LITMIR.BIZ

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French couple, the patron, Marie, Étienne, and Étienne’s prostitute, Marianne, all stare at her.

      Rainy retrieves her Walther, works the slide to eject the jammed round, and in French says, “Messieurs, dames, I am going to tell you what happened here. These Germans got drunk and picked a fight with a truck driver who is heading west, toward Cognac. There was a fight, the truck driver had two friends, and they killed the Germans. Is that clear?”

      No one answers.

      “Is that clear?” Rainy demands. The patron and the French couple all nod yes. Étienne’s friend is backing toward the door, looking very much as if she might scream.

      Rainy aims the Walther and BANG! shoots her in the heart. Étienne lets loose a whinny of protest.

      “Going west,” Rainy says, her voice genuinely ragged now. “Truck drivers going west toward Cognac. Stick to that story and you’ll be all right. This is maquis business, not yours. But if you betray the Resistance . . .” She lets the threat hang.

      Three minutes later they are panting and gasping in the truck and driving at an average, unremarkable speed toward the east, toward the pleasant woods of the Périgord Limousin.

      “We should have taken their guns,” Étienne says, speaking for the first time.

      “No, you imbecile,” Marie rages. “We should not have stopped to see your mistress and you should not have found a way to make her angry!”

      “If we took the guns it’d look like maquis to the Krauts for sure,” Rainy says, her voice far calmer than her heart or brain. “Drunk truck drivers getting in a bar fight don’t take Schmeissers.”

      Silence. Then Étienne says, “You didn’t have to kill Marianne.”

      An even longer silence. Then in slow, measured but furious tones, like slow-motion violence, Rainy says, “Your arrogance ends right here, right now, Étienne. You screwed up. You could have gotten us all arrested or killed.”

      “You have no—”

      “Shut up!” Rainy snaps. “This is my operation from here on in.”

      “We do not take orders from the American—”

      “Stop it, Étienne.” Marie’s voice, like Rainy’s, is tense and barely under control. “She’s right. You were careless. That woman died because of you. And we all nearly ended up in an SD interrogation cell! Because of you and your . . . your needs.”

      Étienne does not argue further. He continues driving and stares straight ahead.

      Rainy uses the silence to put herself back together. The crisis is always easier than the aftermath, she has learned that. In a crisis it is all about speed and decisiveness. The aftermath, the sick feeling that comes with each obsessive mental replay of digging broken glass into a man’s neck, feeling his blood, smelling it . . .

      And the hole that appeared not quite perfectly centered in the mistress’s chest.

      Her hands tremble so she sticks them in her coat pockets. How long will it take the milice to show up on the scene? Would the SD get there first? Did the patron and the French couple have the nerve to lie to the SD?

      No. But they might just repeat what she’d said about heading west. That very small ruse might just work.

      But deep inside her a voice says, “No.”

      No, they would not convince the SD, not for five minutes. So, make a plan, Rainy! They had a good ten minutes’ head start, but the SD could radio ahead, they could call in planes, they could mobilize the entire French police force as well.

      Which meant the likelihood was they were not going to make it to Limoges. That was just the reality.

       Time to hide.

      And what better place than the middle of the Das Reich division?

      “We’ve got a cargo of cognac,” Rainy says, “and a bunch of thirsty Germans somewhere around here, right? So let’s go make a sales call.”

6

      RAINY SCHULTERMAN—NEAR LIMOGES, NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE

      They drive the truck-load of cognac and black market cigarettes around for a full day. Rainy’s thought had been to use the cognac as proof of innocence, as proof that they were just smugglers, black marketeers. Surely, she figured, surely they would be stopped at a roadblock and then could negotiate a deal for the cargo. It had seemed so terribly clever when she’d thought of it.

      They have three transport barrels of cognac, three hundred and fifty liters or roughly ninety gallons each, plus two hundred cartons of cigarettes of ten packs each. The Das Reich might be Nazi fanatics, but in war no one ever has enough alcohol or smokes, and Rainy is reasonably sure that an offer to sell and, crucially, a promise to return with more, will get the attention of any divisional quartermaster.

      There is only one flaw in the plan: they encounter no roadblocks. Twice they pull off the road to avoid German staff cars racing by, perhaps in pursuit of them, perhaps not.

      The first night after killing the soldiers Rainy, Étienne and Marie sleep rough, driving the truck down a dirt track deep into the Limousin forest. Étienne and Marie sleep cramped in the truck’s cabin, and Rainy wedges herself into a place between two of the barrels in back. It is not comfortable, not even by army standards, and she sleeps very little. When she does sleep she is kneeling beside a river of blood, washing her hands in it.

      The next morning, chilled, aching and frowzy, they stop at a small café for coffee and croissants.

      “The croissants are good,” Rainy observes, politely saying nothing about the coffee.

      Marie says, “The coffee is merde. Chicory and roasted grain.”

      “It’s hot,” Étienne says. “Coffee is not the highest priority.”

      Rainy is not at all certain about that. She’d have paid a month’s salary—a hundred and fifty dollars—for a decent cup. But Étienne has been distant and defensive since the incident with his mistress or girlfriend or prostitute, whatever she was—his stories varied—and Rainy does not want to argue with him. He has not yet chosen to share with them the reason Marianne ended up chasing him down the street yelling that he was maquis.

      The people who join Resistance groups and risk death are a mixed bag, according to Colonel Herkemeier’s briefing in London. Some are committed Communists. Some are followers of General DeGaulle’s Free French. Most joined the maquis only after the Germans began shipping French citizens off to forced labor in Germany. There are dozens of groups under dozens of leaders, some quietly effective, some noisily useless. All are brave, that at least is clear: only a very brave person defies the Nazis.

      But as Rainy watches Étienne fuss with the croissant crumbs he’s scattered she knows that some are also informers working either for the Germans or the collaborationist traitors of the Vichy government.

      “We should get going,” Marie says.

      “In a minute,” Étienne answers. He has taken to overruling Marie on everything, asserting his now-questionable authority, though he has not yet challenged Rainy, who has carefully avoided antagonizing him. But his continued high-handedness is definitely getting on her nerves.

      She tries to imagine a scenario in which Étienne is a traitor. Had he provoked Marianne into giving him up? Is she his contact with the Nazis? Had the two of them cooked up the little demonstration that had resulted in her death?

      But why? Why not just walk in and tell the three SS men? Why the subterfuge?

      Of course the answer is obvious: Marie. She is his sister after all, and he might not want her to know that he’s a traitor. He could stand her thinking him a fool, but not a traitor.

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