The blaze of sabotage was a beginning, not an end. London kept sending new targets and the campaign to snarl the Germans as they tried to reinforce their troops at Normandy became a battle to harry them, tie them down, exhaust and demoralize them. That meant more drops, more ambushes and a continual round of regular supply runs to the smaller groups of Maquis dotted around the region, all of them on the move to keep out of reach of the Germans.
The days bled one into another as Nancy catnapped in fields waiting for supply drops, or let one of the Spaniards drive and allowed her head to droop, her Bren still on her lap as they bounced through the back roads. The Allies had gained a grip in Europe, and it was their job to make sure they kept it. Once they had ticked off the lists from London, they made their own, working with railway crews to blow engines and tracks, cratering every road wide enough to carry armored trucks, forcing troops into smaller, more vulnerable wagons and then ambushing them in lightning raids and disappearing back into the woods when the road was ablaze with burning vehicles and filled with the screams of injured men. When the guns were blazing, she was alive, absolutely awake. The moment the immediate danger passed, her body shut down and she went through the intervening hours in a daze.
Reprisals against the civilian population had been talked about, of course. Long before Nancy had even got back to England, the Nazis’ habit of shooting hostages in revenge for covert enemy action was well known. At first they had made a pretense of executing political prisoners, couriers and communists they had on hand in their jails, but now all pretense of order, control or justice was gone. Perhaps the French thought the SS wouldn’t behave like that in France. Even when, after the assassination of the Gestapo leader Heydrich, rumors reached them of two Czechoslovakian villages wiped out—men, women and children—they thought no. They only do that in the east.
Now they had their answer. That useless rage the SS men felt when they found their enemy had disappeared into the mountains and valleys was turned on the people, those tied to their land and their families who could not run.
“Shit…” Nancy blinked and lifted her head.
They were traveling down through Védrines-Saint-Loup, and the road was a familiar one. They’d bought supplies from the farm here from time to time. A ragged plume of smoke was rising straight up into the air round the next bend in the road. She rubbed her eyes, peered through the windscreen.
“Shall we go round?” Mateo asked.
Nancy examined the smoke again. “No, if that’s the Boyer farmhouse, it’s been burning a while and it’ll cost us two hours and a ton of fuel to detour. Keep going.”
They saw the first body before they turned the corner. An old man, a worker on the farm who’d sold them cheese from the back barn. The Germans had strung him up in one of the chestnut trees whose heavy branches shaded the road. Nancy felt her mouth go dry. Mateo turned the corner, slowing down.
Two more bodies, the farmer and his wife. Boyer had lost an arm in 1918 so had been spared the call up and worked like a battalion to keep his animals fed and his storehouses full. The couple had been hanged side by side from the door to the loft of the hay barn. Their children were trying to get them down.
The girl, twelve maybe, was up in the loft, trying to saw through the ropes with a penknife while their son, a little younger, was waiting below, his arms raised, ready to catch the bodies. Behind the loft the farmhouse continued to smolder.
“Stop,” Nancy said.
“Nancy, there’s nothing we can do,” said Mateo.
“Stop the fucking car, and take Jules and help those kids get their parents down.”
He knew not to argue when she spoke in that tone of voice. He stopped the pickup, climbed out and through a sort of fog Nancy heard him giving his orders to the boys riding in the back.
Now two of her men were holding the legs of the man and woman, while another pair sawed through the ropes up top. The bodies fell like ripe fruit. It reminded her of that time Henri took her to see the harvest in Bordeaux, how the thick purple bunches fell into the waiting baskets, full of juice, the dusty purple of their skins.
The boy and girl circled round the men, mewling. The girl was pawing at her dead mother’s skirts as the man who had caught her carried her across the yard. They didn’t have time to stop and help bury them. Mateo told them to lay them down under the slope of the woodpile. He closed their eyes and worked the ropes off their necks while the girl sat on the ground between the bodies, still keening wordlessly, turning right and left touching them, holding their hands and dropping them, picking them up again.
Nancy got out of the car, took an envelope from her tunic, counted out a fistful of notes. What was a parent worth? Two parents, a home? She didn’t have enough for that. Enough for food for a few weeks. Should she give it to the boy? Where was the boy?
He came at her fast, with a roar of hatred, his little pocketknife, the knife his sister had been using to try and saw through the ropes, held out in front of him. When did he get hold of that? He was screaming. That it was her fault. That he would kill her. She just watched him come. Didn’t move. Mateo turned from the bodies, raised his gun, but Jules was too quick—he jumped down from the gatepost where he’d been sitting and caught the boy with his rifle butt. The kid went down like a sack of oats, his knife spinning away from him across the dry mud of the yard. Jules bent down, examined the boy, then stood.
“He’ll live.”
Nancy still didn’t move. Jules took the money from her hand then jogged across to the girl and gave it to her. She didn’t understand. You could see that. Her mind was scattered with the horror of it all. Perhaps it would come back. She didn’t even seem to notice her brother laid out on the ground by the gate. Jules pushed the money into the pocket of her pinafore and left her.
Then Nancy’s men were back in the car, and she was back in her seat and the farmhouse disappeared back into the folds of the valley.
Back at the bus, after she’d told them the location and timing of that night’s drop in a monotone, Mateo handed her a single sheet of paper.
“It was pinned to Monsieur’s coat,” he said. Then he picked up his rifle and, with the other senior men, ducked out of the bus, leaving her alone with it.
She unfolded it. Her picture. A good likeness too. “Reward for murderous and unnatural English spy, Nancy Wake, aka Madame Fiocca, aka the White Mouse. A million francs.” That boy could buy a new farm for that. She knew that wasn’t why he had attacked her, but for a moment she was sorry he hadn’t managed to get to gut stab her and claim the cash. Fuck. Get it together, Nancy. If they were ready to do this, hang a husband, a wife and an old man for her sake, what were they doing to Henri? She remembered the first time she had seen Gregory after his stay with the Gestapo, and tasted bile in her throat.
The door of the bus slammed open. It was Denden.
“Nancy! Have you sorted out the reception committees for tonight? They are going to rain all sorts of goodies on us.”
She didn’t reply, just handed him the notice. He scanned it quickly, raised his eyebrows.
“A million francs! My, my! Well, don’t let it go to your head.”
She grabbed a glass off the table and poured herself a large measure of whatever the hell it was in the clear glass bottle on the shelf. Some sort of brandy. Burned like hell.
“It’s not funny, Denden. These sick bastards have my husband, and they know exactly who I am. They’ll take it out on his hide.”
He held up his hands. “Sorry, sorry! Just a stupid joke.”
She poured herself another drink and drank it. Closed her eyes and saw the old man’s body swinging from the chestnut tree. Who would cut him down?
“Yes, it’s all one big fucking joke to you, isn’t it?” she muttered darkly to the glass. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Denden flush.
“What did you say?”
“You know, Gaspard has a point.” She picked up the bottle and slouched opposite him, took another swig. “I’m responsible for hundreds of lives, but you prance around like you’re on holiday.”
He lifted his hands. “Here we go!”
“Sticking your cock in every hole you can find…” The corner of his eye twitched, a sure sign he was hurt. She knew that. Remembered it from training. Didn’t care.
“Fine, Nancy! Take your guilt out on the queer!”
“We’re out there, sacrificing everything…” She could feel the rope in her hands. She saw her own hands tying it round their necks. Saw herself kicking them out of the loft, laughing as the rope squeaked and stretched.
“Yes, come on then, all your self-loathing, lance the boil…”
“And you won’t even pick up a gun, because you are a fucking coward.”
She took another swig, watching how the words stuck him right between the ribs.
“Apologize, Nancy,” he said standing up, his face white.
She looked at him and found she didn’t want to apologize. “That’s ‘Colonel’ to you.”
He waited, and when he spoke again his voice was cold.
“Message from London, Colonel. You are to pick up a shipment of bazookas and a man to train the Maquis in their use. Tomorrow night. Courçais. Rendezvous is the Café des Amis. Contact is blond, code name René. Ask him the time, he’ll tell you he sold his watch for brandy.”
She studied him. He hated her at this moment, she could see it. And it felt right.
“Dismissed.”
He saluted and left her to the bottle.
Still no proper sleep, and when she did fall into a half-doze, she dreamed of Böhm, his face in the square. It kept flickering in between memories of bomb blasts, of flames. Then, as his smile grew kinder, warmer, the flames engulfed her and she woke hearing her mother’s voice whispering in her ears. She came to, finding herself sitting on the edge of a field near Saint-Marc. For crying out loud, she’d been napping in the middle of a drop. The canisters were already coming down, the sky was full of them.
She pushed herself to her feet and Tardivat turned to look at her.
“Mon colonel,” he said softly. “Rest if you can, the men can gather these in. They know what to do.”
She shook her head. “This is my job, Tardi.”
“It is the job of each of us, and the responsibility of each of us.”
Nancy didn’t hear the last part; she was already striding across the field.
One of the containers had a black cross chalked on the side. A care package for her. Buckmaster must have passed the message to Denden that it was coming, and that was why he had been so cheery about the drop tonight. She remembered the first time one came, including face cream from Vera, it had felt like Christmas. She wasn’t looking for presents from Daddy Buckmaster now though. As soon as the container was in the back of the truck she clambered up after it and unbolted the latch, ignoring the grumbling of the men who muttered it “wasn’t procedure.” The cross marked not just the fact that the canister contained a package for Nancy, but also its rough position, so it was the work of minutes to pull it out from in between the packs of plastic explosive. She hopped out of the truck again and leaned against the cab as she unwrapped the bundle. More face cream and a bottle of cologne. The cologne was a decent antiseptic, so she kept that. The cream she would hand over to the first female villager she met. Then there was the letter.
Very sorry to report no news of our friend delayed in Marseille, it said. Typed. She could see Vera at the desk in Baker Street tapping it out while the officers went to and fro in their nice clean uniforms discussing their losses among the agents in France: who was dead, who had burned out, who had ended up in a camp, a cellar. Then a note in Buckmaster’s firm hand. Courage, my dear. The end is coming.
Fuck him. The nearest he’d got to action in this war was watching his agents clambering over an assault course. Had they even bothered trying to get any news of Henri? Of course they hadn’t. They were just pretending to keep her quiet a little longer. Keep her pretty nose to the grindstone until some Nazi sadist smashed her face to smithereens or hanged her from a hayloft. But Böhm knew. Böhm knew where Henri was.