Clash by Night (11 page)

Then she headed for the front door and the trip back to Fains.

* * *

That night Laura went to the barn early, carrying a meal for Harris in a covered bucket. If she ran into a patrol she was going to say the food was for Pierre’s sick wife, but she crossed the field between the two houses without seeing anyone.

It was a moonlit evening, very warm, filled with the fragrance of wildflowers and the ginger Langtot grew in his kitchen garden. The main door was barred, but she unlocked the keeping closet next to the henhouse with a key Pierre had given her and slipped inside the barn.

She halted when she confronted Harris, stripped to his marine issue skivvies, chinning himself on an overhead beam.

He dropped to the floor when he saw her.

“Sorry,” he said, picking up his undershirt and toweling his streaming torso with it. “I wasn’t expecting company just yet.”

“That’s all right, Cap...Dan. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a man in his underwear,” Laura replied, setting down her burden.

“I’m relieved to hear it,” Harris said, smiling. He picked up a pail of water standing in the corner of the barn and doused himself with it, pushing back his wet hair. “I was going stir crazy sitting in here all day, thought a little exercise might help.”
 

Laura avoided his gaze as he pulled his pants on over his damp shorts, but she had seen enough to determine that he was what her grandmother would have called “well set up”: slender yet nicely muscular, with a broad chest and attractively developed biceps. She looked up as he pulled his Tshirt over his head, and she couldn’t help smiling.
 

“What’s so funny?” he inquired, noticing her expression.

“You expecting a flood?” she said, pointing to his pants, which ended about two inches above his ankles.

“What’s the matter, Boston, you think I’m too old for knickers?” he asked teasingly.

“I take it Pierre supplied those.”

“Yeah, he said they belonged to his nephew. He gave me another pair too, from his cousin, and they’re just as bad.” Harris sighed. “He must have a short family.”

Her lips twisted. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you some pants that fit better,” she said.

He grinned. “I’d appreciate it.”

“I brought you something to eat,” Laura said, unfolding the cloth she’d packed and setting out his dinner: endive salad, roast chicken and potatoes, croissant with damson preserves from Bar-le-Duc, and a pot of tea with Langtot’s fresh cream.

His eyes widened when he saw the fare. “Hey, this is great. Did you make all this stuff?”
 

“Just the chicken and salad. I bought the jam and the rolls.”

He sat on the floor and dug in with obvious enjoyment. “It’s really swell of you to do this. I’m sure Mrs. Langtot is a nice lady but she keeps sending over this gray meat, like in an herb sauce, and some kind of wet cheese, other stuff I don’t even recognize. I figure it’s better not to ask.”
 

“Lamb vinaigrette,” Laura said, suppressing a smile. “That’s the gray meat.”
 

He looked up, his mouth full. “Oh, yeah? Sounds questionable. I’ll stick with chicken any day.”

“She thought she was giving you a treat, Dan. Meat is hard to come by even for a farmer.”
 

His face fell. “Oh. Well, I’ll tell her husband to thank her. I don’t want to offend anybody.” He paused in the act of stripping a drumstick as the further implications of what she had just said hit home. “Are you sure you can afford a feed like this?” he asked. “I don’t want you to blow all your cash on me.”
 

“I had Brigitte’s ration card. She’s been taking her meals at the nurses’ residence.”

“Brigitte?”

“Alain’s sister. She’s a student nurse in Bar-le-Duc.”

“Oh.” He gestured to the goodies as she watched him eat. “Do you want anything?”

Laura shook her head. “No thanks, I already had dinner.”

He spread jelly on a crescent shaped roll and took a large bite. His hair was drying in finger width strands, darkened with moisture. This, combined with the odd fit of his borrowed duds, made him look like a kid who had climbed out of a swimming hole and into his brother’s clothes. Laura sat on a corner of the cloth and folded her hands in her lap, waiting for him to finish.

Harris examined her as he polished off the last of the flaky croissant and washed it down with a drink. She was wearing a brown skirt with two large forked pleats in the front and a white puffed sleeve blouse. Her hair was parted in the middle and rolled back on either side to her ears, where it was held in place by a pair of ivory combs. He wondered how she managed to look so nice on what had to be very little money, and then decided she must make her own outfits. She seemed like the type who could do everything efficiently.

He leaned back on his elbows and lit a cigarette, a Gauloise Curel had given him. He hadn’t been able to bring any American ones with him, in case he was stopped. Already he dreamed of pungent Lucky Strikes, and harsh, aromatic Camels. Smoking one of the French cigarettes was like puffing on a wad of donkey dung but it was better than nothing.

“Thanks a lot,” Harris said, exhaling a stream of smoke. “I’m a new man.”

Laura gathered up the remains of his repast and put them away. He watched her in silence until she said suddenly, “You volunteered for this mission, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” He took another deep drag, hollowing his cheeks.

“Why?”

He started to give a flip answer but looked into her wide green eyes and couldn’t do it. He thought for a moment and then said, “I love a good fight, and this is the best fight anybody’s ever been in. The things we’re struggling for, and more important, what we’re struggling against, will be remembered long after we’re both dust.” He lifted one shoulder expressively. “I just couldn’t sit it out any longer.”

“But what you’re doing is so dangerous,” she said softly, her gaze fixed on his face, her brow furrowed with concern. “Aren’t you afraid?”

Harris stared back at her, his blue eyes frank, the cigarette burning down between his fingers.

“Yes, I am,” he answered quietly. “Aren’t you?”

Behind them, Langtot opened the door. Harris and Laura looked away from one another uncomfortably, as if caught in a stolen embrace.

In a few minutes the other members of the group had joined them. Laura saw Alain take in the vestiges of Harris’ meal, and his eyes flashed to her face. She returned his gaze steadily and he flushed, turning his back on her.

“Ask them if they’ve noticed any roadblocks, if the Germans have been checking identity papers at random, things like that,” Harris began, speaking to Laura. He dropped his cigarette to the floor and stubbed it out.

The response was negative and Harris seemed satisfied. Apparently the Germans didn’t know he had arrived and weren’t looking for him.

“I’ll keep watch,” Langtot said, and moved to the door.
 

“What’s happening at the factory?” Harris asked, looking at Alain and the Thibeau boys. “Are they upgrading all the furnaces?”

The young men described the changes taking place to convert the glass plant into a munitions factory.

“Any timetable?” Harris asked. “When will it be ready to go?”

“One month,” Patric Thibeau replied.

“Five weeks at the most,” Michel chimed in.

Harris looked from one brother to the other. “Pat and Mike,” he said in an English aside to Laura. “Sounds like a vaudeville routine.”

She smiled at him and Alain interjected shortly, “That tells us how fast we have to move.”

Laura said nothing. Simple statements in either language all of them could all understand, and already they were beginning to communicate without her in an expressive hybrid tongue, aided amply by gestures. She stepped in when more complicated concepts required explaining and when precise understanding was necessary.
 

“Okay,” Harris said, retrieving the plant blueprints from a corner and spreading them out on the floor. He knelt and indicated points on the drawing, talking as Laura translated for him.

“If we place the charge in the office here,” he said, tapping his pencil along a margin, “next to the main power generator, we can run the line right out this door.” He placed the eraser against a square marked
Sortie
, for Exit, and leaned closer. “Then we put the detonator on the rise in back on the plant,” he stabbed his other index finger at the small hill shown by a crescent on the map. “When the blast goes off, we scatter and run for these trees.” He waved the hand holding the pencil at the woods indicated by stick figures on the plans. “I’ll have to get out there and check it personally, to make sure this map is accurate and nothing much has changed, but that about covers it. With enough juice the factory should go up like a Roman candle on Independence Day.” He sat back on his haunches and looked up at his French audience. “Excuse me, Bastille Day. How does that sound?”
 

Laura smiled as she finished translating. The Vipére members glanced at one another and nodded, murmuring approval. Only Alain looked on in stony silence.

Harris rubbed the back of his neck. “Now we’ll be doing this at night, one or two in the morning when they run only a skeleton crew, but the French workers can be alerted to get out in time. According to what you told me before, the Germans post guards at each door and around the perimeter of the building. We’ll have to plan how to divide them up and who should take each one, but we have to see the exact deployment first. We’ll check that next week.”
 

He exhaled sharply and put his hands on his thighs. “So. What have we got in the way of fireworks?”
 

Laura asked Curel and received an answer.

“Nitroglycerin,” she told Harris. “They use it in the mine.”

Harris shook his head. “Nitro’s no good. Too unstable. What else?

They all looked at him, unable to frame an alternative.

“Plastic high explosive?” Harris said. “PHE?”

Laura translated and it was obvious they didn’t know what it was.

Harris exhaled slowly. That had been too much to hope for; it was being used by the newly formed British SOE, Special Operations Executive, in training its agents to work underground in occupied countries. He cursed again his situation, which had precluded bringing along the high technology materials which would make this job easier and safer.
 

“No dynamite?” he said.

Laura repeated the word, giving it the French pronunciation, but they had received the message.

“The Germans have plenty of it,” Curel said, after a protracted pause.

“Then I guess we steal it,” Harris said.

“They’ve been moving some of it out on hay wagons the last few weeks,” Michel Thibeau said. “My uncle works in a camp and he was brought here to load it. He says the consignment from Hamburg’s been held up and they’ve been taking part of it back across the border.”

“Wagons? Surely the master race can’t be having trouble with its trucks,” Harris said.

“They’re using all of them to loot art treasures from the Louvre and carry them to Berlin,” Curel snarled.
 

“I get dynamite for you,” Alain said abruptly, in English. He was torn between his growing reluctance to aid Harris, for whom he was forming an intense dislike, and his desire to complete the mission. The latter won.

Laura shot the boy a look. “Alain...” she said warningly.

“I know where the boche keep it,” he said to her.
 

“Been sneaking around the camp again?” she asked.

“Is it easy to identify?” Harris demanded, ignoring her.

Alain spit in the dirt. “Those methodical bastards label everything, including the contents of the garbage cans.”
 

“What can you get?” Harris said to Alain. “Sticks? Blocks? What? And how much?”

“You tell me, I get it,” Alain replied coolly.

“We’ll both get it,” Harris said firmly.
 

“No,” Alain said curtly. “Patric and Michel go with me.”

Harris looked at Laura, who shook her head very slightly.
 

Curel said to Harris, in French, “Let the boy do it. We can’t afford to risk your being taken. If they nab Alain it will just look like the usual harassment from the locals and we can continue with the plan another way, but if they catch you they’ll find out that something’s up. You have to stay in hiding until it’s over.”
 

Laura didn’t like the sound of this exchange. She thought she’d just heard Curel say that Alain was expendable, and she had an idea that the boy was playing for attention, trying to match Harris in style and competence. Alain had neither the years nor the training to accomplish such a feat. But they needed the explosives and there didn’t seem to be another way to get them.

“All right,” Harris said reluctantly.

Alain grinned triumphantly, happy with Curel’s support and the challenge to the marine’s leadership, which hadn’t been questioned up to that point. It wasn’t exactly a defeat for Harris, since they were admittedly on the same team, but it felt like a victory to Alain.