Clash by Night (38 page)

Spiritless bastards, Brigitte thought disgustedly. They were all so damned
careful
.

“It’s all right,” she said to Harris. “We made it through.”

He poked his head out and grinned at her. The skin around his eyes crinkled and his teeth showed white and strong in his boyish face.
 

No wonder Laura has fallen for him, Brigitte thought. He was graceful under pressure and with his collegiate good looks he really was attractive.

“One down, one to go,” he said.

“Next will be the real test, at the border,” she said. “Try to get some sleep.”

Harris pulled the blanket back over his head, thinking that everybody was always telling him to go to sleep. He had managed it in the hay wagon but anybody who could sleep under these circumstances was a narcoleptic.

He finally did fall into a fitful doze.
 

Brigitte’s voice roused him.

“The border,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Lie very still.”

Kurt had instructed the driver to pace himself to arrive at the border at midnight when the shifts were changing. Brigitte glanced at her watch. They were right on time.

Harris heard the driver downshift and the ambulance slowed to a halt. Voices traveled over his head and he tried to relax as he felt for the gun at his belt. If they found him he would be ready. At least he would take some of them with him.

There were only two sentries on duty, and one of them was leaving. The remaining man went through the same procedure as the previous one had, but paused to talk with Hesse before opening the back of the ambulance.

“Papers, please,” he said.

Kurt furnished them.

“You are escorting this ambulance?”

“Yes. Just to this point.”

The sentry nodded, but something in his manner caused Hesse to get out of the car and go with him. He stood in back of the guard as he opened the doors and looked inside.

Brigitte’s white face stared back at them. She was trying not to look terrified but Hesse could tell that she was trembling inwardly.

“Why couldn’t this man be treated at Bar-le-Duc?” the sentry asked Brigitte, looking at the patient.
 

“Hôpital Miséricorde has better facilities for this type of injury,” she answered, avoiding Kurt’s eyes. Why did they always have to ask such stupid, obvious questions?

The sentry slipped his rifle from his shoulder, removed the bayonet, and poked her patient with the end of it. Brigitte stiffened as the man groaned.

Kurt warned her with his eyes.

The sentry noticed the other bundle of blankets and poked that. Flesh resisted but no sound emerged.

His eyes shot from Brigitte to Kurt. Before the latter could react Harris threw off his blankets and lunged to his knees, firing as he did so.

The noise in the enclosed space was deafening. The sentry’s chest blossomed into a scarlet flower of blood. Brigitte screamed and then fell back, silenced with shock, as carmine droplets spattered onto her white hose. The guard collapsed like a pricked balloon and slid to the ground.

Kurt stared down at him in horror, then fell to his knees and grabbed the man’s wrist. Under his fingers he felt the pulse flicker, twitch like a live wire, and then die. He dropped the sentry’s arm as realization flooded through him.
 

“Christ, man, did you have to kill him?” Kurt gasped in French.

“How else was I supposed to shut him up?” Harris replied grimly. He surged past Brigitte, who was still dumbstruck with revulsion, and leaped to the ground.

 
The driver, alerted by the sound of gunshots, appeared on a dead run and stopped short, riveted by the sight that met his eyes.

 
“Help me move him,” Harris said to the driver, grunting as he hoisted the dead sentry to his shoulder. Gore smeared his sweater and the sickening coppery smell of blood filled his nostrils, reminding him of things he would rather forget.
 

The driver snapped to attention and grabbed the guard’s legs. Together the two men dragged their burden back to the hut. The sentry rolled bonelessly to the floor when they dropped him.

Kurt climbed into the ambulance and took Brigitte in his arms. She was shaking so hard her teeth were rattling.

“Take it easy,” Hesse said to her in French. “You have to be strong if we’re going to make it through this alive.”

She nodded, unable to speak.

“You’ve seen people die many times,” he said.

“Not like this,” she whispered. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what it was like.”

“Listen to me. You can still get the American through if you do as I say and save our lives in the process.”

She looked at him alertly, already recovering, seeking direction.

“You have to get going right now,” Kurt said breathlessly. “That guard’s relief will be here any minute. Can you go on? You can’t stay here, you will be caught for sure if you do. Can you finish what you started?”

She nodded again, more firmly.

Harris and the driver ran back to the ambulance.

“We dumped him in the guardhouse,” Harris said to Kurt.

“All right, take off,” Hesse said. He kissed Brigitte, who clung to him briefly, then with an effort of will let him go.

“What will you say?” Harris demanded. “How will you explain this?”

“I’ll tell them I found him dead when I arrived here escorting your ambulance. I sent you on ahead and stayed to report it. They’ll believe it was local sabotage. That sort of thing happens at outposts like this all the time.”

Harris nodded. “That’s fast thinking,” he said. He extended his hand. Hesse stared at it for a second.

“I’m not doing this for you,” he said coldly, turning away.

Harris dropped his hand. “I hope she appreciates you, pal,” he replied in an undertone in English as he stripped off his bloody sweater.

Brigitte, ignoring her audience, unhooked the stained hose from her garters and handed the stockings to Harris. He took them, admiring her clear head; Brigitte could hold her own with her sister-in-law any time. He dashed to the bushes by the side of the road and buried the clothing quickly.

“Let’s roll,” he said, and jumped in beside Brigitte. The driver ran around to the cab and gunned the motor.

“I’ll see you in Fains,” Kurt said to Brigitte, and moved to close the doors.

She leapt up and stayed his hand.

“I love you,” she said to him in German. Then, as Harris yelled behind her to “get moving” and Hesse stared at her in amazement, she shut the doors in his face.

The ambulance careened down the roadway, tires screeching. Hesse didn’t pause to look after it, or to consider why Brigitte had chosen that hectic moment to tell him what she knew he wanted to hear.

Everything had happened in such a blur that time was distorted. He was relieved to see by the clock inside the guardhouse window that only a few minutes had passed since their arrival. He took a few, deep calming breaths of the cold night air and then went to the military phone inside the hut. He wound the handle several times to ring the service operator in Lyons, and by the time he reached headquarters in Bar-le-Duc he knew what he would say.

“This is Kurt Hesse, aide-de-camp to Colonel Becker, military governor of the Meuse. I want to report an act of sabotage,” he said calmly. “At the Lissante outpost on the Swiss border.”

The lieutenant on the other end began to take down the information as Hesse fed him the altered version of the facts. And as Kurt stood in the guardhouse he saw a puff of smoke grow larger in the distance. It materialized into a motor scooter.

The sentry’s relief had arrived.

Part Three:

LIBERATION

Summer, 1944

Chapter 12

“Curel says that it will happen soon,” Laura whispered, wheeling her bike beside Brigitte as her sister-in-law walked down the path away from the hospital. Preoccupied German soldiers hurrying toward the entrance flowed past them like a stream dividing around a rock.

“He’s been saying that for a month,” Brigitte replied in the same undertone, exasperated. Early June sunshine bathed them in its warm glow, and she shielded her eyes from it with her hand as they strolled. She was on her lunch break from the hospital and had to be back soon, but Laura had been insistent about seeing her.

“No, no,” Laura hissed excitedly. “The Résistance received another message about it last night.”

They both glanced around them at the same time to see if anyone listened, and then Laura dropped her eyes and shook her head. This conversation was best continued elsewhere.

They waited until they were far down the main street and well away from an audience before Laura said, “You saw them just now, scurrying around like bees in a hive without a queen. Something’s up, can’t you feel it?” She leaned her bike against her hip and turned to the other woman eagerly.

“Well?” Brigitte said, raising her brows, challenging her to continue.

“It’s called Project Overlord, and the Allies sent word that the invasion was imminent again yesterday.”

“How?”

“The first message came over the BBC last week, coded in a poem by Verlaine. They’ve been sending it ever since.”

“We’ve been hearing rumors for months,” Brigitte said. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Curel says they’ve been trying to mislead the Germans about where the landings will take place,” Laura went on, so caught up in her story that Brigitte’s skepticism didn’t even touch her. “It could be Calais, or Brest, or Normandy. There’s even talk of a British descent on Norway.”

“How does Curel know so much?”

“Oh, he hears everything. He’s been around so long that he knows everybody and everybody trusts him.”

“Do you really think it might be true?” Brigitte asked, beginning reluctantly to hope. Fear of disappointment always kept her wary.
 

Laura squeezed her hand. “I do. You know how the war has been going. Curel says that now is the time and he’s rarely wrong.”
 

“Pretty soon he’ll be telling us what to wear when we get up in the morning,” Brigitte said dryly.

Laura grinned. “What does Kurt say?” she asked, sobering.

Brigitte shrugged. “He’s not in a position to really know anything.”

“Well, what does Becker think?”

“Nobody knows what Becker thinks.”

“Not even Kurt?”

Brigitte sighed. “He says they’re on the alert, expecting something, but nobody knows quite what it will be. After a number of false alarms I guess it starts to become routine.”

“Good,” Laura said with satisfaction. “I hope they’re getting complacent and dismissing the rumors so that when it comes it will catch them off guard.”

“There’s no such thing as a complacent German,” Brigitte said. “And they’re definitely on guard. Look at them.”

“Some people act as if they can hardly imagine this town without them,” Laura said disgustedly.

“I know.”
 

“It must be similar to having a chronic disease. After a while you forget what it was like to be well.”

“I remember,” Brigitte said fiercely, rounding on her. “I remember what it was like to be free.”

“Oh, Bree, so do I,” Laura replied, squeezing her hand. “And we’ll be free again. I can feel it.”

Brigitte smiled briefly, dismissing the emotional moment as she said, “You’d better be getting back to the school. Lysette will be looking for you.”

“Are you coming home tonight?” Laura asked.

Brigitte nodded. “I’ll see you for dinner.”
 

Laura waved goodbye as Brigitte turned back for the hospital, and then wheeled her bike into the street to cross it. The townspeople eddied about her and she was sure she detected an air of suppressed excitement. The Germans weren’t the only ones reacting to the rumors. Passersby met her eyes, smiling slightly and then looking quickly away, almost as if they were afraid to dispel the magic by acknowledging it.
 

 
Laura had gone shopping on her lunch hour and the wire basket was filled. She locked her bike to the rack by the door of the school and lifted the packages into her arms. As she walked inside she could hear the shouts of the children, still at recess, playing on the clay topped schoolyard in the back. A light breeze rustled through the trees and fanned her face with a cool caress.
 

On such a day four years ago Alain had first told her about the American who was to come and help them. She’d had no way of knowing then how important that man would be to her.
 

She had gotten several sporadic messages from Harris, sent through the Résistance network. The first had said that he’d made it safely back to England, and the last that he was fine and flying again.