Escape From Paris (10 page)

“Go inside, Robards,” Krause ordered.

Louis Robards was a big man, almost three inches over six feet. Bent forward, his head down, he was still an imposing man, looming above his tormentors. He swayed unsteadily. It hurt to stand, to move, to breathe. He was badly injured, his body knew it. He looked at Krause. Pain had smeared his vision but he heard well enough.

“Go ahead.”

The day shift was off, Robards knew, for dusk was beginning. Most of his friends would still be inside, drinking pernod or dark red wine, laughing, perhaps, about the train cars where they had switched weigh bills. That would show the Boche. Let them wait for those shipments. And the food cars en route to Germany with the good fresh vegetables. A little acid could do wonders.

“Hurry up, you fool,” Krause said impatiently.

Robards took one step forward then slanted to his left and began to run, a heavy, slow lumbering stumble down the sidewalk.

He never had a chance. He didn't expect a chance. In his mind, dazed with pain, he remembered what he had been told, “Don't ever run from the Germans, they will shoot you in the back.” Over the agony that jolted his liver with every thudding step, he waited for the rattle of the Schmeisser machine pistol that Schmidt held. “In the back . . . in the back . . . in the back . . .”

Schmidt raised his pistol and the nearest soldier lifted his gun.

“No,” Krause directed. He raised his arm and gestured, a short hard chop.

The soldier, expressionless, stepped forward.

Robards, his head down, his breath whistling through his teeth, never saw him. The rifle whacked brutally along his shoulder and head and Robards fell heavily to his knees.

The soldier lifted his rifle again but Krause shook his head.

Blood welled from Robards forehead. He wavered back and forth on his knees. A huge man. Too strong yet to fall.

“Grab his elbows,” Krause ordered. “Shove him through the door.”

Schmidt opened the door. Two soldiers swung Robards to his feet and pushed him forward. He tottered inside, one step, two, then once again sank to his knees, just beside Georges Mantel's chair.

“What the hell!”

“That man's hurt. . .who. . .”

“My God, it's Louis, hey, it's Louis. . .”

They called out and stood and the nearest surged closer. Georges pushed his chair out of the way and dropped down on one knee. “Louis, what's happened to you, man? Who did this to you?”

Abruptly, it was absolutely quiet in the narrow dim bar.

Georges looked over his shoulder. He saw the man in a suit first and then the Schmeisser pistol in his hands.

Krause let the moment expand, let the terrible quiet swell. Finally, his thin gray face as impassive as ever, he began to point. “That one and that one. . .the man trying to hide, there, to the left of the bar. The redhead and the fat one. . .”

Two soldiers closed in on each one named, moved them out the door onto the sidewalk. Thirteen men were taken. Not many were left now, the Devereaux brothers, Fabien, Clause, and Paul, the proprietor, Armand Mongelard, and Louis and Georges.

Georges still knelt beside Louis.

Krause looked down at them. “And that one.”

At the door, Georges twisted sideways and called back to the owner. “Please Armand, go tell Martine I'll be a little late.”

“Lieutenant! Psst! Lieutenant, are you there?”

Jonathan woke with a start, his heart hammering. The sudden jerk set his leg to throbbing again. His hand tightened around the jagged lump of stone. In the temple, that was the place to get him. He wouldn't make a noise. No noise. Jonathan raised his arm.

“Lieutenant, it's me, Maurice. Are you there? It's so dark I can't see you.”

Not a German. Jonathan shook his head, came fully awake. The Germans hadn't found him. He had heard them searching for a long time until it was fully dark then, finally, in the quiet warm blackness, he had fallen asleep. “Maurice.” He whispered, too, then he was swept by the strangeness of it all, the dry dusty warm air, the absolute darkness in that pocket beneath the bridge, men whispering though not a soul was about within miles, the stone in his hand. “I'm here, above you.”

Maurice scrambled on his knees, one hand reaching out until it touched Jonathan's tunic. “Thank God. We were afraid they'd found you.”

No. Not yet.

“I've brought food and medicine. Do you know how badly you are hurt?”

“I don't know. It's my leg. I'll look at it tomorrow. What kind of medicine?”

“A salve. My mother has always used it for deep cuts. Once, when our cow, Georgette, was lamed with a bad cut in her hindquarter, Mother pasted it on, thick, very thick, and Georgette was healed.”

Oh hell, Jonathan thought. Cow salve. Every time he moved his leg, it flamed with pain. Cow salve.

“If we can move you, I will try to get Doctor Morissey. They say he will treat wounded soldiers and not tell anyone.”

They say. There were so many reminders that he was a danger to everyone who came in contact with him. This boy, he wasn't more than that, not even as old as Jonathan's students, fifteen, sixteen, was risking his life to help a stranger.

“Look,” Jonathan said abruptly, “I don't want to be a burden to you. I'll rest up here. Get some strength, then strike out—”

“The Germans would find you. Wait and let us help.” He paused, said awkwardly, “I'm sorry I can't take you home with me. But my father, he is so bitter. Don't worry, though, my brother and I will work it out. Now, quickly, for I must start back before the next patrol, let me show you,” and he took Jonathan's hand and guided it to a sack. “The salve is here, in this tin, and this is a roll of muslin, to bind up your leg. There is a bottle of apple brandy, a bottle of water, a loaf of bread and some cheese and apples. Our apples. For more than two hundred years, my family has grown apples.” He felt about, found Jonathan's parachute, rolled it up. “I'm going to take it a couple of miles south of here and half bury it, just good enough so that the Boche will find it tomorrow, when the search continues. They will think you have gone in the other direction.”

Then Maurice was gone, slipping as silently from beneath the bridge as he had come.

Jonathan rummaged in the burlap sack until his fingers closed around the bottle of water. He uncorked it very carefully and raised it to his mouth. He wanted to drink and drink and drink, let the water rush down his throat, swallow until his air was gone, then breathe and drink again. But he took one small sip, a second, then, luxuriously, a third, holding the cool faintly earth-tasting liquid in his mouth for a long moment, letting the liquid trickle down his throat. He punched the cork tightly in the neck and returned the bottle to the sack. The cheese was a round. He took his pocket knife, cut out a thick wedge, tore a heel off the loaf, and ate, once again, slowly. He felt warmth and strength flowing into his body, even the pain in his leg didn't seem quite so bad. He decided to save the apples for his breakfast so he finished with two thick swallows of apple brandy and slowly sank once again into sleep.

Apples and billowing shimmering folds of silk and ripples of moonlit water revolved in his mind, the sharp rattle of machine guns, a long dusty corridor with sunlight streaming through a high arched window, himself strolling, carrying an armload of books, a girl walking away from him, farther and farther ahead, almost out of sight, a desperate panting race to reach her before she was gone. A rumbling thudding shock, bump after bump, bombs, they were being bombed.

He woke, gasping for breath, struggling to sit up, barraged by the thunder overhead. Three trucks rolled heavily across the bridge, shaking the wooden planks, sifting dirt down onto him. Was it the Germans, carrying soldiers out to hunt him?

It was early, the first light of morning just filtering beneath the bridge. Jonathan looked at his watch. Five-fifteen. It was an hour later in France, wasn't it?

He moved his watch ahead, wound it. He smiled wryly. All set up now, wasn't he? Oh well, at least he was still free and maybe the boys would be able to help him.

God, help him do what? How the hell could he hope to get away? He didn't even know where he was. He was lying helpless beneath a bridge near a German garrison and his leg was a bloody mess. Tentatively, he moved his foot. He groaned as his knee twisted and dull throbbing exploded into a knife-sharp sensation of heat.

He must see to his wound. He leaned forward. His trousers were stiff with blood. Worse than that, the cloth was stuck to his leg. Gently, he pushed the outstretched fingers of his right hand down his thigh until it began to hurt. It was all right up to four inches above the knee. That's where he began to saw with his pocket knife, cutting the pants away. It took a long time. He lay back and rested every few minutes, sweat slipping down his face. When he was finished, a rough oblong cut free, the cloth still stuck stubbornly to the flesh. He tugged.

“Oh, God.” Fresh blood began to well in the center of the mangled patch of cloth. Whatever had torn into his leg, a part of the fuselage, shrapnel, a bullet, had ripped through his trousers, too, of course, and not only was the cloth stuck to the wound, pieces were embedded.

He stared at his leg for a long time. If he didn't get the wound clean, get those pieces of debris out, treat it, the wound would fester and swell. Already the surrounding skin was puffy and swollen.

Grimly, his face drawn into rigid lines, he began to pull and tease the cloth away. He took the bottle of water, dropped tiny splashes, then, using the tip end of his knife, he lifted up strips and pieces of cloth.

The skin puckered unevenly in an irregular V-shaped wound just above the knee. It should have been stitched, of course, a spread of more than an inch at some places. But he had the bits of cloth out now and it really didn't look too bad. Apparently the piece of metal had sliced over his knee, cutting loose this flap of skin. He couldn't see any shreds of metal and it hadn't cut down to the bone.

He stared at the swollen blackened edges for a long time. Should he spill more water over it, wash it better?

How clean was the water?

He had already used the water to loosen the dried stuck pieces of cloth, so why not wash it out all the way?

Horses. They probably had horses on a farm. It was water from a farm. Horses and tetanus. Something to that combination, wasn't there? Lockjaw. He shoved the cork back in the bottle and took the tin of salve from the bag.

The salve was yellowish-green and smelled like railroad tar.

“Me and Georgette,” Jonathan said aloud. Straightening out his leg and pushing the edges of the wound close together, he plastered the gash with the salve, covering the open bloodied rupture with the thick gelatinous medicine. The salve felt oddly cool and warm at the same time, tingly but soothing. He wound a long strip of muslin over and over, fastened the bandage with the two safety pins attached to one end. He was just finishing when he heard the slow clop of horses' hooves. In a few minutes, a wagon trundled over the bridge. He lifted his head, waiting, but no one rustled through the grass down to the dry stream bed. Not Maurice and his brother, then. Or perhaps it was, but they were ignoring him during the daylight.

When would they come? Where were the Germans looking now? Would they beat back this way, knowing they had somehow missed him?

Jonathan drew his breath in sharply. It was stupid to worry over something beyond his control. Stupid and wasteful. It took energy to worry, to be afraid, energy he might need. Now, his leg bandaged, it was time to see if he could walk. There wasn't room enough to stand beneath the bridge. Quietly, pulling himself with no more sound than the scrape of cloth over dirt, he reached the edge of the bridge. He lay there for a long while, listening. A crow cawed distantly, starlings chattered nearby. Some small animal, a rat or rabbit, rustled close by. He listened with the most care to a faint faraway knock. If it was hammering, it wasn't nearby. A hollow but clear-cut knock. He frowned and listened. He listened patiently, five minutes, ten, then, with a flash of memory he was at home again, in his mother's garden, she was smiling, her head turning, saying, “Hear that, Jonathan? It's a woodpecker. Hard at it, isn't he?”

A woodpecker. Not the faraway chop of an axe.

If there were anyone near the bridge and the dry weed-grown ditch, he must be standing as quietly as Jonathan lay. Satisfied, Jonathan sat up and began to push himself backwards up the slope until he could reach up and touch the edge of the bridge. He used both hands to pull up. He hung there for a long moment, his good leg bent and taking his weight, his hurt leg outstretched, and peered over the side of the bridge, looking quickly up and down the road, twisting his neck to look behind him. A forest of oak trees crowded thickly down to the stream bed. The dusty grayish road bent out of sight into the trees. He couldn't see far because of the woods, but he would hear anyone coming long before they would be able to see the bridge or him. It was still cool among the huge trees, the sunlight slanting through the thick green clusters of leaves, the only sound the erratic tattoo of the woodpecker. Cool and bright and cheerful, and the sky, glimpsed through the tree tops, a clear and vivid blue.