Tomorrow Is for the Brave, page 19
Thus far, the Allied officers had used an astonishing lack of discipline in their radio and written communiques out on the battlefield, and Commandant Lavigne had proven no different. La Fleur did an exceptional job of ensuring that all of Lavigne’s private papers were secured, but she could not be in all places at all times. He’d verified that the pair would be back on the road at dawn, headed to Beirut for a day, perhaps two, before they returned, and the spy couldn’t risk waiting until tomorrow to search the commandant’s room. The most valuable information and dispatches would go with them.
Decision made, he took the stairs two at a time to the third floor and hurried down the empty hallway to the commandant’s room. He would be in and out in minutes. He knocked again, out of habit. When no one answered the door, he made quick work of the lock and entered the darkened room.
The commandant had not been so courteous as to leave a lamp burning, and the spy had to work with the light filtering in through the open window. This room was almost an exact replica of the colonel’s, and he was already familiar with the way Lavigne liked to organize and store his personal papers. To that end, he ignored the wardrobe and went directly to the heavy leather dispatch bag that he already knew would be resting on the chair. With care, he pulled the files and documents from the bag and laid them out on the table. From his own pack, he extracted a small torch and, shielding the light with his hand, began reading.
The sound of a key in the lock made the spy spin. He extinguished his torch and melted away from the table into the shadows of the wardrobe even as he chastised himself bitterly. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. There were no proper hiding places in this single room, and he would not fit under the bed. He was too far away from the window to escape. He had taken far too long in the colonel’s room, and he had no one to blame for his poor choices but himself.
And now there were regrettably few choices left.
Lavigne closed the door behind him and walked into the darkened room. The spy couldn’t see much, only listen as his booted feet came farther into the room and stopped. The doctor yawned noisily, heaved a tired sigh, and shuffled forward. The spy willed him back out of the room. Or simply into bed. Instead, he listened to the commandant fumble for the switch on the lamp.
Goddammit, he did not want to do this. The attention and the commotion that this would cause was unfortunate and would reflect poorly on the spy’s competence. Berlin would be furious. Beck would be livid. But the past was the past, and all he could do now was try to ensure that his earlier success in the attaché’s room was not compromised. The spy slid his hand into his pocket.
Light flooded the room. The commandant froze where he was, staring down at the documents spread across the table’s surface, and the spy could almost hear the bewilderment and confusion echoing through his mind.
The spy surged from his hiding place and slipped his garrotte over the head of the commandant. Lavigne gasped and struggled, his hands clawing at the wire around his throat. The spy was somewhat relieved. The doctor was a similar height, and had he thrown back his head or pulled the spy forward, it might have made things difficult. The spy pulled harder, and Lavigne’s feet went out from under him as he kicked uselessly. A booted foot connected with the chair, sending it toppling with a crash, and the spy flinched.
Within two minutes, the spy was staring down at the prone, lifeless body of Lavigne. He left it where it was and, working quickly, dumped the contents of the dispatch bag on the floor. He regretted that he would not be able to properly peruse the contents, but he could not steal them without causing suspicion, and he could no longer afford to linger. He opened the wardrobe, pulled a few garments out, and left them in a haphazard pile. He went through the commandant’s pockets and took whatever money he could find, as well as his watch and silver cigarette case. A robbery gone wrong was the best the spy could do in this situation, and he had to hope it would simply be accepted as such. He would discard the case and the watch as soon as he left here.
For the second time that night, he went to the door and listened hard for voices or feet in the hallway. The sounds from the street below filtering through the open window made it difficult to hear. He risked opening the door a crack and then a little farther. The hallway seemed deserted. He slipped from the room and closed the door soundlessly behind him. He was in the process of fumbling for his lockpicks when a door at the far end of the hall opened. The spy cursed inwardly and pulled away from the commandant’s door, walking casually toward the stairs before he could be seen, leaving the door closed but unlocked. He straightened his uniform and smoothed his hair as he descended the stairs. His intent had been to lock the door behind him, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized an unlocked door set the stage much more convincingly for a robbery. Yes, the spy decided as he reached the ground floor. An unlocked door would invite all sorts of conjecture, and probably none associated with subterfuge. How very fortunate.
In the hotel lobby, his good fortune continued as the concierge desk was deserted. The spy strolled through the front doors, out onto the street, where night had definitively descended and the stars had emerged to twinkle in the desert sky overhead. His sister had known all the constellations by heart. She had once told him that he was born under the luckiest of signs. That the Aquarius constellation contained the stars believed by ancient astrologers to possess the luck of luck itself. Despite the regrettable and ill-timed return of Commandant Lavigne, the spy fancied that she was right. The notion that perhaps his sister was watching over him from those very constellations above comforted him enormously.
And with just a little more luck, the doctor wouldn’t be found until the morning.
CHAPTER
16
11 JULY 1941
DAMASCUS, SYRIA
Violet sat behind the wheel of the Humber idling outside the New Royal Hotel and waited for the commandant to return from his room. He’d promised her that he would only be a few minutes, that he needed only to fetch a set of orders that he had forgotten in his dispatch bag, but a few minutes were starting to stretch into many.
She rubbed her eyes, willing herself to stay awake. She’d been up since four that morning, working with an equally exhausted repair crew to fix the Humber’s ailing starter, and then she and the doctor had been on the road by seven. Ten hours of navigating the terrain back to Damascus, and all she wanted now was to retreat to the staff quarters, find something that resembled a bed, and sleep until next week.
But before she could do any of that, Violet needed to return the commandant back to the French hospital. She rested her head on the driver’s-side door, wishing he would hurry. A vendor somewhere nearby was grilling meat, and the tantalizing smell made her stomach rumble hungrily. Maybe food and then a bed—
Violet straightened at the sight of two familiar figures walking toward the Humber. She wasn’t sure where they had come from or where they were going, but they were crossing the street right in front of the car. For a moment she wondered if she was dreaming, but the sweat trickling down her back and the grit in her eyes dispelled that notion. She opened the door and scrambled out gracelessly.
“George?” she called.
George turned at the sound of her name. Her arm was linked with her brother’s and Violet could almost believe that she had just stopped them as they strolled down a road in Nice.
“Vi!” George disentangled herself from Henri and hurried to Violet, hugging her fiercely. She pulled back and studied Violet critically. “You look terrible,” she declared. “Like you’re about to fall over.”
“I might,” Violet admitted. “I think I’m just hungry.”
“I saw the commandant at the hospital earlier but you weren’t with him. I was worried something had happened.”
“The damn car happened,” Violet grumbled. “Specifically the starter. It gave me problems between Acre and Beirut and again when we got back to Damascus. I’m afraid to turn it off now in case I can’t get it started again.”
“Forget the car. You need to take care of yourself,” George chided, “or you’re going to get run down and sick. I don’t want to see you as a patient in that hospital, you hear me?”
“I hear you.” With George working in the French hospital here, Violet was able to visit her friend whenever she could. It was George’s opinion that Violet worked too hard and travelled far too much, though that didn’t ever stop her enthusiastic questions about the cities Violet had come from or the people she had met.
Though tonight, Violet didn’t have the energy or inclination to talk about her last excursion. “They let you out for a night?” she asked George instead.
“Yes.” George grinned. “Two of the other Spearettes and I were hoping to avoid the mess tent for dinner. We were on a search for the most delicious shawarma in all of Damascus.” She gestured behind her in the general direction of Henri. “And then I ran into this big oaf in front of the hotel, so I sent the girls on ahead of us.” The delight in her voice was unmistakable.
Violet glanced at Henri, who was standing to the side, his hands in his pockets, watching them. She hadn’t seen him since that day at the dressing station though she had thought about him often. She’d read the Dekobra novel three times now, mostly for lack of anything else to read, but every time she opened the book, she envisioned him as he had been the first time he had handed her the book. Violet attributed the pang of intense longing that always accompanied that memory to homesickness for the azure blue sea and salty breezes. And maybe a little loneliness.
“How are you, Henri?” she asked. It wasn’t lost on her that in a different life, that question had been nothing more than a trivial and breezy social convention that Violet had asked and been asked a thousand times. And the expected response was always gay and light because no one was really interested in an honest one. Here, that question carried a sobering weight.
“I’m all right, princess.”
His hair was a little longer and his uniform and skin no longer caked in dust and blood. Which made the purple scar that ran across his elbow to disappear under the short sleeve of his uniform that much more visible.
She stepped away from George, closer to Henri, and assessed the puckered skin dotted with tiny scars where he’d been stitched. “What happened to your arm?”
Henri glanced down at his elbow. “It wasn’t as bad as it looks.”
“Shrapnel?”
“Yes.”
“Shrapnel is always as bad as it looks. Usually worse.”
“Now you sound like my sister. Always worrying. But there is no need. I’m fine.”
“You are an idiot,” George scolded. “I will always worry about you. The fighting before we took this city was awful. In case you’ve forgotten, I saw the cost incurred by the Italian and Vichy refusal to surrender firsthand. God, when I saw your name on that casualty list, I just about—”
“What casualty list?” Henri was frowning at his sister. “You never said anything about a casualty list.”
George’s gaze cut warily to Violet and then back. “The one that Vi showed me.”
“You showed her a casualty list?” Henri held Violet’s eyes with such a fierce intensity that Violet felt herself flushing.
“I work for the divisional medical officer, Henri. I asked him if I could look at them as they came in.” Why was she defending herself?
“You were looking for my name?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I… Because George is my friend.” That was the truth if not the whole one. “I thought it was better that George hear it from me if something happened to you.”
“And the commandant let you?”
“Yes. Because he is kind and he knows that not knowing is worse. And there were so, so many losses. On both sides.”
For the first time, his gaze dropped. “I didn’t sign up to shoot countrymen. No matter if they were Vichy.”
“There never should have been two sides. Just France,” George said.
Henri yanked his hands from his pockets. “It’s done. And we’re here now. Waiting for someone to send us somewhere where we can do what we came to do and fight Nazis.”
Violet exchanged a look with George. “Where? When?”
“I don’t know. No one seems to know. It sounds like the Brits and their Commonwealth friends think that they can beat the Germans all on their own out here. Their generals seem content to leave the Free French here and keep us on the sidelines.”
“Good,” George said with feeling. “You’re safe here.”
Henri ignored his sister. “There are rumours that if they won’t let us into the fight, de Gaulle might offer to send us into Russia to help them fight the Nazis there.”
“Russia?” Violet echoed. She shrank back and leaned against the bonnet of the Humber. The commandant had told her horrific things about the fighting in Russia. “You can’t go there.”
“We haven’t gone anywhere, princess.”
“Yet,” she mumbled unhappily.
“Tell me about you.”
“About me?”
“Where you’ve been. What you’ve been doing when you haven’t been scouring casualty lists and spying on me.”
The mention of spying sent a wash of disquiet through her. She had dutifully reported the details of her visit with the captain, but without any real physical evidence, Lavigne felt that there was little that they could do. He hadn’t brought the matter up again, yet there were still moments when the intelligence officer’s words nagged at her.
“She’s been driving the commandant back and forth between here and Acre and Beirut.” George answered for her like a proud parent. “Meetings and strategy and planning. Helping to keep our troops supplied, our casualties taken care of, and the politics managed.” She made Violet sound like a general.
“Indeed?” Henri said. “You’ve been busy saving the world.”
Violet couldn’t tell if he was amused at George’s loyal enthusiasm or mocking her.
“Ignore him.” George grasped Violet’s hand. “Come to dinner with us. I want to hear your stories about the people you’ve met and the cities you’ve seen even if this boor can’t appreciate them.”
Violet shook her head. “I—”
“Don’t say no. You said you were hungry. I can’t fix this war but I can fix that you’re hungry.”
“I wasn’t going to say no. I was going to say that I can’t. I’m waiting for the commandant.” Violet paused and frowned.
“What’s wrong?’
“He’s been in the hotel a long time,” she said, checking the time on her watch. “He said he’d only be a few minutes.”
“Maybe he fell asleep,” George guessed. “He looked just as done in as you.”
“No. He wouldn’t do that. Not when there are people waiting for him at the hospital. Maybe I should go to check on him.”
“Is that a good idea?” It was Henri who asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Some superior officers are a little prickly about their privacy. Maybe he wouldn’t like you following him. Infringing.”
“The commandant’s not like that.” She glanced up at the empty windows of the hotel. “I think I should go check on him.”
“If you like, I can send Corporal Gasquet up to do that so you can wait with the car,” Henri offered. “I just saw Gasquet in the lobby of the hotel and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind fetching the doctor for you.”
“Um.” Violet waffled in indecision.
“Speak of the devil.” Henri waved at someone behind her. “Corporal.”
Violet turned to find the dark-haired corporal with the kind eyes approaching the rear of the Humber. He sidestepped a man hustling across the road with a cart piled high with fruit and joined Violet and Henri. Henri’s earnest batman, Private Picard, was with him.
“I thought that was you. A pleasure to see you again, La Fleur,” Gasquet said with a flourish and a bow that wouldn’t have been out of place in Versailles. “Especially in these much-improved circumstances.”
Violet found herself smiling back despite her worry. “And you, Corporal.” She turned her gaze on the batman. “A pleasure to see you as well, Private Picard.”
The private ducked his head bashfully.
Gasquet had turned to George with a warm smile. “Christophe Gasquet. I have not yet had the privilege of an introduction…” He let his words trail off as a question.
“My sister,” Henri growled. “You can save your charm.”
Gasquet’s smile faltered slightly.
George sent Henri a scathing glance and stepped forward. “Georgette Chastain,” she said. “Though everyone calls me George.”
The corporal’s smile retuned in full force. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He gestured at his companion. “I found Picard heading up the street,” Gasquet said cheerfully to Henri. “The bar in the hotel was especially crowded, so we thought we’d find ourselves a drink elsewhere. Would you all care to join us?”
“I can’t,” Violet said before Henri could answer. “I’m waiting for the commandant to drive him back to the hospital. But he’s taking a really long time in the hotel, and I’m a little worried. I need to go up to check on him.”
“Would you like us to wait with the car while you do that?” Gasquet volunteered immediately.
“Yes, please. That would be helpful—”
“I’ll come with you,” Henri interrupted. “Picard, can you wait with the car? Make sure a pack of Aussie soldiers doesn’t take it for a joy ride? Or a local doesn’t strip it bare of parts and pieces until we can get back?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Corporal, you and I can escort Adjutant St. Croix into the hotel. I’ll get you to check the bar downstairs. Maybe the commandant stopped in and lost track of time.” He paused. “Is that all right with you, Adjutant?”
