Read Chapter 22: The Coal Cart

The coal cart lurched over the cobblestones, its iron-rimmed wheels grinding a complaint that Luc felt in his teeth. Beneath the sacking and the slack canvas, three Sten guns lay wrapped in oilcloth, and under those, wedged against the axle, a crowbar and a length of rope. He held the reins loose, letting the horse find its own pace, and tried to look like a man whose only concern was the delivery chit folded in his coat.

The Gestapo headquarters at Avenue Foch rose ahead, all gray stone and black flags. Two guards at the gate, rifles slung, cigarettes cupped against the morning damp. Luc pulled the cart to a stop and touched his cap.

“Coal,” he said, thickening his accent. “For the boiler room.”

The senior guard squinted at him, then at the cart. A fine layer of coal dust had already settled over Luc’s coat and hands. He’d scrubbed the grease from his nails at dawn, used a cheap soap that smelled of lye, and dressed in clothes that belonged to a dead man who had once delivered coal to the Germans without incident.

“Papers.”

Luc handed them over. The guard studied them, then studied Luc. Luc kept his eyes slightly unfocused, a dull man doing a dull job.

A crash came from the street behind them. Metal on metal, then a woman’s sharp scream. Both guards turned. Fifty yards back, a bicycle lay tangled under a handcart, and a man in a courier’s jacket was shouting at a woman in a scarf, his arms wide with theatrical fury. Marcel’s brother-in-law, though no one would know that. He was good at loud.

The senior guard grunted. “Go on. Around the side. Someone will meet you.”

Luc clicked his tongue at the horse. The cart moved forward, through the gate, into the courtyard that smelled of fuel oil and wet stone. He kept his shoulders slack. The staged accident would buy him maybe four minutes before someone decided the commotion was nothing and came looking.

He guided the horse toward the coal chute at the rear of the building, where a steel door led to the boiler room. No one waited there. The courtyard was empty except for a parked staff car and a soldier reading a newspaper on a crate, his back to Luc.

Luc tied the reins loosely, grabbed the empty coal sack from beside his feet, and moved to the door. It was unlocked. The cleaner had been as good as his word.

Inside, the corridor smelled of carbolic and stale cigarette smoke. Low-watt bulbs cast pools of yellow light. He walked with purpose, a tradesman who knew where he was going, past a closed door marked *Verwaltung*, past a stairwell that led down, past a portrait of Hitler that made his stomach turn.

The cleaner had drawn the route on a scrap of paper now burned to ash in Luc’s stove. Third door past the stairs, left-hand side. He counted. Found it. The lock was a simple mortise, and the crowbar slid between the jamb and the latch with a soft click.

The room was small. A cot, a bucket, a chair. And on the cot, Yvette.

She was curled into a fetal position, her hair lank across her face. Her eyes were open but unfocused, and her lips moved without sound. The bruise on her jaw was fresh, purple and black, but he did not see blood from the torture the others had spoken of. Krueger had been patient. Luc would never know if that had been mercy or cruelty.

“Yvette.” He knelt beside her. Her pupils were pinpricks, even in the dim light. He recognized the signs from the few men who had managed to escape the Gestapo with their minds intact. Morphine, or worse. “Yvette, it’s Luc. Can you hear me?”

Her head rolled toward him. Recognition swam behind the fog. “Luc,” she said, with the effort of a woman lifting a barrel. “You shouldn’t…”

“I’m here. I’m taking you.”

He tried to lift her. She was lighter than she should have been, twenty pounds gone in what had been only days but felt like years. She tried to stand, and her legs folded. He caught her and lifted her fully into his arms, cradling her against his chest. She smelled of sweat and old fear.

“I can’t—” she started.

“You don’t have to. I’ve got you.”

He carried her to the door. The corridor was still empty. He was counting the seconds now, the minutes he had bought with another man’s voice and a staged collision that was already dissolving into apology and payment.

“Luc, they knew,” Yvette whispered. Her voice was a reed, thin and breaking. “They knew I was coming. The damn radio, they knew the schedule.”

“Don’t talk. Save your strength.”

He reached the steel door. Pushed it open. The courtyard was no longer empty.

The soldier who had been reading the newspaper was on his feet, and he had company. A man in civilian clothes—suit, tie, a fedora pushed back—standing beside the staff car, watching the coal cart with the stillness of a predator that has scented blood.

Luc froze in the doorway. Yvette weighed nothing in his arms, and yet he felt every ounce of her, every breath she took.

The civilian said something to the soldier. The soldier turned. Their eyes met across the courtyard.

Luc did not stop to think. He ran. The horse shied as he came at it, and for one terrible moment he thought the animal would break free, but instinct held it. He dumped Yvette onto the cart’s flatbed, pulled the canvas up over her, and seized the reins.

A shout behind him. In German. Then a gunshot, and the stone wall beside his head spat chips.

Luc cracked the reins. The horse bolted. The cart shot forward, through the open gate, the way he had come. The street ahead was suddenly full of motion—people scattering, a bicycle messenger wobbling out of the way, the handcart with the staged accident already cleared to the curb.

A second shot, closer. Then a third, and a fourth. Luc heard a grunt behind him, heavy, the sound of a man taking a bullet soft in the back. Not his, not his.

The truck was waiting three streets over, in the alley behind the butcher shop. Marcel was behind the wheel, engine running. Luc reined the horse hard, grabbed Yvette, and half-fell off the cart, dragging her with him. Marcel was out of the truck in an instant, and together they bundled her into the rear bench.

Bullets whined off the corner of the alley. Luc saw one of his men, the one who had played the courier with the collapsed handcart, fall to his knees, clutching his side. He did not get up.

Marcel floored the accelerator. The truck screamed down the alley, through a gap in a fence that should not have been wide enough, and into the warren of narrow streets that the Germans did not know and never would.

Only when they were deep, when the engine was the only sound and the dust had settled, did Luc realize he was bleeding. A graze along his forearm, nothing serious. Yvette lay in his lap, her eyes closed, her breathing ragged but steady.

Marcel looked over, eyes hard.

“She’s alive,” Luc said.

Marcel nodded. Said nothing. Drove on.