The Agony of France (Alex Kovacs thriller series Book 6) Page 6

  Our target was a bus full of German soldiers. Based on our week of reconnaissance, it was packed beyond reasonable capacity every night, with soldiers standing in the center aisle. We never counted because it didn’t really matter, but there were likely more than 60 men on the bus every night — although they were mostly boys. Unlike at the start of the war, when we received the flower of the German army to watch over us, we were now under the thumb of beat-up looking men in their forties and the most raw of recruits. The kids were the ones who packed the bus every night.

  The destination of this daily field trip was Bal Tabarin, where the alcohol was freely available to German soldiers, as were the naked dancers. And, really, who could blame them? What originally was thought to be a pretty cushy post had turned into a nightmare. When they weren’t helping the local police round up crying Jews, they were dodging all manner of hazards, many of them lethal. The only thing that made it a good place to be stationed was the list of Russian alternatives. So if Bal Tabarin offered a moment of relaxation, a taste of what all of their buddies in Stalingrad figured they were getting every day anyway, well, why not?

  Except, on this night, we would blow up the lot of them.

  The bus arrived every night at just after 5 p.m. The soldiers would bound off, all smiling and laughing and winking, and walk up the hill toward the nightclub. They would be back on the bus at 10:45, in all manner of alcoholic disarray. They left the bus in a group, and they returned in a group. There were never any stragglers because while they all might be drunk and full of images of naked women, there were not enough schnapps or bare asses to get them to forget how scared they were to walk the streets alone.

  The bus was guarded during the hijinks by the driver. It was that way every day the previous week — one driver, alone. On this night, though, the driver had a buddy who sat with him. This was a complication. This was why Leon kept saying, “I tell you, I don’t like it. I don’t fucking like it.”

  I had assembled the bomb in an alley down the street from the bus. Leon had watched for any passersby, leaning against the wall with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. If somebody came by, he would ask for a light and I would scramble behind a trash bin. But there was nobody.

  It was about 10:30 when the next bit of the plan was to take place. I don’t know how the Resistance managed it, but they got their hands on a nice-looking Citroen and managed to find a revealing green dress for Hannah, as well as a bath and a hair stylist. The unexpected turn for us was that she was wearing a blonde wig. She looked great — and the blonde hair made her look, I don’t know, striking and great — and Christian besides. And right on time, she turned the corner and parked across the street from the bus, the steam pouring from her radiator.

  “But can she get both of them to go over?” Leon said, which was the other thing he kept repeating.

  “Of course she can,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Do you forget what it was like to be in the Army?”

  As soon as she parked and got out to look at the steam, her creamy breasts were caught in the moonlight, and the driver and his buddy nearly killed each other trying to squeeze through the door of the bus at the same time. They ran across the street to help. When the driver came back to get the can of water from the back of the bus, as well as a torch, we were set. We figured we had five minutes, but I had practiced and done it in three. If something went wrong, Leon’s job was to create another distraction, acting drunk and bellowing about the “goddamned Bosch” and getting the driver and his friend to chase him. But I didn’t need his theatrics, as it turned out. Hannah’s cleavage kept them occupied for a lot more than five minutes, and I needed only about three to attach the bomb to the undercarriage of the bus.

  We were back in the alley, waiting, when she drove off with an elaborate thank you and kisses on their cheeks. It was 10:43. They were laughing about Hannah’s breasts and nudging each other in the ribs while they put the water can and the torch back in place.

  The bomb was set for 11 p.m. The soldiers were supposed to be back by 10:45. But as the driver grabbed his clipboard, preparing to tick off the names of his returning passengers, 10:45 turned into 10:47, and 10:47 into 10:49, and the young soldiers were still not back from Bal Tabarin.

  I looked at my watch and wondered if it was wrong — because they had not been late any day the previous week, not even a minute. They must have had a deal with the cabaret to throw the boys out at a certain time — but something was wrong, because the driver and his buddy were checking their watches, too. And if the bus blew up at 11, and only the driver and his friend were in the explosion, it would be almost a complete waste. And if the two of them didn’t die, they would maybe be able to identify Hannah.

  10:51…

  10:53…

  “Should we—” I began to say.

  “Nothing to do but wait,” Leon said.

  “But—”

  “No buts. We just wait.”

  Only then did we hear it, the sound of young drunk boys on parade. We heard them before we saw them, but then we peeked out of the alley and witnessed the whole lurching thing. They were singing and hitting each other, shoulder to shoulder, their line like a wobbly caterpillar. Two of them were in the middle of the street, doing a kind of kick dance and then turning quickly and putting their hands on their knees, showing their asses to their friends. At the very front, one of the soldiers was making the universal sign for breasts, two hands outstretched in front of him, palms up, fingers extended, lovingly cupping the air.

  They arrived at the bus and began slurring their names as the driver and stumbling up the steps. The boarding was pretty orderly, all things considered. The door was closed, and the motor started.

  It was 10:58. Through the open window, I heard the driver yell, “Nobody pisses on the bus! You got that — nobody! We’ll be back at the barracks in 15 minutes, tops.”

  The bus strained to get to the top of the hill at the end of the street. It was just making the right turn when the bomb exploded, and then the gas tank exploded. An orange fireball filled the night.

  Part II

  14

  The three of us took the Metro to Port de Neuilly and walked the rest of the way. For Leon, Hannah, and me, it was not a penance as much as it was an appointment with reality. Because when you blow up a bus with 71 German soldiers on it, killing all of them in either the explosion or the fire, there is a reality that follows as certainly as the flies follow a rotting corpse.

  Someone had left a copy of Le Matin on the train, and each of us read the story without comment. We knew it had begun because, well, because we knew that the Germans would never allow such a provocation to go unanswered. And so the story read, in three paragraphs devoid of emotion:

  Five French citizens, Communists and Jews have been executed in reprisal for the attack against a German transport vehicle last Thursday.

  Those executed were Martin Grim, born February 18, 1924; Ruben Klotz, born April 18, 1925; Sidney Rosen, born November 19, 1881; Francois Holder, born June 17, 1919, and Claude Phillipe, born March 11, 1926.

  Reprisals will continue until the perpetrators of the cowardly attack have been identified and arrested.

  Again, we passed it — from Leon to Hannah to me — without a word. I just kept staring at it when it was my turn. I read it, and then it was as if my eyes unfocused. But I didn’t need to keep seeing it to know that, while this was only the beginning, I would never forget where I was, or the names.

  Who were the Jews? Rosen and Klotz, at least.

  Who were the Communists? No idea.

  And the ages. Phillippe was only 17, and that bothered me the most. But Rosen was 62, and that one shook me, too. I mean, what could a 62-year-old have done to deserve being killed by the Germans? The rest might have been active Resistance fighters, but a 62-year-old man? What was his crime? Drunk and disorderly? Curfew violation? Petty thief? Walking around without a Jewish star on his jacket? There was no
way to know, but it was likely that he was just a handy body in a local jail, and likely the first of many.

  A man nudged me from across the aisle and pointed at the newspaper. I handed it to him and watched him read it. He was interested in only one story, the only story in which Hannah, Leon and I had also been interested. He read it, then his stop came and he handed the newspaper back to me. He said two words, not to me but just into the air.

  Two words: “Goddamned Resistance.”

  I heard it, and the look on the faces of Hannah and Leon showed quite plainly that they had heard it, too — Leon’s face a show of sadness and exhaustion, Hannah’s of defiance. We were in the fourth car of the train — not the Jewish car, the fifth car in the back — because Leon and I had identification papers showing we were Christians and Hannah had her red hair.

  I found myself wondering what the reaction might be in the fifth car. I looked at Hannah and Leon and then I found myself wondering, for the thousandth time, what exactly I was doing. Why was I risking my life? For who? For what?

  We got off the train at Pont de Neuilly and walked west, across the Seine and into a neighborhood. We were going to see more of the same, more of what we had done. The one they all called Brick — the one in the black fedora who led the meeting in the cellar — insisted that we join him as witnesses. It was the night before, in the same cafe cellar. Everyone knew about the explosion but he wanted our impressions, so we ran through it for him and a guy he brought with him, a guy around our age. I never got his name.

  Anyway, we told them how the driver had an unexpected helper, how well Hannah’s blonde-haired diversion had worked, how the explosives had done their job. We’d watched the fire burn from the alley for about 60 seconds before retreating deeper into the shadows and then out on the next street. As it turned out, despite his uneasiness, Leon had counted 71 men on the bus — and in the minute we dared to stay and watch the conflagration, neither of us saw a single man flee the fire. And just to be sure, a man we had stationed in a flat across the street had watched for an hour through a slit between the curtains and saw not one body rushed out into an ambulance.

  “Only meat wagons,” he told us later. “Like, five of them.”

  Brick nodded his head and didn’t say anything until he looked at Hannah and asked her, “Did you bring it?” Then she reached beneath her buttoned-up jacket and pulled out the blonde wig. She handed it to Brick, who stuffed it beneath his own buttoned-up jacket.

  “It was a nice touch,” I said.

  “Goyim and blondes,” she said, and they all laughed.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Although,” Leon said, and they all laughed again.

  “The last thing we would need is for one of the drivers to live, or for some nosy neighbor to remember the red hair,” Brick said. “It’s just neater this way. Consider it my contribution to a successful operation.”

  Brick produced a bottle, and we passed it around. Again, there were no glasses to drink from in the basement of a cafe. After everyone had taken a long pull, the guy with Brick said, “So, do we take credit for this one?”

  “No.”

  “Again? Why not?”

  “We can’t,” Brick said. “Can’t afford it.”

  “What are you afraid of?” the guy said.

  “It’s not about fear,” Brick said.

  The three of us looked at each other, and neither Leon nor Hannah seemed to know what was going on. It was as if we had parachuted into the middle of a long-running argument between the two men. Their sentences were short, but I had the sense that they conveyed a lot of history in just a couple of words.

  “Look,” Brick said. “The de Gaulle assholes already figure it was us, and they’re probably furious. They’ve probably heard from the old man in London already, and I don’t want to deal with their shit. So we deny.”

  “Besides,” Hannah said. “The German response to this is going to be loud and bloody. It’s better if the people blame ‘the Resistance’ rather than ‘the Commies.’”

  “Exactly,” Brick said.

  “Who cares who they blame?” the guy said. “We need to take credit. The people need to know who’s fighting the fight for their country. They need to know now — so that when the end comes, they’ll know who’s been working for them all along.”

  “All they’re going to know is that their neighbor got killed in a reprisal because a bus full of German soldiers got blown up,” Brick said. “And if you think they’re going to give us credit for getting their neighbor shot, you’re dreaming.”

  The bottle was passed a second time, in silence, and then a third time. As we were leaving, Brick set the meeting that we were walking to — over the Seine, into a neighborhood, then into some woods behind a school on Rue Cluseret. About a hundred yards into the trees, Brick signaled us with a bird call of some sort.

  He was holding a small pair of binoculars. He handed them to Leon and pointed ahead and to the right.

  “What is it?” Leon said. He passed the binoculars to Hannah.

  “Fort Mont-Valerien,” Brick said. “The Nazis use it for a prison. And for executions.”

  Hannah handed me the binoculars. I looked for a second at the buildings, and then my eye caught some movement in an open courtyard. There were what looked to be tall wooden posts sticking out of the ground, a half-dozen of them. Six men were being marched out at the point of rifles, and each was tied to a separate post. Finally, a hood was fastened around each of their heads.

  “I… I can’t—” I said.

  “Keep watching,” Brick said.

  Without a word, Leon reached over and took the binoculars from my trembling hands. And he watched, intently, until we heard the report of the rifles, and then for a good 20 seconds after that. Once a journalist, always a journalist. As he liked to say, “It’s some profession. All they teach you is how to stare into hell without blinking.”

  Brick broke the silence and said, “You need to know.”

  “We already fucking know,” I said.

  “It’s important,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Somebody is going to need to tell the story when this is over. The more of us that know, the better.”

  We decided to leave the woods separately and head back to our flats alone. I walked rather than take the Metro. It took me nearly two hours, which was fine. About halfway back, I saw a German soldier with a handful of posters, a bucket and a brush. Water dripped down the brick wall as I read it. Twelve more had been executed, including seven Jews, “in reprisal for the attack against a German transport vehicle last Thursday.” So that would be the official wording, the same as in the story in Le Matin.

  I read the names and the birth dates, and then I counted on my fingers. One of them, Rudi Mann, had been 16 years and eight months old when he died.

  15

  The movie was a planned date with Alicia Stella. We were going to see The Secret of Madame Clapain at the Clichy. There had been a story in the paper the week before with a picture of six men on bicycles whose pedaling somehow hooked up to a generator and provided the power necessary to run the projectors. We were at a time in Paris when the lights were on for only an hour a day, tops, so the movie theaters needed to get creative to survive.

  When I mentioned the story to Alicia, right as I picked her up — her father again peering through the curtains — her reply was, “The lights are on at Rue Saussaies all day.”

  She looked nervous. I thought that maybe the gravity of what she had signed up for had finally pierced her youthful enthusiasm, as it inevitably did for everyone in the Resistance. I was going to say something, but she spoke first.

  “Look.” She was half-whispering as we walked down Boulevard de Rochechouart, leaning in close. She had a fake smile pasted on her face. It was so fake that it was frightening, like a drunk clown.

  “Look,” she said. “I think I have something serious.”

  “What?”

  “It’s about the rep
risals. I wrote down some names.”

  She began to reach into her pocket but I stopped her, grabbing her hand and playfully kissing it. Then I feigned a giggle and put my lips to her ear and said, “Not here, in the theater. Now giggle back.”

  She did.

  “Do you think someone’s watching?”

  “I don’t know, but we have to be careful,” I said. I explained to her about the tail that I’d spotted after I dropped her off at the end of our first date. Her face went kind of gray.

  “Look, it’ll be fine as long as we’re careful,” I said. “And part of careful is staying in character. So punch my bicep and giggle and take my arm.”

  Which she did.

  “Why did I punch you?” she said.

  “Because I just asked you the color of your underwear.”

  “Before or after I peed myself?”

  “Either way would work for me.”

  At which point, she punched me again, this time for real. The theater was only a few blocks away. I stopped about halfway to pretend to tie my shoe and spotted what I thought might be a tail. I didn’t tell Alicia.

  The theater was pretty crowded, but we found two seats against the wall with an empty seat between us and the next couple. I wasn’t really concerned that they might be listening, seeing as how the guy seemed to be in so deep that he was licking the girl’s tonsils. The Germans could change a lot of things about Parisian life, but not everything. Still, just in case, there was the empty seat in between. I took the seat next to the wall, seeing as how Alicia would be leaning in my direction and doing most of the talking.