Scorched Earth (21 page)

The old man gave a wry smile. ‘They’re getting out before the city turns into hell,’ he said.

The convoy had now passed and Luc looked behind and saw Marc and PT. The pair dashed across the road, almost in step but acting like they didn’t know each other.

Ten minutes further on, a police checkpoint asked all three for their papers, but didn’t search any bags and the three boys reached their destination at noon. After the previous day’s chase, PT couldn’t show his face anywhere near Bistro le Baron. He found a hiding spot amidst the rubble of a bomb-damaged building, while Luc headed towards the place where PT ate soup the day before.

There was a thirty-strong queue waiting for the café to open. Luc joined the end and kept a discreet eye on Bistro le Baron. Robert’s mother-in-law had told PT that he’d always turn up at the Baron if you waited long enough, but that was no guarantee. Did he come every day? Was it always at the same time? Robert might already be upstairs out of sight, away on Milice business or even have gone into hiding after PT threatened his family.

Luc took time over his soup and watched comings and goings, exactly as PT had done the day before. He left when the waitress was about to make him and as Luc walked back to the bomb site, Marc joined the queue outside the café and took over the surveillance.

Marc maxed out his stay with a second bowl of soup. After leaving the café he crossed the street and looked in at four men at a table inside Bistro le Baron, including a man with a ginger beard who fitted PT’s description of the person who’d stopped him coming down the stairs.

‘Nice soup; no Robert,’ Marc reported, when he met up with Luc and PT on the bomb site a few minutes’ walk away.

Luc looked at his watch. ‘I’ll give it half an hour, take a stroll past and see if there’s any sign. Then I can stroll back in the other direction half an hour later. If Robert’s still not turned up, Marc can do the same thing.’

‘I’m worried that the depot might soon close for the day,’ PT said. ‘I bet they don’t leave all that money in the bistro overnight.’

‘Why don’t we go in now, grab the cash as planned and come back for Robert later?’ Luc asked.

Marc shook his head. ‘If we rob the money, the place is gonna be swarming with gangsters and Germans. It’ll be too hot to come back for Robert.’

Luc looked frustrated. ‘Well, there
must
be some other way to find him. His wife worked in a factory. If we could get hold of her …’

‘
If
we knew what factory she worked in,’ Marc said.

‘We know Robert visits his kids,’ PT said. ‘The mother-in-law told me he brings food for the kids.’

‘But how often?’ Marc asked. ‘Every day? Every third day? Once in a blue moon?’

PT spoke firmly. ‘We’re not running off on tangents. I made a plan and we’re sticking to it. If we spot Robert we follow the plan. If he doesn’t show, we can try again tomorrow, or work out some alternative.’

Luc scoffed. ‘Henderson will be pissed off that we disappeared today. There’s no way he’ll let us disappear a second day.’

‘How would he stop us?’ Marc asked.

PT laughed. ‘Our beloved captain may have gone all misty-eyed on us last night, but he’s
still
Henderson. If the only way he could stop one of us from disobeying a direct order was to shoot us, I reckon he’d do it.’

Luc smiled at PT. ‘Henderson
loves
Marc, but he’d shoot you or me without batting an eye.’

When the time came, Luc walked past Bistro le Baron in both directions and drew another blank. But when Marc made his first pass just after 3 p.m. there was a group playing dominoes at a table by the bar and Pierre Robert was among them.

‘Got him,’ Marc said when he got back to the bomb site. ‘And when I walked past there were still porters going in and out of the depot.’

Luc, Marc and PT exchanged wary smiles as they squatted behind a blast-damaged wall, sorting out their kit. Marc assembled his sniper rifle and handed it to PT, while Luc went down his bag and pulled out a lump of plastic explosive the size of a ping-pong ball.

‘All set?’ Marc asked.

Luc nodded as PT took the safety off on Marc’s rifle.

‘Let’s do this shit!’ Luc roared.

Marc walked the long way around, passing the depot as he headed towards Bistro le Baron from the top of the street. A girl in a servant’s uniform came out of the depot’s front entrance with a basket of vegetables straining on each arm. Marc didn’t like the idea of hurting her, so he slowed his pace and glanced at a handcart being loaded with sacks of potatoes down a side alley.

The girl was 20 metres clear when Marc neared the depot’s high fence and dropped down on one knee. He tied his shoelace, but as he stood he cracked a glass time pencil, pushed it into the ball of explosive and squished it against the wooden fence. Plastic explosive was naturally a sandy beige colour, but he’d pre-rolled it in dirt so that it blended in perfectly.

The time pencil was designed for one minute. As Marc gave an
All good
signal by scratching his scalp, PT hid in a side street with the sniper rifle poised and Luc strode into Bistro le Baron. The men playing dominoes eyed him suspiciously as he approached the bar.

‘Two coffees,’ Luc said.

The waitress looked curious. ‘Two?’

Luc nodded as he peeled out a ten-franc note. ‘My friend will be here any second.’

Marc stepped in as the waitress turned to face the coffee machine. He’d only got two paces when the explosion went off. Nobody was within a metre, so the small charge just blew a hole in the fence. As Bistro le Baron’s windows rattled and people in the street took cover, Pierre Robert and his fellow domino players charged towards the exit to see what had happened.

There was broken glass in the street as PT raised the sniper rifle and took preliminary aim at head height, just past the Baron’s exit. Keeping one eye shut and holding his breath, PT watched different heads in his telescopic sight.

Robert glanced around as PT pulled the trigger, almost as if he’d spotted the muzzle poking around the wall across the road. PT hadn’t done sniper training like Marc and Luc, but he was still a decent shot and the range was less than 50 metres.

The bullet split Robert’s head like a boot stomping a ripe pumpkin. Bullet fragments punched through the bistro’s window as PT took his second shot. Everyone was diving for cover, so PT lowered his aim and shot the guy with the ginger beard.

At such close range, any half-decent marksman could take PT out with a pistol, so he slung the rifle over his shoulder and began a sprint.

Inside the bistro, Marc and Luc dived as glass flew and pieces of the bullet that killed Robert shattered glassware behind the bar. Marc led a fast crawl towards the stairs and they charged up while the gangsters huddled on the floor near the entrance. Luc had a crowbar hooked on his belt in case the boss’s office was locked, but the door was half open.

There was no sign of the boss, but the elderly accountant sat in his alcove with his ledger and his stacks of money. As Marc stood on the landing, covering the stairs with his pistol, Luc opened his suitcase and ditched the bundle of tatty clothes inside.

‘Fill the case,’ Luc ordered the old guy.

Downstairs, a couple of the gangsters had worked out what was going on. But it was a straight staircase, so Marc could easily take out anyone who tried coming up. There was more money than would fit in the case, but they couldn’t take more than a case full without seriously impeding their getaway.

‘I’m ready,’ Luc shouted.

As Luc opened a window behind the desk, the boss came out of the toilet, with his braces dangling and tailored trousers held up with one hand.

‘Can’t I take a shit in peace?’ he yelled as he stepped on to the landing. ‘What’s all this bloody noise?’

His expression turned to shock when he saw Marc right in front of him.

Startled, Marc took a low shot, hitting the boss in the thigh. As the boss collapsed, Marc sent him tumbling downstairs with a knee in the back.

‘I’m done,’ Luc shouted. ‘Let’s move out.’

Marc backed into the office and kicked the door shut. The accountant had his hands in the air and Luc had one leg on the window ledge, ready to jump down into an alley behind the building. He made the 3-metre leap, then Marc passed the suitcase down before jumping himself.

The pair belted down an alleyway that emerged much closer to the depot than they would have liked. PT had made a long sprint and covered the pair with the sniper rifle as they turned left into a sloping street. Once the trio met up, they turned right and sprinted between rows of tiny houses built for factory workers.

The boys ran half a kilometre together, with no sign of a chase. When they reached a turning into a large road, PT stopped and did a quick disassembly job on the sniper rifle. Luc took a right and strained from the weight of money as he strode towards three waiting taxi-carts.

Marc whispered, ‘See you back home,’ to PT before crossing the street and walking briskly down the first turning.

PT walked the opposite way to Luc and had less luck finding a taxi-cart, but he was astonished by an open Métro station. People were so used to it being closed that he rode four stops in a near-empty carriage, while the trains going back towards the city were crammed with German infantrymen carrying their full kit.

Marc was the only one who made the journey back to Saint Cloud on foot. The roads were still full of Germans heading out of town and he had to make a long diversion because they’d closed the bridge nearest home for a movement of military vehicles.

Marc expected a bollocking as he stood inside the apartment’s front door, gently sliding boots off his blistered feet.

‘Living-room,’ Henderson said brusquely.

Maxine rarely stayed in one place for long, so Marc was surprised to see her in the middle of a sofa. PT and Luc sat on another sofa facing towards her and the money-filled suitcase rested on the coffee table between them.

‘Sit,’ Maxine snapped, sounding like she was ordering a dog.

Paul and Edith hovered in the doorway as Marc squeezed on to the sofa between Luc and PT. He’d been on his feet all day and would have loved a glass of water and a cool flannel.

‘I’m told Pierre Robert and another man are dead,’ Maxine said. ‘Plus one critically injured.’

‘How do you know that?’ Marc asked.

‘Telephone,’ Maxine said. ‘The network is as useful to us as it is to the Germans, so we’ve done nothing to damage it.’

The boys knew this, but gave respectful nods like they were learning something.

‘The Ghost Circuit has put significant efforts into tracking down Milice,’ Maxine said. ‘If you’d had the common sense to ask, I could have easily found out where Pierre Robert sleeps at night. And if I’d known you planned to kill him, I’d have ordered you to wait. Robert’s girlfriend is a member of a resistance group. She was using him to gather intelligence on Milice members.’

The three boys all gawped.

‘We had no idea,’ Marc said weakly.

‘How
can
you know if you don’t ask?’ Maxine said irritably. ‘Fortunately, Commander Robert’s involvement with the Milice had almost come to an end and the overall Milice threat is a fraction of what it was. They’ve been deserting in droves now they’ve worked out that they’ve sold their souls to the losing team.

‘But that doesn’t excuse your cavalier behaviour. Paris belongs to the Ghost Circuit. No resistance operation goes down without me, or one of my senior commanders, approving it. Even the communists wouldn’t commit murder and robbery without letting me know first and my circuit has only lasted this long because we have strict rules and severe punishments for those who break them.’

The boys looked anxious as Maxine let the threat sink in.

‘Just this once I’ll turn a blind eye,’ she said finally. ‘Especially as you’re making such a generous contribution to resistance funds.’

Maxine stood up and pulled the suitcase of stolen money off the table.

‘Paul, come here,’ Maxine said.

Paul approached warily, though he was only guilty of lying to Henderson about Marc, Luc and PT’s whereabouts. Maxine opened the suitcase and pulled out a 3-centimetre stack of twenty-franc notes.

‘Rosie was a hero of the resistance,’ Maxine said. ‘When things calm down, you can use that money to give her a proper funeral, and buy her a headstone.’

Paul had learned to cope with Rosie being dead, but he wasn’t over it and his eyes glazed as he took the money.

‘Now I have other matters to attend to,’ Maxine said, as she stood up and strained under the weight of the suitcase.

She stopped to kiss Henderson’s cheek on her way to the door. ‘See you at the cinema later, Charles.’

Marc looked back at Henderson once Maxine had left. ‘You’ll have a hard job finding a cinema that’s open.’

‘An even harder time getting one where the power stays on for the whole film,’ PT added.

Henderson grunted. ‘If there’s one lesson you boys should have learned today, it’s that Maxine is a lady who gets what she wants. And thank you
so
much. I trusted you lot and you’ve repaid me by making it seem like I can’t even control my own people.’

‘We didn’t mean to cause trouble,’ PT said. ‘But I’m not gonna apologise for going after a Milice scumbag who killed Rosie.’

For a moment Henderson looked as if he was about to blow up, but his voice was calm when he spoke.

‘You’ve been through a lot, but you’re still young,’ Henderson said. ‘I was doing espionage work while you lot were in nappies. I know you think you know it all, but you don’t.’

*

Two hours later, Henderson led a 9-kilometre bike ride from the eastern suburb of Saint Cloud to l’Odéon in central Paris. He was trailed by Marc, Luc, Paul and PT.

The district was known for restaurants, bars and especially cinemas. Managers had kept Parisian cinemas open through all the shortages and power cuts by switching to candles or gas lanterns, and converting projectors to run off car batteries. But as the Allies closed on Paris, city administrators became concerned that any public gathering might turn into an anti-German demonstration and had ordered all screens to close.