Mateo was pissed off at her. Nancy could feel it coming off him in waves as they sat in the cab of the little truck. He disapproved of what had happened in the café and now was shooting her brooding disappointed looks like a maiden aunt who caught you not sitting up straight at a tea party. What was his problem? He hated the Milice, and now there were four fewer of them in the world, and they’d died easily, not strung up in front of their families or tortured into madness in Gestapo cells.
She was so busy being angry at him that she hardly noticed the track René was guiding them along in the chugging truck, out to the west of the village through copses of beech and chestnut. It ended at a two-story barn.
They clambered out of the truck in silence and followed René into the barn. The air was cool and dry and smelled of leather and fresh straw. René hung up his lamp on a nail hammered into one of the struts between the stalls and rubbed his hands together. They watched as he kicked aside the straw and pulled up a trapdoor, chatting as he did. Not the babbling, ingratiating speech of a nervous man, just a low happy burble. Mateo might have disliked the scene at the bar, but René seemed only pleasantly amused by it.
“Southgate arranged for these to be dropped in February but told me to keep them out of the way until D-Day. When I heard the news of the landings my fingers were itching to tell you, but no Southgate, no orders. Poor René! All these lovely toys and no one to play with them.”
“The Gestapo picked up Southgate in Clermont in March.”
René paused. “That is a shame. A nice man.” Then he giggled. “Though he lacked your flare, Colonel Wake.”
He unhooked the lamp and lowered it so they could see inside the space dug under the barn. A dozen hessian-wrapped tubes. Nancy hadn’t seen a bazooka since training in the Hampshire mud, but she recognized the deadly heft of them, sleeping under the horses.
“How much ammunition do you have?”
“Enough to take out a battalion.” He caught the look in her eye and shrugged. “Fifty rounds for each.”
“Come on then,” Mateo said gruffly, and they began to maneuver each one out of its hiding place and stack them near the door.
Heller had selected an excellent driver and they covered the ten miles to Courçais in just under twenty minutes. Heller struggled to keep his torch steady as they sped up the road, reading to Böhm from his intelligence file on the village and its inhabitants. The last dregs of the fallen brandy bottle were still dripping from the table top into the blood of one of the murdered Milice when Böhm entered the café.
The bar owner stuttered out his account of the woman, the murders and the man who came to meet her. Half an hour later, Heller brought him the news that the checkpoints had been set up and Böhm left the scene of Nancy’s madness. All these strange meetings and coincidences. He felt almost sorry for her. If he could only reach her somehow, make her see. Lights were flickering behind the shutters of a dozen of the houses now. Heller followed him into the square and found him staring up into the star-studded sky.
“Set up the loud speaker,” Böhm said.
“It will take a little time, sir,” Heller replied.
Böhm only nodded. He seemed deep in thought, still looking up into the night.
The bazookas had a thrilling power to them, even in their hessian covers and smelling of straw and earth. Nancy smiled. A round could blow an armored jeep ten feet in the air. If you got lucky, they could disable or destroy a tank. They needed two men to operate them properly, and the guys using them needed to be properly trained or they’d blow each other apart, but it was like being able to carry a cannon over your shoulder.
The door creaked open, and Nancy glanced round.
The girl from the bar. René pointed his pistol from the hip; Nancy held up her hand and he didn’t fire. She stepped forward. The girl was shaking.
“Anne? You followed us? You could have been killed, you stupid child,” she said.
Anne put her hands out. “Please, Madame, take me with you! I can cook, I can clean. Don’t send me back to Maman.”
Nancy sighed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Go home to your family.”
“I want to help fight! My family are Milice, I hate them. I wish my father and brother had been in the bar when you came in.”
Nancy looked at René.
“I don’t know her,” he said. “Or this place. I just use this barn for storage. I don’t like this village. Too fascist. I hear they were very sorry when they found they had no Jews to give up here, though they looked carefully in every single cupboard just to make sure.”
“And I know a way out of town,” Anne said quickly. “A track through my uncle’s farm just north of here. There are already Germans in the square, they are setting up roadblocks.”
“Thanks to your little escapade,” Mateo growled, looking at Nancy. He peered out of the doorway of the barn. “We have to get moving. Lights coming up from the village.”
“Please, Madame!” The girl put her hands together, and she looked like one of those sentimental Victorian adverts of a poor, golden-hearted child praying for her sick puppy. “I do not want to go home.”
Nancy could relate to that. “Fine. Let’s finish loading, and hurry the fuck up.”
A sudden squeal of static booming up from the village made them freeze.
“What the hell?” Mateo said. “Let’s get moving.”
Nancy put her hand on his arm. “Wait.”
The voice curled up from the square. She knew it at once, the exact, slightly accented French of the officer in the Rue Paradis, the man she had seen presiding over the execution in the town square.
“Madame Fiocca? Nancy? I know you are there. This is Major Böhm.” He paused for a moment, as if expecting her to answer, then continued. “That was an ugly business in the tavern, Nancy. As if you want to get caught. I’ve seen it before, the guilt has driven you mad. I wonder how your men feel? Do they know that you’re leading them to ruin, just as you did Henri?”
She heard him. She felt his voice in her bones. She looked around her. The girl had clambered into the cab of the truck; René had paused to listen, his hand resting on the box of ammunition he had just loaded into the back. Mateo had his shoulders hunched, staring at the ground. He would not look at her.
“Madame Fiocca, Henri is still alive.”
Nancy felt her whole body lurch forward into the darkness, felt Mateo’s hand on her elbow, steadying her. She strained forward to listen.
“I swear to you he lives. Give yourself up, Nancy, and I shall arrange for his release. It is as simple as that. You know I am in Montluçon. Come to me.”
She took a step forward as the voice clicked off, and Mateo’s grip tightened on her arm.
“Mon colonel!” he hissed, and she shook herself.
“Who is Henri?” René asked conversationally.
“My husband,” Nancy answered him. “My husband.”
“We have to leave, Nancy,” Mateo said. “Now.”
He almost shoved her into the cab, as if she were a prisoner, then as soon as they heard René climb into the back, he released the brake and they moved off into the dark.