At the revetment, Trankic prepared the dynamite for the insertion of electric caps, his muscular hand and wrist twisting a wooden punch into the brittle end of the sticks, driving the pin deeply into the hard-packed explosive. When three were ready, he lashed them together with heavy black friction tape and handed them to Docker, who attached an end of fusing wire to electrical detonator caps, inserted one into each of the holes Trankic had drilled into the dynamite, clipped the unattached ends of wire to the blasting machine and checked the hand plunger, the test-pilot light and the charging switch. Then, carrying the taped bundle of explosives under his arm and the coils of wire over his shoulder, he waved to Trankic, who was now standing at the opposite flank, a small figure in the hazy mists.
When he saw Trankic settle to his knees and go over the side of the hill, Docker started down the slope himself, crouching to take advantage of natural cover, clusters of iron-hard bracken and frozen clumps of bushes still bright with pips and berries. He crawled and slid headfirst a dozen yards, then stopped to rest, his chest and stomach numb with snow that had soaked through his woolen shirt. When his breathing slowed, he studied the area where he intended to place the charges, a level bed of rock about thirty yards below him. Raising himself on his elbows, he studied the floor of the valley which was quilted with white clouds, the tips of fir trees studding this screen like big green spools.
The Tiger Mark II was almost completely submerged in these ground mists, only the massive turret and cannon visible through the white layers.
In Baird’s theory, the Tiger II would attack either of the machine gun positions, and it was Docker’s job on this flank — and Trankic’s on the other — to anticipate its route up the mountain. He looked at the machine guns above him and moved eight or ten yards to his left, traveling like a crab on his knees and elbows to place himself at last on a direct line between the tank and the guns.
He saw Laurel and Kohler watching him from the crest of the hill, their helmeted faces framed by the machine gun barrels, and for an instant he was shocked by their ravaged appearance, until he realized they all must look like that now, dirt and fear and exhaustion a common mask.
Docker started down to his target area, a rough ledge of rock that would give the tank treads a solid grip for the final thrust up and over the top of the hill. Stretched at full length, he worked carefully toward it, freezing motionless whenever his body created a betraying spill of snow and shale. When he reached the flat shelf, he planted the lashed bundle of dynamite behind a small outcrop of rock and covered it with snow and matted brown grass. He then rested for a moment, feeling his sodden shirt begin to stiffen against his body.
After making a last check of the detonator caps, he started back up the mountain, rapidly playing out the fusing wire and aware now of the growing daylight and the black muzzle of the big cannon covering the steep slopes of Mont Reynard.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
December 23, 1944. Lepont-sur-Salm. Saturday, 0600 Hours.
She heard the car stop, the sound of the motor mingling briefly with the sleet and wind against her windowpanes. She knew it was not from Lepont. The only vehicle left in the village was an ancient Citroen used by the pharmacist to visit the sick on snowbound farms, but even those trips had halted in the last few months when petrol supplies had run out.
A knock sounded. Denise Francoeur opened the door, wind sweeping around her in chilling blasts. She stepped back instinctively and put a hand to her throat.
“You do that nicely,” Karl Jaeger said. He came into the room and swung the door shut behind him. “It’s an attractive gesture, suggesting graceful repugnance for the Hun, a defense of virginal treasures. You’re alone here, mademoiselle?”
He spoke in French and smiled at her, but she was frightened by the tension in his bright, unfocused eyes.
“Yes, I’m alone, colonel.”
“You recognize my rank? Good.” Jaeger spoke in German now. “Can I assume from that you’ve been friendly with my comrades-in-arms, fräulein?”
“There were times when I had no choice.”
“So if you were friendly, it wasn’t a matter of choice.” He glanced about the room. “You’re the schoolteacher here?”
“Did someone tell you that?”
“What is there to be evasive about, fräulein? You speak French and German, the look of your hands hardly indicates you spend much time in the barnyard.”
“I didn’t mean to be evasive. I was surprised.”
He smiled as if accepting an apology and walked about the room, glancing at the mirror over the mantelpiece, then at a sewing basket on the floor. Stopping, he removed his gloves and studied the solid wall, the central panel decorated with a brightly painted angel’s head.
He looked at the schoolteacher, the smile leaving his face. “In my case, fräulein, I’ve never been a teacher. A student, of course, and not too bad, some of my instructors were kind enough to tell me. But perhaps they were just trying to get rid of me, give me good marks so they could pass me on to someone else.”
He removed the briar pipe from his overcoat and stared at it with a puzzled frown, wondering what he had planned to do with it. His words made no sense to him. “... but perhaps they were just trying to get rid of me...” What did that mean, they wanted to get rid of Rudi, not Karl Jaeger...?
“At the Berlin Academy I studied fortifications, fräulein,” he said. “This involved mathematics, engineering, that sort of thing.” With one hand, he made a gesture of dismissal. “Of course, I couldn’t build a cathedral or a château, I wasn’t trained as an architect, but I think I could put up a little house like this... yes, I’m quite sure of it...”
He rapped the wall above the gaily decorated angel’s head and glanced at the schoolteacher, found he was unable to bring her pale features into focus. He blinked his eyes, but failed to clear away the strange veil between them... her dark hair continued to float like a cloud about her face... He rapped again on the wall and began to pound the middle panel heavily and rhythmically with his fist. “But if I built a house, I wouldn’t make the mistake of blocking off a stairway—”
“It was done to save heat.”
“How do you get down to the cellar?”
“There’s no need to, colonel.”
“What about storage? What about vegetables and firewood?”
“There’s nothing left to store. The firewood is in a shed in the garden.”
“You sound as if you’ve memorized those answers, fräulein. Which you probably have. I know you’re lying.” Jaeger pounded his fist for emphasis against the wall. “I’ve talked to the priest here. Father Juneau. He’s been very helpful. He’s the one who told me that you’re the schoolteacher here, and that you have a Jewish child living with you.”
The alarm that drummed on her nerves sent a involuntary shudder through her body.
“No, that’s not true.”
“Why would the priest lie to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know why he’s lying, which amounts to saying that he is lying. Correct, fräulein?”
“Perhaps he thought it was the truth. Or the truth as he knows it.”
Denise was beginning to realize, and with a sense of exquisite relief, that she had nothing to fear from this German officer. Her first shock of panic had been like a racial memory of terror, a nervous spasm that had made her forget for an instant that Margret was safe with the nuns. Now there was only herself, and while this man might hurt her or even kill her, she felt that if he did, he would be damaging something renewed and valuable.