When Logan had reconnoitered the area two weeks ago, he had not seen so much as a bowl of sauerkraut. The only thing resembling authority in the region was a pudgy, middle-aged police inspector who, though no patriot by any stretch, collaborated with the utmost laziness. He had not even so much as asked Logan for a look at his papers, and Logan had enjoyed complete freedom to examine the town and study the airfield to insure that it still fit RAF specifications. He had even contacted the local Resistance, which consisted of an elderly farmer and his kindly wife.
Now there were Germans everywhere.
Had word of this mission somehow leaked out? Could he be approaching the final Waterloo for L’Escroc, as he had been fearing for weeks?
Claude pulled the van to a stop behind an ancient truck, his features taut but more with malice than fear.
“Claude,” said Logan from where he had crouched down in the back, thinking the three of them together might appear more suspicious, “can’t you try to look more like a vacationer and less like you’ve just slit a Boche throat?”
Claude harrumphed angrily. “You just keep out of sight and leave this to me!”
Lise shook her head and gritted her teeth against her own angry retort. Couldn’t they just once lay aside their animosity? True, Claude could be unreasonable, but why did Michel antagonize him at every opportunity?
The truck coughed and sputtered on its way, and Claude pulled up into place.
“Qù est le qui se passe? What is happening?” he said, in what seemed a genuine effort to assume an appropriate attitude.
The soldier, however, had no intention of answering such a question, and instead replied with the most dreaded of German commands.
“Ausweis!”
The demand for identity papers should not have bothered these three, for everything they carried for travel and identity purposes was perfectly in order, having, in fact, been obtained through due process from the proper German departments in Paris. The anxiety rising in each stemmed more from the fact that secreted beneath a false floor in the back of the van were three wireless sets.
Claude and Lise, in the front seat, handed their papers out the window and the soldier gave them a perfunctory glance, then handed them back. Claude reached for the gear shift, but the soldier was not finished yet.
“What is in the back of the van?”
“I don’t know,” came Claude’s unimaginative answer.
Lise immediately leaned toward the window. “We borrowed the van from my uncle in Reims,” she said, “so we could tour the countryside, you know. We are on holiday from Paris.”
“And that tarp . . . what is it covering?”
Lise hesitated only an instant. “My brother,” she said, “he is asleep. He works all night in a factory. He was very tired.”
“I must see his papers too. Wake him up.”
Lise climbed in back and pretended to awaken Logan, who groggily rolled back the tarp. Lise took his papers and handed them forward.
The guard seemed to scrutinize them a moment or two longer than the others, then handed them back inside.
“Get out and open it up.”
With but the faintest hint of a groan, Claude complied. Lise resumed her seat. Logan threw aside the tarp but remained where he was, praying that no one would want to search under the floor where he was sitting.
The guard opened the back of the van, poked around, shoved about a couple of boxes they had placed there as decoys, cast Logan a final wary look, and finally closed the door and waved Claude ahead.
Claude pulled the lever down into first and jerked back into motion, while his two passengers exhaled tense breaths.
In another quarter mile they entered the little village of Vouziers. There were German soldiers everywhere it seemed, although those walking the streets paid them little heed. It was hardly a comforting prospect to think of trying to complete their mission under such circumstances.
While dining in the restaurant of one of the town’s two hotels, they learned the cause of the sudden German interest in the area. An army contingent had arrived the day before responding to reports of the presence of several escaped prisoners-of-war in the area. Actually, the German command in Paris had received rumors that this little out-of-the-way village had become a regular link in the underground escape route. For two days all roads had been blockaded and patrols were combing the countryside. No one could say how long they might remain, but the hotel concierge complained that it was already cutting severely into the tourist trade.
After dinner the three discussed what to do. Unfortunately, the radios they now had hidden in their rooms were only receivers brought for the specific purpose of intercepting the BBC broadcast. They had no transmitter; thus there was no way of contacting London about this hitch in their plans. They were all too worn out to consider a return to Paris only to have to turn around for another drive out to Vouziers. Therefore, they deferred their decision until morning.
By the time they awoke, however, it seemed their problem had been solved in spite of their uncertainty. Two escapees had been recaptured some time during the night, and the Germans had pulled out before dawn.
The successive days, while the weather continued fair, were peaceful ones, at least for Logan. Four days passed with no message, and he saw no reason why this excursion could not at the same time be viewed as a bit of a holiday for the beleaguered spies. Even Claude relaxed a little, though he spent most of his time in the cafes drinking too much black-market wine.
Logan and Lise took full advantage of the great weather and the lovely countryside. Leaving the van parked to conserve precious fuel, they rented bicycles at an exorbitant price and explored the banks of the Aisne River and the woods surrounding the town. Except for the tense hour every evening when he bent over his wireless listening for the BBC, Logan gave himself over completely to the holiday atmosphere of the place. At times he practically forgot his reasons for being there and the necessity for a man in his position to remain constantly vigilant.
———
He first spotted the youth after he and Lise returned to the hotel late one day after a picnic and swim. Lise went up to her room for a rest, while Logan tarried in the lobby exchanging pleasantries with a clerk. The coarsely dressed farm lad looked badly out of place in a hotel lobby, despite all his efforts to appear casually interested in a Paris newspaper.
The natural paranoia of his occupation, coupled with the fact that Logan thought he recognized the lad from earlier that morning, put him immediately on his guard. When he bid the clerk adieu, Logan exited the hotel, keeping his own casually camouflaged watch behind him. It seemed better to verify his suspicions sooner than later.
As he expected, the youth followed him. Logan ditched him easily, circled around the block, and came up behind the boy as he stood puzzling over which way his quarry had taken. The moment Logan firmly grabbed his arm from the rear, he nearly cried out with fright.
“Take it easy, young man,” said Logan as he propelled him into a recess between two buildings where they would not attract attention. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I do want to know why you are following me.”
“They told me to be sure,” panted the lad, who looked to be about sixteen years old, and completely unaccustomed to his present calling. “Who you were . . . and . . .”
“And what?” demanded Logan.
“It’s . . . it’s so hard to tell, and they didn’t have a very good description,” rambled the youth, “and they said I had to be sure. And with the Nazis here, I didn’t want to—”
“All right, lad,” broke in Logan, trying not to chuckle at the poor boy’s discomfiture. “You haven’t found a Nazi, and I doubt that I have either. Now let’s see just what we have found. I believe we both know Monsieur Carrel.”
Carrel was the farmer and resister Logan had met briefly on his last visit to Vouziers.
The boy nodded his head vigorously. “Oui!” he said, much relieved. “You are Monsieur Tanant, non?”
“I am,” replied Logan. “Now, why did Monsieur Carrel send you after me?”
“My father knew you were returning during the moon period,” said the young Carrel. “But you had both agreed not to contact each other unless it was an emergency. So he sent me into town every day to see if you had arrived.”
“We’ve been here four days already.”
“I did not look so hard when the Germans were here,” admitted the boy sheepishly. “And you were perhaps out in the country often?”
“Oui, that’s true,” said Logan. “So what does your father want?”
The boy glanced fearfully this way and that before speaking. “He has what the Boche were looking for.”
“An escapee?”
“Oui.”
“And he’d like some help getting him out?”
“Very much so, I think.”