War Stories Page 10

  “Sticks and stones,” the old man replied. “It’s just words.”

  His grandson was still nervous. “I’m beginning to think it’s more than that. Our slashed tires; the dead bird under the windshield wiper. Trev seems to believe that blond girl is stalking us. What if it isn’t a figment of his imagination? What if she’s mixed up with La Vérité?”

  For the first time, his grandfather had no snappy answer. Both men watched as Trevor walked back from the grove of trees, dusting off his hands. G.G. was not intimidated by a few nasty comments on a Facebook page. But the whole thing had to be taken more seriously because Trevor was with them.

  “The two of us can protect ourselves, but Trev’s twelve,” Daniel reasoned. “I don’t like the idea of bringing him into the lion’s den.”

  G.G. was adamant. “If you feel like this is too dangerous, then by all means, take the kid and go home. But I’m seeing this through to the end. These threatening messages of yours—they’re part of it too. Don’t you think I want to find out what it’s all about?”

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “Grandpa, do you know something about this that you’re not telling me? Something about those messages and who’s sending them?”

  The old man’s eyes flashed. “Do I mind your business?” Then he added, almost to himself, “I didn’t think there was anybody left.”

  “What are you talking about? Who’s ‘anybody’?”

  At that moment, Trevor’s voice reached them. “I couldn’t find it,” he reported briskly. “The ground’s too hard to dig with your hands. Maybe we should go to the next town and buy a shovel.”

  G.G. laughed and shook his head. “No time for that, kiddo. We’ve got places to go. Next stop: Gay Paree!”

  Most of the pictures were familiar to the blond girl—Omaha Beach, the historical sites around Normandy, the hedgerows, Saint-Lô. There was one image she couldn’t place. It seemed to be an old stone cistern at the side of a road somewhere. Who knew what attracted the attention of these Americans?

  Anyway, there was no mistaking the photograph at the top of the Instagram page. Trevor Firestone—who proudly identified himself as the great-grandson of Jacob Firestone, the “hero” of Sainte-Régine. The foolish boy believed that to be related to such a man was something to boast about. For this, Trevor was probably not to be blamed. For sure, his much-adored “G.G.” never told him the truth.

  Juliette Lafleur scrolled down to the bottom of the Instagram page. It was a picture of the front of the Hôtel Pivoines in Paris. And she knew exactly where it was because she was standing directly across the cobblestoned street from it. Juliette looked up from her phone screen and there it was.

  “Here it is,” said her tall cousin in French from the seat of his motorcycle.

  Philippe was seventeen, four years older than Juliette. This whole thing had been Juliette’s idea, but she could not possibly have pulled it off without her cousin. A thirteen-year-old girl never could have traveled all around France on her own. But Philippe had a motorcycle.

  “Let’s get it done, then,” she told him.

  Philippe reached into the cargo net under the seat, pulled out a plastic bag, and handed it to Juliette. From it, she removed an exquisitely gift-wrapped box.

  “I don’t know why we had to make it so pretty,” Philippe grumbled, “considering who it’s going to.”

  “It has to look like a present,” she explained patiently. “Otherwise, we’ll never get it past the front desk.”

  Juliette tucked the parcel under her arm and headed into the hotel through the automatic doors. Wearing her most innocent expression, she approached the desk and announced in English, “Monsieur Firestone left a key for me.”

  Juliette knew that none of the three Firestones had done any such thing—not the great-grandfather, the father, nor Trevor. But she kept a sharp eye on the desk clerk as he scanned the wall of pigeonholes behind him. The man reached into the slot for room 407 and came up empty.

  “I am sorry, mademoiselle, there is no key for you.”

  She did her best to look disappointed. “My grand-uncle is no longer a young man. He forgets things. Merci.” She started for the door. But as soon as the clerk turned his back, she dashed onto the elevator and pressed 4.

  On the fourth floor, she marched straight past room 407 to the housekeeping cart, which was parked outside the slightly open door of 419. Inside, she could hear the vacuum cleaner running, which meant she probably had at least a minute or two. She snatched the passkey from the corner of the cart, raced back to 407, let herself into the room, and left the gift package on the carpet just inside the door.

  She exited the room to find the maid standing by her cart, gazing around in confusion.

  “Is this what you’re looking for?” Juliette asked her, handing back the passkey. “I found it on the floor back there.”

  “Ah, yes. Merci. Merci.”

  It was only when the elevator door closed behind her that Juliette began to breathe again. How naïve had she and Philippe been to believe that a few Facebook posts would convince Sainte-Régine to cancel their celebration or to scare off this family of Americans?

  Perhaps this would be enough to get the job done.

  “You know, Trev,” Dad said as the weary Firestones returned to their hotel late that afternoon, “Paris has the greatest art museums in the world, including the Louvre. And what are we spending our time looking at? Tanks and guns and pictures of dead and wounded soldiers!”

  Trevor was thunderstruck. “Didn’t you like the Army Museum? It was awesome! Those French Resistance guys had to be the bravest people who ever lived. It’s one thing to fight in the army. But with the Resistance, even joining was enough to get you killed!”

  As they stepped through the automatic doors, G.G. reached under his shirt collar and pulled out a ring on a thin gold chain. The ring was dull and tarnished compared to the shiny chain. Engraved into the metal was a small cross with two bars.

  “That’s a Cross of Lorraine!” Trevor exclaimed excitedly. “Symbol of the Resistance!”

  Dad spoke up. “Grandpa, you never told me you had anything to do with the Resistance.”

  “The Resistance was everywhere,” G.G. explained. “Especially in Paris. They rose up and started the liberation of the city before we even got here. Toughest fighters I’ve ever seen. Terrifying if you were a Nazi.”

  “But who gave you that ring?” Trevor persisted.

  “A friend.”

  “You had a friend in the Resistance?” Trevor crowed. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “Where is it written that you have to know everything?” his great-grandfather retorted.

  Trevor backed up a step. It was the first time he could remember that G.G. had refused to answer one of his questions.

  Dad pulled Trevor aside. “Easy, Trev,” he said in a low voice. “G.G.’s just tired. There’s a lot of walking in these museum visits. It’s hard on a man his age.”

  “I’m not tired and I’m not deaf either,” the old soldier tossed over his shoulder as the elevator door opened in front of him.

  “I’m going to stay down here and upload the museum pictures to my Instagram,” Trevor told him. “There’s better Wi-Fi in the lobby. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

  So Daniel rode to the fourth floor with G.G. They opened the door of room 407 and stared. There on the floor was a festively wrapped package.

  The old man was the first to speak. “Well, it’s not my birthday …”

  Daniel bent down and picked it up.

  With a bark of anger, G.G. snatched it away from him. “Let me do it! If there’s any danger, it’s meant for me.”

  Daniel was nervous again. “If there’s any danger, we should be calling the police.”

  “Well, we won’t know that until we open it, will we?” The old soldier ripped away the wrapping paper to reveal a shoebox. Then he tipped up the lid and peered inside.

  The first thing he saw was an old-fashione
d alarm clock. It was ticking. In a remarkable burst of speed for a man his age, he ran into the bathroom, dumped it in the toilet, and flushed. He held the handle down to keep the water pouring onto the device.

  “A bomb?” Dad exclaimed, aghast.

  G.G. took a closer look. “Nah. Just a regular alarm clock. Whoever sent it seemed pretty intent on scaring us, though.”

  “And it worked! I don’t mind telling you I’m scared to death!”

  The old man examined the empty shoebox and held it up for his grandson to see. Written on the white bottom in Magic Marker were the words:

  It was signed: La Vérité.

  In the lobby, Trevor tapped his phone to upload yet another picture. It was of Dad and G.G. posing in front of the desk where the German garrison commander had officially surrendered Paris to Allied forces. G.G. had actually been there on that day in 1944—not in the room with the desk, but outside in the city. That fabulous museum visit had been twice as good thanks to the old man’s stories of millions of Parisians celebrating in the streets, heedless of the fact that some renegade Nazi units were still fighting. Nobody cared, because after four years of occupation, Paris had been returned to its people.

  Trevor knew he was clogging his Instagram with too many pictures. But how could he leave any of these out? The display cases of guns and weaponry. The Resistance flags—the French tricolor with the Cross of Lorraine in the center. Trevor hoped to add a photograph of the Resistance ring that G.G. was wearing around his neck, but he had a feeling that now was not the time to ask about it. The old soldier was normally cool about everything but for some reason he was sensitive about that ring.

  He transferred the last of the pictures—a shot of the outside of the museum in an area called Les Invalides, since it began as a hospital for wounded soldiers. The grounds were swarming with tourists. As the photograph loaded onto Instagram, Trevor’s eyes were drawn to the slender figure of a girl. A blond girl.

  He used his fingers to zoom in, but the image became too blurry.

  No way, he told himself. Now you’re seeing things.

  But as he zoomed back out, he noticed that she was walking toward a tall young man on a motorcycle. It was her—them. They had been in Saint-Lô. They had been at the beaches of Normandy—or at least she had been there. And now they were here in Paris.

  Dad had argued that they were just tourists who happened to be on the same World War II route the Firestones were taking. This was different. Paris was a vast city with more attractions for visitors than anyone could count. The presence of this pair at the very same museum on the very same day had to be more than a coincidence.

  Who are they and why are they following us? Trevor wondered.

  Private Jacob Firestone rolled into Paris on a tank.

  There was no other way to get into the city. As the word spread that the capital had been liberated, millions of people took to the streets, dancing, screaming, celebrating. Strangers hugged strangers. Champagne was being drunk straight from the bottle and sprayed in all directions. The war wasn’t over yet, but Paris was free.

  A very young woman in a bright yellow dress clambered up onto the Sherman’s running board, threw her arms around Jacob, and began kissing his face, until he was polka-dotted with lipstick. She was raucously cheered on by Jacob’s platoon-mates. Beau laughed so hard that he almost fell off the tank, to be crushed under the heavy tracks—not that the tank was moving very much. It was impossible to advance any faster than inch by inch through the rampaging mob.

  The woman in yellow jumped back down to rejoin the revelers, still blowing kisses to Jacob and Bravo Company.

  “What’s the matter with you, High School?” Beau jeered. “Didn’t you learn hand-to-hand combat at Fort Benning?”

  Embarrassed, Jacob tried to wipe the lipstick off his cheeks, and only succeeded in smearing it even further.

  “Get out of the road!” Lieutenant Hollister, the tank commander, bellowed into the crowd. “This is for your own safety!”

  “Don’t think they understand English, Lieutenant!” Leland called up to him.

  “No, that’s not it!” Jacob hollered. “They just don’t care!”

  That was closer to the truth. Nothing was going to spoil this celebration for the citizens of Paris. Everywhere, wine flowed, music played, and flowers were flung at tanks, jeeps, and half-tracks. Kisses rained down on soldiers. The French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” blared from fifteen places at once. During the long occupation, it had been forbidden.

  On the opposite side of the broad avenue, a line of Nazi prisoners was being loaded onto a French army truck. Suddenly, the emotions of the crowd turned from celebration to hostility. The captured Germans were punched, kicked, and pelted with rocks. Their only protection came from the French Forces of the Interior—Resistance militiamen who had very little interest in being protectors to the hated Boches.

  Suddenly, machine-gun fire erupted in the street. Three bullets ricocheted off the armor of the Sherman, dangerously close to Jacob’s legs. The revelers scattered in an instant, scampering for cover in shops and cafés. Jacob and his platoon-mates came down off the tanks combat-ready, scanning the surrounding buildings for the source of the sniper. Despite the surrender, it was known that there were still pockets of enemies around the city, and in places, the fighting could be fierce. Bravo Company had hoped to avoid this. Yet here they were in the thick of it.

  Another burst of gunfire tore into the road, sending fragments of pavement and cobblestone flying in all directions. A chip bounced off Jacob’s helmet with a clang that rattled his brain a little.

  The next thing he felt was 210 pounds of Beau Howell landing directly on top of him.

  “High School—you hit?”

  “No, I’m squashed!” Jacob shouted back. “Get off me!”

  Beau rolled away and the two of them scrambled to get behind the tank. Bullets continued to keep them pinned down. Even the German prisoners were hiding under the truck that had been sent to take them into captivity.

  “Where’s it coming from?” Beau asked Leland.

  “One of the buildings across the street,” Leland replied. “But it could be any of them.”

  Warily, Jacob peered out from behind the Sherman’s armored flank. Leland was right. The sniper could have been anywhere, lurking behind dozens of identical windows.

  Then he saw it—a tiny hint of movement beside a chimney on one of the rooftops.

  “Got him,” he murmured, sighting along the barrel of his rifle. His finger tensed on the trigger, ready to shoot.

  A tremendous boom rang out far louder than any rifle report. Still locked on his target, Jacob watched as a tank shell slammed into the building across the street. The roof and half the building disappeared in a cloud of smoke and dust. The machine-gun fire ceased.

  On the Sherman, the hatch opened and Lieutenant Hollister poked his head out of the turret to examine his handiwork.

  It took both Beau and Leland to restrain Jacob from climbing the armored vehicle to throttle the tank commander. “What did you do that for?”

  “I got him, didn’t I?” Hollister asked mildly.

  “I had him in my sights!” Jacob raved. “You didn’t have to blow up the whole building! There could be people in there!”

  Hollister shrugged. “You should have said something.”

  He signaled down to his driver. The Sherman roared back to life and began to rumble along the boulevard. Jacob’s platoon-mates rushed to jump aboard.

  Jacob wanted nothing to do with Hollister or his tank. Sullenly, he marched along behind it.

  Beau reached out a hand. “Hop on, High School.”

  “I’ll walk,” Jacob seethed.

  The big Texan laughed. “Don’t be stubborn. It won’t fix the top of that building if you get flat feet.”

  Jacob couldn’t explain, even to himself, why the destruction of the building bothered him so much. The cities and towns of Normandy had been leveled to t
he ground; Saint-Lô was a smoldering ruin. Why did the damage done to this one row house in Paris—which was in great shape compared with those other places—bother him so much?

  Because it hadn’t been necessary. Jacob had been fighting for so long that the devastation was starting to feel normal. It had taken this building to remind him how awful all this really was.

  The plume of smoke still hovered over the block when the revelers returned to the street, dancing, singing, and celebrating. Hollister’s tank slowed down again and progress was back to almost zero. Within a few minutes, the boulevard was just as mobbed as it had been before the incident.

  As the only US service member within reach, Jacob was being thanked, kissed, hugged, slapped on the back, and loaded down with gifts of flowers and food. When an old woman tried to press a live chicken into his arms, he decided it was time to get back on the tank. Beau and Leland hoisted him aboard.

  Beau grinned. “Get used to it, High School. This is what victory is like.”

  “You’ve got feathers on your grenade belt,” Leland added.

  Jacob brushed the feathers away, his expression grim. Victory. He was thinking of Freddie and all the other members of their unit who weren’t here to see it.

  Bravo Company spent three days in Paris. Most of the time, they were assigned to the Comédie-Française—one of the largest theaters in the city. There were no productions going on now. The place was a triage center for the wounded.

  On the first day, some Canadian medics brought in an old woman who had been pulled from a collapsed building.

  “Which one?” Jacob asked. “Was it the one we blew up? On that wide boulevard? You could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance?”

  But Jacob had no French and the woman had no English, so he never found out. The Canadians transferred her to a hospital a few hours later.

  Another thing about Paris: There were soldiers from all the different Allied countries around—Americans, British, Canadians, French, and even some Polish units. They had been fighting on the same side since Normandy, but this was their first real chance to intermingle. Official policy was to let the French forces take the lead, since this was their capital.