Clash by Night (32 page)

“Put this over you,” Curel said, sharing his lap robe with her, and Laura snuggled into its woolen warmth.
 

“Thanks.”

“If we’re stopped we’re going to see my sister Adele in Fragonard for the holiday,” he told her. “She’ll back up the story.”

Laura nodded and sat back.

 
The trip was conducted in studied silence. Aside from their work with Vipère the two did not have much in common, and even if they had, it was too cold to talk. Laura watched the bare trees slip by for some time, then closed her eyes and huddled inside her coat, trying to convince her face not to freeze solid. After a short interval she felt a drop of moisture on her nose, then her cheek, and she opened her eyes.

“It’s snowing,” she announced to Curel.

He swore expressively. “Do you ever think that God might be working with the Germans?” he asked finally in disgust.

“The possibility has occurred to me,” she mumbled to herself. She was jolted sideways as the horse lost its footing on the icy road, then recovered adroitly, plodding forward diligently. Laura gripped the edge of her seat and hung on tightly.
 

Their luck held. They didn’t see a soul until they reached their destination. The Germans must be celebrating the holiday indoors, with a supply of schnapps to keep them festive. At length Curel guided the semi-frozen animal up the secluded lane to the Convent of Saint Claire, and the front door opened as soon as they came in sight of it. A boy ran out to take the horse to the nearby barn as Curel barked instructions concerning its care and feeding. Laura ran up the steps and into the vestibule, seeking warmth, and almost collided with the nun standing just beyond the door.

“Oh, excuse me, Sister,” Laura said breathlessly, “I didn’t see you.”

The woman nodded kindly. “You’re here for our visitor,” she said.

Laura nodded, looking at the nun. She appeared of indeterminate age, as people of her calling often did, and was wearing a dark gray habit with a white wimple and a black veil. A thick rosary of brown beads hung from the cincture at her waist and a heavy gold and black crucifix lay on her breast, suspended from a stout chain.
 

“How is he?” Laura asked.

“Much better, I think, though still very thin,” the nun said conversationally, as if greeting Résistance fighters at three in the morning on Christmas Day were an ordinary occurrence. “We’ve done what we can for him but what he really wants now is to get back to his unit. I’m afraid that we’ve had a quite a time convincing him to wait for you and not to go off on his own.”

Curel came up behind them. “Good evening, Sister,” he said respectfully, remembering his manners.

The nun nodded. “Happy Christmas. I’m Sister Mary Joel.”

Curel shrugged. “No names for us,” he told her.

“I understand,” Sister Mary Joel said. “The other sisters are all sleeping but Mother Superior granted me permission to stay up and take you to our patient. If you’ll come with me this way…”

Laura and Curel followed the nun through the deserted convent, past the reception rooms at the front and the chapel on the main floor, to a staircase at the back.

“Our rooms are up here,” Sister Mary Joel said, ascending the wide steps to a hall with a dozen numbered doors on either side. It looked much like a hotel. The nun walked soundlessly to the end of the corridor as they trailed her, Laura very aware that she was in a part of the convent that lay people rarely saw. The order was Franciscan and she noticed framed pictures of Saint Francis and Saint Claire on the walls.

“We are not a nursing order,” the nun said, reaching her destination and putting her hand on the doorknob, “but we did the best we could for him. Take as much time as you like. I’ll wait for you out here.” She turned the knob and the door swung inward to reveal a sparsely furnished cell: a rough cross encircled by dried palm leaves on one wall, a bureau against the other. They faced a cot on which a man lay, wearing the leather flight jacket of a U.S. bomber pilot. He sat up as the nun stepped aside, and Laura felt the shock of recognition whip through her body as blue eyes met green ones across the narrow room.

The man they had come to get was Dan Harris.
 

Chapter 10

“Christ above,” Curel said, his face blank with astonishment. “Am I seeing things?”

The nun closed the door behind them as Laura and Harris stared at one another, transfixed.

“Laura,” Harris said hoarsely, finding his voice at last. The spell was broken and she ran to him, dropping to her knees beside the cot and flinging her arms around his neck, her face buried against his shoulder.

“Laura,” he repeated softly, pulling her close, running his hands over her upper body as if to assure himself of her presence. “Is it really you?”
 

She murmured something, barely able to speak, and clutched him tighter.

Harris closed his eyes and bent his head, his breath escaping in a soundless sigh.

Curel, who’d thought that two wars had inured him to everything, felt his throat tighten at the scene. He left the room, joining Sister Mary Joel in the hall. She was seated on a straight backed chair, reading.

“I want to leave them alone for a few minutes,” Curel explained awkwardly when the nun looked up from her book.

She gazed at him inquiringly.

“They know one another,” he said inadequately, and turned away.

Inside the cell Harris held Laura off and gazed into her face.

“You cut your hair,” he said mournfully, half laughing.
 

“It will grow,” she whispered, and kissed his hand where it lay on her shoulder.

“God, I can’t believe it,” he said, searching her face. “What are you
doing
here?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“Well, I had a little problem with a German anti-aircraft gun,” he said, sighing. “It seems I was dropping bombs on some sons of the Fatherland and they weren’t too happy about it.”

“Curel told me you were shot down,” Laura said quietly.

“My plane was,” he replied dryly. “I sort of fell down with it.”

“How long ago?”

“Six months. I was flying night runs across the Channel out of Framlingham...”

“England?”

“Yeah. B-25s. We were hitting Rouen pretty hard and I guess they decided to hit back.”

“Did anyone else get out of the plane?”

Harris looked away from her. “My bombardier. We were picked up as soon as our chutes touched the ground. We planned the escape together and he broke out with me but...”

Laura waited.

“He didn’t make it. I had to leave him when he died. The ground was frozen and I couldn’t even bury him.”

Laura put her hands in his. “How did you get here?” she asked gently.

He shrugged. “The camp was in some nowhere town in Germany. I knew if I made it to France I could hook up with some partisans and then find my way home. So I just headed east. It was rough until I crossed the border. I had to hide all the time. But once I got into this country people helped me out along the way, fed me, gave me a bed for the night.” He paused. “I thought of you but I never expected to get this lucky. I didn’t even know if you were still in France.”
 

“Glad to see me?” she asked, smiling.

“What do you think?” He cupped her chin. “‘Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine,’” he said archly, obviously mimicking someone.

Laura gazed at him, puzzled.

“Don’t you recognize it?
Casablanca.”

“What’s that?”

“The movie. I saw it when I was home on leave.”

She raised her brows.

“You’re such a movie freak, I thought...” Then he stopped. “What the hell’s wrong with me?” he asked himself. “Of course you haven’t seen it.”

“Dan, the last American movie I saw was the one in London with you,” Laura said.

“Well, you’ll like it when you do see it,” he said lamely. “Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Lots of stuff about the brave, indomitable Résistance fighting off the Nazis. I’ll take you to see it someday.”

“Someday,” she echoed. “Did you see it with a friend?” she asked, trying to sound neutral. Two years was a long time.

“Yeah. Gamble. He has a moustache and very bad legs.” He winked.
 

She smiled.

“Did you miss me?” he asked softly.

She closed her eyes. “You cannot know how much.”

“I know,” he answered. “I know.”

They said nothing more for a long beat and then Harris cleared his throat.

“So, you’re taking me out of here?” he said, pulling her to him and nuzzling her hair.

“That’s right.”

“Where?”

“To Switzerland.”

“You do this sort of thing all the time?”

“It’s my work now,” Laura said simply. “Getting people like you back to safety.”

He thought for a moment. “Still at it, then, with Vipère?”

“Oh, yes.”

“For Alain?” he asked.

“For Alain and Thierry. For all of them. And especially for me.”

He smiled gently. “That’s my girl.”

Overcome, Laura embraced him again. He felt so incredibly wonderful, exactly as she remembered. He even smelled the same.
 

“Why are you so surprised to see me?” she whispered. “Didn’t you know what I would be doing?”
 

“Well, I knew you wouldn’t be sitting home stitching samplers,” he answered. “But when the Sisters told me that two people would be coming to take me across the border I pictured a couple of...”

“Men?” she suggested playfully, raising her head to look at him.

“Maquis,” he corrected. “I expected to go south, to Vercors.”

She shook her head. “Bern.”

“Oh? Why?”

“You remember that Alain’s sister works in the hospital at Bar-le-Duc.”

“So?”

“So Sacre Coeur doesn’t have the facilities to treat burn cases. They’re transported from there to a special unit in the Hôpital Miséricorde at Bern. With Brigitte’s help we can smuggle you across the border in the ambulance with the patient.”

“You’ve done this before?” he asked.

Laura nodded. “Yes, a couple of times. We can’t use it too often or the Germans might get suspicious, and it has another problem—we have to wait for a genuine burn emergency to show up at the hospital. But it’s virtually foolproof. We save it for special cases.”

“Like me?” he asked, eyeing her intently.

“Like pilots,” she replied evenly. “We didn’t know it was you when we planned this trip.”

“Pilots are special cases, huh?” he asked.

“Yes. Too valuable to keep grounded for long.”
 

He smoothed her hair back from her brow. “You’ve come a distance from Fains, haven’t you?”

She shrugged. “We’re the specialists in this type of work. We have a network for it so the others call us in.”

“I see. How are things in Fains?”

“The same. No, worse. The war is dragging on too long. It’s hard for people to keep their hopes up.”

“That same guy still in charge? That good looking Kraut colonel, what was his name?”

“Becker. Yes, he’s still there.”

“I would have thought they’d replace him when the factory blew.”

“No such luck,” Laura said darkly. She sat back and studied him. “Let me look at you,” she said.

 
The change in him was not shocking, but still very apparent. He had always been slender, yet muscular. Now he was thin; the clothes he wore, obviously a gift from the nuns, hung on him loosely and his cheekbones stood out above the hollows in his face. Scabs and fading bruises disfigured his skin in several places. His thick hair was shot through in several spots with silver and there were bandages on both his hands.
 

“Pretty bad, huh, Boston?” he said sheepishly, noting her expression.

“You look good to me,” she said, belying her concern.

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me two weeks ago when I got here. I looked like Lon Chaney.”

“We’ll just have to fatten you up a little bit,” she said tenderly.

“Nobody would mistake me for Stanley Studley these days,” he said, sighing.

“Oh, is that who you used to be?” she asked, amused.

“I always hoped so,” he said, offhand, and she laughed.

“What are the bandages for?” she asked.

“Frostbite,” he said shortly. “I had it on my feet too. The nuns got a doctor to fix me up. They’ve been real good to me.”

“I never imagined that the pilot Curel told me about was you,” Laura said wonderingly, touching his cheek, still in a daze. “This is like a miracle.”

“You’re the miracle,” he said huskily, kissing her fingers. “You kept me alive in that prison camp. When I knew I couldn’t go on one minute longer, I thought of you and our time together in London. Then somehow I made it through another day.”