Waiting for the Violins (13 page)

Almost soundlessly, Mathilde appeared at her side.

“Oh, thank you, Mathilde. A glass of wine is exactly what I need right now.” Tell Gaston not to worry about bringing the wood inside. When I take the men out tonight, I’ll have them bring some of it in. They could use the exercise.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Mathilde returned downstairs to her kitchen to conjure a meal out of the foodstuffs Gaston had procured on the black market.

Sandrine drew up her knees and stared at the flames, suddenly filled with doubt. Had she accepted the stories of any of the men too easily? The interrogation was a farce, and any person who could speak English without a German accent could pass. If the Gestapo could infiltrate someone in Brussels, who could travel down the entire line, it would mean the capture of the airmen and a death sentence to all the patriots who had helped them.

Infiltration or betrayal could come from anywhere. And what of that woman who came to the café the other day? The one called Sophie? Surely not her real name. Had she sent her away only because of the possibility she was Gestapo? Or was it something more personal?

Seeing her had been a jolt. With her narrow, intense face, she was the image of Isabelle. Isabelle, who had stirred her so strangely, for years, until she married and moved to Liege.

There seemed a parallel between her own integrity and that of the Comet Line, though she wasn’t sure which of them had sent up an alarm when she saw Sophie’s face. Was she protecting the line or her peace of mind?

In any case, who
was
the stranger? Was she still lurking outside the café, like Büttner, keeping an eye on them? For the briefest moment, Sandrine wondered if she should have sent someone to follow and, if necessary, kill her.

*

Sandrine had scarcely drunk her wine when she heard the car pulling up in front of the house. Gaston would have alerted the soldiers downstairs to go dark and so she waited, filled more with dread than fear. A few moments later, Mathilde came into the room again, her eyes averted, and Sandrine guessed who the visitor was.

“General von Falkenhausen is waiting in the entryway, madam. Should I bring him into the library? He is alone,” she added unnecessarily. He was always alone.

Sandrine took a deep breath. “Yes, bring him in.”

*

The business was quickly done, though the fire in the fireplace had burned down when General von Falkenhausen buttoned his uniform trousers and drew on his tunic. He set another log on the embers and returned to the sofa, pouring two more glasses of wine.

“To your beauty,” he said, offering one glass to Sandrine.

She smoothed her skirt into place, suppressing the desire to rush upstairs and bathe. She drank and was silent. What possible remark could either of them make after their coupling? Should he thank her for her cooperation? Or should she admit the act was in fact no worse than most of those she’d experienced with her husband?

Von Falkenhausen seemed concerned only with the proper fit of his uniform. He stood up again, tugged on his tunic, and brushed invisible dust from the front of his trousers. Then he took her hand and kissed the back of it.

“With your permission, Madame Toussaint. Duty summons me.”

Wordlessly, she unlocked the door and guided him to the end of the entryway, where Gaston already held his greatcoat. The general slipped both arms into the sleeves and buttoned it closed. He withdrew leather gloves from the pockets but shook her hand briefly again before pulling them on. “I thank you for your kindness and look forward to seeing you again. Good evening.”

He stepped toward the open door but then swung around to face her again. “Oh, yes, I forgot to mention. I will send around a man tomorrow with a few liters of petrol. And some ration tickets to buy more. You will be needing that, I believe, for your lovely car.”

He touched his cap and stepped through the doorway. Within moments, his Mercedes rumbled over the gravel and down the road away from the house.

“Wait a few more minutes, then go and tell the men it’s all right to turn the light on again,” she said woodenly.

Relief and disgust settled over her in equal measure. She was safe, obviously, and so were the men she was hiding. She trudged up the staircase to the bathroom at the end of the corridor. Mathilde, bless her, had already run a bath. Shivering, she stepped into the tub and scrubbed herself raw.

Von Falkenhausen’s whore. The words rang in her head. Did submitting to a high-ranking Nazi in order to continue the Comet Line mark her as a martyr or a collaborator? Was she different from any woman who gave herself to any Nazi in order to feed her family?

The bathwater was cooling, so she climbed out and dried. It was at least pleasant to put on fresh clothing. The evening wasn’t far along so she returned to the fireplace, added more wood, and curled up on the sofa. Mathilde had cleared away the glasses, removing all traces of the act that had just taken place.

The phone rang. Mathilde took the call in the entryway and then appeared in the doorway. “Madam, it’s the Delivery Service calling. From Bayonne.”

Delivery Service, the code name for the network of people who linked the safe houses along the line. If it was from Bayonne, it would have to be about Andrée. She took the call at the corner desk she never used.

The voice on the other end was familiar and, as always, gave no names. It was also somber. “I am sorry to report that we’ve had no luck obtaining the product you ordered. Every time our men followed a lead, the competitors were there before us. I’m afraid the trail has run cold.”

“Thank you.” She hung up slowly, benumbed, and dropped back onto the sofa. The coded message was of disaster. The Comet line had been halted while good men and women risked their lives trying to save Andrée. Dangerous, audacious attempts, each one just short of success. But each one had failed, and now she was on her on her way to a German concentration camp. Buchenwald? Ravensbrück? Sandrine didn’t even know which one.

She was certain of only one thing. Even if they could beat Andrée down to the point she would cease to care about the foreign pilots, she would never betray the good Belgian, French, and Basque people who had put themselves at mortal risk. Sandrine was as certain as she was of her own heartbeat that they could not make Andrée talk. She would sacrifice her life first.

Sandrine stared into the dying embers of the fire.
Her
only sacrifice was her “honor.” How trivial it was in comparison.

She called her two dogs to her and scratched them both for a while as she brooded. Conditions would only get worse, not better, both in Brussels and everywhere in the occupied zones. She did a mental inventory of the safe houses, the supplies, and the remaining resistants. It was time to begin another trip along the line.

She stood up and went to the stairs leading to the cellar.

*

“Come on, all of you,” Sandrine said to the men. “We’ve got just a little daylight left. Let’s go for a walk and talk about how we’ll get you to Spain.”

“Jolly good,” Eddie said. “Anything to get out of this cave.” Then the rest of the message registered. “Spain? Oh, yes, let’s do discuss that.”

She led the four of them upstairs and through the front portal into the woods. Having just made a “payment” to the governor general, she had little fear of official patrols anywhere near the château. Going out with the men would physically invigorate her, and doing actual planning for the escape would remind her the humiliation had a purpose.

“Our forgers should have your identifications papers soon, but then we have to teach you how to behave.”

“For sure we can’t speak any French, so we’ll bloody well have to keep our mouths shut,” Harry said.

“You could practice some of that right now, old chap,” Eddie joked. “He’s been talking me ear off.”

“You’ve done your share, mate—”

A gunshot sounded, and the four men threw themselves onto the ground. Sandrine remained standing, torn between fear and annoyance that someone was shooting on her land. But who
had
shot?

It couldn’t have been a patrol since there would have been no point in striking them down simply because they were there. Moreover, no one was shot. Then who? Most likely a poacher after one of the small boars in her woods.

Leaving the men behind and under cover, she pressed forward toward the sound. A second shot rang out and told her she was closer.

She continued, hearing a third and fourth shot, and now was certain it was poachers. But when she stepped out into a clearing she halted, astonished.

*

“I can’t believe I’ve agreed to do this,” Antonia said as they strode together to toward the Tram 28 stop. Moishe sucked on one of his Russian cigarettes, which he seemed unable to do without.

“We’ll be at the far end of a woods that’s already at the edge of Brussels. No one’s going to hear us except some cows in the distance.”

“Maybe so, but getting there carrying a loaded gun on a public tram is the real risk.” She glanced around nervously.

“I told you, no one will bother us. Not with me in a uniform of the
Service d’Ordre Publique
. The Germans recognize us as fellow fascists, and the Belgians are afraid of us. Them, I mean.”

“Where did you get that thing, anyhow?” She stepped back for a full view of him.

“On our last raid. We broke into their office for the money. Didn’t get much, but this was just hanging there, so we took it. We knew it would come in handy.”

The tram pulled up as they arrived, and they fell silent. Antonia tried to look like a stalwart Rexist woman, but no one seemed to glance their way anyhow.

In forty-five minutes they were at the last stop, at the Place St. Lambert, and they descended. “It’s this way,” he said, pointing eastward. She could see the woods already, behind a stately white eighteenth-century mansion.

“What about people in that house? Are they going to hear us?”

“Maybe they’ll hear a little pop, but they’ll think it’s hunters. There’s small game in the woods, and some of the farmers still have hunting rifles.”

With her fears only partly assuaged, she followed along away from the plaza across a wide country road and into the woods. The path ran circuitously, across footbridges over shallow streams, and it took another fifteen minutes to reach the place Moishe deemed safe.

It was late afternoon, and the foliage admitted only a soft dappled light, not the best for precise targeting, but Antonia decided that teaching stance and a steady hand was just as important as marksmanship. She pinned up four targets of folded newspaper and came back to him.

“All right. Let’s see what you can do.” She handed him the revolver. “Note that unlike
your
useless gun, which has a magazine, this one has a rotating cylinder with only six cartridges. Here’s the safety. See? On…off. Be sure to use it. You don’t want it to go off in your pocket.”

He opened and closed the cylinder, hefted the gun’s weight. “Very light.”

“Yes. But you still need to hold it with two hands and keep both thumbs on the same side. Stand with your legs and your elbows apart. If you have time to aim, center the front post in the rear groove, place the front sight where you want to hit, and slowly squeeze the trigger.”

She let him insert the six bullets into the barrel, click it shut, and take aim at the first target.
Bang!
He twitched at the sound of the gunshot and the bullet went wild.

“Okay, you’re going to have to expect the sound. Just caress the trigger while keeping the front sight on the target.”

Bang!
He tried again, and this time a black spot appeared at the bottom right side of the target.

“Ah,
that’s
how you do it,” he said, pleased with himself, and took aim again. The crack of the gunshot no longer startled him, and the third bullet struck at the bottom left side.

“Hey, I like this.” He took aim yet again, toward the fourth target.

At that moment, a woman stepped out from among the trees and halted.

Moishe turned toward her and dropped his hand.

All three stood as if paralyzed, forming a bizarre triangle of mutual fear.

“What are you doing in my woods?” the woman called out. “You’re not allowed to hunt here.” She glanced over at the row of paper targets, then at the uniform. “Don’t they let you target practice at the shooting range?”

Antonia now realized it was the resident of the château they’d passed. Strangely, her voice seemed familiar. The stranger approached to confront the delinquent shooter, and her face became clear.

It was the woman from the Café Suèdoise.

In rapid sequence Antonia felt surprise, then pleasure, then an internal slapping of her forehead. Christ. It was another disaster. This was the woman she had to win over to contact the Comet Line. But now, standing next to a man dressed as a Belgian fascist, she had no hope of doing that.

“Apologies, madam,” Moishe said in his best cavalier voice. “We’re sorry to have trespassed on your woods.” He holstered the gun and handed it back to Antonia, who stood holding it foolishly.

“We’ll go now, and wish you a good evening,” he added, and after an unnecessary and slightly theatrical bow, he stepped around her onto the path.

Antonia followed, speechless. No remark, apology, or compliment could remedy the situation. As she passed, she looked directly into the woman’s face. In the graying light, her expression was impossible to discern, but her eyes were still green.

Chapter Sixteen

Sandrine Toussaint. So that was the name of the woman who owned the white mansion called the Château Malou, and who had some mysterious connection to the Café Suèdoise. The information did Antonia little good, but knowing the name gave her a handle. On what, she wasn’t sure.

But now, a few days after the target-practice encounter, she strode from the Marolles rummage market, Brussels’s black market for food. She’d paid a king’s ransom for a thin slice of ham and a kilo of potatoes, which, due to a parasite-destroyed harvest, were now rare all over Belgium. It was risky business walking around the Marolles since patrols often swept through, but the alternative, standing for hours in a line in the street, was no less dangerous. She’d already done that once for butter, counterfeit food coupons in hand, but the others in line, mostly women, wanted to chat, and she feared her accent would eventually give her away.