by Lou Cadle
“I’ll go with you and shine the light.”
There was little danger, so she agreed. “Thank you.”
They walked to the bridge and both climbed down. She placed two charges at critical points in the bridge’s structure and shaped them to direct the blast. It should blow out the key supports, and the bridge would fall on this side. The other end across the river might stay attached, but this half of it would, at the least, fall away. At most, it would create a blast upward and then collapse, fast and hard, into the river.
She hoped she was estimating the power of the blast right. Too much, and she’d kill Will. Too little, and the car might just make it over the bridge before the first half fell.
“What would be best, I think,” she said, as he studied her work, “is if you walk back down the road quite a distance and signal me when the car comes. I’ll wait here and run down to trip the detonator.”
“You’ll use a short one then.”
“Five minutes, the shortest. So time your signal for that.”
“That’s not much time for you to get out of the way.”
“It’s enough. I’ll run like the devil.”
“What if you slip?”
“I’ll dive into the river and swim like hell,” she said. “Swim down, mostly.”
“The road may fall on you.”
“I will move far enough away,” she said.
“Maybe you were right, and we should blow it up now. Or at nine exactly, and assume they’ll be here soon after that.”
“If someone else comes along, they’ll see the damage, and stop. Or drive into the damage and wreck themselves. And if that happens, the German car will have warning and turn around.”
“We might get them when they do that.”
“We might not, and if there are two German cars here, we could not. Don’t worry about me, Claude. I can do this, if you can give me enough warning.” Her calf still ached, but she’d been managing to walk on it without a limp, so she knew she hadn’t damaged it badly. She’d rather she hadn’t hurt herself at all, for grappling with a German driver who outweighed her by fifty pounds would be hard enough were she uninjured and at top form.
“I worry about all my people. Even Bernard, or I wouldn’t be trying this with a team of two.”
“If we are caught tonight, only three will be lost. Take some comfort in that. Though you would be the worst loss by far. I can be replaced. You cannot. If you can save yourself by leaving us both, do.”
“I feel bad about this.”
“Superstition,” she said, keeping her tone light.
“I would rather have had more time to plan.”
“But this is what we had. And, for my part, I wish I could have found out something useful by waiting at the café.”
Something crashed through the brush nearby and she jumped, her heart hammering.
“Just an animal. Marmot, as likely as not,” Claude said.
She realized her knife hilt was in her hand. She did not remember pulling it out. She gently pushed it back so it was secure. “Nazi marmot,” she said, laughing from nervousness.
“No, it’s a Résistance animal, like all good Frenchmen.”
“What time is it now?”
He checked a pocket watch. “Over an hour to go.”
“Damn. Okay then.” She said, “I’m going to climb up in the wagon and lie down.”
“Don’t fall asleep.”
“I’m not in the least sleepy,” she reassured him. “I don’t want my profile to be seen above the wagon.”
“It’s too dark to see us from the road.”
“Just in case,” she said, worried about the moonlight. “No one coming now?”
“No one,” he said.
She crawled into the wagon and lay still. Claude stood on the far side of the wagon, away from the road. “Do you have any more operations planned?” she said.
“I was thinking we might destroy the train tracks altogether. Isolate the city for a time. But then I don’t know when or from where the Allied Army might come and if they will want the tracks intact. If they ever do come.”
“They’ll come,” she said.
“When?”
“I wish I knew. But it is all kept rather secret, you know.”
“Do you think they will tell us before it happens?”
“I think they will. Not the details. But there will come a time that they ask us to increase our activity. Perhaps give certain circuits individual tasks.”
“Like what?”
“Large train bridges taken out. Plants that manufacture something for the war effort sabotaged or burned to the ground. Taking out German machine gun emplacements along the coast.”
“So it will come from the coast.”
“I don’t know, but I would imagine. It will take hundreds of thousands of men to liberate Europe. Once the airfields are secured, if they haven’t been destroyed by our side or the Nazis in retreat, then they can fly in more troops. But at first, yes, it will have to come across the Channel.”
“Surely there are no planes that large to carry troops.”
“The Americans have some large ones for that, I believe, though not enough. But yes, the majority of fighting men should come on large ships. Once we have France, we can dock the ships and offload fighting men easily.”
“You know more than you let on.”
“No, I really don’t. I’m making educated guesses, not sharing secrets. At first, the Nazis will hold everything—ports, the high ground along the coast, the airports. Every inch will have to be battled for against terrible odds. All I have seen that you have not is the Americans in uniform, more and more of them in England every month.”
“So they will save us?”
“Everyone working together will. English, French, Norwegian, Australian, American, Canadian.” She had been able to forget about Will for a moment, push her worry about him to the side, but that last word brought her mind back to him. She made herself push the thought away, for it did not help to keep her calmer, to think about the consequences of failing tonight. “Also, the Russians are fighting on another front. They seem to be making progress.”
“We’ve heard rumors, mostly because of BBC broadcasts.”
“They’ve taken back the Ukraine. And they’re moving west from Leningrad. They may have Latvia by now.”
“The Communists in the Résistance will be happy to hear it.”
So he was not one. She’d never thought to ask. It didn’t matter to her what his politics were, beyond hating Nazis. “The German troops on the ground must fear the threat of being transferred east to that front. But staying here won’t save them for long. Soon, it will be as deadly to be in France as to be in the Ukraine.” She rolled over and stretched. Her calf gave a little twinge when she did. “Time?”
“We’ve only been talking a few minutes. I don’t have to check. There is still an hour before they come.”
“What shall we talk about? I can’t talk about my background, and you can’t tell me much about the circuit or its members.”
“I trust you. I would tell you whatever you asked.”
“I could be captured. Everything should be told on a need-to-know basis. I would like to know you, but I do not need to know more than I do. That’s an important distinction.”
“You’re a better agent than the last one.”
“The radio operator?”
“Yes. She was too trusting. She talked too much. She kept her signals.”
Her signals? The paper copies of them? That went against every protocol. And against common sense. “Oh, God. Did she reveal anything important to anyone?”
“It seems not, for here I am still, free.”
“Her signals. I cannot believe she kept copies of them. She didn’t burn them?”
He knew what she wanted to hear. “I burned them after she was shot.”
“Thank you,” Antonia said, with relief. “I’m sorry she wasn’t up to the job.” And she
wondered what had been in the girl’s mind. It was madness to keep your signals written out.
“I find myself wanting to tell you something, but I don’t know if I should.”
“If it’s secret, keep it so.”
“Not that sort of secret. My own. A burden I carry. Something I have not told a soul.”
She didn’t know exactly what to say to that. She didn’t feel right either encouraging or discouraging him. “I am your friend.” There. That was the truth. He could do with it what he would.
He took an audible breath. “The Germans didn’t shoot her. I did.”
Antonia froze. Her first thought wasn’t even a thought—just a stab of fear. What if Claude is a double agent? And I’ve trusted him. And now he shoots me? But that passed quickly. In her heart, she knew it was not so. “And so you lied about her being shot running from the Germans.”
“She was running from the Germans. She was caught. She would have been captured in seconds, and tortured that day. That girl, she would have broken. Probably within hours. I was in the crowd. I had my pistol. For a moment, I had a clear shot. So I killed her.”
Antonia tried to imagine the moment. Seeing the Germans closing in on the fleeing girl, knowing what it would cost the circuit were she caught. Having a clear line between himself and the girl. “You did the right thing.”
“I did a very wrong thing.”
“But for the right reasons,” she said firmly. “You’ve been letting this gnaw at you?”
“Yes,” he said.
She rolled over and reached out of the wagon’s bed for him. Unable to see him well, it took her a second to find his shoulder. She tightened her hand on it briefly. “You did the right thing. How many would have died had she talked? If the answer is only one, then the trade was even. But if the answer was a dozen, then you saved eleven lives with that bullet. Including your own.”
“I know. I’ve said it to myself in almost those words. But….” He trailed off. “I still think of it. I believe I always will. She was just a girl.”
She said, “I’m glad you weren’t caught. Did you run?”
“No. I faded back into the crowd. I don’t know that anyone saw me do it. People were watching the drama with the girl’s capture, not me. If they did see me, they never spoke of it. Not to the Germans. Nor to me.”
Antonia probably wouldn’t have either. She’d seen the faces, like those in the crowd when the Jewish woman and her baby were killed. Most had been studiously blank until the very end. Great numbers of people were neither collaborators nor Résistance. They didn’t want to have to choose. They just wanted it all to go away.
But without someone courageous enough to fight evil, it would not simply go away. Good had to stand against Evil, or Evil won. “Do you imagine,” she said to Claude, “that after the war, people will claim they were Résistance who were not? Boast of being part of some raid or another?”
“In a city this size, that would be hard to do. In large cities, probably yes. If enough of us here survive, we can counter false claims.”
“Another reason to stay alive, Claude. You can fight another day. And you can bear witness after the war. Not let collaborators forget what they were.”
“It’s not my place to judge. I will leave that to the judges and politicians. And to God, if he still cares about France.”
“You should go into politics yourself once this is all over.”
He snorted his derision. “I’d rather clean sewers with a handkerchief.”
She had at least distracted him from his worry and guilt about killing the radio operator. Should she have? She was no priest, and she didn’t know how to hear a confession. Nor did she have the power to absolve a sin. Yet she didn’t believe what Claude had done to be a sin. Killing should be one, should it not? Killing an ally should be worse. But there was a greater good to be served. Claude had done so.
“I’m going for a piss,” he said. “And then I’ll take up my position, in case they are early. This is the signal.” He whistled a complicated call.
“What is that? A bird?”
“Yes, a sittelle,” he said. “Not a night bird, but what are the chances a German guard would know that?” He left, his footsteps crunching on damp leaves from the last autumn.
She waited five minutes, and then he was back. “I will take up my post now,” he said. He walked away, down the road. She checked to make sure she still had the short-time detonators in her pocket, and lay on her back in the cart. The moonlight was stronger, as the moon cleared the thickest part of the trees.
For a moment, she tried to think about his shooting the SOE agent, tried to see if, now that she was alone, her opinion of him had changed.
It hadn’t. It was a shame that it had happened that way, but the girl should have known better. And to keep her radio signals? What horrible security that was. Had she been dim? Simply naïve? Or something worse?
No matter. She was gone, and nothing Antonia could do would bring her back. Her next radio transmission, she could, of course, tell them the girl’s exact fate. But she wouldn’t. There was no purpose in doing so. Claude was a strong leader, and she did not want to mar his reputation with England. She’d take his secret to her grave. She hoped his confession and her response had relieved him of a bit of the burden he carried.
She sent her mind to rehearsing the placement of the detonators. They were easy to use. With a tiny attached spring, you broke an ampoule that held acid, and it ate through a thin wire. A striker was released, flew down the tube, and hit the percussion cap with its explosive. She had taken the shortest timed ones of those Claude had.
Five minutes. It didn’t leave her much time to crawl out of the stream bed, but it was enough.
After she had mentally rehearsed what she needed to do, she rolled out of the cart and made her way to the stream. She needed to be very close to the plastique when she heard Claude’s signal. Five minutes’ delay might in fact be too long.
Had he brought Genevieve, they could have set up two sentries, and the message could have been passed along that the car was coming. That would have been better. Still, and considering the risk of this operation, she was glad the girl was nowhere near here.
She splashed through the edge of the stream and shone the torch on the plastique she’d placed. Now, while she could do so with steady hands, she placed the pencil detonators into it, two per. The correct procedure was to use two different batches, in case one batch had all gone bad for whatever reason. But she hadn’t been given that choice. And these detonators were new, so she would trust them more than old ones. As long as it was a good batch, they would work. Still, two should be used rather than one.
Will’s life depended on them working.
Again her thoughts drifted to him, and how he was managing. How serious had the gunshot wound been? Had he been hurt in the interrogation? Had he given up any information about the circuit? Could he walk? See? She recalled the story about the shocks between the eyes to the captured members of Monk circuit. He might not recognize her, or where he was, or be able to take orders had something like that been done to him.
She imagined an outcome where she could not rescue him, but where she had a clear shot at him. Could she find the courage in that moment to do what Claude had done and shoot him to protect the circuit?
She thought not. Will had broken through the ice around her heart, and to kill him—no. Not even to save him from pain. She was weaker than Claude. She was weaker than the Antonia who had parachuted from the plane over two weeks ago.
Something else had been woken in her beyond lust or love or whatever it was she had begun to feel for Will, something that felt far more dangerous. Hope had awoken, that fluttering thing in the chest, so easily crushed. She wouldn’t kill him if there were any chance of his surviving the war. Who was to say what chances might come to him, what turns of the war, that might let him escape, or survive, or even thrive after it was all done?
The locket with the
L-pill felt very heavy around her neck. It had been a comfort to her before. Now it felt a burden.
A car went over the bridge, headed the wrong way, toward town, shaking the road over her head.
She flicked on the torch again to check the explosive charges. Everything was still in place. Nothing had shifted from the passage of the vehicle.
Minutes passed, slowly. She grew restless.
And then Claude whistled.
Chapter 26
Antonia leapt across the distance to the first detonators so fast, it seemed she had flown. She punched the two springs and was on the move again, to the other patch of plastique. She hit the first detonator, then the second…and the second felt wrong, as if it hadn’t flattened enough. She used her thumbnail and gave it a final hard push, and then she was running, out from under the bridge, hard up the side of the embankment, forcing her knees up, feeling the strain in her injured calf muscle, fighting her way up to the level of the road.
She should have been counting the seconds. How long had it been since she’d broken the detonator, setting off the chemical reaction that would make it fire? Two minutes? She craned her neck to look back at the road, but her legs kept moving.
The car was coming, too fast. She could hear it, see the moonlight glinting off a bit of metal, and then she saw the headlights, shuttered at the top, the only light from them aimed at the road.
Definitely it was too close. She didn’t know the time, but she was certain the bridge wouldn’t blow until after the car was past it. She stopped, trying to come up with a plan.
And then two dull pops sounded. The car swerved. It slowed. And she heard the flop of a flat tire.
Had it been a single pop, she would have assumed they’d had a convenient blowout.
But two pops meant Claude had shot at them. Damn, but he was a good shot. Nighttime, a moving target, and he’d gotten a tire.
The car was rolling to a stop. Closer to the bridge. Closer. Slowing. Come on, park on the bridge.
It stopped with its front tires just barely on the bridge.
Time’s up. The thought came to her, as if not her own. She threw herself to the ground where she was and crossed her arms over her head.