyed. As far as we knew, it had yet to be repaired. If it was still out of action, the race was as good as over—it would be only minutes before the tank caught up with us.
With nothing to lose, Camille accelerated down the track, which twisted on its final approach to the bridge. In a matter of seconds our fate would be sealed one way or another.
“Is the bridge there?” Camille yelled as she tried to turn the manually operated windscreen wiper to clear the screen.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes!” I blurted, screwing my eyes up to peer ahead. As far as I could tell, there was a new section of wooden track stretching out across the water.
But as the bridge loomed up in front of us, we suddenly saw to our horror it was only half complete. Before we could do anything, the car crashed onto the wooden boards and took off.
For a hideous second I had visions of plunging into the water again. But, as luck would have it, Christian’s sports car was still half-buried in the riverbed, reeds now growing up through its leather upholstery. The Tin Snail thumped down onto its bonnet, momentarily bottoming out. A force like that should have sheared the suspension rods in half—yet miraculously, with a wrench of splintering metalwork, we simply bounced off it and landed on the riverbank beyond.
Unbelievably, the car still carried on—mostly out of sheer forward momentum, but who cared? It was moving.
Back on the other side, the Panzer had attempted to muscle its way straight across the half-formed bridge. But the moment its colossal weight hit the woodwork, the whole structure collapsed, and the tank slumped onto its side, its caterpillar tracks spinning forward and then backward, spraying up mud and stones.
No two ways about it: it was stuck fast.
Minutes later, the battered skeleton of the Tin Snail rattled its way up the track into the village, a hubcap sparking off the pavement and clattering against the wall. Camille tugged the wheel left and urged the tiny spluttering engine toward her father’s forge on the opposite side of the square.
Our faces were covered in mud and weeds from the river, but we were elated. We had maybe two to three minutes to start sabotaging what was left of the car before Keller’s men arrived. Anything now would feel like a victory, no matter how token.
Suddenly Camille screamed. In the middle of the road ahead of us stood the unmistakable figure of Keller. As we barreled across the square, straight toward him, he calmly raised his pistol and took aim. Camille and I dived for cover as he let off five rounds into the bonnet.
Riddled with bullet holes, the car veered dementedly toward him before crashing through several tables, and straight into Victor’s bar. Destroying everything in its path, it thumped into the counter, its bonnet crumpling like tin foil as steam hissed out of its punctured radiator.
For a moment Camille and I were too dazed to move. Behind us, voices began to cry out in alarm and I spotted the blurred form of my father sprinting across the square. By now Victor and Dominique were also scrambling their way through the wreckage to reach us.
Through the door, I saw Keller return his pistol smoothly to its holster, a look of satisfaction on his face. Seconds later, two army trucks roared into the square, spilling out troops, but he held up a hand to stop them. “That will not be necessary,” he told them calmly.
My father and Victor managed to drag us, battered and bruised, from the wreckage of the car. As Keller strode toward us, Papa lunged at him ferociously. For a moment he feared for his life—till several soldiers raced forward and roughly overpowered my father.
“You animal!” he railed. “You meant to kill them.”
“Not at all,” Keller assured him icily. “I’m a marksman. I meant merely to disable the car. Had I wished to shoot the children, believe me, they would already be dead.”
By now Engel, Bertrand and Philippe had reached us, all ashen with shock.
“M-Major Keller,” Engel stammered, incensed, “I shall be lodging an official complaint about your behavior with the German minister himself. Your conduct is nothing short of barbaric, and you bring disgrace on yourself and Germany.”
Keller listened impassively. “Complain all you want, but I have carried out my orders—not to mention yours. As you see,” he said, nodding toward the wrecked car, lodged nose-first in the bar, “I have found your prototype.”
As his men set about salvaging what was left of the car and loading it onto the truck, I slumped, defeated, on the curb. Moments later my father joined me.
“We failed,” I said dejectedly, suddenly understanding the futility of everything we’d tried to do.
“No,” he sighed. “I was the one who let you down. If I’d just done what Bertrand said…”
“I—I thought the car would change everything,” I stammered, my voice catching with emotion.
“How do you know it won’t?”
“I mean now,” I protested. “Between you and Maman.”
My father lifted my chin, gently smoothing away my tears. “What is it Bertrand used to say? Some things aren’t meant to be….”
“The rest aren’t meant to be yet,” I added.
My father smiled at me wistfully. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe.”
And that would have been the end of the story. The prototype would have been sent back to Germany and lost to France forever—had it not been for Benoît’s plan.
It turned out that a number of the local wine growers had grown sick of the invading Germans looting their cellars and shipping their finest wines to Germany. To get their own back, a select few of Benoît’s friends had begun a series of daring midnight raids on the German freight trains. No sooner had each barrel of wine been loaded up to begin its journey north to Germany than the local stationmaster would tip off the farmers. They would then intercept the train, sometimes before it had even left the station, and secretly empty the barrels, replacing the wine with water.
Two nights after the dreadful day when Keller found the car, a friend of Benoît’s from a nearby vineyard arrived at Victor’s bar and whispered an interesting piece of information into his ear. The stationmaster had told him about another consignment heading back to Germany. Only this time it wasn’t wine, but assorted parts of the Tin Snail itself.
The wrecked remains of the chassis, engine and, most importantly, suspension had been duly numbered, logged and then packed into crates by Keller’s men to be taken back to Germany the following night.
Major Keller had overseen the operation himself and watched as the precious cargo was loaded onto the trucks, bound for the main station on the outskirts of Boutonne. He then pulled on his leather gloves, slid down his goggles and sat back in his staff car as it swept out of the town, never to return.
But no sooner had Keller’s entourage thundered away than Camille, my father, Victor, Benoît, Félix, Philippe and I sprang into action. Even Marguerite came along for the ride.
Taking Benoît’s tractor and various carts drawn by horses and a remarkably revitalized Geneviève, we set off for the station at nightfall.
There, shortly after midnight, we stole across the tracks and hid behind the freight carriages.
Marguerite, meanwhile, approached the lone guard keeping watch in the signal box. Under her arm was a bottle of Benoît’s strongest home brew. The guard didn’t take much persuading to join her in a nightcap, but he hadn’t reckoned on Marguerite’s iron constitution.
While we crouched in the shadow of the freight train, the guard finally passed out. As he began to snore like a warthog, Marguerite crept to the window and signaled the all clear. Immediately we sprang into action.
Following the information from the stationmaster, it didn’t take me long to identify the carriage that contained the Tin Snail. I nodded to Félix, who produced a giant pair of bolt cutters.
Checking that the coast was clear, he crunched his way through the padlock and we slid the carriage door open. Once safely inside, we made s
hort work of prizing open the carefully numbered crates, all emblazoned with a red-and-black Nazi swastika. Inside each one lay a precious component of the wrecked prototype, packed in straw for its journey back to Germany.
“Where do we start?” I hissed.
“How about with this?” Victor suggested, producing from under a blanket the section of wooden plow that had hung above the bar. He removed one of the pieces of the prototype and replaced it with the farm machinery.
And so it continued into the night. As each box was opened, the parts of the Tin Snail were lifted out and replaced with assorted fakes. Then, one by one, the crates, containing a hotchpotch of broken farming equipment and household ironmongery, were resealed.
It amused me to imagine the scene in Germany, days later, when, under the watchful gaze of Major Tobias Keller, the crates were reopened and a group of nonplussed technicians attempted to reassemble the Tin Snail….
After the success of our midnight raid, news spread fast. Soon, a new spirit of defiance was sweeping the country. The ordinary French people were beginning to realize that their German oppressors weren’t so benevolent after all. In fact, they were systematically bleeding the country dry.
Food became very scarce. More alarming still, the Nazis were dragging away anyone who dared to speak out against them.
But the German occupiers had underestimated the will of the French people. Soon—spurred on by the story of the Tin Snail, I liked to think—the groups of peasants intercepting German trains were joined by others, until a whole secret army of fighters had sprung up all over the country.
The French Resistance, as it was soon called, would become a fearsome group of heroes who risked everything to sabotage the German war effort, and Philippe was among its most daring leaders.
The Paris Motor Show, 1948
It’s a little before nine o’clock in the morning, and I can feel my stomach tightening into a knot as I wait for the doors of the Grand Palais to be thrown open for the Paris Motor Show.
The Tin Snail Page 20