Clash by Night (4 page)

“Something is up at the factory. Curel wants only a few of us in on it now but the operation will expand as soon as we get things going.”

“What’s happening at the factory?”

“I can’t talk about it yet, it’s only a guess. But if we’re right it could be a real chance for us to hurt them.”
 

So it was going to happen. Alain had been involved in forming the anti-German group since the first days of the occupation. He’d been getting together with Curel, a World War I veteran with a lingering score to settle who was as anxious as his younger comrade to oust the invaders.
 

They both heard Brigitte on the stairs and Laura asked, “Does she know?”

Alain shook his head. “No. Keep it between us.” It wasn’t necessary to discuss Henri. He had paid a high price for his new friends and his creature comforts; his family no longer trusted him.

Laura dropped the subject as Brigitte took her seat at the table. They didn’t expect Henri, who was out at the Cheval Blanc in Vitry le Francois with some of his buddies from the garrison.
 

 
Laura served the other two and then sat herself, exchanging a covert smile with Alain before he said a swift grace for them and dug into his food. Her relationship with him was complicated; she knew that he was drawn to her, partly because he wanted what Thierry once had, and partly because their complementary natures pulled them together. Laura ignored the infatuation, certain that he would grow out of it and respond to the girls his own age who constantly sought his attention. Alain was handsome, and had about him that aura of reckless abandonment women always found alluring. In ten years he would achieve his ambition and be just like his revered older brother.

“Pass the butter, please,” Brigitte said, and Laura looked at her, startled out of her reverie. Brigitte was the fairest of the three Duclos children, and at twenty looked like a Dresden doll: pale skin with the texture of Meissen china, light blue eyes, with fine flaxen hair.

“What?” Laura said.

“The butter,” Brigitte repeated, smiling. Laura gave it to her, wondering how the local turmoil would affect this member of the family. Brigitte said so little that it was almost impossible to determine what she was thinking. Her mother had died when she was seven, and as the only woman living in a house with three men she’d been very protected during her childhood and adolescence. Laura was afraid that her innocence would not survive the occupation unsullied.

“How did it go at the hospital today?” Laura asked her.
 

Brigitte shrugged. “All right. The boche are everywhere but they leave us pretty much alone.”

Alain stared at her. “How nice of them, to leave you alone in your own country,” he said sarcastically.
 

Brigitte sighed. “All I’m saying is that they don’t bother you if you do your job and mind your own business. You know that if you step out of line there will be trouble, but their commandant doesn’t let them interfere.” She subsided with finality, indicating that was all she had to say on the subject.

“Yeah, that Becker is a great guy,” Alain said savagely, stabbing at a potato floating in his soup.

Laura caught his eye and shook her head. They finished dinner companionably, exchanging gossip and the usual pleasantries. Laura avoided the topic most on her mind until Brigitte had finished helping her with the dishes and gone outside.

“You see what I mean about her?” Alain whispered to Laura, as soon as the younger girl had left. “I’m going to keep her in the dark about this.”
 

“Fine. The fewer people who know at this point the better. But she’s no friend of the Germans, Alain, you have to know that.”
 

“If she isn’t working against them she is!” he replied fiercely, pounding his fist on the table. “One collaborator in this house is enough!”

Laura bit her lip and looked away. Alain couldn’t understand his father’s motivation; he saw fear only as a hindering weakness to be dealt with and overcome, like a sprained ankle or an injured hand. Feeling it was unavoidable but surrendering to it was inconceivable.

“You’d better go,” Laura said.

He stood and embraced her. “Anything I can do,” Laura said, smoothing his unruly hair, so like his brother’s. “Anything.”

When Alain held her a little too long she stepped back, and he released her, his eyes meeting hers, then drifting away.

“Be careful,” she added.

“I will.”

Alain slipped out the back door and ran across the open field between his house and his neighbor’s barn. He tapped on the door, and it was opened by Curel, the hero of the Somme, who waited for him to step inside before throwing the wooden bolt on the door.

Alain looked around him. In the glow of the oil lamps suspended from the oak beams overhead he could see Langtot, the farmer, and the Thibeau boys who worked at the factory with him. A year apart, they were enough alike to be twins, and wore identical expressions: scared, hopeful, determined. They looked the way he felt.

“Welcome, Alain,” Curel said quietly at his back. “I think we have some work to do.”
 

Alain turned to him and smiled.
 

And in this way all over France that summer, in hamlets like Fains-les-Sources and in big cities, from the chateaux of the Loire valley to the shepherd’s huts of the Auvergne, the Résistance was born.

Chapter 2

August humidity blanketed Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in torpid, windless heat as Captain Daniel Patrick Harris, USMC, crossed the camp’s central common and tossed away his cigarette. It was a muggy, overcast day, threatening the relief of rain which never seemed to materialize. Harris pulled his uniform blouse, which stuck wetly to his backbone, away from his body and glanced at his companion.

“Another fight last night in the mess,” he said. “The stockade is already so full it looks like the hog pen at the county fair. If this weather doesn’t break soon we’re going to be locking up everybody in uniform in North Carolina.”

“Ah, they’re just jumpy, antsy. We keep waiting for something to happen and nothing ever does,” the other man, a second lieutenant named Gamble, answered. “What do you think this is all about?” he added, nodding toward the clapboard building they were approaching.
 

They walked up the steps and filed into the designated meeting room with about eighty of their colleagues. They’d been called to assemble that morning, and speculation was rife about the reason for such an impromptu gathering, which was an unusual event.
 

Harris shrugged. “Maybe the Krauts declared war on us overnight and Forrest is going to give us the good news.”
 

Gamble grinned. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he said, familiar with his friend’s restlessness. “I hate to disappoint you but I heard Forrest needs a new driver for his staff car. They’re probably going to announce a lottery for the job.”

“No chance. Too late for you, Gamble. They’ve got some butt kissing corporal already picked out for that cushy spot,” Harris replied dryly.

Gamble continued to smile as they found seats at the back of the room while the rest of the men milled around, talking, laughing, exchanging information. Harris folded his arms on his chest and stretched his long legs in front of him. His eyes roamed the gray institutional walls, unrelieved except by the occasional presence of notices tacked at eye level. A small podium faced the rows of folding chairs, and off to the side stood a tristaff holding three flags: U.S., state of North Carolina, and the scarlet and gold banner of the Marine Corps. The commander, Major Forrest, took his place behind the podium and watched the men settle down. When all was quiet he conducted the usual preliminaries and then came to the point of his address.
 

“Men, this meeting will be brief as I’ll get right to the heart of the matter at hand. All of us would like to do something about the developing crisis in Europe, and it now appears that one of you will have that opportunity. We’re looking for a volunteer to undertake a mission there, and you have been summoned here today because you are all qualified for the job. We’re asking for volunteers because the task will be difficult and dangerous, and I’ll think no less of any man who doesn’t speak up for it. I’ll need to hear from you soon, because the selection must be made by Friday. Get in touch with Lieutenant Gray if you’re interested. That’s all. Dismissed.”

Forrest saluted smartly and walked out of the room as the men rose to their feet. Harris and Gamble exchanged glances as a buzz of conversation rose around them.

“Going to volunteer?” Gamble asked slyly, already knowing the answer.

“Hell, yeah,” Harris replied. “It beats marking time around here, making practice jumps into tobacco fields and playing the pinball machine every Saturday night.” He extracted a packet of cigarettes from his breast pocket and lit one, his carefully measured movements designed to conceal a growing inner excitement.

“I noticed you haven’t been taking advantage of the local talent,” Gamble observed, referring to the available area women who hung around the PX and the bars frequented by the enlisted men. “What’s the matter, you religious?”

“Not religious,” Harris answered mildly, as they went back outside. “Just particular.”

“Well, Danny boy,” Gamble said, slapping him on the back, “it sounds like Forrest’s little mission could be just the thing for a particular guy like you. But count me out, buddy. This war is coming for us too, but until it does I’m keeping myself safe and sound in the Old North State.”
 

Harris didn’t reply because he wasn’t listening. He exhaled a stream of smoke, wondering how he could get the major to choose him from the field of applicants.

He volunteered that afternoon. That night, he lay awake in his bunk amid the nocturnal sounds of the camp while the rest of the men slept. He tried to think of the possible questions he might be asked when screened for the mission and planned his responses. It was a technique that had served him well since he was quarterback of the football team in high school, waiting to be grilled by the coach about his choice of plays in a game. But this time there was more at stake than the county championship, and his role in the outcome was a moral issue as well as a sporting one.

Could he persuade Forrest to pick him for the mission? He rolled over onto his stomach as he thought about it, dying for a cigarette. But getting nailed for smoking after lights out wasn’t going to endear him to his superiors. He propped his chin on his crossed arms and fought off the nicotine fit, blinking in the light from the guardhouse beacon as it passed the window above his head.

Harris was sure that he could get in the running, but the actual choice was going to be unpredictable, up for grabs. Straight laced types like Forrest sometimes went for a rigidly obedient tin soldier rather than an innovative guy who could think on his feet. The military viewed too much imagination and independence with suspicion, but that’s exactly what they needed for an act like this, if only they would see it. There was no doubt in his mind that he was right for the job. His confidence had a nice edge of arrogance and it gave no sign of failing him now.

 
He turned restlessly again, and stared at the peeling, water stained ceiling. The humidity corroded everything in this climate. Although the base command had repair details painting and refurbishing constantly, the whole place was in a continual state of scabrous decay. As he shifted he heard the rustle of paper in his breast pocket, and removed a letter he had received that day from a girl he’d known at college in Evanston. He tried to read it once more by the beacon’s intermittent light, but gave up, refolding it and putting it away. He remembered it well enough anyway: chatty, suggestive, uninspired. She was a nice girl, but already picking out the wallpaper for her little white house with the picket fence. All she needed was a husband to fit into the picture.
 

He sighed dismissively, his mind returning to the mission. He could do it, he felt that with an atavistic passion, with the certainty of a saint. He could do it cold, whatever it was, if only they would give him the chance.

The first shimmer of dawn was appearing in the patch of sky he could see from his window, and he accepted that he would not sleep that night. He laced his fingers behind his head and waited for reveille. If he had to face another week in this steaming greenhouse, chain smoking and ticking off the long summer hours which passed with agonizing slowness, he would go mad. The world was boiling up around him and he was longing to kick over the traces and jump into the fray. Why should he be stuck in the Carolina flatlands, growing a heat rash, when there was so much to be done? He was tired of waiting; he wanted to get into it
now
.

Gray light was filling the squad room, but nobody stirred, nobody moved. Soldiers slept like the dead until forcibly roused. Harris sat up and pulled off his skivvy, wiping his sweating face with it. He was always hot in this place. He thought longingly of the cool breezes off Lake Michigan, fresh and invigorating. Even a Chicago winter now seemed attractive in retrospect. Then the cool breezes became Siberian headwinds, and the temperature often plunged below freezing at Halloween and remained there until Easter. But his recollection was selective. He remembered roaring blazes in stone fireplaces, the sledding races, the soothing, cleansing whiteness of the first snowfall. He conveniently forgot the paralyzing ice storms and getting up at five-thirty to scatter rock salt on the sidewalk before his father’s hardware store. It would never have occurred to him that he was homesick, though he had all the symptoms of that disease; he just didn’t like the climate of North Carolina, that was all.