Sins of the Flesh (29 page)

“Daddy, ladies, especially ladies like Jane, do not sit around waiting for men to call late at night. Aaron was always a perfect gentleman.”

“Aaron who?” Daniel asked.

“I guess he was her last gentleman friend. I heard her telling someone today what a gentleman he is and how fond she was of him. Maybe he's a business associate, and I…She's very fond of you, Daddy,” she said hastily when she saw her father's face darken.

Without another word, Daniel kissed his daughter good night and went upstairs to bed. He would take his daughter's advice. She might be young, but she was a woman, and women understood other women. Men, as Reuben had pointed out, never did and never would understand the female species.

When the phone rang at eleven-thirty Nellie snatched it up on the first ring. As she'd expected, it was Jane. Nellie made her voice sound sleepy and groggy. “Wha…time is it?…My goodness, Jane, Daddy fell asleep the minute we got home, around eight-thirty or so. Do you want me to wake him? I will if you want me to, but Daddy is a bear when you wake him out of a sound sleep.”

“No, don't wake him, Nellie. Just leave a message that I called.”

“I'll do that.” Nellie deliberately scribbled something on the pad by the phone that even she couldn't decipher. And why should she be expected to remember phone calls late at night, especially those that woke her out of a sound sleep?

Nellie waited a full five minutes before she picked up the phone a second time. She dialed Philippe's number from memory and waited until he answered on the fifth ring. His voice was gruff, and he sounded annoyed. Well, she would change all that in a second, Nellie thought. “Hi, Philippe, I just called to say good night. I hope you aren't angry with me for canceling our plans this evening. I had no other choice, you know.” She rushed on, not giving Philippe a chance to respond. “I kept wishing I were with you and wondering what you were doing. I just got home this minute and decided to call you. What did you do all evening?”

Philippe's voice thawed and grew warm. “I read most of the evening. I wrote a letter to my mother I know will probably never reach her. A quiet evening. Did you enjoy yours?” He hadn't meant to ask the question, but he wanted to know.

“It was all right. He smiled all night long. I guess movie stars have to do that. He had so many teeth, Philippe, he reminded me of a shark. He talked a lot about himself and how much money he made and how really, really famous he was going to be someday. He said I was prettier than a movie star. Dinner was terribly expensive. I hardly ate a bite. You know, Philippe, now that I'm home I can't even remember what he looks like.” She giggled, and Philippe laughed, which was exactly the response she wanted.

They talked for another ten minutes or so and then hung up. Philippe would dream about her all night long, and she would dream, too—-about attending the Academy Award ceremonies as the wife of the most powerful man in Hollywood. In her dream she'd wear a virginal white gown, but when the time actually came, she'd wear a stunning red sheath, off the shoulder, and full of sequins or maybe rhinestones. Diamonds in her ears, of course, and on her wrists. She'd have her shoes dyed to match the dress and full of the same glitter, but maybe just on the heels so they shimmered and sparkled when she walked. Smiling, she reached out to sleep, welcoming it.

In the morning she was disappointed that her sleep had been dreamless.

The winter sun bathed the French countryside in a dazzling, blinding light, but only for a moment. Clouds, thick and gray, were moving in, and new snow would fall, hopefully enough to obliterate the footprints of the Resistance members as they made their way in a single file to what they had been told was a deserted village—deserted by the French, but not by the Germans, who manned a command post outside the village church.

These members were new, so new that Mickey and Yvette had yet to be told their code names. The other members they'd come to know over the last months had either left for other networks, been reassigned, or joined God. Mickey dreaded the day she and Yvette would reach a rendezvous with no one to greet them, give them orders, share the latest news, and tell them yes, France would rise again. Her thoughts had never carried her beyond that particular moment.

She was cold now, numb actually, and hungrier than she'd ever been in her life. As always, she tried not to think about food and her stomach and a warm bath. Such luxuries were not for her at this time. Months earlier she'd given up the game she'd played with herself when they rested, the game of Reuben and Philippe, reliving memories of happier times. It had taken Yvette and her stern, waspish tongue warning her she would get them all killed because her mind was not on the business at hand, and she'd been right. She wanted no loyal Frenchman's death on her conscience. There was no time for reveries of any kind if one wanted to stay alive.

Mickey felt her group had done well considering they were not trained soldiers. By military standards their efforts might seem puny, but she knew, as the others did, that people continued to live because of their efforts. The Basil network of which they were now members was more refined, with members who knew how to create believable identity papers, and tailors who could craft a German uniform by hand. Somewhere there was a storehouse of confiscated German weapons, uniforms, transmitters, and anything else the Boche had unwillingly given up to the patriots. So far, though, she and her colleagues had been unable to avail themselves of these necessities because the storehouse was outside the perimeters of the Basil network. Others used it and lived to tell about it, which was all to the good, she thought.

It was snowing now, large, feathery flakes that would get smaller as the wind shifted. Once she'd thought snow beautiful, so clean and pure, but she'd since seen it stained with her countrymen's blood, seen others frozen to death. It was hateful now, but unlike the rain, the snow was a smothering blanket to sound that they used to their advantage. It would help them now when they sent out a member to reconnoiter the village. If they were lucky enough to eliminate the command post, they could build a fire and warm themselves. There would be food, and it wouldn't matter if it was German food or not. Silently, she prayed that there would be enough for the second group of children due to arrive tomorrow.

This would mark the second trip over the mountains to safety. The first trek across the Pyrenees had been in September, and weather conditions had been tolerable; only one grave had been dug.

Mickey shuddered. “Yvette,” she whispered, “this weather…the higher we go the worse it will be. The children…even we won't be able…There must be a better way.”

“There is no other way,” Yvette grumbled. “I think God will watch over the lot of us. They say He watches over drunks and little children. And foolish women,” she added.

“It's not myself I'm worried about, it's the children.” Mickey's eyes misted. “I can still see myself digging that grave with my hands and those children, their sad eyes. They trusted us, and we…we lost the little one.”

“We didn't just lose him, Mickey, we lost him to God and that's what makes the difference. I heard you tell Philippe on more than one occasion when he was little that when a child died, it was because God needed another angel. Did you lie to your son?”

“Stop it,” Mickey panted as she came to a halt behind the man in front of her. “I was responsible for that child, and he died. It is on my conscience. I saw the way the others looked at me. I'll see their eyes until the day I die.”

Yvette was saved from the sharp retort that was on her lips when the man in front of them turned. “There is no room for martyrs in this movement, nor for foolish sentimentality. Take my advice and don't look at their eyes and don't ask them their names, either. You are not their God, their mother, or their relative. You are their guide and nothing more.”

Mickey shrugged. The man was right, and she knew Yvette meant well, but that wouldn't change the way she felt and thought. Children were children. Someday these same children would be France's future. Never again did she want to see condemnation in a child's eyes when he looked at her. Never!

By this time the fat, lacy snowflakes had given way to hard dots of icy rain. It would change back to fine snow shortly, Mickey decided, looking around her anxiously. They were waiting for a man named Gage to return from the village. He wasn't really a man at all, but a seventeen-year-old university student who claimed to know the village as well as he knew his prayers. There was a tunnel, he said, that had been dug during the Great War that led from the rectory to the church and then to the hilltop a mile from the village. He'd argued vehemently with André, the group's leader, that the command post would be in the belfry of the church, for it was the highest vantage point, offering visibility to both ends of the road as well as to the entire village.

In the end André had acquiesced, but only because Yvette had given him not one but two resounding kicks to his shins. “If the boy knows the area, he's the one to go. I don't plan to stand here and freeze, so send him on his way,” she'd said in the voice she'd used to order her husband about. André had waved his hand, a signal that the youth was to go ahead and report back as soon as possible.

“It's been too long,” one of the men whispered much later.

“Too long,” whispered another. “The snow is coming down harder. Maybe he can't find his way back.”

“You talk too much,” Yvette snapped. “He's young, his eyes are sharp, and he's resilient, not like this group of old men and women. He said he'll come back, and he will.” He had to come back; she'd given the order for him to go. Unlike Mickey, who relied on prayers, she was depending on luck. Now she crossed her fingers in their thick gloves.

When the boy returned an eternity later, he was as frisky as a newborn pup, his eyes shining with his news. He addressed himself to Yvette, probably because she reminded him of his mother, Mickey thought sourly.

“Their machine guns are in the belfry, as I thought they would be. I was standing right under them in the tunnel. I heard everything they said. There are six of them, I think. The floor was warm, so they have a fire. No smoke can be seen the way the snow is blowing.”

“What did they say, these bastard Germans?” André demanded.

The boy gave a Gallic shrug. “I don't understand German,” he said. “Do you?”

“How do we get in there?”

“Through the tunnel, of course. It opens in the small room off the sanctuary. I think they're clustered at the back of the church, near the confessionals. There's more room there. They're using lamplight. I cracked the trap-door and it was black as hell. I know of no other way. Besides, the snow is worsening,” he said pointedly.

He was their Pied Piper; they were his mesmerized followers, slipping and clawing their way to the hill opening that would lead them into the tunnel. Muttered curses and sharp expletives were strangled in the swirling snow, all made by the men in the marching column. Yvette kept her lips clamped together, as did Mickey. I hope I live long enough to talk about this, she thought crazily. To her dismay she'd found out over the past months that men were not the superior force she'd believed them to be all these years. After all, she and Yvette were alive and had done everything that these men had done, possibly more. But unlike the men they hadn't whined or cried or complained except to one another.

The church was large by most village standards, Mickey reflected a while later when she peeked through the partially open door into the sanctuary. It had eight pews divided into fours, made from Austrian walnut, and in the back of the church a cavernous fireplace and stove that could be cooked on, as these filthy Germans were doing now. The aroma of frying sausage and potatoes made her dizzy. In the faint yellow light she could see guns and boxes of ammunition stacked against the wall near the one confessional. God alone knew what the Germans had stashed behind the confessional curtain. Quickly she blessed herself, asking forgiveness for carrying her own gun into the house of the Lord. It was sacrilegious. She wouldn't think about the killing that would happen shortly.

André motioned for the patriots to gather together in a circle. His whispers sounded harsh in the quiet sanctuary. “We must wait till we see how often they go to the belfry and how often they transmit. It's possible we'll be here for a very long time, so get comfortable. Gage will monitor the door.”

“We are going to take one prisoner, aren't we?” Gage asked excitedly, his boyish face lighting in anticipation. “Since none of us speaks German well enough to use the wireless, we need a prisoner, and we need someone close enough to hear what they're saying. It would help if we could watch their transmittal.”

The boy was right, Mickey thought morosely. “I speak German—quite well, as a matter of fact,” she said. “I can listen, and Yvette, if she can get close enough, will…she can try to get a feel for his touch. But it's tricky.”

André scowled at his little band of freedom fighters. Through no fault of his own, he seemed to be losing control. The eager young boy had shown him up several times, and the red-haired woman had a tongue like a viper. Christ, he hated working with women; they were too emotional and temperamental in his opinion. Only four months with the Resistance and already his head was clotted with too many deaths, half of them women. These two, though, he admitted, were different, older and more dedicated, if that was possible. Although he worried about them, he'd never let them know it, for they'd think him soft and weak. He worried about the boy, too, who hadn't even tasted life, probably had never had a woman in bed. For a moment he felt unsure of himself as the others looked up at him expectantly. His scowl deepened. There was no room here for ego or personalities, it was what was best for the lot of them and their country.

He moved closer to Gage. “Is there any way to reach the back of the church without going down the center aisle?”

Gage shook his head. “If the wind picks up a little more and they keep on drinking, one of us could crawl on his belly under the pew and get close enough to hear what they're saying.” He shrugged; it was the best he could offer in the way of a solution.

One of us, Mickey thought. What he meant was, she should be the one to crawl on her belly since she was the only one who understood German. Yvette would transmit. There was no other choice. Without being told, she knew that their weapons would be left in the sanctuary. A knife up her sleeve would be her only protection. Without a word, she nodded at André.

“We'll give you an hour,” he told her. “At the end of that time one of you crawls back here to tell us what those bastards are saying. Take off your boots and remove your jackets. Buttons make noise and boots might hit the footrests. Maman to the left, Chapeau to the right. One hour. Go!”

Mickey's heart pounded as she dropped to the floor to crawl through the half-open door. She bellied her way across the front of the altar, blessing herself and then slithering down the step to the communion rail, fumbling with her numb hands to find the latch on the center gate. The latch clicked beneath her fingers when she held her breath, then gently, she inched it backward, allowing just enough room to crawl through.

For a moment she hesitated; had her movements alerted those at the back of the church? A light touch on the heel of her foot by Yvette urged her on. By now she was in front of the communion rail, straining her eyes to see exactly where the footrests were. One to each side of the pew…If the last parishioner had raised it on leaving, there would be no problem. When she reached the first pew, her gloved hands straight in front of her, she crawled forward. The footrest was up, as were the second and third. Five more to go. The fourth was down, without enough room to crawl over it. She sucked in her breath as she gripped the hard wood in both her hands. Then she heard a sound, a whispery, scratching sound as the footrest moved upward. Mother of God, it wasn't the footrest at all, but a rat crawling over her arm! She wanted to scream, to drop the footrest and run. Her eyes were wild, her arms stiff as the rat scurried up her arm to her shoulder and down her back. It would be right in Yvette's face. She felt rather than heard Yvette move, then something sailed up and past the pew she was under. The rat made a screeching sound that was followed by an arc of light and a gunshot so loud it deafened Mickey's ears.

“A rat, nothing more,” she heard one of the soldiers say in German.

After a few moments, she began to move again, slower this time, her eyes straining for other vermin. When she reached the seventh pew the footrest was down, which was fine this time, as it afforded her more protection in the faint light and shadows at the back of the church. When she moved to the side so Yvette could crawl next to her, she could feel her friend's trembling body. She reached out to offer a comforting pat on her arm.

The Germans were playing cards, eating, and drinking. Their talk was desultory—the storm, one soldier's wife who was due to have a baby by the new year, a superior they all seemed to detest, a woman named Renée who, according to one of the soldiers, was the commandant's French mistress and fucked like a rabbit.