We Were Soldiers
110. Céleste
The answer to "What's the catch?" made Steve wish he'd never asked in the first place. The only way to get to Signes without being caught was to travel across the countryside, and it was a particularly rugged countryside that even a Jeep would struggle to traverse. Not that it mattered, because the Resistance didn't have any Jeeps.
What they did have, was motorcycles. Appropriated German motorcycles with thick-tread tires ideal for traversing uneven terrain. Their contact directed them to a place in the country outside of Marseilles, where they found a vehicle shed cleverly concealed in a deep ravine. Getting the bikes out of the ravine and to a relatively flat, obstacle-free patch of ground was the first challenge. Getting the Commandos to stay on the bikes was the second and more considerable of the challenges, and it was made all the more challenging by the fact that it was midnight, and there was only weak moonlight to see by.
"Where the hell did you learn to ride a motorbike?" Bucky asked Peggy, as she zoomed around him following his third fall of their training session.
"Michael had a bike when he was nineteen," she said, pulling up to a dignified halt in which she did not fall off the bike at all. "He taught me how to ride it. Granted, I only went up and down the driveway… and around the orchard a few times… and halfway to London, once… but it's not something you just forget."
Jacques, unsurprisingly, was equally competent on a motorbike. It had been his main mode of transportation for most of his life, he informed the team when asked. Steve was just glad the guy wasn't vomiting his guts up.
"Hey, watch out!" called Dugan. Steve held his breath as Dugan narrowly missed a head-on collision with Jones. Neither of them seemed to know how to use the brake lever on the right-hand side of the handlebar.
Steve was in a slightly better position than the rest. He'd ridden a motorbike once before, during their mission to free Michael. Now that he knew how to stop without falling off—the trick, he had discovered, was to put your foot down—he'd put a halt to his own riding to sit astride his bike and watch the progress of the others. He'd given them an hour to learn before they had to set off, so they were under a fair amount of pressure.
"How's it going, Falsworth?" he called.
"Just like riding a bicycle," said Monty, driving past at five miles an hour and wobbling with each turn. "A death-bicycle which will kill me at any minute."
"You're doing great. But why don't you give second gear a try, okay?"
Freddie and Morita seemed to be doing a little better. They'd both made it up to third gear and could start, stop and turn without wobbling too badly. So long as everybody could stay upright, they would be okay. And if anybody did have a mishap… well, they'd just have to double-up on one of the bikes. Luckily, their Resistance contact had given them some spare gasoline, to help them reach their destination.
"ARGH!" Jones' cry of dismay was almost drowned by the scream of two engines revved too hard as they tried to turn out of each others' way. Steve looked over in time to see Jones and Dugan finally collide, their bike engines falling silent as they stalled. Both men were flung clear of the crash, rolled to a stop and lay there for a moment, winded and dazed.
Dugan recovered first. "Jones, ya crazy fool! I told you to watch out!"
"Well, maybe if you weren't driving like a madman—"
"Madman! I've been the safest guy here! If you hadn't—"
"Sacrebleu!" Jacques snapped. "Stop acting like buffoons! This is no game, and this is no time to act like children. If you cannot take this seriously, I will go without you."
Silence fell in the clearing, and Steve cleared his throat. "We should get going, it's been almost an hour. Jacques, since you know this area better than any of us, why don't you take point? Try to pick the easiest trails, and let's keep the pace steady for the first few miles. I'll watch our six and make sure nobody falls behind. If you spot something noteworthy, pull over so Freddie can take pictures. Phillips will kill us if we come back without intel."
Monty and Morita helped Dugan and Jones right their bikes and perform a quick check. With nothing broken, neither men nor machines, they set off in convoy.
"Hey, we'll need to keep a close eye on Dernier," said Bucky, as Freddie tagged onto the line of vehicles leaving the clearing.
"It's understandable that he's upset," said Steve. "I would be too, if I'd been told my sister had been tortured and executed by Nazis. I remember how tough it was when I lost my Mom."
"Yeah, but your Mom was different. She died from a disease. It was a tragedy. There was nobody to blame. No revenge to be had."
"You think Jacques is gonna go off the rails?"
"I dunno." Bucky bit his bottom lip for a moment. "Back in the 107th, I sent one of our Corporals—Gusty, you met him last year in Italy—out on a recon. While he was out there, a Private under his command tripped a land mine. He was just a kid, and Gusty saw him blown to pieces. He was never quite the same after that. Cold, when it came to the Germans. Uncompromising in battle. He liked to hurt them a little too much. We did all we could for him, but I think seeing that will always stay with him. Just how the violence of Céleste's death with always stay with Dernier."
Hearing Bucky talk about those times was like seeing through a window into another world. Since being rescued from Schmidt's clutches, his friend had never really talked about his time in the army. Steve had assumed it was due to the trauma of being experimented upon, and sometimes he forgot that Bucky had been fighting for months before being captured. Seeing friends killed, taking lives… it was strange, but if you sat in the Fiddle for long enough you'd hear a thousand stories told by a thousand different servicemen, stories of their experiences in war. Not so Bucky. It was as if everything from the moment he shipped off from New York to the moment Steve pulled him off that steel table was a blank. A no-man's land of memories that Bucky didn't want to cross.
"Earth to Captain America," said Bucky, waving his hand in front of Steve's eyes. "Do you wanna sit here daydreaming all night, or should we catch up to the team before they're out of earshot?"
"Sorry, just dwelling on things. And don't call me that."
"Heh, just checking you were paying attention!" The grin on Bucky's face was pure mischief. "C'mon, I'll race you to the back of the group."
Grinning back, Steve revved his bike's engine. Worries about the past could wait until the future. Right now, his attention was needed in the present. "You don't stand a chance, Barnes."
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The fifty-kilometre night-time journey was fraught with grassy tussocks and rocky outcroppings. Cross-country was swifter on a bike, but more perilous than on foot. Trees were a particular hazard; if you got a branch caught in your collar, it was fifty-fifty whether the tree wrestled you and your bike to the ground, or you came away with half a trunk embedded in your jacket. And even though the team had changed back into their military uniforms—all save Freddie and Jacques—the night air was still bitterly cold, and made even colder by the speed at which they travelled.
Still, nobody complained. Not Peggy, not Freddie, not even Dugan, who loved a good complain even more than the next guy. Everybody was completely dedicated to the mission. There would be time for warmth later, when this was done.
If Steve was honest with himself, he wasn't entirely comfortable with the plan, and he grew more and more uncomfortable with it with each passing mile. True, the whole 'plant a bomb in a Nazi facility' schtick was pretty routine by now. But this was a little different. It wasn't a factory, or a mine, or a weapons depot—it was a house. A home. A place where a man lived with his kids. And even though that man was responsible for heinous crimes and countless murders, the kids were innocents in this. They didn't deserve to die for the sins of their father.
When they planted the bomb, they would have to make sure it was planted well away from the children. There could be no room for error or mistake on this mission. The best time to carry it out would be during late night, when the children would be asleep. That would give the team time to do a little reconnaissance during the day. And when the sun set tomorrow, they could wheel their bikes silently to somewhere close to the house, ready to make their get-away as soon as it was done. On their way out, he would activate the transponder and signal Captain Stone to come pick them up.
It wasn't the mission they'd signed up for, but at least it should be relatively straight-forward from here.
Steve could smell the morning before it arrived. It was strange, and possibly sounded mad, but as the sun prepared to rise, the air changed. It got fresh and dewy and smelled a little crisper than it had in the dead of night. As that pre-morning scent hit his nose, he ordered the team to pull over and sent Morita on ahead to scout on foot. No sense announcing their arrival with loud motorbike engines.
The sun had risen by the time Morita returned with the news that he'd caught a distant glimpse of the house through his binoculars, and had found them a hiding place a few miles down the road where they would be safe until nightfall. Now came the hard part; pushing their bikes to the hiding place in silence.
It didn't take long for everyone but Steve to work up a sweat. And finally, Peggy found herself disadvantaged. While she was just as smart and as brave as any man—and considerably smarter and braver than some—she simply lacked the raw physical strength of the rest of the team. Not even halfway through their arduous trek to their hiding place, she started to lag behind. Steve surreptitiously dropped back to keep her company.
"No need to worry about me," she said, between puffs and pants. "I can follow those and catch up. I won't get lost." She nodded at the multiple sets of footprints and tire tracks imprinted on the soil. Yeah, there was definitely no hiding those.
"You got me," he said, trying to inject some humour into his voice. Keep her spirits up. "I was just using my concern for you as an excuse to spend time with you. And to be honest, I wanted to get your opinion on something."
"Oh?"
"Bucky's worried about Jacques. That this might not be enough for him. That losing his sister might push him over the edge."
Peggy nodded. "Men can do seemingly crazy things under the influence of grief. I've seen men broken by it, and I've seen men made harder by it. The best thing we can do for Jacques is to be there for him when he needs us, but give him the space he needs to come to terms with his sister's death."
It made sense. Still, Bucky's anecdote niggled at him. He didn't wanna see Jacques change into someone who enjoyed hurting people, even if those people were his enemies.
"Bucky mentioned there was a guy with the 107th, Gusty, who saw one of his soldiers get blown up by a mine, and was never the same again."
He stopped as Peggy ceased pushing to take a breather and wipe the sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her jacket. After a few deep breaths, she started pushing again with renewed vigour.
"That was different," she said at least.
Sensing some reticence from her, he pushed on. "Different how?"
Again, she paused. Steve didn't try to rush her. They were in no hurry to reach their destination, and he needed to know if this thing with Jacques, this need for revenge, was going to spiral out of control.
"Let me ask you this," she said. "When was your first real taste of war?"
It was an easy question. "The moment Dr Erskine was shot." Everything before that—the training at Camp Lehigh, running laps, climbing nets, firing drills, medical tests—was just play. Like when he and Bucky and their friends had built a cardboard version of the Alamo in the Barnes' back yard. Almost a form of make-believe.
"Now, imagine you hadn't seen that," she continued. "You're just a regular soldier who's gone through basic training, learnt how to shoot and dig foxholes and work together with your team. Every evening, you all went back to your barracks and climbed into bed and went to sleep. And when you woke up the next morning, you did it all over again.
"That training was to instill into soldiers a sense of camaraderie, normalcy and routine. Subconsciously, you learnt that if you did what was asked of you, everybody would turn in for the night. Then you got shipped off to Europe, and the first time you went out on a mission, somebody didn't come back. You did everything that was asked of you, you performed just like you did in basic, but at the end of the day, there was an empty bed."
"I guess I would feel let-down. Angry," he admitted. Just like when Mom had died. The world he had known all his life had abruptly ended, and he had been lost.
"And that was precisely the problem. The American army has not done a particularly good job of preparing its soldiers for the concept of seeing men—friends—die. In basic, death was something removed from the training. You could always win the scenario, complete the mission, by working together, working hard, and obeying orders. In basic training, that was your world.
"The 107th and the other units that accompanied the SSR last year… their world-view was shattered. You learnt that the war was real in Brooklyn, when HYDRA killed Dr Erskine. Most of the soldiers with the SSR didn't learn about it until they got here. And nobody had trained them on how to deal with that. Some masked their pain with jokes. Others shut down completely. Some used revenge as a soothing balm."
"And Bucky?" Steve asked. He didn't want to ask. Didn't want to know. But he couldn't stop the question coming out. "How did he deal with it?"
Peggy pursed her lips. "Badly. At first, anyway. In time, he turned to duty. He wanted to be strong for his men. To be a good role model for them. To look out for them."
That sounded like Bucky. Always lookin' out for everyone else. Always putting the wellbeing of others ahead of his own problems. It was good to know that he had duty to turn to. That he hadn't gone the way of Gusty.
"How does this relate to Jacques?" he prompted, recalling the original reason for asking these questions.
"Jacques is not some naïve American soldier. France has been occupied for years, its people forced to deal with adversity on a daily basis. I've no doubt that Céleste's death will haunt Jacques for many years to come, but I don't think we need to worry about him losing control and going on some revenge-spree. At the end of the day, he's still fighting for his home and his peoples' freedom. He knows there's a bigger picture. He's lived in it."
"And if he wants to stay here, in France? Rejoin the Resistance?"
Boy, all his concerns were just pouring out today. Still, it was nice to have somebody to lean on. To talk about all this stuff with. In days past, he would've talked to Bucky, but he was all too aware that Bucky was still battling with his own demons. Steve didn't want to burden him unnecessarily. Besides, Peggy was a great observer, and capable of being entirely impartial when the need arose.
"I know it will be a blow for you and your team. Jacques is good at what he does, but he's not the only explosives expert in the world. We would find you somebody else. That I can promise you."
"It wouldn't be the same."
She shrugged. "As they say around here, c'est la vie. Now come on, I need to reserve my breath for pushing this bloody thing." She shot him a mischievous side-glance. "That is, unless you'd like to carry it for me? I saw some of the USO posters, you know."
Damn those posters. They immortalised the most embarrassing aspects of the show. The calf-hugging tights. The beaming dancers. The Harley they'd made him lift above his head. He was just lucky the movies hadn't made it out here yet. Or the radio show!
"Er, I think we can push in silence for a while," he said. And later, after this mission was finished, he'd have to speak to Kevin about those darned posters he kept putting up.
: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :
Once they reached the hiding place Morita had found for them, Steve let the team have a breather. Peggy wasn't the only one a little short of breath; Freddie looked just about ready to pass out. Poor kid had been living the civilian life for too long—he'd have to start training more if he was gonna be coming on missions like this. Or perhaps this was a good excuse to keep him off missions like this. Yeah. Steve could tell Phillips that it was too dangerous. That Freddie was a liability who risked the success of the mission. Phillips might even believe that.
When hell froze over.
"Jacques, you and I will undertake a recon," said Steve, once everybody had had chance to grab a drink and some rations. "The rest of you, conceal the bikes as best you can and set a watch. We don't want to be caught with our pants down."
"What about me, Cap?" asked Freddie. He patted his camera meaningfully. So far, he'd managed to get a few snaps from the warehouse window in the city centre, and a few of the main road to Signes, whenever their small convey neared it. That ought to give the brass something to talk about, at least. "I could come along and get a few pictures of this place."
Steve shook his head. "By the time we get back to London, your pictures will be obsolete. Just stay here with the rest of the team." Besides, he wanted the chance to speak to Jacques alone. Once this was over, their explosives expert might have some big decisions to make.
They set off in silence, Steve's focus on their surroundings, Jacques' on some faraway point only his eyes could see. It was only at that moment that Steve realised just how little he truly knew about the Frenchman. Jacques had always been honest about his chequered past, and everyone on the team knew he'd served time in jail before the war for burglary and arson… but the past was the past, and Jacques wanted to turn over a new leaf by using his skills and contacts to help free his people.
Other than that, Steve had known the guy had a brother and sister, but Jacques had been pretty tight-lipped about everything else. Were his parents still alive? Was he married? What were his plans for after the war?
Steve cleared his throat and waited for Jacques to glance up at him. "So. What comes next? After we're finished here, I mean. I guess you'll have to find a way to get a message to your brother..?"
Jacques nodded. "Oui. I must speak to Gaspard face to face. This is not the sort of news that can be sent in a letter. Gaspard is not like me; he thinks with his heart instead of his head. If he finds out from anyone but me, he will do something stupid."
"Then we'll go with you."
"Non." The Frenchman stopped and reached up to put his hand on Steve's shoulder. "I am grateful, but it is too risky. You have done enough already. All of you. Now I need time to be with my family. But do not worry, once I know Gaspard will not be a fool, I will come back to London. We have many more missions ahead of us, yes?"
Steve wanted to argue the point s'more, but he had to accept that this was something Jacques had to do alone. He needed to be with his family, so they could grieve together. Steve and the guys… they would only be intruding.
"London won't be the same without you, pal," he offered instead.
Jacques gave a small smile. "I know. But I bring you back some cheese."
They continued in silence, and Steve felt about fifty pounds lighter. The weight of the thoughts he'd been carrying… that they would lose Jacques, that the man might go off the rails… that weight had faded. It may take a long time, but Jacques would be okay. He would always love and remember his sister, but he still had so much left to live for. He and Gaspard would help each other through their pain.
After half an hour of hiking, they found the house. Steve smelled the distinctive scent of a wood-burning fire before he spotted the brick walls of the stately building. He dropped to the ground a couple of hundred metres out and pulled a pair of binoculars from his bag as Jacques lowered himself down beside him.
The picture he saw through the binoculars was as clear as day. There was a fence around the house, a tall chain fence which looked relatively new. A few birds perched atop it were evidence that it wasn't an electric fence, which made their task significantly easier.
A couple of armed guards were present in the courtyard; they stood beside a fountain that now ran dry, smoking cigarettes and talking. Steve was too far away to hear their words, but he could see their lips moving, and after a moment one of them threw his head back and laughed at something the other said. Their uniforms lacked the many-armed symbol of HYDRA. So, they were just regular Nazis, then.
Just regular Nazis, he scoffed to himself. When did I become so complacent about the enemy?
'Regular' Nazis or not, these men may have had a hand in torturing Céleste. Just because they weren't Schmidt's pawns didn't mean they were innocent of any crimes. They deserved to be caught in the blast, just like the camp's commandant.
He handed the binoculars to Jacques, let the Frenchman get sense of the layout of the place. Nature was on their side; the trees and bushes gave them an effective screen. From here, they could be seen from neither the road, nor the house. It would be a good staging post to launch their operation from, after dark.
"According to our contact," Jacques whispered, "the commandant's bedroom is at the rear of the house. We should look now, in daylight."
"Good idea. The more we know now, the less surprises we'll have tonight."
They made their way in a wide circle to the back of the house. There was a spacious yard bordered by hedges, and on a freshly cut grassy lawn stood a child's red and blue swing set—no doubt highly utilised by the children who lived here. And, sure enough, the uppermost window at the rear of the house was framed by luxurious curtains, and the corner of a four-poster canopy bed could just be made out from where they lay. There was no sign of movement in the room: no doubt the occupant was out overseeing the execution of innocent civilians.
"I want to be sure this explosion doesn't harm the children," he whispered to Jacques.
A moment later, the Frenchman said "There", pointing to something as he handed the binoculars back to Steve. The 'there' turned out to be a drainpipe running up the side of the house, near the edge of the windowsill.
"I can climb up and place the explosive on the window," said Jacques. "The blast will focus inward, drawing in fresh air when the glass shatters. Anybody in the room will be killed, but anyone in other rooms should live."
"Or how about I climb up and plant the bomb, and you keep a look-out?" Steve suggested.
Jacques shook his head. "You are too heavy for drain pipe. Besides, I must do this myself. For Céleste. I will climb, you will look-out."
"Alright, alright. I think I've seen enough for now. Do you wanna do more recon, or should we head back?"
"We head back. Rest before mission."
"Good idea."
When Jacques didn't move, or hand the binoculars back, Steve asked, "Is something wrong?"
It was hard to read Jacques' expression. The guy spent so much time laughing and smiling that seeing any other emotion in his eyes almost made him look like a stranger. But if Steve had to put a label on his friend's expression at that moment, it would've been overwhelming sadness.
"Gaspard will blame me," Jacques said at last. "For what happened to Céleste. He will blame me."
"Jacques, this isn't your fault."
"Isn't it?" he shot back, the overwhelming sadness turning accusatory. "I left them. My little brother and sister, I left them alone. If I had not gone to England, I would've been there for them. I could have stopped her from joining the Resistance. I might have saved her from a horrible death. Gaspard will blame me, and he will be correct to do so."
"I'm sad," Steve told him, "that I'll never get the chance to meet your sister. She sounds like a remarkable woman. Brave. Proud. Determined. But if there's one thing I've learned about women who are brave, and proud, and determined, it's that you can never stop them from doing something they want to do."
From Rita Hayworth to Peggy Carter to Mary-Ann Barnes, strong women had shown him time and time again that they did what they wanted regardless of whether it was 'right' or 'proper'. Rita had stood up to a doorman who didn't want to let a Negro into some swanky California club. Mary-Ann had gone to Baltimore to build the Victory Fleet, even after her family had told her their misgivings. And Peggy defied the men who told her no every day of her life.
"I don't think your sister would want you to live the rest of your life regretting that you couldn't stop her," he said. "I think she would want you to be proud of what she did. Maybe the rest of France won't remember her as a hero, but you will. And Gaspard will."
"Thank you, Steve." Jacques clapped him on the shoulder. "You are a good friend. And you are right. Maybe Gaspard will listen to your words as well. Come, let us go back to the others. I have a bomb to prepare."
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In the dead of night, the Commandos moved out. Quiet as possible, they wheeled their bikes a couple of miles closer to the house, where they would wait for Steve and Jacques to carry out the mission. Steve had explained to the rest of the team that once they were done here, Jacques would head back to Marseilles and give his brother the bad news, then find his own way back to London. With a great deal of sympathy and understanding, the team had accepted that decision.
The forest was quiet, but not silent. In the distance, an owl hooted, its call growing quieter as it moved away from the area. Small nocturnal animals rustled through the underbrush, their scurrying inaudible to everybody but Steve. Probably rats or badgers or something.
When they reached their first checkpoint, a little under a mile from the house, he instructed the rest of the team to remain ready with the bikes, then he and Dernier continued unencumbered by heavy vehicles. With any luck, the explosion would catch everyone off guard, and they would be well away from the area by the time the Nazis realised what was happening.
The moon was their guide as they made their way to the house, its pale light filtering through the bare branches of the trees. They walked in silence, too aware of the stakes if the were caught. Both of them carried their sidearms concealed beneath their shirts, so Steve wasn't overly worried that they couldn't fight back if they were seen, but a firefight would ruin the element of surprise and the mission would have to be abandoned.
They reached their former vantage point faster than Steve anticipated. There, they took a few minutes to check their surroundings and ensure nothing more had changed since their earlier recon.
The guards were no longer in the courtyard, and everything else around the place was still. From what their Resistance contact had said, Steve had expected this place to be swarming with guards on patrol. But maybe their contact had got it wrong. Maybe it was the main facility that was heavily guarded, and the only guards the house had were the two from earlier. Perhaps if they'd known that the house had only a couple of guards and a meagre chain fence, they wouldn't have had to send Céleste undercover. This place wouldn't have given the Resistance too much difficulty…
Steve nodded at Jacques, and Jacques nodded back. Time to get this over and done with.
At the fence, Steve gave the Frenchman a leg up, and waited until Jacques had cleared it before vaulting over it and landing without even a wobble. He was getting much better with his co-ordination! At this rate, by the time he managed to find chance to go dancing with Peggy, he might not even have to worry about stepping on her toes.
Once inside the fence, every sense seemed to sharpen, and every hair on his body stood on end despite the fact that he wasn't even cold. It was strange, but despite the fact that this was probably the lowest-stakes mission he'd been on so far, he also felt like he had the most to lose. He had to make sure this mission was a success. For Jacques. For Céleste.
His heart pounded loud as a drum in his chest as he and Jacques rushed forward to put their backs against the nearest wall. The shadows swallowed them, and Steve allowed himself to breathe a little easier. Half of moving covertly was about blending in with the shadows, and Peggy had grilled his team on stealthy advancement during their training in Coventry.
Their luck held as they moved around to the back of the house. Most of the curtains were drawn closed across the windows, reducing the chance they might be seen, and the guards were still nowhere in sight. It seemed the Resistance had really dropped the ball with their intel on this one.
They reached the base of the drainpipe below the commandant's bedroom window. The window on the ground floor had no curtains and was open a fraction, but secured on its latch; probably to let a little fresh air in. Steve's sensitive nose picked up the scent of the evening's meal from within, probably some sort of stew and a freshly baked loaf of bread. When he peered gingerly over the top of the windowsill, he found himself looking into a long hallway, an open door at the end spilling yellow light onto the carpeted hallway floor. Judging by the way the shadows played against the far wall, there was somebody in that room, but there was no indication they were about to leave it.
Steve nodded at Jacques, who removed his backpack and took the bomb from within. Once it was secured across his back by a strap wrapped around his shoulder and chest, he tested the strength of the drainpipe by pulling on it a couple of times. No movement. No squeaking. Not even the tiniest groans of complaint. The mission could proceed as planned.
He couldn't help but tense as Jacques began the slow, silent climb. Waiting below was the worst part. Each second seemed to take an eternity to pass. Why did time always slow when it was most needed to pass speedily?
It took a lifetime for Jacques to reach the window ledge. Then came the painstaking task of removing the explosive from his back while clinging to the drainpipe and setting it carefully against the glass.
This all seemed easy. Too easy. Where were the guards? Why didn't this place have some sort of lookout post? Why was everything so quiet?
"Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, dormez-vous? Dormez vous?"
Steve froze, a wave of coldness brushing over his skin that had nothing to do with the night breeze. That song. Sung by a woman. It sounded like a child's nursery rhyme. And it sounded close. Were the children awake? But it was so late!
"Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines, ding ding dong!"
Wait. Why was somebody singing in French to German children? Had the commandant found a new nanny for his children? His last nanny had been found with a bomb, so why would he trust another Frenchwoman to do the job? Safer to bring somebody from Germany to look after the kids.
His mom had an old saying: curiosity killed the cat. But right then, Steve couldn't help but be the cat. Something smelled bad, and it wasn't the odour of stew and fresh bread.
While Jacques was occupied with his descent down the pipe, Steve turned and peered in through the window closest to him, the one that had been propped slightly ajar. At the end of the corridor, inside the room that had been all light and shadows earlier, he could see a woman in profile. She was short, slim, her dress light grey and rather plain, but well-tailored. Her brown hair had been scraped back into a bun, and held in place with a cowrie-shell clip. In her hands she held a closed book, small enough that it could be a child's story book. Maybe the kids had woken and needed singing back to sleep?
With a quiet thud, Jacques landed beside him. Taking a deep breath, he straightened his cap and said, "Now we go."
"Wait a minute, there's a woman in there." Steve pointed at the window. "Maybe she's another Resistance member. But why wouldn't our contact have mentioned her?"
"Is not important." Jacques waved the remote detonator in front of him. "We have to go."
At that moment, the singing started again.
"Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, dormez-vous? Dormez vous? Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines, ding ding dong!"
Jacques' face turned white as a bed sheet. He rushed back to the window, pressing his face against the glass as he peered into the house like a kid with his face pressed against the window of a toy store. He seemed to have completely forgotten this was the home of a Nazi murderer.
"What is it, Jacques?" Steve whispered. "What's wrong?"
"It… it cannot be!" he replied. When he turned to Steve, eyes wide, face white, it was as if he'd seen a ghost. The expression on his face made gooseflesh spread across Steve's skin and an uncontrollable shiver race up his spine. "It… it is Céleste!"
Author's note: This is a cliff-hanger.
I'm going to be away for most of next weekend, so if I don't get chance to publish the next chapter then, it'll be the week after - possibly on Sunday or Monday (which I have off work!) Thanks for reading, and as always, if you have enjoyed this story, please send me helper-monkeys to assist with my daily routine so I can spend more time writing this behemoth!