Raoul shook the man’s hand. From fragments overheard, he’d worked out that a strike was intended in the next couple of days. He wondered if Sandrine had heard anything about it.
Straight away, Raoul felt the same tightening of the chest he now always had when thinking about Sandrine. If he’d been able, he would have put her on a plane and taken her across the world. To America or England, somewhere away from the war-torn, divided Midi. Then he shook his head. Even if he had all the money in the world, Sandrine wouldn’t leave. She’d never run away. She’d stay and fight to the bitter end. His expression hardened. Whatever else Authié had done, he hadn’t crushed her spirit. She was still as stubborn and determined as ever.
The light was just coming up. Raoul felt an unaccustomed sense of peace as he looked around the glade, recognising some of the men with whom he’d worked. They’d been in pairs, carrying and loading, never all together until now. Most of them looked like he felt. A little dazed from lack of sleep, tired, sharing a bottle of beer or a pouch of tobacco. Relieved that it had all gone off all right. No raid, no shooting, no sirens.
No one dead.
One of the
maquisards
had set a charcoal fire to burn in the centre of the clearing. Two rabbits were roasting on a spit, breakfast for the men before everyone went their separate ways. On the far side of the fire, Raoul noticed Coralie Saint-Loup’s fiancé sitting on a log rolling a cigarette.
‘Got any going spare?’ Raoul asked, sitting down beside him, struggling to remember what he was called. Some old-fashioned village name.
‘Sure.’ The young man handed over the pouch. ‘Help yourself.’
‘How’s Coralie? I heard you got married.’
‘Expecting our first, he said. ‘I don’t know, it doesn’t seem right, bringing a kid into all this mess, but life goes on, I suppose. It’s what she wanted.’
Raoul nodded.
‘If it’s a boy, we’ll call him Alphonse.’
Raoul sighed. ‘After you,’ he said, remembering.
‘And my father and his father before him. Family tradition. If it’s a girl, Coralie wants to call her Vivien. After that film actress.’ He shrugged. ‘Can’t say I like it much, funny sort of name. What about you? Still with the same girl?’
‘I am.’
‘Married?’
‘We haven’t got round to it yet,’ he said, ‘but we will. As soon as all this is over.’
‘They say the Germans are pulling out. Do you think it’s true?’
‘I don’t know,’ Raoul said.
For a moment, they sat in silence in the still dawn air, both smoking, passing a tin cup of coarse red mountain wine between them, the smell of the game roasting on the fire curling up into the air.
‘Are you going with the others?’ Alphonse asked, dropping his voice.
‘Going where?’
The boy looked alarmed that he’d spoken out of turn, then decided Raoul could be trusted.
‘There’s a few going to try and catch up with the ghost train,’ he said, lowering his voice even more. ‘See if they can hold it up until the Allies get here.’
Raoul turned to look at him. Like everyone, he had heard rumours about the
train fantôme
. The last remaining Jewish prisoners in Le Vernet were alleged to have been loaded on to a train bound for Dachau. Lucie’s fiancé should have been one of them, but his name wasn’t on the list. And because Raoul had been caring for Sandrine, he realised he didn’t know if Liesl or Lucie had ever found out where Max actually was. The train had passed through Toulouse on the thirtieth of July, going towards Bordeaux, then north. Thanks to the Allied advance, though, it had been turned back again.
‘Where is it now?’ Raoul asked.
Alphonse shook his head. ‘Heading towards the south-east, so I’ve heard. Provence, maybe. That could be the best chance of getting them free. They say the Allies are going to attack from the Mediterranean.’
Raoul swallowed another mouthful of wine, thinking hard. He wanted to go back to Coustaussa immediately. He’d hated leaving Sandrine, even though he knew she was in safe hands. But he remembered what she’d said to him last night – that she wouldn’t be able to bear it if he stopped fighting because of her. More than that, what would she think of him if he’d had a chance to save Max – assuming Max was even on the train – and hadn’t taken it? Raoul knew she still blamed herself for not intervening when Max was arrested in Carcassonne. It weighed on her mind. This might be a practical way of paying that debt for her. It was one way he could make things easier for her.
‘Are you going?’ he asked Alphonse.
The boy shook his head. ‘I’d like to, but not with the baby due any day now. Wouldn’t be fair on Coralie.’
Raoul patted his pockets, trousers and jacket, until he found a pencil.
‘Got anything to write on?’ he said quickly. ‘Anything at all?’
Alphonse looked in his own pockets and came up with a notification for a doctor’s appointment. He glanced at the date, saw it had already passed and handed it over.
Raoul quickly scribbled a note for Sandrine, telling her what he was going to do and promising to be back within the week. He hesitated, still in two minds, then folded it and gave it to Alphonse.
‘Can you pass this to Coralie,’ he said urgently, ‘and tell her to get it to Geneviève or Eloise. It’s very important she delivers it. Very important indeed. Just to let them know where I am.’
The boy nodded and put it in his pocket.
‘Do you know who’s in charge?’ Raoul asked.
‘He’s the one I heard talking about it,’ Alphonse said, pointing out a tall, lanky man with sandy-coloured hair.
Raoul stood up and held out his hand. ‘Good luck with the baby,’ he said.
‘Come to the christening, if you like,’ Alphonse said.
‘I might just do that,’ Raoul replied.
Then he crossed the wood and went to introduce himself, still thinking of how pleased Sandrine would be if he could come back with good news about Max after all this time.
Twenty minutes later, he was in a truck heading north on the unpatrolled back roads towards Carcassonne.
Alphonse walked slowly along the stony bank of the Aude back towards Couiza. The river was silver in the early morning light and the foam of the current tumbled and eddied white over the low rocks.
He reached a point where the bank disappeared and the water was deeper. He hesitated a moment, then decided to climb up to the road. He was sure he could avoid any Wehrmacht trucks or SS cars. There was so little traffic on the road, he’d hear anything coming from several kilometres away. He was pleased to be carrying a note to Coralie. She said she didn’t mind, but Alphonse thought she was too often in the shadow of her older sisters, who always knew everything first. It would be nice for Coralie to be the one with information for a change.
Alphonse tripped over a log and bashed his shin. He fell forward on to the road and cried out in pain before he could stop himself. He gave a deep sigh, then heard the sound of a safety catch.
‘
Levez les mains
.’
As he started to put his hands up, he saw the flash of a blue Milice beret and panicked. The woods were dense behind him. He hesitated a moment. Wouldn’t it be better to make a run for it?
He turned and charged back down the slope towards the cover of the beech trees. He heard a bullet fly over his head and embed itself in a tree. Then another shot. He kept running, back down towards the river.
It took him an instant before he realised he’d been hit. He pulled up, suddenly short of breath, then a second bullet hit him in the back and he fell, face forward, into the water.
‘Vivien, what a name . . .’ he muttered to himself.
He started to choke. Blood spurted out of his mouth, turning the silver waters of the Aude red. Raoul’s note fell into the river and was carried away unread.
COUIZA
S
andrine rubbed her temples. She had her usual pre-operation headache, the period of counting down to zero hour. She rolled her shoulders, wincing as the skin around her burns stretched sore. She took several deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. The plan was almost identical to Berriac. The same signs, the same systems. When she’d come down to it, Sandrine had found herself unable to think of anything new.
In two days, there had been no word from Raoul. No word from Monsieur Baillard. She told herself it wasn’t any different from any other mission they’d done, but it was her first since coming back to Coustaussa.
Her first since she knew what it was like to be caught.
‘Blow the whistle twice if you see anyone coming. Three short blasts if you hear a vehicle – car, motorcycle,
petrolette
, anything.’
Liesl nodded.
‘Twice for a person,’ Sandrine repeated, ‘three for any kind of vehicle.’
‘I know,’ Liesl said quietly.
Sandrine looked at her watch. Seven forty-five.
Lucie and Marieta were at home with Jean-Jacques. Marianne was on lookout, watching the road from the south. Suzanne was covering the bridge and Geneviève was making her way towards the electricity substation with a basket packed with explosives. It had worked in Berriac, so why wouldn’t it work again?
She looked at her watch again. Seven fifty.
‘I’m going now,’ she whispered to Liesl. ‘Don’t forget, if anyone comes, whistle. We don’t want anyone hurt. If all goes to plan, when you hear the blast, leave straight away.’
‘I know,’ Liesl said patiently.
Sandrine came out of the shadow of the empty chicken coops. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. There was no one about. At the war memorial, a black and white dog, scruffy, thin, sat as if guarding the dead.
‘Good boy,’ she whispered. It was rare to see an animal nowadays and the last thing she wanted was for the mongrel to bark, alerting the village to her presence.
Sandrine reached the small, colourful house in the far corner. Suzanne had identified the porch as a good spot to wait, not least because the owners were away. Or detained.
She checked the time again.
‘Three minutes,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Three minutes.’
At eight o’clock, the bells began to ring. Perfectly on time, Geneviève came into view. She walked towards the substation, put the basket against the door and carried on up the track without breaking her stride.
Sandrine waited until she was out of sight, then stepped forward. She lifted the red and white tablecloth, located the fuse in the jumble of wires and pipe, then tried to strike the match. Her hand was shaking so badly that it guttered, flared, and went out. Sandrine took another, scraped it along the strip, and, holding her right hand in her left, this time, the flame held steady. Tonight she felt no satisfaction at the hiss of the cord, only relief.
She gave it two seconds, to check it had taken, then made it out to the track behind the vegetable gardens before the bomb went off. She experienced a vivid flashback to Berriac, remembering how exhilarated she had felt that night. Now she felt nothing but fear and loathing for the things she had to do.
She started to run, but a sharp, jagged pain in her lower abdomen forced her to stop. She doubled over, feeling the heavy, dull drag, and knew she was bleeding again. She waited as long as she dared, then carried on. The hope that Raoul might have returned was what got her up the hill.
Liesl and Marianne were waiting for her, both safe, as was Geneviève. There had been no word from Eloise, but no reason to think anything had gone wrong there either.
‘And Raoul?’
‘Nothing so far,’ Marianne said quietly.
‘He’ll be back,’ Lucie said.
Marieta made her a glass of lime tea with plenty of saccharine, then helped her with her bloodied clothes. Lucie sat with her until she went to sleep.
CARCASSONNE
C
arcassonne was in darkness as Raoul made his way along the Canal du Midi.
He’d got out of the truck on the Villegly road. From there, it had been a short tramp over the hill to come down into the Bastide via the cimetière Saint-Vincent. He had not thought to be back in Carcassonne so soon and, now that Sandrine was no longer here, he was shocked at how alien the city seemed to him.
Below him, boulevard Omer Sarraut – where he had lifted Sandrine’s broken body from the
panier à salade
– was silent. Even now, Raoul could hardly bare to look at it. All he saw was her bruised face and her branded skin and the blood dripping from the leather of the seats on to the floor of Robert Bonnet’s car.
He stopped to catch his breath for a moment. Was Robert still alive? Gaston? Or Dr Giraud, who had saved Sandrine’s life? What about Aimé Ramond and Jean Bringer? He had not even had time to grieve for his mother. Raoul shook his head. Trying to clear his mind. There would be time to mourn, for those taken or lost, but not now.
The blackness made it easy for him to make his way unobserved towards the offices of the railway transportation department. Although it was being called the ghost train, the truth was that there were records. Every stretch of the line, every day the prisoners spent confined to the cattle trucks, was written down. All Raoul needed to do was find the information and let his comrades know. Then, at least, they would have a chance of delaying the transport.
He climbed the embankment and crawled out over the line. There was no hum of metal. The gravel between the tracks cracked and crunched, but no one seemed to hear. Raoul stepped over one sleeper, then the next, like a child playing a game in the schoolyard. He was surprised there was no patrol, but assumed perhaps that the Gestapo – that Authié – were concentrating their attention closer to the station buildings.
Without too much difficulty, Raoul located the station master’s office at the far end of the westbound platform. Even in the dark, the plaque seemed to gleam:
CHEF DE GARE.
The door was solid oak. There was no way of breaking it without making enough noise to get the guards running all the way from the Caserne Laperrine. Instead, Raoul climbed on to the metal bench beneath a small window and reached his hand up. The catch had been left
à l’espagnolette
, to allow a shaving of cool air in, so it wasn’t difficult to lever the fastening up with his hunting knife.