CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SOPHIA
Sophia clung tightly to the tree. Her arms were scratched, her skin bruised and torn from climbing the trunk and pushing her way up the branches. She’d been near the back door when they’d been raided. She’d been about to go up and look for Hazel, wanting to see how she felt about Harry’s departure and make sure she wasn’t too worried. It was obvious there was something between Hazel and Harry, it would have been obvious to anyone, and she’d hoped for her friend’s sake that Harry made it home safely.
She shuddered as she listened to screams below, squeezing her eyes shut and wishing she could block it out. Her natural instinct was to drop down and fight, to do anything she could, but her bare hands were nothing against the men below toting guns.
Hazel.
Sophia dug her fingernails into the trunk, the pain inside her impossible to comprehend. The only other time she’d even come close to this kind of pain was seeing her mother . . . She pushed away the memory, refusing to let it in. There was nothing she could do. Nothing.
She could try to drop slowly, quietly, or she could try to sneak up on one of them and take a gun, but the probability of either of those things working was almost nil. Her training was clear; she had to do whatever she could do to protect herself. She had to hide and wait and get up to the attic. She had to secure anything she could that was left in the house, and then get to the next closest cell and re-establish.
‘Let me go! I have nothing to say!’
Sophia’s blood ran cold as she heard the scream. Icy, painfully cold. In the moonlight Sophia could see Hazel, held on each side by Gestapo, her legs kicking frantically as the men each clutched an arm. She was like a wildcat, scratching and clawing and squealing.
Whack.
Sophia gasped. One of the men had clearly had enough. His fist connected with Hazel’s face and she went limp, falling to the ground. The other man gave her a kick before hauling her back up. She stumbled, blood dripping from her nose and down her top – the lights from one of their vehicles had suddenly perfectly illuminated her face. There was silence for a moment, or perhaps it was the ringing in Sophia’s ears that made everything else silent for her. And then Hazel started to fight again.
Sophia listened to her friend yelling and wished she’d just go quietly, knew they’d probably go easier on her if she was meek and mild. But Hazel was a fighter, and she knew in her heart that she would never give anything away.
She waited for a gun to fire, for the blast that would take Hazel’s life, but instead she heard her friend swear as they dragged her away, feet trailing in the dirt as they hauled her to one of their trucks.
Before, the lawn and trees had been full of gunfire. The maquis had battled hard, but she knew most of them were dead, strewn across the grass. There would be Germans dead, too, but she guessed they’d lost fewer. They were the ones who’d taken them by surprise, which meant they were always going to come out victorious. Hazel had been so worried about staying, about their location being discovered, and Sophia had been the one insisting they wait until Rose was back. She blinked away tears. Rose was gone. It had been days since they’d waved her goodbye, and she would have returned by now if she could have. They should have left; they could have left a coded message and disappeared, moved on so they had less chance of being found.
A pain in Sophia’s side intensified and she slipped one hand from the tree and pressed it to the soreness. She was surprised to feel moisture, a stickiness that she hadn’t been expecting.
What happened? What was . . . ?
Sophia lifted her hand and rubbed her fingers together. It was blood. Had she been shot?
When she’d been running, she’d felt pain, a stinging, burning sensation against her side, but she hadn’t had time to react. All she’d cared about was getting away, running past anyone in her way and finding somewhere to hide. She’d been terrified they’d have tracking dogs, that they’d find her and she’d be sitting up the tree with nowhere to go. And then she’d seen them with Hazel and . . .
Sophia held on, feeling woozy now that she’d touched the blood. She’d been through worse. That night she’d first met Rose, landing on her doorstep in the middle of the night, slumped and bloodied against her door. This wasn’t as bad as that.
Sophia shut her eyes tight again, waiting, knowing it was too soon to go down yet. If she was going to cling to a tree and watch her friend be taken, then she was going to make damn sure that she made it count. Her only problem was that she had no idea how she was going to travel the sixty-odd miles to the next cell on her own if she did manage to escape. With no help, no transport and a gunshot wound that would make her journey almost unbearable.
Sophia made her way as carefully as she could down the tree. She had no concept of how long she’d been waiting, clinging there in the dark, but there hadn’t been any noise for what she was certain were hours. If she waited longer, then she risked them coming back to check the house over in the daylight, especially if someone they’d captured talked and gave any information away. She stretched once she landed, her legs heavy and achy from being in the same position for so long.
The risk now was that they’d left someone in wait. There could be someone hiding, watching to see who emerged and came back to the house. If only she had a weapon. But she didn’t and she was going to have to risk it.
She walked quickly but was as careful as she could be. She headed straight for the house. The moonlight was almost completely covered by a mist of clouds, which made it nearly impossible to see. But she kept going, determined, knowing she had a small window of time, one opportunity before the sun rose. She had to gather what she needed, secure what she could and then head north before it started to get light.
Sophia entered the house. She strained to listen, her breath loud in her own ears as she waited, expecting to hear something, but there was nothing. Only long stretches of silence greeted her, so different from the house that had been heaving with people up until a short time ago. They were fortunate in that so many of the maquis had gone. Even though they might have had a chance at surviving against the Germans if they’d been here, they would have lost so many more men and all of their plans would have been interrupted. As it was, she had no idea how she was going to warn the other cells, get word to London and Paris before things got worse. How much did they know? How many cells were they infiltrating?
She refused to think about Rose. Rose would never have talked, nothing would have made her give up her friends or anyone in the Resistance, but she hadn’t made it back and that meant something had definitely gone awry.
Sophia stopped when she saw the first body. Face down, a huge wound through his back. She didn’t need to turn him over to know he was dead. As she moved through the house there were more. Bodies were strewn everywhere, not all of them theirs, but most. There was blood splattered across the walls, pools of it seeping into the floor, and she was thankful there was no smell yet or she’d have been gagging with every step she took.
She stopped to touch one man, slumped against the wall. Sophia placed her fingers to his neck, waiting, silent as she hoped to find a sign of life. But as with all the others she’d come across, there was nothing. She moved fast, eyes straining as much as her ears to see. There was only one place she needed to go, and that was upstairs. Hazel had been taken, but that didn’t mean her equipment had. She hurried, focused on where she had to go and not letting herself think about anything else. Creaks echoed out from under her feet, but she’d quickly realised that the likelihood of anyone surprising her now was almost non-existent. If they were lying in wait, she’d have been long dead by now.
She placed one foot on the stairs, about to race up, when a noise made all the blood drain from her face. Sophia paused, spun around, her heart in her throat.
‘Halt.’
Sophia came face to face with a German. He was crawling, his face screwed up in pain, but his intent clear. He was holding a gun but his hand was shaking and she quickly moved out of his line of fire. He groaned and tried to follow her, but she was too fast for an injured soldier fallen to his knees.
‘Halt!’ he screamed, but it came out as more of a plea, his voice faltering as she stared at him.
Sophia dodged his aim again, cringing when he fired the gun. It shot through the wall to her left, and she knew that she had no choice but to disarm him. He might be injured, but his desire to kill her was strong, and she wasn’t going to walk away from him only to have him shoot her in the back.
She’d passed another dead German on her way in, and she was furious with herself that she hadn’t taken his gun then and there. She made her way back and found him, bending to push him over. He was heavy and she had to shove him hard, her heart in her throat as she listened to the shuffles of the other man near the staircase, rattled now after being so certain she was the only living person left in the house.
She collected the pistol, checked it and made her way straight back to her enemy. There were many things she could have done; disarming him by overpowering him and killing him with her bare hands had been her first thought, but this was safer. And if she died or hurt herself right now? Then thousands of maquisards, the rural French Resistance fighters who relied on them, who were so vital to their movement, would be effectively left in the dark.
She walked closer, stood over him from behind. He went to move, went to turn around and take aim, but she was already waiting, pistol head high. A cool rush of calm passed through her body, her mind clear as she stared at the enemy in front of her. Sophia squeezed the trigger, pulled it back and held the gun steady, refusing to look away when the bullet entered his head and killed him before he’d had a chance to do the same to her. This time when she stepped over him and started up the staircase, she kept the gun with her, ready to take anyone down who dared to stand in her way.
Her heart was racing, pounding in her chest as she took the steps two at a time. She paused at the top, dizzy and pressing her hand against her side as she nudged the door open and scanned the room. It was silent up there, but everything had been upturned. Sophia glanced where the radio had been, where she’d last seen Hazel sitting, her back to her. Hazel had turned and smiled, laughing at something when she’d teased her about Harry. She hadn’t known at the time that they’d never share another moment like it.
Sophia gasped, the weight of everything that had happened, what she’d survived, what she’d done, hitting her. She fought the urge to fall to her knees, to give up, to berate herself for sitting in a tree and watching her friend get taken so brutally. But she couldn’t. This was how she helped her friends. This was what they’d want her to do.
She took a moment instead, inhaled deeply and positioned herself in the middle of the room. She grabbed a pillow off the bed and took the pillowcase off, smiling when she saw a wooden piece from Hazel’s radio fall to the bed. She left that and quickly tore the pillowcase, fastening it tight to her side now that the bleeding had started up again. Then she looked around, knowing the other parts must be hidden in the room. Hazel must have heard what was happening and had a chance to hide the parts, and she’d obviously broken it down. The trick now was to find them all, and hope that she hadn’t tried to run with the rest of the radio.
Sophia remembered the secret boards in the room. She knelt beside the bed and leaned down lower, squinting and seeing nothing. The bed had been moved, but not very far, so she hauled it out from the wall and shoved it away as far as she could. On hands and knees, she felt around, glancing behind to make sure no one had followed her, that no one was about to surprise her with a gun pointed to her head.
No one was there, but she was still unnerved about being in a house filled with so many dead bodies, and possibly another not-dead one.
She kept feeling around and connected with a groove, a slight imperfection that didn’t fit against the other board, that made her certain she’d found it. Sophia scrambled forward some more, tugging at the board and then the one beside it. She grinned when she uncovered the hole and stuck her hand inside, connecting with a bag of some sort. Quickly she pulled it out, recognising Hazel’s satchel, and making sure there was nothing else there. She opened it, looked inside and saw the metal parts she’d been hoping for. She had no idea where else to look, but Hazel had obviously broken the machine down into parts so the entire thing couldn’t be discovered too easily. She might even have had a simple piece on her.
And then she saw something that made emotion clog her throat, tears filling her eyes almost instantly. It was Hazel’s red lipstick, the one Rose had given her before she’d left. She reached for the Elizabeth Arden case, holding it tight, fingers clenching around it as she thought about her friends, the only other two women in the world she’d ever trusted that way. They both meant the world to her, and now they were gone. She opened the case and carefully swept the lipstick across her lips, leaning into the little mirror above a large piece of bedroom furniture. It was filthy and the light was still impossible, but she could see enough to make sure she wasn’t drawing on her face. Once she was finished, she slipped the case into her pocket, a little something of Hazel’s to remember her by. Then she rummaged around, found one of Hazel’s shirts and quickly changed into it, grateful that they were a similar size.
Sophia froze when she heard a noise. Her ears pricked, body on high alert. It could have just been the old house moving, it could have been anything, but she knew it was time to get out. She frantically searched for the other piece, knowing there had to be another part, pulling down books from the bookcase. Then, frustrated, she opened the wardrobe, yanking things down and then standing on tiptoe, arm extended to feel around.
Got it! She connected with a piece of cold metal, exactly what she’d been looking for. She quickly put the other pieces in the satchel and walked on silent feet across the room and back down the stairs, placing the strap of the satchel across her neck to drape diagonally between her shoulders. She hoped she’d found it all, did a quick check and ran through everything in her mind. She’d been trained in radioing, too, only it had been some time since she’d worked the equipment herself.
It was silent now, and she hoped it stayed that way until she left. Sophia made her way to the kitchen, knowing her efforts would be fruitless if she didn’t have something to eat or drink or both with her. There was a meat safe that had been turned into a real safe some time ago, and she was thankful she’d been trusted with the code. She turned the dial, put in the correct numbers and reached in for all the money the safe held. She quickly stuffed it into her satchel, along with two papers she saw in there containing codes that could be useful.
Sophia then turned and scanned the kitchen, the space a mess from so many people using the same house. She opened a cupboard, looked for something, anything, to eat. She found some bread and put the chunk into the satchel. It would have to do. She fetched a mug and filled it with water, gulped it down and then turned to go. There were some old bicycles out in the shed, and she knew they were her only hope to get away fast enough. On foot she’d be too slow.
She kept glancing around outside, scanning the trees and thinking every shadow was the enemy, but she saw no one. When she reached the shed she hauled the rickety old door back and found an equally rickety-looking bicycle staring back at her, beside a crate half-full of apples. The bicycle was propped against a stack of old crates and covered in cobwebs, but she didn’t care. She quickly wiped it down, using her hand to get the dust from the seat and the webs from the handlebars. Then she took some apples to fill her satchel with, put the satchel in the basket at the front and pushed the bicycle out, wobbling as she got up on the seat and started to pedal. She struggled over the grass, pushing as hard as she could past the gnarled apple trees in the orchard. At least with her bag full of fruit she had a cover story, since she could be taking them to a friend or a relative, and with any luck they might help her to avoid detection.
She had a long ride ahead of her, but all she was going to think about with every push of the pedal were the thousands of maquisards who were relying on her. She was the only one left from the chateau, and if the message hadn’t been received by everyone that the landings were imminent, then they could lose the war. They needed to disrupt the lines and cause mayhem to ensure the German focus was anywhere but Normandy.
She gritted her teeth and settled into a steady rhythm.
There was no way that was happening on her watch.