Satisfied, I begin to pick my way down. The boards are weathered grey and someone has left the door slightly ajar, but are there trip wires?
Feeling around it, I search. The latch is but a simple hook and eye. My fingers move up some more, reaching out a little now, for the roof’s low, but there’s still nothing. Have I been wrong about their having anticipated me and having been here recently? Have they not remembered that we also used this hut?
Below me, the gully opens in ledges of rock, spills of boulders, and clumps of brush. Sparrows and finches are after seeds. I walk away, find a boulder, heft it as a cricketer might, and toss it at that door, knowing there won’t be time to duck, but nothing happens.
With the muzzle of the Schmeisser, I ease it open since I need to get in there, to remember how it was. The table’s still here-there’s a ruin of splintered chairs. Bullet holes are everywhere, the one little window completely obliterated, but as if God had willed it, the soot-clouded glass of the lantern is perfect even though glass was really what it was all about on that first night we met here. Broken glass, and Schiller will know this.
Paul Tessier lovingly held one of the time pencils. That badly disfigured face paused to search out each of us. ‘You crush the right colour, eh? It releases the measured amount of fulminate of mercury, which begins to eat its way through the wire. Thin for a fast delay; thick for a slow one, and very thick for much longer.’
About one-third of the time pencil was colour-coded. Tiny phials of fulminate-the acid-encircled the wire whose thickness varied with the colour and its length. ‘Red means a delay of four-and-a-half hours. Violet …’ He traced the length of the stem. ‘Violet, mes amis, gives one of five-and-a-half days. Orange, yellow, green, and blue provide delays that are in between, so you squeeze the woman of your choice, break the cherry, let the acid flood out to contact the wire, and voilà! it eats its way through. The striker pin is then released and the detonator struck.’
I ignored the chauvinistic inference. No one stirred. There was not a murmur. All eyes were riveted to those hands until a finger was held up. ‘But beware,’ he said. ‘These things are sensitive to heat and sudden shock. The glass is so thin you could easily kill yourselves, so I’m recommending you carry them like this.’
He took off his beret and shoved the time pencil between the Croix de Guerre and the material beneath it. ‘Mind you don’t become too hotheaded, though. Heat speeds up the rate of reaction.’
‘Aren’t there shorter delays?’ asked one of the railwaymen from Melun.
Paul was all gestures. ‘We’ll get them next time perhaps.’***
‘And the “plastic,”’ asked another.
Tessier was firm with us. ‘For now, it’s the Nobel 808 and a much stronger stench of bitter almond, so don’t breathe in the fumes too long or your head will split.’
The map was unrolled. Roads, towns, villages became clear in miniature. The Forest of Fontainebleau was like a green stain. Railways were simple lines of black with tiny crossing lines spaced at regular intervals. Two for a single; four for a double.
‘The line from Paris,’ said Nicki. ‘London wants us to hit it close to the city where it will hurt the most.’ He was now totally committed to the offensive. What fools we were. Every person who was in this hut that night is dead except for myself.
London would only have shrugged at the loss, or shaken their heads and said, ‘What a pity.’
More likely, still, they would have blamed our lack of security, not realizing that we took what precautions we could.
‘Villeneuve-Saint-Georges,’ said the taller of the two railwaymen. ‘The Port Courcel and the bridge, the roundhouse and the marshalling yards along the river.’
These were just downstream of the town, but it was the little guy who objected. ‘That bridge is so heavily guarded they open up if you fart ten kilometres from it.’
‘So fart then. We simply shoot them,’ said the bigger one.
It was Tommy who reminded them, ‘The whole idea is to do the job in secret and get away, that’s why the time pencils. We let the sabotage happen when they least expect it.’
‘We want to make them afraid of us,’ said Nicki. ‘Certainly, the damage is important, but so, too, is the psychological effect. Kill only if you must, and then quietly.’
There were nods of agreement. ‘With a knife,’ said someone, and I realized it was Dmitry and that it might be to Moscow’s advantage if all but he were killed.
The gully is still empty. There’s only the sound of the birds and the wind as it sweeps under the eaves to lift a tattered piece of roofing paper. Out over the plain, some of the fields lie fallow, others before the plow, while behind me the escarpments climb and I know I should get out of here before Schiller and Dupuis come, yet I can’t seem to leave, can’t stop wanting to remember the past.
Tommy handed me his cigarette. Hurriedly, I took a drag and handed it back, but he was not there anymore, though I wanted to warn him of Dmitry.
That supplier of false papers was waiting for me when I got to my bicycle. ‘Dmitry, I don’t think it’s wise for you to use the potting shed anymore. I’m sorry, but I must ask you not to come back with me. Tommy feels Schiller must be up to something.’
‘And what does Lutoslawski have to say about it?’
‘Nicki? The same, I think, but perhaps you should catch up with them and ask. If they okay it, then fine.’
‘Trust is basic to everything we do, madame. I’ve risked my life time and again.’
‘As have others, myself included. Look, it’s not safe, that’s all there is to it.’
‘Then I’ll come with you and pick up my Luger.’
‘That’s not possible. I’ve already passed it on to one of the others.’
He knew I was lying. I could hear him following and yet I kept on pushing that bike of mine through the darkness until his voice came at me again. ‘Moscow wishes me to inform them of the hiding place, madame. They would rather the Germans didn’t recover the stolen works of art since some of them belong to Russia.’
Nicki’s things … He had grabbed my bike! Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. In panic, I tried to fight back but he was too strong. With a final yank, he threw me to the ground, and as I lay under him, I heard the sound he gave as his throat was cut.
‘Tommy had to be convinced,’ said Nicki as he helped me up, ‘but for myself, I’m sorry I had to use you the way I did.’
Where once there had been a mound over the hasty grave, there’s now a shallow depression. I’m not sorry Dmitry’s dead, only saddened that it had to happen. There’s still no further sign of Schiller and Dupuis. The forest is as it was back then, and soon, all too soon, there’s the sound of train wheels in my head, and I feel myself rushing inevitably towards the abyss. My children were beside me, and we were on our way into Paris, me with two large hampers, hidden in each of which were a kilo of Nobel 808 wrapped in much decorated bread dough, two Webley service revolvers, and a packet of cartridges, and I knew it was suicidal to attempt that. Having flour, even the grey of the ‘National’ was one thing. I’d added onions and had sliced some of them and bulbs of garlic, too. Though it was always chancy bringing food into the city, it was the smell of the Nobel that terrified me.
‘Ihre Papiere, bitte. Ausweis und der Passierschein, ja? Schnell!’
This Scharführer couldn’t seem to let go of my papers but I’d raise his rank anyways. ‘I must have a medical checkup, Herr General. I’m pregnant.’
He didn’t give a bloody damn. ‘What’s in the baskets?’
‘Food, a few spare clothes, a little bedding for my children. Things I’ll need so that the people with whom we’re staying overnight won’t have to provide everything.’