The city was in chaos. There were shops and restaurants with shutters down, fearful of both the Germans and Resistance reprisals as well as various armed groups marauding the avenues looking for victims.
Bill saw a small band of fighters in tricolour armbands aiming their guns at a line of men in front of a red brick wall. He looked away as the shots rang out. This was brutal, antediluvian mob justice, and Bill nodded to himself approvingly.
He returned his gaze as the Parisian streets absorbed the crimson fluids. The ground beneath them was like an island floating on a corrupt sea of blood stretching back through time. The city had been built on the deaths of thousands right back to the Viking siege in 845. Bill gripped the butt of his sub-machine gun and hoped he could get through this particular one. He didn’t have the mythical horns on his helmet, but he still felt every bit the stranger in this peculiar place.
Glancing over at Jack, he could see that Lena was helping him put his armband on. No one wanted to get shot by their own side this late in the game. Jack was grimacing in pain and cursing the world. Bill took another long swig of water.
The truck continued to rumble down the Champs-Élysées. All around, there were resistance liberators on the march. Most were civilians. Some wore French Police uniforms. Bill spotted a man in his fifties dressed in full Great War French infantry uniform, medals and all, carrying an old bolt-action Lebel rifle. The grey-haired man waved at their painted truck with a giant hand as they passed. Bill smiled and nodded back. This was their day.
Most of the Germans had cleared out, but along their route, they had seen a few dead who had been stripped of their boots and rifles and, Bill was in no doubt, their valuables and gold teeth too.
The army had not yet arrived this far into the city. Distant shots rang out, and Bill instinctively ducked, much to Jack’s amusement.
“A little nervous there, Bill?” He chuckled, then stopped and grunted in pain.
Bill just frowned back at him.
The truck veered precariously around some abandoned vehicles. The city was being cleansed of its demons. Bill checked the breach of his Thompson one last time to check the full metal-jacketed holy water was ready to go, should it be required.
Bill sat on the truck floor as the movement got too much. His leg was stinging with the rumbling of the truck’s progress through the city. As they swerved side-to-side, he peered above the olive drab tailgate and saw burnt-out tanks and smouldering vehicles all over the street behind them.
They pulled up outside their old safe house. All the windows were smashed, and the door was hanging loosely from its one remaining hinge. Two Resistance fighters were standing out front. Roland slowed the truck, said something inaudible to them from the driver’s side window, and then carried on along the street. A short while later, they halted at Rene’s cafe.
The extensive glass frontage had somehow remained intact. There were the smouldering remains of two Kubelwagons on the opposite side of the street. Around twenty armed men were gathered around the burnt-out twisted steel carcasses. They stood around, laughed and chatted as the blackened skeletal remains of the cars’ occupants looked on and smoked from every opening.
“You two need to rest up here while we try to find a medic,” Andre told them as he lifted Jack by his arm to his feet.
“What happened to Misselwitz and Barbie?” Bill asked.
“We don’t know for sure, but another group saw staff cars leaving the building a few days ago,” Andre replied, dragging a moaning Jack towards the rear of the truck.
Bill hopped out and then turned to assist Andre. Lena vaulted out, a Sten in her hands, and disappeared into the still-gleaming cafe.
Andre, passing Jack down to Bill, continued, “We attacked the place at the first opportunity, once the uprising started, and found it empty and unguarded. There had been a large fire at the back, where they had been burning files.”
They took Jack, one under each arm, through the glass door. They found Lena had dragged a mattress down the stairs and placed it on the ground near the counter. The cafe was a hive of activity. In the far corner, maps were spread out, and two men placed small coins on various points of interest. Near them, another two attempted to coerce an old radio set into life. Men talked to each other at different tables, completely ignoring Bill and Andre dragging a limping Jack into the cafe and onto the mattress. Everywhere were glasses and bottles. The liberation wasn’t complete, but already the drinking had commenced.
Brandy and comfortable chairs, that’s how a war ought to be fought, Bill thought.
They carefully laid Jack down, and Lena started to check him over. His chest was covered in open wounds. Bill winced as he saw that long, thin strips of skin had been carefully removed, probably using a surgeon’s scalpel. The dried blood was mixed with dirt and pieces of material. Jack had really suffered at the House of Horrors, and Misselwitz and Barbie were facilitators of this fanatical sadism.
Having switched off the truck’s engine, Roland now wandered in, MP-40 slung on a sling casually over his shoulder.
“Here you go, lads.” He placed a wooden crate down. Inside were some apples, a small bottle of clear alcohol, some medical gauze and a loaf of bread.
“You are truly a lifesaver, my friend,” Bill said.
Lena got up, then walked off and disappeared through a door at the back of the cafe.
“It’s not a problem. We need all the men we can gather! We’ll find you a medic and get him back here. Take a day or two to get well. We are working our way through the city, clearing it out house-by-house. Be sure to keep your armbands on at all times. It looks like Jack is in pain, but he should recover. He should rest up. When you feel better, you can come and join us in clearing out the neighbourhoods. These boys in here are all officers of the Resistance. Lena knows most of them. You can trust them, Willy. Just be careful; there’s already been enough death without losing good men now.”
“I’ll need to get clean and make contact with headquarters.”
“No rush, my friend. I need to head back with Andre and hook up with Nicole and the others. She’s going to be famous. An American reporter has been following us and writing a story about her, photographs and everything!”
Lena reappeared with the now refilled water bottles. She left a full one in the wooden crate and helped Jack drink from another. Andre gathered up the others. Rene, the cafe’s hunchbacked owner, followed closely behind. He had an old sword-bayonet in one hand and a crested, grey, tin helmet from the last war in the other. Under his sweaty armpit was a picture frame of some sort.
“Ah! Hello! You look like you have been fighting the Boche already!” he exclaimed, looking at Bill with his one good eye. The other was drifting off down the boulevard somewhere else.
“You should see the other guy.”
“I bet! Time to get them out of Paris completely. Good times ahead, good times,” he muttered to himself as he shuffled around the counter. He placed his war mementoes back on the empty spaces on a glass shelf where they had proudly stood, presumably since the opening day of the cafe, until the Nazis had arrived in the summer of 1940. He carefully placed the picture frame onto an empty picture hook. It was a photograph of a very muddy artillery piece, with three even grubbier soldiers standing in front of it. Above the photo was a group of four medals, including a Croix de Guerre, which Bill knew to be an award for bravery.
“Time to finish this,” Roland interrupted and slapped Andre on the back, who grinned at him. He nodded to Bill, then marched out the door and back to the truck. Bill and Andre turned and watched through the glass as he struggled to get the engine started back up.
“We’re going to find the rest of the guys, get this city cleared, and then try to find where they moved Leo,” Andre said.
“Moved him?” Bill inquired.
“That’s right. He was arrested shortly after you two were, as we were leaving the cabaret lounge that afternoon. As planned, we went separate ways, but he got intercepted and taken in. Some time went by with no news. Then, we got word that they were moving two prisoners from the Gestapo building. A woman rumoured to be one of your lot, probably your friend, Violette, and Leo. We headed down to the bottom of the avenue to follow them, but we arrived too late. I need to find out where they sent him. He’d do the same for me. We have been brothers in arms right back to Verdun. Nineteen sixteen was a long, tough year. Leo saved my life. More than once. The Boche thought they had us then, and they thought they had us this time, but we proved them wrong, right Willy?” His little inset eyes looked like black onyx buttons pushed into a ball of putty.
“Sure did, Andre.”
Bill now realised who it was he’d witnessed get murdered by Misselwitz that day. Should he tell him? It was never good to break a man’s spirit before combat. Bill had seen this happen, and it never ended well.
Bill stared at Andre, building the courage. It seemed too cruel to let him go on a wild goose chase. Maybe he might get hurt or worse trying to pursue his friend when he was already lying cold somewhere, thanks to the young, depraved Nazi, Ernst Misselwitz.
“Here, sit down. I need to tell you something.” So, they sat, and Bill waited, searching for the words. “Listen, Andre, I need to tell you something.”
“What is it, Willy?”
“That day they came to collect Violette? Misselwitz executed Leo outside number eighty-four. Right there, out on the street. I was so sure it was Jack. He had a black hood over his head. He would not have known what was about to happen.”
“Hood? So, he had no idea?”
Andre sat in stunned silence. His breathing grew shallow. He reached into his tunic, pulled out a matching pair of medals, and placed them on the table in front of him. Small brass-coloured discs suspended on silk rainbow ribbons. Everyone who had served in the Great War on the front lines for long enough got one. The other was Leo’s. Andre had been holding it for him, perhaps rescued from the old safe house before they vacated. He sat and just looked at them for several minutes.
Bill looked at Lena. Lena was squatting near the table, and Jack was propped up on his elbow on the mattress by her. They were both just silently watching Andre. Rene was now also staring in their direction from behind the counter. All around, the various other conversations continued. Andre was a veteran of Verdun, one of his best friends, Jean, had gone missing whilst in Gestapo custody, and now he had the news his only other friend, Leo, had been murdered by the same butchers. He looked to be devastated.
Andre carefully turned over one of the medals and felt the raised letters’ surface as if it were Braille. LA GRANDE GUERRE POUR CIVILISATION 1914-1919. He smiled as he gazed down with his small rodent eyes at the award. Then, after a few moments, he shoved it off the table and onto the floor. He said nothing as he stood, walked around, and carefully pushed his chair back in. He picked up his rifle, slung it onto his shoulder, and headed towards the door. He stopped suddenly, placed his hands on his stomach, then spun around, walked back towards the toilet, disappeared inside, and closed the door behind him.
“He’ll be alright,” Bill tried to reassure the others.
Rene looked out at the still smoking vehicles in the street and shook his head. Lena gave a small smile and nodded to Bill. She then stood and made her way to his table. Bill automatically rose back to his feet.
“Look after Jack. Make sure he gets plenty of water,” Lena said, thrusting the half-filled water bottle into his hand.
“I guess I’d better make sure the big bugger lives. Thank you, Lena.”
She grabbed his head on either side, pulled him close, and planted a kiss on his lips.
“I feel better already.”
“That was a kiss goodbye, Bill. Buckmaster is sending for me to assist him in wrapping up the French networks.” Tears had welled in her eyes. She blinked and sent one cascading down her cheek. “I’ll not be returning to Paris. You are to contact the French command upon their approach and assist however you can in the city. Baker Street said they would be sending forward a British medical unit to collect you both from here once the city’s liberation is complete. The hospital is not ready to accept civilian casualties yet, so get him recovered here. Hopefully, the French medic will be along soon.”
“Understood. Look after yourself, Lena. Maybe our paths will cross again one day.”
She turned away and hurried out of the cafe. Bill waited for her to look back. She never did. She turned right, walked the length of the glass windows and disappeared from view.
Bill wandered over to the picture on the wall. He squinted at it and then recognised a very young-looking pair of men he had come to know in Paris. An older-looking Rene was maybe thirty-five, but it was hard to tell with all the dirt and grime on his face. He had his arm around Andre, and just beside them stood the taller, far more handsome, Leo. Rene seemed like one of those blokes who looked old, even when they were young. The other two looked like teenagers. The enthusiasm of young men amid the great adventure of war. They held their rifles casually, like toys. All three of them beaming from ear to ear.
“I had no idea.”
“Happier times. I wasn’t always an ungainly cripple, you know,” Rene replied. “Took a piece of shrapnel to the head and another to the pelvis. Messed my eyes up and my walk, plus it’s pretty hard to stay in shape when you run a cafe.”
“I’m sorry about Leo.”
“Just another one lost. You start to lose count in the trenches, you know. Coming back to the real world after the war, I needed something to do. No one wanted to employ a half-blind cook, so I opened up this place with my wife. You lose them all. In the end, I mean. She died a few years before the Germans arrived. Cancer. I’m glad she never had to see them on our streets, not after what we all had to go through to keep them out last time,” he said, pointing at the photograph.
Just then, Roland came in from outside. The chugging truck engine intensified and throbbed through the cafe as he opened the large door. The glasses behind the bar danced and rattled together like a miniature orchestra made up of only crystal maracas.
“Where the bloody hell has he got to, then? I’ve been waiting to go! This war won’t win itself!”
“Oh shit!” a voice yelled out from the back of the cafe as Bill spun around to see where it had come from.
He made his way over to the gathered huddle and, pushing his way through, at the now-open doorway, found a pair of old farm labourer’s boots. They were attached to the swinging legs of Andre, who was dangling from a plumbing pipe running across the high ceiling, his small eyes bulging out of his lifeless, reddened face. Around his neck was the sling he’d removed from his rifle, which was neatly propped up in the corner of the small water closet.
“And another lost,” Rene said from somewhere behind.