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He smiles.
“She likes you,” Rainy says.
He turns so abruptly that the makings of his cigarette go flying. “Did she say that?”
Rainy shakes her head. “Didn’t need to. It’s obvious. Obvious to Étienne as well.”
“Étienne.”
She waits. It’s an interrogator’s trick the army taught her: most people find long silence intolerable and will say more. Philippe is not most people.
A truck full of French milice drives past, going the other way. They stiffen, but the truck rolls on until its taillights can no longer be seen.
They come to an intersection. The woods press close on one side, with fallow fields on the others. Philippe snaps the reins, and they plod on through. The wagon is the sum total of traffic at this time of night.
“That’s the ambush point,” Philippe says when they are through. “Our people are in the woods. If the Boche come this way . . . The gate is just around that bend.”
Rainy reaches under her coat to snap the safety off on her concealed Sten gun. Three magazines are in her left coat pocket. One will have to be snapped into place before she can use the Sten. She reaches behind and draws out her Walther, sticking it in her right pocket.
Slowly, slowly they come around the bend, and slowly, slowly the gate comes into view, barbed wire over wooden posts with a tall wooden gate. The gate is locked from the inside with a chain. A bored German soldier in an ill-fitting uniform stands with rifle hanging, chafing his hands and blowing into them to warm his fingers. A few feet behind him is an ugly, squat, concrete blockhouse with a wooden door, and beside it a firing slot, presumably housing a machine gun. Smoke curls from a pipe chimney.
“Not SS,” Rainy says.
“No,” Philippe agrees. “SS men don’t guard fuel dumps. He’ll most likely be some poor Pole or Ukrainian pressed into service. A lot of the less-than-front-line units have German officers and NCOs but pressed men from the east.”
The guard spots them and yells something over his shoulder while unlimbering his rifle. He holds the rifle at his waist. Rainy has not seen him touch the safety, but she cannot be sure.
Philippe waves his hand in a big arc and rattles off a quick stream of friendly sounding French, the most prominent words being cognac and officiers, officers.
The guard orders them to halt, and they do at a distance of a hundred yards. Too far. A helmetless sergeant comes out of the cement block hut, pushing his uniform into place and smoothing his hair, looking very much like a man who has been catching forty winks.
The NCO yells, “Was willst du hier?” What do you want here?
Rainy glances at her watch. 12:59 a.m. In six minutes Étienne is to provide a distraction.
Philippe offers an eloquent shrug of incomprehension. In French he explains that he and his sister are here to see whether the German officers are thirsty. Then he adds, “My sister speaks German.”
Rainy translates into German, and this seems to reassure the NCO. He waves them closer. But he also ducks back inside and reemerges with a helmet on his head and a Schmeisser in his hand.
Clop, clop, clop, the wagon advances.
They stop a second time, just before the gate. The German sergeant orders them to get down and come forward, hands in the air.
Step. Step. Step.
Two minutes.
They stop when they reach the gate. The NCO asks again for an explanation. Rainy takes her time about it, launching a long tale of how she and her brother just happened to find a barrel of cognac. This part of the story is clea
rly a lie and is meant to be understood as such by the German. He will of course assume that they have stolen the barrel. The sleepy NCO gets a shrewd look on his face, the kind of look people get when dealing with possibly useful criminals.
After a while the German impatiently silences Rainy with a raised hand. In response, as though trust has been established, Rainy lowers her hands.
The German does not like this. He orders her to open her coat. If she does, he cannot fail to see the Sten gun hanging low on its strap over her belly where the coat is at its blousiest.
She protests that she is not a whore! She has not come here to be insulted! Is she to undress for the amusement of this lowly sergeant?
It’s a convincing display of feminine modesty and French emotionalism—at least that’s how the German sees it. He grins and says something rude along the lines of not needing to rape some old widow woman in . . .
