Scorched Earth Read online

  ‘I’ll stand for anything that has alcohol in,’ Joel said cheerfully.

  The first cork sailed across the high-ceilinged room and Henderson drank from the foaming bottle before handing it across. Joel took three foamy gulps, then passed the bottle on to Paul as Henderson began untwisting the wire clamp that held the cork in the other magnum.

  ‘I’ve really come to admire and respect you boys,’ Henderson said, as he gave a nod to Edith. ‘And the odd girl, of course.’

  Henderson paused, making a rare display of emotion as everyone looked his way.

  ‘Marc, you’ve been with me from the start,’ Henderson said. ‘You’re the one that taught me what young people are capable of doing. Paul, you probably have the biggest brain in this room. You’re not the strongest, but I’ll always respect how hard you had to push yourself to get through training. Joel and Sam, you have guts and integrity and I know you’ll go a long way together when this war is over. Edith, you’ve never trained on campus, but over the last eight months you’ve become one of us where it matters: in the field. PT, you’ve swindled and conned your way into my heart!’

  Everyone went stiff as Henderson turned towards Luc, apart from Jae, who was passing out a mixture of unmatched glassware and enamel mugs so that they didn’t have to keep slugging champagne out of bottles.

  ‘I’m not going to pretend that I like you,’ Henderson told Luc, to a couple of uneasy laughs. ‘I wish I could dig into your soul and rip out whatever makes it so dark. But I can honestly say that with my back to the wall in a scrap, there’s nobody on earth I’d rather have on my side. So for one night, let’s forget about the war and welcome back our friends. I raise my glass – well, my tin mug – to all of you, and a toast to the future.’

  Everyone moved towards the middle of the room and chinked glasses, mugs and bottles together.

  ‘The future!’

  PT raised a second toast. ‘Henderson’s boys!’ he shouted.

  Things got noisy as they went for a second toast. Then they all settled around the room, breaking into separate conversations as they drank the champagne. Henderson liked a drink and even in these hard times he’d amassed a cache of four magnums, a bottle of whisky and some revolting red wine which they left until everything else had run out.

  Booze, mixed with evening heat and a sparse diet, meant they were all soon drunk. Luc had invited his girlfriend Laure up from her apartment two floors down. She was a dark-haired woman of twenty-two, and while she canoodled with Luc, her five- and six-year-old sons rampaged through the apartment.

  Marc, Paul and Sam acted like drunk kids, chasing the little lads around, having mock fights and swinging them by their ankles. It was a taste of childhoods that had ended too soon.

  Maxine knocked on the door at nine. She carried cold beer and a bag filled with butter, paté, tomatoes and fresh white baguettes. Paul ate greedily, but the rich food lying on top of champagne made him queasy. He curled up on Marc’s bed, feeling a mattress under his body for the first time in almost two months.

  Henderson rarely smoked, but once they’d eaten Maxine’s food, he shared a cigarette with her on the balcony. Eyebrows were raised as the pair discreetly moved into Henderson’s bedroom.

  ‘How’s your wife, Captain Henderson?’ Luc shouted.

  ‘How’s your girlfriend’s husband?’ Henderson shot back.

  Laure looked annoyed, but Sam and Marc broke into fits of drunken laughter.

  As the sun set, Luc helped Laure carry her dozing boys downstairs and by the time he came back up, everyone was either asleep or getting ready for bed.

  The electricity had been off all night, so Luc helped Edith collect plates and glasses before joining her at the sink.

  ‘You wash, I’ll dry,’ Luc said cheerfully.

  Luc usually dismissed domestic chores as women’s work and Edith’s jaw almost hit the floor.

  ‘If this is what having a girlfriend does for you, I’m all for it,’ she said.

  ‘Laure’s so nice,’ Luc said. ‘I know she’s older and she’s got a husband in Germany, but I really like her.’

  There was no soap or detergent, so Edith only had tepid water and a square of old cloth to get things clean.

  ‘You seem to get on with her boys as well,’ Edith said admiringly.

  Luc walked to the dresser with a stack of dry plates. ‘Did you enjoy tonight?’

  Edith nodded. ‘How often can we forget about everything and have a laugh?’

  Once the plates were dry, Luc put out the last gas lamp and stepped into the bedroom he shared with PT. The room had two single beds, but was barely wide enough to walk between them. PT had fallen asleep drunk, with his shirt unbuttoned, one leg hanging off the side of the bed and his hairy balls catching a breeze through the window.

  PT’s trailing foot touched the floor. It would have been easy to step over but Luc couldn’t resist stepping on his toes.

  ‘Jesus,’ PT gasped, as he sat up and clutched his foot.

  ‘Sorry,’ Luc said, smirking in the dark. ‘Hope it didn’t hurt.’

  ‘Thought you’d be downstairs, with Laure,’ PT said, as he inspected his big toe. ‘Was Mr Penis out of order after all that champagne you drank?’

  ‘Laure doesn’t like me staying overnight, in case the boys blurt something to her mother-in-law,’ Luc explained.

  ‘You wanna make some cash?’ PT asked, as Luc dropped his trousers.

  ‘How?’ Luc asked.

  ‘You and me don’t have much in common,’ PT began, ‘but money – or rather the lack of it – is one of them. Paul’s inherited from his folks. Edith was left property by Madame Mercier; Marc’s got a rich girlfriend. But the war will end sooner or later, and you and me’ll have no money and no family.’

  Luc looked intrigued. ‘Keep talking.’

  ‘I tracked down Pierre Robert today,’ PT explained. ‘I think he’s reverted to being a full-time gangster, no Milice uniform.’

  ‘Milice don’t work where they live,’ Luc pointed out. ‘The resistance would crucify them.’

  ‘Robert’s associates run a black-market food racket. Food goes out of a little depot, money winds up across the road to a place called Bistro le Baron. I got up in the boss’s office today and there’s a guy with a ledger. He sits there counting piles of money, all day long.’

  ‘Definitely interested,’ Luc said. ‘Is it just about the dollars, or is killing Commander Robert still part of the plan?’

  ‘I loved Rosie and watched her die,’ PT said. ‘I’ve worked out a plan that should enable us to do both.’

  ‘Why pick me?’ Luc asked.

  ‘Exactly like Henderson said earlier: if it comes to a scrap, there’s nobody I’d rather have on my side.’

  ‘Just the two of us?’ Luc asked.

  ‘Three would be better. I’ll ask Marc in the morning. So are you in or not?’

  Luc nodded slowly. ‘I’ll look at your plan when I’m not boozed up. If it’s any good I’m in for sure.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Wednesday 16 August 1944

  Paul slept solidly and woke feeling rested, with morning sun warming his bare midriff. He found Marc, PT and Luc sitting on the living-room floor, around a low coffee table.

  ‘Morning,’ Paul said, before looking at Marc. ‘Sorry about your bed.’

  Marc waved a hand dismissively. ‘Couldn’t make you sleep on the floor after all you’ve been through. You really knocked that champagne back. How’s your head?’

  Paul smirked. ‘Not great, but it was a good night. So what are you guys plotting?’

  PT explained about finding Pierre Robert and that they’d worked up a plan to take him out and rob the gangsters’ cash.

  ‘You can come if you want,’ PT added.

  But Paul didn’t seem enthused. ‘Killing Robert won’t bring my sister back,’ he said dourly, as he settled on a couch. ‘You guys do what you have to, but I’m not interested.’

  Marc nodded sy
mpathetically. ‘You’re better off resting, after all you’ve been through.’

  ‘Henderson’s still holed up in his room with Maxine,’ PT explained. ‘It’s a bit early, but we want to sneak out of here before he starts asking what we’re up to.’

  ‘I’ll try and cover for you,’ Paul said. ‘Where’s everyone else?’

  ‘Joel and Sam are still sleeping off the booze,’ Marc said. ‘Edith’s chasing a rumour that there’s gonna be some bread on sale in the market and Jae’s riding her bike back to Beauvais.’

  PT, Luc and Marc made final preparations as Paul went to the kitchen. He took the last of the hard black bread and smeared it in the synthetic gloop that the German food scientists tried to pass off as jam.

  Although the Nazis were increasingly focused on the Allied advance, there were still Gestapo teams out hunting the resistance. Henderson made sure there were enough guns and ammo stashed to put up a fight if the front door got kicked in, but their supplies of automatic weapons, grenades, ammunition and explosives were stored under a drain cover in the building’s basement.

  The cache wasn’t huge, and the boys had to travel light because there was a chance they’d be stopped at a checkpoint. Large bags were the most frequently searched, so Luc carried a large suitcase filled with clothes. The idea was that he’d join any checkpoint queues first. Hopefully, Marc and PT would get waved through while the Germans searched his bag.

  The road they lived on ran 100 metres down a steep hill, before reaching the banks of the Seine less than 50 metres from a road bridge. There were often a couple of taxi-carts standing around here, but the boys were out of luck.

  ‘Always the way when you’ve got stuff to carry,’ PT moaned.

  ‘You said Robert didn’t get to Bistro le Baron until lunchtime yesterday,’ Luc said. ‘If he’s a creature of habit, we’ve got bags of time.’

  The checkpoint on the bridge was unmanned. Once they reached the Seine’s east bank, Luc walked ahead and Marc dropped back. The Germans were less likely to stop one young man than a group of three, and if one of them got hassled by a patrol there was a chance that the other two could rescue him.

  They kept to back streets as much as possible. There was more traffic noise than usual, but they were almost halfway to Bistro le Baron before they had to cross a major road.

  Luc stopped at the kerb as three Kübelwagens sped past. This was notable, because German vehicles usually travelled alone and took unpredictable routes to avoid resistance attacks. All three cars were so heavily laden that their rear bumpers almost scraped the road. One had suitcases lashed together and poking out of an open trunk. Another had crates of wine and a large, landscape painting on the back seat.

  The streets had been quiet for so long that Luc felt strange having to look both ways for traffic. He crossed behind a truck crammed with OT officers and their luggage. As he reached the opposite kerb a convoy of two dozen German vehicles, ranging from motorbikes to trucks, rumbled into the street.

  PT and Marc wouldn’t be able to cross until this line of vehicles passed through, so Luc turned into a side street and waited by a beautifully-kept flower garden in front of a community meeting hall.

  A frail voice surprised him. ‘Why dig up my flowers?’ the man said, as if he was asking himself. ‘If I plant vegetables, they’ll get stolen.’

  Luc turned and studied an old man, holding a rake and chuckling. He wore glasses with one lens cracked and had his shirt done up in the wrong button holes.

  ‘How long have they been driving past like this?’ Luc asked.

  ‘Oh!’ the old man said dramatically. ‘I’ve seen hundreds. All packed up to leave town. I’m told there’s been trouble.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Smashing windows, stealing things they want to take back to Germany.’

  ‘Good riddance,’ Luc said firmly. ‘Though you can bet it’s administrators and bureaucrats clearing out, not soldiers.’

  The old man gave a wry smile. ‘They’re getting out before the city turns into hell,’ he said.

  The convoy had now passed and Luc looked behind and saw Marc and PT. The pair dashed across the road, almost in step but acting like they didn’t know each other.

  Ten minutes further on, a police checkpoint asked all three for their papers, but didn’t search any bags and the three boys reached their destination at noon. After the previous day’s chase, PT couldn’t show his face anywhere near Bistro le Baron. He found a hiding spot amidst the rubble of a bomb-damaged building, while Luc headed towards the place where PT ate soup the day before.

  There was a thirty-strong queue waiting for the café to open. Luc joined the end and kept a discreet eye on Bistro le Baron. Robert’s mother-in-law had told PT that he’d always turn up at the Baron if you waited long enough, but that was no guarantee. Did he come every day? Was it always at the same time? Robert might already be upstairs out of sight, away on Milice business or even have gone into hiding after PT threatened his family.

  Luc took time over his soup and watched comings and goings, exactly as PT had done the day before. He left when the waitress was about to make him and as Luc walked back to the bomb site, Marc joined the queue outside the café and took over the surveillance.

  Marc maxed out his stay with a second bowl of soup. After leaving the café he crossed the street and looked in at four men at a table inside Bistro le Baron, including a man with a ginger beard who fitted PT’s description of the person who’d stopped him coming down the stairs.

  ‘Nice soup; no Robert,’ Marc reported, when he met up with Luc and PT on the bomb site a few minutes’ walk away.

  Luc looked at his watch. ‘I’ll give it half an hour, take a stroll past and see if there’s any sign. Then I can stroll back in the other direction half an hour later. If Robert’s still not turned up, Marc can do the same thing.’

  ‘I’m worried that the depot might soon close for the day,’ PT said. ‘I bet they don’t leave all that money in the bistro overnight.’

  ‘Why don’t we go in now, grab the cash as planned and come back for Robert later?’ Luc asked.

  Marc shook his head. ‘If we rob the money, the place is gonna be swarming with gangsters and Germans. It’ll be too hot to come back for Robert.’

  Luc looked frustrated. ‘Well, there must be some other way to find him. His wife worked in a factory. If we could get hold of her …’

  ‘If we knew what factory she worked in,’ Marc said.

  ‘We know Robert visits his kids,’ PT said. ‘The mother-in-law told me he brings food for the kids.’

  ‘But how often?’ Marc asked. ‘Every day? Every third day? Once in a blue moon?’

  PT spoke firmly. ‘We’re not running off on tangents. I made a plan and we’re sticking to it. If we spot Robert we follow the plan. If he doesn’t show, we can try again tomorrow, or work out some alternative.’

  Luc scoffed. ‘Henderson will be pissed off that we disappeared today. There’s no way he’ll let us disappear a second day.’

  ‘How would he stop us?’ Marc asked.

  PT laughed. ‘Our beloved captain may have gone all misty-eyed on us last night, but he’s still Henderson. If the only way he could stop one of us from disobeying a direct order was to shoot us, I reckon he’d do it.’

  Luc smiled at PT. ‘Henderson loves Marc, but he’d shoot you or me without batting an eye.’

  When the time came, Luc walked past Bistro le Baron in both directions and drew another blank. But when Marc made his first pass just after 3 p.m. there was a group playing dominoes at a table by the bar and Pierre Robert was among them.

  ‘Got him,’ Marc said when he got back to the bomb site. ‘And when I walked past there were still porters going in and out of the depot.’

  Luc, Marc and PT exchanged wary smiles as they squatted behind a blast-damaged wall, sorting out their kit. Marc assembled his sniper rifle and handed it to PT, while Luc went down his bag and pulled out a lump of plastic expl
osive the size of a ping-pong ball.

  ‘All set?’ Marc asked.

  Luc nodded as PT took the safety off on Marc’s rifle.

  ‘Let’s do this shit!’ Luc roared.

  Marc walked the long way around, passing the depot as he headed towards Bistro le Baron from the top of the street. A girl in a servant’s uniform came out of the depot’s front entrance with a basket of vegetables straining on each arm. Marc didn’t like the idea of hurting her, so he slowed his pace and glanced at a handcart being loaded with sacks of potatoes down a side alley.

  The girl was 20 metres clear when Marc neared the depot’s high fence and dropped down on one knee. He tied his shoelace, but as he stood he cracked a glass time pencil, pushed it into the ball of explosive and squished it against the wooden fence. Plastic explosive was naturally a sandy beige colour, but he’d pre-rolled it in dirt so that it blended in perfectly.

  The time pencil was designed for one minute. As Marc gave an All good signal by scratching his scalp, PT hid in a side street with the sniper rifle poised and Luc strode into Bistro le Baron. The men playing dominoes eyed him suspiciously as he approached the bar.

  ‘Two coffees,’ Luc said.

  The waitress looked curious. ‘Two?’

  Luc nodded as he peeled out a ten-franc note. ‘My friend will be here any second.’

  Marc stepped in as the waitress turned to face the coffee machine. He’d only got two paces when the explosion went off. Nobody was within a metre, so the small charge just blew a hole in the fence. As Bistro le Baron’s windows rattled and people in the street took cover, Pierre Robert and his fellow domino players charged towards the exit to see what had happened.

  There was broken glass in the street as PT raised the sniper rifle and took preliminary aim at head height, just past the Baron’s exit. Keeping one eye shut and holding his breath, PT watched different heads in his telescopic sight.

  Robert glanced around as PT pulled the trigger, almost as if he’d spotted the muzzle poking around the wall across the road. PT hadn’t done sniper training like Marc and Luc, but he was still a decent shot and the range was less than 50 metres.