Moving off like an animal in the wild, Domingo tore off through a wild berry patch. Thorns ripped his hands, and he flattened when a German guard issued a sharp command. His partner breathed far too loudly.
Boots again clacked on stone, so Domingo crawled to a break in the bushes and stared into the rail yard. Not a soul. He pulled out Aitaita’s gold watch: 10:30.
Half leaping, half-crawling, he made room for his comrade. Tension flowed between them, and soon, his partner pointed left down the tracks. The light from their cigarettes clearly marked three Bosche guards as they smoked, chuckled and intermittently broke out in loud guffaws. Their guns dangled from their shoulders.
Domingo gulped cool night air and stepped across one set of tracks, then the second, his flexible espadrilles making no sound. The outer wall lay in dark shadows. For that, he breathed merci, and continued in a crouching run.
Around the corner, a signal post rose between the two sets of tracks. Loud laughter wafted from the guards as he darted back to the berry patch with his partner close behind.
The distance between this and the next detonation location allowed five minutes to set each charge, unless plastiques took longer. Well, they would soon find out.
Most of the group, hunched down like jackals, waited for them. Domingo’s chest leaped at every chestnut that crunched under a boot, but the German guards still talked and chortled, unaware of anything amiss.
In the warmth of close bodies, Paul’s eyes flamed against the night sky, his gestures mimicking an orchestra director.
“You two take out the guards on each side. I’ll set the charges nearest the station house, with La Foudre.”
“Girotte, you and your partner kill the other three, and the rest of you, keep watch with the guards’ guns.”
A twig fell from the nearest tree and someone startled, but then the group quieted, a silent intensity connecting each man. Like a panther, every nerve taut, they awaited their prey.
Stay low, watch, light your charge, flee with hell at your heels.
Engine brakes squealed, train cars clanged together and tore apart with nerve-jangling wrenches as workmen unhooked heavy iron latches. Shouts rang across the rails. Axle grease and coal dust wrapped the yard like a shroud.
After picking and shoveling all day, the workmen’s soft conversations carried on the slight breeze. Help them hear the alert and stay clear. Domingo had no wish for innocents to die.
The smell of Nobel’s number 808 explosives, oddly akin to almonds, but stronger, hovered. Then, like a shrill night bird’s call, only much louder, the yard whistle shrieked. The killers loped along the path between brush and tracks.
Domingo shadowed Paul, stooping and twisting, all the while balancing his delicate box like an egg basket. Once, a sharp cry was stifled abruptly, followed by a heavy thud. One Kraut would never again see his fatherland.
They enacted a swift-paced scene, Paul in the hero’s role. At one point, Domingo glimpsed the partisans-turned-patrollers, now toting heavy German Karabiner 98k’s. All moved according to plan. He might be watching a movie.
Paul slipped ahead of him as if he had blown this very station ten times before. Domingo handed him tools. One by one, Paul used and exchanged them.
Aluminum-colored wire, tape, tweezers, pliers—ordinary useful items one might employ to fix things, hold pipes together, or even pull a child’s painful loose tooth. But tonight, they became lethal instruments.
Wire ends scattered at their feet—such a slight noise—but the gentle twang echoed in the stillness. Paul’s fingers twisted, his elbows jutted. At last, his shoulders relaxed. Sweat doused his forehead as he motioned for Domingo to light the farthest charge.
The charge barely ignited before Domingo slid to the next. Snort of sulfur-blue ... splash of light ... sizzle. A flaming trail darted along the fuse, but Domingo rejected his childhood fascination with fire.
Run—jump those bushes. Torpedo as far and as fast ...
Paul crashed into him and they tumbled along a ravine. Moments later, a blast rent the night with a stunning display. The force almost covered the screams coming from the yard. Then another blast, and silence. Finally a third, and two more on the other side.
Domingo held his breath. One more. Come on Giriotte.
Low to the ground, Paul held his temples. A groan, prayer-like, escaped Domingo’s lips as two more men slid against him.
Paul braced his fist in the air. Pow! Ker-slam! The final detonation shook the earth with a magnificent fireworks display.
Paul exhaled. “We did it.”
Père Gaspard seemed very near, with Good Friday words followed by the annual crack of a book he slammed shut behind the altar. Every Holy Week, this ritual in the darkened sanctuary signified Roman soldiers sealing the tomb. Then Père’s “It is finished!” rang out. Domingo felt the same rejoicing this night. It was done.
By the time they reached the incline’s crest, the rail yard swam in flames and fumes. Smoke spiraled above the tallest pines. They watched, entranced, as three more of their team crawled over the ridge.
But not Giriotte. Where was he?
Paul stared into the conflagration. “Five more minutes before this place crawls with Huns.”
Time stalled. Hurry, Giriotte. I won’t mind you this time. You can bump into me on harsh turns—come on, come on!
But when Paul gave the signal, Giriotte still had not arrived. Help him, Lord. All the way to the lorry, Domingo pled. Please, in this last few seconds...
The engine sputtered to life. Explosions rose from the valley like the maelstrom he and Katarin observed that night over Albi.
“That’s the munitions arsenal blowing.”
Someone produced a flask, and Paul commented. “Ironic—we call them Bosche after their scientist who figured out how to convert Haber’s atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia on an industrial scale ... for explosives.”
Another partisan chuckled, and Paul continued. “They both got a Nobel prize for their work, and what do we get?”
“Sweet success!” The flask circled again, but Domingo had no heart for this empty victory. Dust and sulfur ringed his tongue, and he could think only of Giriotte. An urge to plunge into the darkness and launch a search nearly overwhelmed him.
At the same time, calm logic reigned. If they turned back, even more men would perish. The night offered no figure loping toward the lorry, wild flailing arms against the orange and yellow background.
“Above all else, maintain hope.” Domingo closed his eyes against his knees. “Remember, we are les inconnus.” Père’s words helped him as dirty sweat rolled down his face.
He drank from a canteen his neighbor offered and passed it along. When he wiped his face, Giriotte’s eyes rose before him. Who could ever fathom the price he may have paid for that rail yard?
Unknown—but known to God. Père shared one of his family stories, using his uncle as an example. “He was gassed in the Great War, and my grandfather found him in a field hospital. Grandfather watched over him until he died.”
Starlight reached down through the cracks, and Domingo let his mind wander back to that other war. So many men fit the meaning of les inconnus—buried far from home and remembered only by their loved ones. The lorry faltered, and Domingo shook himself back to the present.
Perhaps Giriotte had gotten away. Maybe the inferno disoriented him, and he’d run in the wrong direction, but still away from the rail yard. One day, they might meet again on some back woods path, and Giriotte could exult in telling him all the details.
One by one, the other partisans dozed. Good, they needed the rest before their next missions. Domingo leaned his head against the rough lorry wall, but sleep remained a stranger.
~
Into the darkness before dawn, Kate continued transmitting. Once, she glanced out the window and recalled what Père said earlier. Domingo’s home meant everything to him, like that Cajun who left America. Did people with a home live without the restlessness that never left her?
Finally, she packed up the set, wishing she could haul it down the stairs for Père. During the weeks since her mission to Albi, she’d longed for another courier assignment. When Eugene blew her circuit’s cover, another of her temporary homes had passed into the realm of mystery. Left without even a mailbox for messages, she felt at loose ends.
Then Domingo became her guide and they discovered Monsieur le Blanc. Something had happened inside her as she waited with the injured Monsieur alone on that rugged wilderness trail, vulnerable to the Gestapo. She found his briefcase, learned his identity, and pondered the flawless timing involved in this unlikely reunion.
Then Domingo brought partisans to transport Monsieur to the Résistance farm. Amid animals and manure, Monsieur’s dying became a sacred time, for he gave proof that he was her father’s brother.
She and Addie used to giggle over Aunt Alvina’s matronly brassiere with its severe stays, but the contraption provided a perfect metaphor for what happened inside her when she heard his revelation. Monsieur’s dying message reinforced Kate like that brassiere reinforced her aunt's figure.
Finally, so many of her questions found answers. At last, her meager fragments of information about her father came together.
What were the chances of meeting a relative would bless her with clear recollections of her father and mother? Much like her first rendezvous with Monsieur in London, the scene defied understanding, yet Domingo had witnessed it, too.
From now on, she could cast aside anxiety about her next move. If the Almighty could bring her uncle to her on a trail at the edge of the wild Massif Central, was anything impossible?
Beside a dwindling fire, like a long smudge on the floor, Père Gaspard slept. Kate sank onto the bunk and tried to clear her mind of SS troop movements, bridges blown, rail yards destroyed, and supplies needed. But lists of coordinates ticked before her like a hundred clocks. Which mission had included Domingo?
Impossible to know, and she must sleep. She buried her face in her pillow.
The aroma of boiling coffee woke her in full daylight. She wiped sleep from her eyes—a new day, and tonight would bring another location, along with more meaningful work. The thought spurred her out of bed to splash her face with hot water burbling on the woodstove.
The door creaked, and silence bade Kate to look up. One glance told her something terrible had happened. Père’s drawn countenance paled against his black hood. Even his wild hair seemed limp and its roguish red diminished.
But he made an attempt at cheer. “I trust you had a good sleep?”
“What is it?”
“The SS has gone into a fervor, burning villages, looting everything in sight. They’ve even ransacked peasants’ farms. From the smoke...”
Kate’s heart leapt into her throat. “Domingo’s mother?” Père Gaspard whitened even more at the echo of gunshots in the distance.
“I’ll fetch that transmitter and we’ll be off. The lorry will meet us at ten o’clock. Perhaps the driver will have some idea...”
He mounted the ladder and straggled down under the radio’s weight. She handed him coffee, and they drank in quietness. Then he lifted the radio again, and at the meeting point, settled his burden on the earth. He sank on a fallen log, twisted like a pretzel.
A squirrel clattered down a pine, scattering bark every which way, and Kate hurried to see what chased it. Good pretense for a walk, after being inside so long. In the heavy pines, she mouthed fervent prayers before turning back.
Père Gaspard’s rested his head on his arms. A while later, he paced between two massive pines and a chestnut, still silent.
On one pass, Kate dared a question. “How do you keep from hating the SS?”
“Who says I don’t hate them?”
Digesting his answer led to a question that haunted her since the war began. Alexandre gave his life for freedom—she accepted that long ago. He knew he risked death, like Charles Tenney and so many others.
But why didn’t an all-powerful Being intervene for all these innocent lives? For those children murdered with Sancha, and the helpless elderly, like Madame Ibarra?
Something stirred in the bushes across the road and alerted Père. Then, like a lamb’s mewling, a far-off noise drifted from somewhere.
Ramrod straight, he strained until the noisy lorry appeared over the last bump, a veritable khaki warrior. Its dented front fender trembled when the driver braked. He leaped out and broke into the Langue d’ Oc. Kate caught only some village names, the SS, Gestapo, and gendarmes.
He apologized for keeping them waiting. Then, palms uplifted, he croaked, “Where can we go now?”
Père looked years older today than yesterday. “Henri, you know these parts. Where would a transmitter be safe? The communication with London must continue tonight.”
Henri, a long-nosed fellow with scabby ears from sun and wind, cranked his enormous hands to his hips. His elbows stuck out like bony chicken wings—yes, like those raw bones Kate and Addie once split while butchering a dozen roasting hens.
When Henri silently rubbed his forehead, Père’s face distorted in thought, and Kate’s heart fell. Surely, there must be a place—there simply had to be.