by Lou Cadle
A few minutes later, they halted once more, this time for long minutes. Someone—Edgard, probably, with his work-clothes disguise—moved ahead alone, crouching. He crept over the rise of the tracks and was lost to her view.
After several minutes, her foot began to cramp and she shifted position. Someone hissed at her to be quiet. It was hard to stay still.
Then a man appeared silhouetted on the tracks, and her heart skipped a beat. But then it waved them on, and she knew it was Edgard. He spun his arm as they clambered for the tracks, hurrying them forward. She scrambled up a scree of gravel, slipping once, but making it to the top without falling.
The whole of the depot was visible from here. A long Quonset hut—or whatever the Germans called their version of that—dominated the area. Equipment was scattered all over: loading ramps on wheels; platforms that looked newly built; an old farm tractor, probably seized from a local person; a pair of square diesel trucks with attached cranes. A few dozen flat cars on sidings awaited their load. Though the kanones were not yet here. They must be coming over the roads still.
She wondered what battles those big guns had been in, how many Allies they had killed, how many widows they had left in England or Australia or the States, and how many women had been grieving for a husband or brother or son.
The fear fell from her with that thought. She had no reason to feel afraid. She was blessed, lucky to not be in her empty home anymore, wringing her hands, weeping and feeling sickened by what she could not change. She was changing things in her own small way. Remembering this, the steel of resolve flowed into her bones.
Only two Germans were visible from here, guards, standing in a brightly lit area, and their backs were turned as they seemed to be speaking to each other.
She hurried after the others, over the top of the tracks and down to the other side, wanting to be hidden from them before either glanced her way. They might not be able to see through the glare of lights to this dimmer area, but she did not want to count on that.
All of them made it across without incident. They proceeded on hands and knees from there, nearing the loading area. They seemed to be heading for a parked line of freight cars, painted black, with no markings she could see. Another hiss stopped her. Claude’s voice, she thought.
They had shifted out of order, Genevieve having advanced ahead of where Claude wanted her. When they were in line again, they resumed their journey toward the light. Toward danger. But toward action as well.
It was all she could do not to raise her head to check where the guards were, but that was not her job. She focused on Leonce just ahead of her, his hips shifting as he crawled, and mimicked whatever he did. He’d lived through nearly four years of German occupation without being caught, so he must know what he was doing.
They halted twice more, lying low and waiting to go on until the person ahead of them moved. At the front of the line, Edgard was giving the go-ahead sign. Each time they moved, the wheels of the freight cars ahead drew nearer.
When she finally reached the cover of those train cars, she felt half her tension drain away. It had felt too exposed out there, crawling along, expecting at any time to see an armed guard peering down at her. Touching the dagger in her sleeve reassured her. If she needed to, she would use it tonight.
The five of them were crowded together now, waiting while Edgard took his equipment out. He did not want these closed freight cars they hid behind but the flat cars on the siding just across from them. He peered between the two freight cars and gave a signal that all was okay. Claude whispered something to Leonce, who crawled back to Antonia and said, “We will spread out with three cars between each of us.”
She nodded her understanding and went back to whisper the message to Genevieve.
They crept after Edgard, lengthening the spaces between until she could hear no other sound than her own knees crunching in the gravel. The smell of oil and diesel fuel, of cinder and railroad ties filled her head.
Edgard sprinted across the tracks to the flat cars that he was to sabotage.
The sound of an approaching truck froze her in place. She heard the engine shut off near the front of the loading area, and she lay still in the shadow.
Then a man’s voice shouted. It took her a moment to realize he was speaking not German but French and her mind shifted over to that language. “Where do you want this?” she heard. One of the Germans called out a name, a door slammed, and then there were more voices and distant footsteps crunching in cinders. A German, a supervisor perhaps, must have emerged from the temporary building and was talking to the Frenchman, too low now for her to hear more than a word or two that told her nothing. One was “tonight.”
She hoped the rest of her team was well hidden. She lay still, straining to hear any more, but she couldn’t, and then the truck started up again and the depot grew noisy with the sound of shifting gears and then something heavy and metallic pushing more metal.
She was curious, but not so curious she would risk being spotted to see what they were doing. She craned her head back and forth to make sure no one was coming their way. That was her only job tonight, to warn Edgard of someone approaching.
For now, the Germans did not come nearer to him or to her hiding place. She waited, wondering how much Edgard had done with his grease sabotage, wondering how much more he had to do, and if whatever the Frenchman was doing over there with a truck might not last for hours.
She glanced down at herself and saw that the ash on her hands had rubbed off in one spot. The little container Claude had given her was still in her pocket. She took it out and rubbed the spot and, just in case, she dabbed more on her nose, forehead, and around her lips, where perspiration or a nervous touch might have washed it away.
And then she settled down to watch and wait.
It might have been forty-five minutes—it felt like half of forever—before the truck engine turned off. “It is done,” called the Frenchman. “Do you have a cigarette for me, my friend?”
It grated, hearing any Frenchman call a German a friend. This was not someone forced into labor by the invaders—it was a collaborator. He had come here of his own free will, done work for them, and wanted to end the night by sharing a smoke with them. Idiot.
Aware again of her knife pressing into her arm, she longed to take care of him. And of the guards. She could imagine the resistance of taut skin at the tip of the knife, and then the quick give, and the spill of blood over her hand.
When she had begun having those fantasies during weapons training, she had been horrified and pushed them from her mind. Eventually, she had grown used to them and, finally, she had welcomed them. They were dreams of gaining power, of being able to do something to stop the evil that was spreading over the world.
But tonight, murder was not her job. And she was no longer powerless, a woman sitting in a parlor in England with a flimsy scrap of paper in her hand that had once told her of her missing husband, the words eventually worn away by her fingers tracing their message. She was no longer the woman knocking at doors uninvited, asking friends of his for help, until she won an audience with an undersecretary who gently explained to her the chances of him still being alive, eight weeks after that message arrived, was infinitesimally small.
She snapped out of the brief memory. She had a job to do that, while it wasn’t stabbing those bastards over there, was something. It was allowing Edgard to finish the job of sabotaging the kanone cars. Though her hands itched to act, though her mind wanted to know if the satisfaction of killing a Nazi would be as deep as her dreams had it, tonight was not the night to learn that.
The voices grew louder. They were walking, for what purpose she could not know, but coming closer. She gave the signal she was supposed to, though Edgard had likely hidden himself some time ago. Immediately Leonce passed it on up the line.
A minute later, the scent of tobacco hit her nose. They must be very close indeed. The gritty sound of boots on gravel confirmed that. They were tal
king German for a few sentences, but then they switched to French again.
“As soon as this is done and the train on its way, we need to tidy up.” A thick German accent. “You’ll be called on.”
“Why is that?” The Frenchman.
“A special guest is arriving.”
“Who?”
A tsking sound. “None of your business. But there will be, I can tell you, much care taken about….” And then the man turned away and his voice faded.
Chapter 9
Antonia strained to hear more, but they were moving away, first the voices and then even the gritty footsteps fading. She waited, the minutes stretching out, wondering who a special guest might be. If a general was arriving, Claude’s circuit might make him a target. If they knew when and where he was arriving, explosives could kill him and his aides. Catching a few collaborating Vichy officials in the blast would be icing on the cake.
But who was to say it might be a general? It could be anyone. Maybe “special guest” was metaphorical, and it was a weapon arriving, a new and rare and terrible weapon.
Still, that would be a potential target of sabotage.
What to do? She wanted to know more about this. As the voices came back her way, grew louder as they walked next to the track, she made the decision. She would follow them as far as she could, back toward the Quonset hut, trying to learn more about this special guest.
They were facing this way, so she could hear them quite well. But the talk was not about the same thing. It was talk of the war. The German seemed to think the war was going better for the Nazis than she knew it to be. They were being beaten badly on the Eastern Front, and Antonia suspected, based on nothing more than the increasing numbers of Americans she had seen, that the invasion from England to take back France was not terribly far away.
Despite their talk having drifted in topic, she still wanted to follow them. Who knew what else they might say one minute from now?
She moved on her belly, as quietly as she could, directly under the car, inching forward.
“What’s that noise?” the Frenchman said.
Antonia froze where she was, with her head barely covered by the end of the freight car.
A German said, “Probably a rat, or ein Igel.”
“What’s that, my friend?” The Frenchman.
“The little rat with the needles and nose like this.”
“Un hérisson.”
A hedgehog. No, Antonia wasn’t a hedgehog.
“Do you shoot them?” the Frenchman asked.
“No. Well, a rat sometimes, when I can see him.”
Please don’t shoot at me.
“So I will see you again soon,” the Frenchman said. They were on the move again, headed back toward the entrance to the place.
“In a few days, after this train has left. We have some days before the guest arrives, but everything needs to be polished, the trash….”
Their voices were fading. Antonia would make less noise if she stood than crawled. So she wriggled out from under the end of the freight car, and moved fast to get behind the next car nearer them, keeping to the shadows.
“I can use more fuel,” the Frenchman said.
“Take that up with the Wachtmeister. I am no one.”
She had come to the end of the second freight car from her original position. She waited until one spoke again and then tiptoed across the space, using the voice as cover for any noise she made.
A hand shot out and grabbed her ankle. She nearly gasped aloud and only stopped herself in time from making the startled sound.
“Ssst,” said a voice.
Relief nearly made her fall. It was Genevieve. Only the girl, clinging still to her ankle. Antonia sunk to her knees.
For long moments they stayed together in silence while the voices faded away. The two men were headed back to the temporary building, or the Frenchman to his truck. When the diesel engine growled to life again, she guessed he was leaving.
“You have an assignment!” Genevieve said.
“I know.” She almost explained but then caught herself. This was something to share only with Claude. There was no reason to radio it in to England. She didn’t know enough. Damn her for not following them the first time they passed and taking that chance to hear more. She knew almost nothing. A visitor. Not immediately, but soon.
“Go back,” Genevieve said, impatiently, as if talking to a disobedient child.
Antonia did, returning to her assigned spot. While she waited to hear the movement of guards again, waited to give the signal to be passed to Edgard, she went back over the little she had heard, trying to remember every word so she could discuss it with Claude.
A half-hour later, the job was done. Edgard has sabotaged the train wheels, and one by one they crawled from their hiding places to follow him in retreat.
As finally they reached the spot where they had first left the road, she pulled on Claude’s jacket, drawing him off a few steps from the others. “I need to talk with you.”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“No. Tonight. I think it shouldn’t wait.”
He did nothing but breathe for a full minute, thinking his own private thoughts. “We can’t use the shop again.”
“Here is fine. I’ll be brief.” They were alone, there were bushes to use as cover, and they were dressed in dark clothes. It was safe enough.
“D’accord,” he said. Then he hurried over to another of the figures stepping onto the road and spoke to him. She waited where she was.
The others moved off into the darkness, headed toward town. Claude returned to her. “What is it?”
“I heard something. Just a few words, but it might be important.”
“What?”
She had remembered nearly word for word, and she reported the conversation. She added, “It could be a person, it could be a weapon. I don’t know.”
“A person, I think.”
“Why do you think this?”
“Something I heard that you did not, it seems. Just one word.”
“What word?”
“I will tell you later,” he said. “When I am certain.”
She felt a wave of frustration. But no, this was like the curiosity at SOE training. She had to control her curiosity and the frustration that came from it being thwarted. “Yes. I understand.”
“No day was mentioned?”
“Just what I said. What do you think, a week from now?”
“Possibly, though perhaps longer once our sabotage pays off. When the rail cars seize with the kanones on them, they will be out of this area a half mile or more. The Germans will have to take time to clear the track. Odds are, whoever they speak of is coming from Paris. The blocked tracks may delay his arrival.”
“They could take him to the next town and then drive him here.” A thought struck her. “Or maybe here is not the final destination, just a stop. So if they cannot get through on rail, they might offload him and take him directly to wherever he is going in the end, and we’ll miss our chance.”
“They’d still pass through here on the roads.”
“We can be ready for that?”
“Give me a day—no, two days—to ask some questions. We have people working in Vichy offices. People we have not used often, and who are kept for moments such as these.”
“Yes,” she said, starting to feel a real spark of excitement.
“When we know who is coming, we will know what to do.”
“Whatever I can do to help, you only need ask.”
“We might need supplies from England, depending on what is planned.”
“They’ll help any way they can. Though the time is short to arrange for anything unusual.”
“Go home now. I’ll contact you when I know more.”
“I need to radio in about tonight. Briefly.”
“You’re on your own for that. Use any of the places you have used before. Or find your own.”
So far, she had not come close to
being caught. One short transmission should be safe. No doubt it would be more of a risk to walk through the dark streets with the radio in hand than to stay where she was in the boulangerie and radio from there. But she did not want to put Madame Charlevoix at risk unless she had no other choice.
And that was the end of the conversation with Claude. They walked back toward town but split up only two blocks from the main road. She made her way back to the bread shop, happy to have been a part of a successful sabotage action and happier still that another one might be in the offing.
She wished she could do more to help prepare for it, but she couldn’t wander through the offices of the Nazis. Her German was terrible, not even fit for being a tourist. That was something she needed to change as well.
Chapter 10
She stayed awake, and just before dawn walked to radio from the bombed-out building that Genevieve had shown her. When she returned to the boulangerie, Madame Charlevoix was already awake and baking.
“Can I help?” she asked the baker.
“You can sit and visit with me after you take your bag upstairs. Keep me company.”
Antonia put the radio away, washed her hands, and returned to the kitchen. “Please tell me if there is anything I can do. I am no baker, but I can weigh flour, lift things into the oven.”
“It is not necessary. I have my ways, my habits.”
“How long have you been baking?”
“Since I was a little girl. My grandfather was the baker before me. We worked together for a long time, and when he died, I took over the business.”
“None of his children were interested?”
“Except for my mother, and the cousin who died here, many of my family went to Paris. One uncle married a Swiss woman. He may still live there, for all I know.”
“It must be hard, not being able to communicate outside France.”
“Everything is hard with the Germans.”
It made a thought from last night rise to the surface. “How much German do you know?”