by Robert Rigby
“Of course,” Henri told him, “everything must be as normal as possible here. Léon is a good man and completely trustworthy. And we’ll need him later anyway, as he knows the contact who knows the mountain team – and I don’t.”
Paul smiled as he heard Henri’s words, recognizing that the “need to know” rule was maintained as strictly in the south as in the north.
Down below, Didier was still worrying about the internment camp guards. “If the escape is discovered and the alarm goes off, the truck will almost certainly be stopped by the gendarmes.”
“How many times must I tell you,” Gaston barked, “the escape won’t be discovered until the morning at the earliest.”
“No, Didier’s right,” Henri said quietly, playing the peacemaker again. “We must consider every possibility. And it is possible the escape will be discovered and the truck stopped. And that would mean trouble if you, a gendarme officer, were to be found with me. But Léon is in the textile business too, so it’s not unlikely we’d be moving material together, even late at night. It makes it much safer for us all.”
“And what if you are stopped?” Didier asked. “We haven’t discussed that.”
Josette and Paul heard Henri give a chuckle. “I almost hope we are, as ours is the diversionary tactic. Tomorrow I’ll make sure the truck is heavily, and badly, loaded. If we’re stopped it will take the gendarmes an age to search all the way through it. Time enough for you to get safely back to Lavelanet, Didier.”
Aware that his ear had gone numb, Paul turned and pressed his other ear to the floor.
“Then Léon and I take Jean-Pierre and Paul to the rendezvous with the mountain team,” Paul heard Henri say. “Léon knows the place.”
“And which trail will they take?” Didier asked. “Do we know yet?”
“Yes,” Henri said softly. “It’s the Eagle Trail.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Josette suddenly realized she was grasping Paul’s hand. She had closed her eyes, concentrating fully on what was being said in the room below. Opening them she saw Paul staring at her. His face was close to hers. He smiled and squeezed her fingers, and she instantly released her grip and looked away, her cheeks burning.
She had never heard of the Eagle Trail, but the name was enough to send a shiver down her spine. It sounded dark and brooding, menacing and deadly dangerous. It made her heart thud. It made her grab Paul’s hand again for comfort.
She blushed once more and pressed her face to the floor, trying to hide her embarrassment.
“I know the Eagle Trail,” she heard Didier say in the room below.
“What do you mean?” Gaston snapped.
“Not the whole trail, but the beginning part. The first few hours are easy; the path is well trodden and clearly marked. But then it disappears completely; no signs, no markers, nothing at all. It’s called the Eagle Trail because they say you need the eyes of an eagle to follow it.”
“Yes, and because there are always eagles up above it,” Gaston said. “We all know that, but how do you know the trail?”
Didier hesitated before replying. “My father died there.”
Josette froze.
“I went on my bike once,” Didier continued. “I wanted to see for myself where it happened. I walked for hours but when the trail petered out I had to turn back. It’s easy to get lost up there.” He turned to Henri. “I’ll come with you tomorrow night.”
“No, that will only complicate matters,” Gaston said, before Henri could reply. “We’ve made our plan. Henri will have Léon with him; all they have to do is hand over Jean-Pierre and the boy to the mountain team. What could be simpler?”
“I’m just trying to help,” Didier said.
“But you’re not,” Gaston said, his voice growing louder again. “When you get Jean-Pierre back from Rivel you’ll have done your bit, so leave it at that.”
“But I’m worried about Jean-Pierre – and Paul, come to that!”
“Look, just stick to the plan, Didier, and don’t—”
“Enough!” Henri said loudly. “Stop it, both of you!”
There was a tense silence and then Henri spoke again, quietly. “There’s no point in arguing among ourselves, it won’t help anyone. Perhaps it would be useful to have you with us tomorrow, Didier. I’ll think it through and—”
“But it’s complicating the operation,” Gaston said, interrupting. “And if we compli—” He fell silent under Henri’s penetrating stare.
Henri waited for a moment, then picked up where he had left off. “So I’ll think it through, Didier, and let you know tomorrow what I’ve decided.”
Gaston sighed loudly and irritably, making it clear that he disagreed.
“Stay calm, my friend,” Henri said to him kindly. “We’re all a little tense, I know. But we need to stay positive, for Paul especially. Because if Jean-Pierre is in as bad a shape as we fear, then a lot will depend on him.”
Josette turned her head and held Paul’s gaze.
The tension and uncertainty below seemed to seep up through the floorboards to wrap them both in an icy grip.
TWENTY-NINE
The day was passing with agonizing slowness. Henri, Josette, Paul and Didier were attempting to work normally – and failing dismally. The events of the night to come and the threat of the unknown hung heavily in the air.
Josette stayed mainly in the office, starting one small job after another and completing none. Her mind was in turmoil. She was afraid for her father, for Didier and for Paul, collectively and individually. And she was tormented by the knowledge that if the plan went wrong she would be powerless to intervene.
Henri took his time supervising the loading of the truck before joining Josette in the office. A few minutes later he leapt to his feet and hurried back out to make certain he had packed strong wire-cutters and torches in the driver’s cab. He had. He trudged back up the stairs to the office but ran down again a few minutes later to make absolutely sure the truck’s fuel tank was full. It was.
When he was finally settled at his desk he simply sat gazing into space. After a while Josette glanced up from her own desk. Her father looked exhausted. There were dark rings beneath his eyes and his skin had a grey, ghostly pallor. He had obviously hardly slept, though Josette had fared little better.
The next time she looked up at her father, he was smoothing the bristles of his moustache. On any other day Josette would have simply shrugged and smiled, but not today. Today the familiar sight was suddenly infuriating.
“Papa!” she almost yelled.
Henri looked over from his desk. “Yes? What is it?”
“The moustache! Please will you stop doing that!”
“Oh! Sorry! I didn’t realize.”
“It drives me mad, Papa.”
“Really? You should have mentioned it before.”
Josette rolled her eyes, took a deep breath and went back to the accounts ledger she’d been working on for what felt like a lifetime. When she looked up a few minutes later Henri was staring into space, rhythmically smoothing down his moustache once again.
Paul was in the workshop, listlessly moving tools from one bench to another. Unable to suggest anything more useful, Didier had told him to tidy up. However Didier prided himself on keeping a perfectly tidy workshop, so there was little for Paul to do.
Paul also had much on his mind. Firstly there was the news from Antwerp that Jos Theys had been freed. He was finding it difficult to understand. His father had been gunned down, his mother had been arrested and was still in captivity – or worse – but Jos had been allowed to go free.
There could be only one explanation. Jos must have perfected a totally convincing cover story, one good enough to satisfy even his Nazi interrogators. That had to be it. Paul trusted Jos. Jos had started him on his flight to safety. But at the back of Paul’s mind there was also a nagging doubt. Could Jos have betrayed his father? No – he pushed that awful thought away too.
Paul was also thi
nking about Josette.
The previous evening when the meeting in the room below had broken up, he and Josette had scrambled to their feet as quietly as possible. Paul had mumbled a quick, “Goodnight,” and then hurried off to his own room without waiting for a response.
Since then they had not been alone together. This morning, Josette had missed breakfast, and when they walked to the factory with Henri, neither had said a word.
But as Paul lifted a spanner from the bench and then put it down in exactly the same position, he found himself puzzling over his feelings towards her and wondering about her feelings for him.
To complicate things further, there was Didier. Paul knew that Didier was crazy about Josette. Everyone knew it. And Didier had been looking out for Paul since he’d first set foot in the factory. They’d become friends; the last thing Paul wanted to do was to hurt a friend.
Paul sighed, deciding that in reality none of this confusion over Josette and Didier mattered anyway. By the same time tomorrow he would be high in the mountains, somewhere on the Eagle Trail, forced to focus on nothing but his and Jean-Pierre’s long climb to freedom. Once that climb began he was unlikely to see Josette or Didier, or Lavelanet, ever again.
The thought did not make him feel better.
Didier was probably the most conscientious worker in the entire factory, but even he was struggling to stop his thoughts being drawn to the night ahead.
He spent the morning aimlessly tinkering with a machine that had been out of action for months. At lunchtime he checked and rechecked every moving part of his motorbike, adjusted the tyre pressures and made sure the fuel tank was topped up. Then he rode the bike to Henri’s house, leaving it there in readiness for his late-night journey to Rivel.
He walked back to the factory deep in thought, and as he passed through the main doors came face to face with Josette.
They stared at each other.
“Hello,” Didier said.
Josette didn’t answer, but he noticed the tears in her eyes. She rushed up the staircase without a word.
“Josette?” he called.
Gloomily, Didier trudged back to the workshop, nodding a greeting to Paul and sat down at his bench. He picked up a clipboard and glanced idly at the job sheet fixed to it, without taking in any of the words.
“Have you spoken to Josette?” he asked eventually.
“Not since this morning.”
“Was she all right?”
“I … I think so.”
“I saw her when I came in. She seemed upset.”
Paul said nothing and they lapsed into an uneasy silence.
“Probably just worried,” Didier said a couple of minutes later. “About tonight.”
“Yes,” Paul answered unconvincingly, “that’s probably it.”
They fell silent again, both wanting to talk but equally unsure what to talk about.
“I … I…”
“Yes?” Didier said.
“I wanted to ask you about the mountains.”
“What about them?”
Paul knew he couldn’t ask Didier directly about the Eagle Trail. He wasn’t meant to know about it. “No one has told me much,” he said. “I don’t know what to expect; I’d like some idea before we start.”
Didier thought before answering. “Yes, you should know at least something. Well, it won’t be easy, I can tell you that.”
“And can you tell me any more?”
“People have always crossed the Pyrenees,” Didier continued. “Until a year or so ago many were coming from Spain into France to escape the civil war there. Now they go in the opposite direction to escape our war. The camp at Rivel was originally built to house refugees from Spain.” He shook his head sadly. “There are more like it all along the border. Our government didn’t even need to build new ones.”
“And are there many routes across the mountains?”
“A few,” Didier said, “some much more dangerous than others. But the most dangerous to cross are also the safest to use.”
Paul frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Few people even attempt them,” Didier said, “so the chances of being caught by border guards are very slim. Some of them have names. The Wolf Trail, because it’s said that wolves used to hunt there. And the Lion Trail.”
“Lion?” Paul said. “I didn’t know there were lions in the Pyrenees!”
“It’s because there’s a huge rock high up that’s shaped like a lion’s head. And then there’s the Eagle Trail.”
He paused.
“What about the Eagle Trail?” Paul asked.
“It’s probably the most dangerous of all. My father loved the mountains. He knew them well, but he lost his footing and died on the Eagle Trail.” Didier looked at Paul. “We both lost our fathers too soon. Something else we have in common, eh?”
“Something else?” Paul said. “You’ve confused me again.”
Didier smiled. “Well, we’re both mad about Josette, aren’t we?”
Paul stared. Until that moment he’d had no idea that his feelings for Josette were apparent to anyone else. He wasn’t even sure how he felt about her himself. He was struggling to answer when there was a knock at the door and the ever-smiling Marcel Castelnaud came in and asked Didier if he would take a look at a machine that had mysteriously stopped working.
Didier picked up his tool bag. “I’ll catch you up,” he said to Marcel, and the factory foreman sauntered away.
Didier crossed to the doorway, checked that no one was nearby and turned back to Paul. “I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit miserable today.”
“You haven’t,” Paul said. “At least, no more miserable than me.”
“We’re all a bit tense, I guess.”
“It’s the waiting.”
Didier nodded. “Well, it won’t be long now.”
He disappeared, leaving Paul deep in thought. Paul glanced at the neat line of tools he had rearranged on the bench earlier in the day. He sighed, and because he had nothing else to do, began shifting them round again, back to their original position.
A few minutes later, a piercing scream cut through the constant thundering of the machines. Paul sprang to his feet. There was another scream and then another, and then an emergency siren began to wail. Paul hurtled to the doorway just as Yvette Bigou ran past, rushing towards the stairs to the office, her face white and streaked with tears.
“Yvette!” Paul shouted. “Yvette, what’s happened?”
Yvette came to a standstill, her eyes wide with horror. “It’s Didier! He fell into the machine. There’s blood – everywhere. I think … I think he’s dead!”
THIRTY
Gaston Rouzard sat back on the less-than-comfortable, sparely padded bench and glanced through the carriage window at the countryside he loved.
The single-track Moulin-Neuf rail link ran from Lavelanet to Mirepoix and was the simplest way to reach the small town of Chalabre, particularly for someone like Gaston, who had never learned to drive a car.
The Moulin-Neuf was a special rail line, Gaston believed, as not only did it link the industrial Hers valley, named after the river that meandered through it, with the national rail network, it also brought within easy reach the cluster of villages he had known throughout his life. There were small stations at Laroque-d’Olmes, La Bastide-sur-l’Hers, Le Peyrat and Sainte-Colombe-sur-l’Hers, before the train reached the bigger station at Chalabre.
The day was overcast, with low clouds moving briskly in a sharp breeze, but for Gaston, the short journey was always delightful and restful, and one he had made many times.
He had never wanted to travel far; Lavelanet and the Hers valley was his stomping ground. Even during the First World War, when other young men of the area were fighting at the front, Gaston’s job as a gendarme officer meant he could remain behind to keep order on the home front.
And order was what he liked. Order in everything.
As the train moved sedately through the countr
yside, Gaston smiled at each familiar landmark; the unusual church tower at Le Peyrat, with its row of three bells hanging near the top and a fourth bell suspended alone just below, was a particular favourite.
Leaving the village, the train entered the long, straight section of track leading to the station at Sainte-Colombe-sur-l’Hers. Gaston stared out at the high, tree-blanketed hills to his right. His favourite time of the year was fast approaching – the hunting season. Soon he would be out in those hills, prowling the woods with his trusty shotgun broken over one arm, accompanied by his shooting friends and a pack of baying hounds. Wild fowl and deer were fun – good sport and excellent practice. But his favourite prey – the only prey that really mattered – was the wild boar, the sanglier.
Gaston loved tracking, stalking, pursuing and finally running down the mighty sanglier. He loved the thrill of the chase, but most of all he loved the moment of execution, staring down the barrel of his shotgun and pulling the trigger as the brave animal charged to its death.
The sanglier was a noble beast, cautious but courageous, a tranquil, even gentle animal when left to get on with its life in peace. But it was also a ferocious opponent, prepared to fight to the death when threatened or cornered. A lot like Gaston himself.
Gaston had chosen “Sanglier” as his code-name. He hadn’t used the name yet, or even told anyone about it. But when he was ready, when he took over, he would send out his own coded radio messages, carefully broadcasting misinformation to all those who sought to change things and destroy the tranquillity of his life. They were the real traitors of France, and they would be dealt with, Henri first and foremost.
The fact that Henri did not hunt, did not shoot for pleasure, was just one of the reasons why Gaston despised his so-called friend.
They had been at school together, but it was only fairly recently, when Henri announced that he would lead the local Resistance movement, that Gaston came to realize that he had probably always hated Henri.