Authors: Robert Muchamore
The stairs came alive as Goldberg and the boys raced up and down. There was a knock at the front door as Paul came down with the last canister and Henderson pulled on a backpack.
‘Dr Blanc,’ Henderson said. ‘Answer the door, but do whatever you can to stop the Germans from coming inside for a few moments.’
As Dr Blanc walked through her ground-floor waiting room towards the surgery door, Henderson, Marc, Paul and Goldberg gathered outside the rear door. Goldberg was loading the last of the canisters on the handcart, and all four had machine guns loaded and slung around their necks.
‘What’s your plan?’ Goldberg asked.
‘As soon as you hear something go bang, you three set off with that cart and run like hell. Find somewhere safe, you’ll have to improvise. Everyone who makes it meets up with Rosie in the woods at eight, exactly as planned. If I don’t make it, you’re in charge, Sergeant Goldberg.’
Goldberg was a great shot, but this was the American’s first day working undercover and he didn’t look comfortable with the idea of running the show.
‘You’ll do fine, Sergeant,’ Henderson said. ‘Remember, don’t move from here until something blows up.’
As Henderson ran behind the row of small businesses, Marc closed the back door of the surgery and Dr Blanc let the German soldier in at the front.
‘I’m sorry for the wait,’ she said. ‘I thought you were a patient. They turn up at all hours, and I have to be strict unless it’s urgent.’
‘You’re lucky I didn’t kick the door in,’ the young German said furiously. ‘How many others in there?’
‘What’s this all about?’ Dr Blanc asked.
‘You don’t ask the questions, fatso,’ the soldier shouted. ‘Everyone must line up in the street for questioning.’
Before Dr Blanc could answer, she heard a huge bang and found herself thrown into the door frame as the entire building jerked sideways. The blast was caused by a full stick of plastic explosive detonating between two buildings less than twenty metres away. Chunks of wood and masonry crashed down as people screamed and glass shattered on both sides of the street.
Marc and Goldberg got pelted with debris as they set off at a sprint, each putting their weight behind one side of the handcart, while Paul strode backwards covering their rear.
Henderson broke cover, close to the truck blocking the graveyard end of the street. He knocked down three Germans with well-aimed shots through the back, then swapped pistol for machine gun and began shooting into the dust cloud caused by the explosion. The aim was to set off panic rather than cause injury, so he fired over the heads of the Gestapo’s civilian line-up.
As people screamed and dived for cover, a few soldiers tried to return fire, but couldn’t because by the time the dust cleared Henderson had dropped down and rolled under the truck. He placed a grenade in the cobbles directly below the truck’s fuel tank, then scrambled towards the graveyard and jumped over its crumbling perimeter wall as the vehicle exploded.
Justin dived behind a hedge as the truck went bang, but was still close enough feel the dry heat against his forehead. After leaving the railway embankment, he’d walked briskly through fields towards the surgery but had only got as far as the alleyway alongside the butcher’s shop when Germans arrived.
He’d backed out of the alley as the Germans jumped off their trucks, then crawled rapidly through tall grass until he’d reached the edge of the graveyard with Rosie’s words from a few weeks earlier in his head:
A perfect view and half a dozen escape routes if someone comes looking
.
Justin might have been spotted if the soldiers had chased Henderson, but only one German made it around the burning truck. The German didn’t fancy going up against a grenade-throwing lunatic and went no further than the edge of the graveyard.
As the soldier jogged back to his colleagues, Justin watched Dr Blanc walking into thick smoke and diesel fumes. One of the men Henderson had shot was still alive, but the Germans had no idea that Blanc was a doctor, and before she could help a rifle butt smashed into the side of her head.
‘None of you French bastards move,’ the solidly built lieutenant in command shouted, as he strode through smoke brushing chunks of rubble off his uniform. ‘Get this rabble lined up.
Somebody
here knows what this is all about.’
But the chaos continued, centring on a blacksmith trying to extinguish a roof fire started by Henderson’s stick of explosive.
‘Leave it to burn,’ the lieutenant shouted. ‘Let it be a lesson to people who harbour criminal scum.’
But the blacksmith was desperate to save his business and plunged a bucket into the horse trough outside his shop. The apprentice girl from the butcher’s shop said something about fetching a water pump, but the rebellion ended as the lieutenant pulled his pistol and shot the blacksmith in the back.
After a couple of screams, the officer changed position and shot again, this time killing a woman who was rolling about in pain after being struck by a chunk of hot metal from the exploding truck.
‘Oh,
now
I have your attention,’ the lieutenant said, smirking like a mischievous schoolboy as he swung his pistol about, pointing it at cowering Frenchmen and women. ‘Two police officers are killed, then an explosion. Then my men are killed. I
will
get to the truth behind this. Tell me now, or all your lives will be short and agonising.’
Nobody said a word and the officer signalled to his men. ‘Come on, line them up.’
Justin had a good view, and noticed that all the soldiers had a certain demeanour. They were much younger than the local garrison. Their boots and uniforms were tatty and most of them had long hair and stubbly beards.
There were a few elderly amongst the civilians, but the rough-hewn soldiers showed no patience with their slowness, dishing out kicks and slaps and even twisting one old man’s arm up behind his back.
‘Someone here knows,’ the officer said, as he looked about, menacing the crowd of about thirty with his pistol.
Dr Blanc had blood streaking down her face from the rifle blow, as the lieutenant closed up on her. In the background, the roof of the blacksmith’s shop was now fully ablaze. A central section was sagging and about to collapse into the shop itself.
‘What does the fat pudding know?’ the officer asked.
Dr Blanc hoped she hadn’t been singled out for a reason. ‘I just run my surgery,’ she said tearfully. ‘I’ve been working all morning. I don’t know anything.’
The lieutenant reared up. ‘If you’re a doctor, why aren’t you trying to help my wounded men?’
‘I tried,’ Dr Blanc hissed, as she pointed to her bloody head. ‘That’s how I got this.’
The lieutenant was too full of himself to apologise, but the doctor was taken out of the line-up and escorted back to the surgery for her medical bag.
‘Liars, all of you,’ the officer shouted, as he pointed at the burning blacksmith’s shop. ‘Either I find out what’s been going on here and now, or you’ll all be taken into Rennes for Gestapo interrogation.’
The thirty-strong line-up was trembling but stayed silent. Apart from Dr Blanc, none of them knew anything about Henderson’s operation.
‘We’ll need another truck for all our new prisoners,’ the lieutenant said. After a dramatic pause he broke into a rumbling laugh and turned to a teenage private. ‘While we wait for transportation, why don’t you see if starting another fire will jog someone’s memory. Schmidt, get your flamethrower. Load the meat from the butcher’s shop on to our truck, then set the building on fire. If nobody speaks up, we’ll burn the doctor’s surgery after that.’
*
The sun was setting as Edith stood in the vegetable plot behind Joseph Blanc’s grand house picking beans. There was enough light for her to make out a dust trail on the approach road, and she threw down the beans and sprinted towards the house.
‘Rosie,’ Edith shouted.
Justin had arrived a few hours earlier and reported on what had happened at the intersection. Edith was on edge and half expected men to jump from the truck and start pushing them around, but instead one of the elderly men from the local garrison stepped down from the driver’s seat and walked around the truck to help Dr Blanc disembark on the passenger side.
By the time Rosie came on to the doorstep with Justin behind her, the German truck had pulled into the driveway.
‘Everyone stay calm,’ Rosie said quietly. ‘We’ve all got papers and nothing’s out of order inside the house.’
The doctor looked badly shaken. She had a dressing around her head and her skirt was torn, but the middle-aged soldier treated her decently, and even shook her hand after retrieving her leather doctor’s bag from the footwell.
‘Those men from Rennes are animals,’ the soldier said. ‘They make me ashamed to wear this uniform.’
The truck’s engine clattered back to life as Dr Blanc walked through the back door of her son’s house.
‘Are you OK?’ Rosie asked. ‘Do you need anything?’
‘A brandy,’ Dr Blanc said, as she crashed breathlessly into a chair in the kitchen. ‘Very large.’
As Edith dashed to the living room for the drink, the doctor fixed Rosie with an angry scowl.
‘Where’s Joseph?’ she asked.
‘With so many Germans around he was worried about being picked up for deportation. He’s gone to Jean and Didier’s place in the woods.’
‘At least he’s safe,’ Dr Blanc said, then thanked Edith for the brandy before looking back at Rosie. ‘What did your boss think he was doing? His explosion destroyed the blacksmith’s shop and with three dead Germans, we’re going to have the Gestapo on our backs for months.’
‘After you left with the injured German, they took a couple of men away and smashed up the shops and stole a lot of stuff,’ Justin said. ‘But a bunch of Gestapo men turned up after that and stopped that psychopath lieutenant from burning everything down.’
The doctor looked surprised. ‘I didn’t even realise you were there.’
‘I was hiding in the graveyard,’ Justin explained. ‘I was trying to warn Henderson, but the Germans got to the intersection before me.’
‘Are your family OK?’
Justin nodded. ‘Luckily my sisters were away. My mum’s gone to my aunt’s house to pick them up now.’
‘So what was Henderson playing at?’ Dr Blanc asked Rosie accusingly.
‘I haven’t seen him,’ Rosie said. ‘But he clearly needed to create a distraction to get the canisters away.’
‘But killing three men in cold blood? And the blacksmith’s shop is utterly destroyed.’
Rosie considered saying that the resistance had to be ruthless, but Dr Blanc clearly needed calming down and she decided to be diplomatic.
‘I’m sure Captain Henderson did no more than he felt he had to,’ Rosie said. ‘But you can speak to him later when we meet.’
‘I’ve never seen Germans acting brutal like that,’ Justin said. ‘I was so scared when they took you away.’
‘By the time we arrived at the hospital in Rennes, I’d stabilised one of the men Henderson shot,’ Dr Blanc explained. ‘That probably saved me from being taken to the town jail for interrogation, but the soldier who drove me back from the hospital says that the unit we encountered at the intersection are real thugs. They’ve spent most of the past year fighting on the Eastern Front. Soldiers there are given free rein to torture and murder any civilians they encounter.’
‘They’re still floating around as well,’ Justin said. ‘They set up a checkpoint right near my house.’
Dr Blanc nodded. ‘We were stopped three times on my way from Rennes, even though I was in an army truck being driven by a soldier.’
Edith looked at Rosie. ‘We weren’t bargaining on checkpoints. What does this mean for the mission?’
‘Henderson will have to make a decision on whether to delay the operation,’ Rosie said. ‘Assuming he made it out of there alive.’
Marc, Paul and Goldberg escaped with all the canisters, hiding out in a barn a few kilometres from the intersection, then moving into the forest after sunset. Although there hadn’t been time to discuss routes, Henderson knew where they were heading, so after a few hours hiding out near the railway lines he tracked them down as they set off into the woods.
A meeting had been set for 8 p.m., in the mouth of a cave that forest dwellers Didier and Jean used as an occasional hideout. Henderson took centre stage, lit dramatically by torchlight. Sitting or squatting around him were Goldberg, Paul, Marc, Luc, Sam, Jean, Didier, Rosie, Edith, Justin, Dr Blanc and her son Joseph.
The plan had been for Dr Blanc and Justin’s roles in the operation to end after the agents had arrived and taken their equipment into the forest, but Rosie invited them along because they’d witnessed what had happened at the intersection.
‘Today has been tough,’ Henderson began, deepening his voice in an attempt to instil confidence in new comrades. ‘We’ve seen how plans can go wrong. We’ve seen how the occupiers can act ruthlessly, and how our own actions can cause suffering to innocent civilians. But every one of us has put our lives on the line to be here. If we back out now, the risks and bloodshed will have all been for nowt.’
There were some enthusiastic murmurs, most notably from Jean, Didier and Justin, but Dr Blanc’s discomfort was obvious.
‘There’s no point hanging around in this business,’ Henderson continued. ‘My job is to balance risks. The presence of this unpleasant group of soldiers from Rennes and the possibility of additional security checkpoints along our planned escape route makes things more difficult than we’d hoped, but the longer we’re in this area the greater the chance that the Germans will find our equipment or unearth some aspect of our operations.
‘We also have to co-ordinate with the Ghost network in Paris, and with United States Bomber Command. So, weather permitting, we move ahead as planned on Friday evening. That gives us tomorrow and Thursday for individual briefings, plus a spot of training and final reconnaissance on the bunker site. On Friday those taking part in the mission can eat and relax during the day, so that we’re all fit and ready for our little adventure four kilometres east of here.’