“We found that out,” I said.
“And your plans?”
I laughed. “To do it anyway.” I started climbing out of my jump suit, stripping down until I was in ragged breeches and the torn shirt of a farmer. I tucked the gun in my belt and the explosives in a sack over my shoulder.
“You will be shot if you are caught, of course.”
“Of course.”
Her laugh was deep and throaty, a laugh of devilish amusement. “You Americans have too much of the... bravery. Sometimes you forget that one need not be so... direct. There are other ways of doing things and not getting shot.”
I looked at her carefully, alive to the woman, yet alert to every sound that came through the night. From the village I could hear the rumble of trucks going over the pavement. “Who are you, girl?”
“In the underground I have a code number. Always, since I was a little girl, I have played under the bridge and along the banks of the river. When the people of the village moved I was directed to stay. You see... for long we knew that this time would come, and since I was the only one who was familiar with every spot that would be of importance about the bridge, the job was assigned to me. I am to... guide you, shall I say?”
“No, let’s not say it. The thing’s too pat.”
“There is not time to argue. Certainly your intelligence knows how heavily the bridge has been guarded.”
“They know it.”
“Then how can I convince you that you must trust me?”
“You can’t,” I said. “It’s still too pat. We never communicated with the French underground on this movement.”
Her fingers stopped tapping the table. “I said we expected this. The railway is the only one on which troops can be moved. All the roads are out of service.”
I said, “Sorry, kid,” but I made it easy by backing it up with a smile.
“I see.” Her eyes bored into mine, searching for the answer. “And what will you do with me?”
“Tie you up so you can get loose after a while. Like I said, there are too many traps for me to step in one blind.”
A smile played with the corners of her mouth. It stayed a while then danced into her eyes. “I should curse you in the name of France for being so stupid. But too, I should curse myself and the others for being so cautious as not to leave any proof of my identity behind.”
I had a coil of rope wound around my waist and I started to shake it loose. “In the name of France and the others you’ll do better if you let me alone: I told you that I wasn’t taking chances. The Krauts come across with nice prizes for dragging in a saboteur or two.”
“And why couldn’t I have turned you in before?”
I held the rope in my hand and fiddled with it. “Because I’m a man and you’re a woman, chicken. A beautiful woman, but still a woman.”
Her hand had a gun in it and it was aimed right at my head. My fingers jerked the rope tight and my mouth felt dry. “If I had wanted to I could have killed you before. Or I could have drawn a prize as you seem to think.” She laid the gun on the table with the butt toward me. “Do you still think I shouldn’t be trusted?”
The stiffness left my fingers and I wound the rope back around my waist. “Someday I’ll smarten up,” I said. When she saw that I wasn’t going to touch the gun she put it back in the folds of her skirt. I glanced at her sharply. “You know what will happen if they catch you with that thing?”
“Yes. First I will kill several of them, then myself.”
She meant it, every word of it. I finished tucking the ends of the rope in, then straightened up. “Okay, what gives. Tell me two things: if you knew how important the bridge was, why didn’t the underground do something about it? When you tell me that tell me how we’re going to go about it.”
“The thing you carry in your pack is the thing we lacked. We have no explosive. Nor is it a job for one person.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see. As for the plans, they were arranged long ago. I told you that was why I was left behind.”
“Go on.”
“The war came close to us, m’sieu...”
“My name is Joe.”
“And mine is Claire. As I said, the war came close. Rather than risk destruction the populace moved to the hills beyond.”
“Not even token resistance?”
Her voice had a sharp edge. “It was hardly necessary. It happens that here we had the radio transmitters and the printing plants that was the lifeblood of the underground. We could not afford to have it captured.”
“Sorry,” I said. “You’re brave.”
Her eyes got grey and cloudy. “No braver than you, Joe. You expected to die when you came here, did you not?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I figured it would happen sometime.”
“It may not be necessary. You have made arrangements to be picked up?” I nodded a yes. “Then we shall hope for the best. However, it is agreed that I will lead you there?”
I was doing everything I shouldn’t do. I was taking a chance on an unknown quantity in violation of all my training. How many lives depended on my judgment — thousands? All because a woman was beautiful, with a deep, rich voice and eyes that burned holes into my soul. I was fully briefed to do my job, yet here I was letting a woman change plans that had been made by experts.
And I knew I was right, I knew it damn well! I looked at my watch, and said, “Let’s go.”
The bridge is part of history now, but not that night. That’s pure screaming torture that has etched itself into my memory with an acid so strong it will never leave. I could forget it, if within an hour I hadn’t found myself loving her and having it returned.
But it happened and I can’t forget it, see? She was mine. She was beautiful and soft, and she was mine before the moon was at its peak...
That night the air and the ground were alive with death. We heard the sharp metallic noises it made and felt the force of it waiting to thunder into reality. It was there in light and shadows, and we walked through it safely. Claire took my hand and I responded to the slightest pressure of her touch, letting her show me the path until we had the sounds behind us and the sound of the river coming our way.
We still had two hours to wail, timing ourselves so the job could be completed with precious minutes left over for me to reach the field where the plane would come down.
We didn’t speak of our plans. Somehow we both knew what was to be done, and whatever she had to do I didn’t want to know about.
That was where we found life, there right in the middle of death. We forgot about it and talked of the things that were and would still be when it was over, lying on our backs facing the stars. I was counting them when a shadow of golden hair moved across my vision and I tasted the warmth of her mouth and the sweetness of her breath. She said, “We love each other, Joe.”
My answer was in my arms and in the present. I had to come across a continent to find her. I was hers until the hands on my watch marked the time to end the life we had found.
After she was mine she took me to the banks of the river, leading the way through the weeds. She was calm, but I didn’t dare speak. Along the causeway and on the bridge itself I could see the file of the sentries back and forth. They shouted instructions and commands, following any object that moved with the white beam of the searchlights. Then there would be the short snarl of the machine guns and the questions asked afterward. Nothing moved and lived.
“Notice, Joe...” I turned my head to her. “The river flows under the bridge, but here starts a little offshoot of the river that winds through the rushes. The bottom is clay, and if you walk softly without splashing and keep in the shadow of the tall grass, you can get under the bridge. From above this looks like part of the bank and they will not be watching. Their lights are trained on the river itself and the road along the bank. Only in this one section of the river is the footing solid enough to follow. None of them are under the bridge because no man can stand long in the ooze of the silt without sinking under.”