Been a while since I've published something, so here it is.
A three-part short story just before World War II, in France, around the border of Alsace-Lorraine. And Paris. And France as a whole.
Part one, below. Please enjoy!
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Night Train
9th of December,1938
Colmar, Alsace
6:35 PM
Horns blared in the distance, twice then, thrice even, shattering the utter silence that engulfed the little train station. The shrill of the train made his spine tingle, forcing him upright and making him forget for a fleeting moment the bitter cold that crept under his woolen overcoat, somehow inadequate against the galloping winter. It was a cold December evening, and he was all alone on a small train station platform on the border with Germany. France was tingling with worry, the newspapers were rolling out in record numbers, global diplomacy was failing and here he was on the border with a hostile country. He sighed. Small snowflakes gently fell on the train tracks in front of him, illuminated by a half-moon that made joyful light pockets around his leather boots. Everything else however was a dark, lifeless maze. Around him there were six lampposts, each one of them holding a small oil lamp, but only two of them were lit. But none of that mattered to him now. The train was coming.
The horns blared again. The train was getting closer. His fingers dug deeper inside the side pocket of his overcoat and reached for a cigarette. He brought the cigarette to his mouth and fumbled about for an entire minute until the wind died down to allow him to light up the heavy Turkish blend. Flurries of snow wafted around the station with increasing intensity but even the cold mattered little by now. He was curious. And his curiosity would be quenched once that curious train would stop in the station.
Moments later, he caught glimpse of the steel behemoth. In the darkness of that December evening, there was not much to distinguish from a nondescript black locomotive that chugged along on the railway lines. But the red stripes on the side of the locomotive were evident, causing him to frown a bit. Red stripes usually indicated trains that would stop in big cities, not local train stations. And Colmar was far from being a city. At most it was a local town, a border outpost. Despite his sudden worry, the train stopped in the station as planned, dropping off one single passenger who waved meekly as he approached.
“Good evening, Alexandre.”
The man from the train shook Alexandre's hand firmly. Dressed in a similar woolen overcoat, he wore a generic brown fedora on his head and twisted the collar of his overcoat upwards to protect himself from the rushing flurries that swept through the station. Somewhat shorter than his station guest, he bowed his head slightly, indicating Alexandre as his superior, even if on paper he was the one of higher rank. The Frenchman gave a curt nod.
“I see you have changed trains, Klaus,” replied Alexandre.
“Sort of. There was a murder on the train from Strasbourg to Colmar, so they sent over one of the trains that was supposed to take the Geneva – Paris route.”
“A murder?”
“Nothing related to our concerns. A triangle of love, as is rather the norm these days.”
“So you came with the red stripes?”
Klaus nodded. “Quite. I got here in record time, I did not expect to arrive at 6:40.”
Alexandre gave a quick glance to his white gold wristwatch. The sleek line of the bezel stood out in the darkness, the two thin hands showing fifteen minutes to 7. He slid his hand back into his pocket and nudged his fellow companion onwards. The two men walked away from the station in silence in the crackles of the snow crunching beneath their boots, echoing even louder in the almost complete silence of the small town. Colmar was a quiet place, with rows of timber-framed houses huddled around a small bridge over the river Lauch. Small pockets of lights indicated that most of the inhabitants were inside their houses with the snow rumbling through the streets. Most of the population had sympathies with the French republic, but there was more than just a vocal minority who would be more than happy to see the Nazi Party install the swastikas on the roof of the town hall. Alexandre knew that, Klaus as well, but neither of them spoke of this openly.
They trodded through the beaten path from the station down to the centre of the village, whisking themselves to the snow-capped bridge over the Lauch.
“It's been one month, Klaus.”
Klaus nodded, more to himself rather than in acknowledgment.
“One month since that ugly night.”
Alexandre nodded. “That night, what was it you called it, Kristallnacht?” he said, accentuating the German word with a particular Parisian twist. Klaus smiled to himself but nodded in agreement. “Yes, that night. A shame, and a cause of worry.”
“The outlook is grim, Monsieur Reythier, it's grim.” He glanced to his French companion, but the man only stared at him back. “But I suppose you already know that.”
The Frenchman nodded. “Kristallnacht scared a number of locals away. Colmar is now turning into a ghost town, and it's not good for our cause. No matter how we put it, we cannot convince the locals to stay around these places unless they're committed to our cause or committed to their families.”
“This place sits right on the border, I would expect them not to stay around.”
“Some do.” Alexandre sighed. “Why have I been called here?”
Klaus stopped. For a moment he stood silent, unsure on what to say. He fumbled his hands in the air, trying to force his words to come out, to express at least some semblance of a coherent idea, but nothing came out of it. He felt Alexandre's stare on him. Klaus sighed and pointed towards a row of houses, even if they were not what he wanted to convey.
“We caught two Germans trying to infiltrate themselves around these places. They went right under our noses, and worse even, we caught them with a Frenchman who lived in the villages down the south of the Maginot line.”
“That's all they've done?”
Klaus shook his head. “The plan was rather well conceived. They posed as tourists from the Far East, even if they looked as every bit from here as possible, and tried to ask around about the Maginot line. One of the local farmers even took them to a deserted area of the line that we have not even bothered to repair or even take care of.”
“Spies?”
“More than that. Something is going on around these places, and I don't like it.”
Alexandre rolled his eyes. “And what am I supposed to do?”
“Interrogate them, that is all.”
Alexandre suddenly looked downwards. Interrogation was something he hated, but given that Klaus was his superior and his close friend, he could not say no. By now they reached the curiously deserted centre of the town. The narrow Lauch river ran right in its midst, but given that this was mid-December, the river was frozen solid. Alexandre glanced over the bridge, down the length of the Lauch, watching the snow fall down on the slanted roofs of the houses built about a century ago. Snow crunched and crackled underneath their leather boots as they walked in silence between the houses huddled around the riverbank. It was bitterly cold, the snow had picked up in intensity and even they struggled to utter any other word except for a prolonged sigh as they weathered through the streets.
They snaked their way down the length of the riverbank in silence until they reached a small plaza. The junction connected four smaller side streets, but Klaus led Alexandre into a timber-framed two story house right on the edge of the riverbank. A small light above the door waned and flickered as the wind blew. Klaus twisted the handle and pushed the door aside, closing it behind them with the wind howling one last time in their ears. A small flight of stairs led them to the first floor, which was nothing more than a room adjoined by four separate doors in the dim light of another flickering light. Klaus pointed to the first door on the right.
“After you, Alexandre.”
The Frenchman raised an eyebrow for a moment but said nothing. He quickly twisted the door handle and entered the room, a rectangle shaped meeting area with two windows overlooking the plaza below and a large table with eight chairs occupying most of the space. In the back corner two wooden bookcases were filled with papers and binders full of documents, which Alexandre speculated those were the local police records.
Two men stood at the table, both of them lazily puffing from their cigarettes, their eyes fixed on this tall newcomer and his more known companion. At first, they did not pay much attention to the newcomer but Klaus ordered them to stand up and salute in military fashion. The men rose from their seats and did so as they were ordered, receiving a curteous nod from Alexandre in return. The Frenchman threw his overcoat on the table and glanced around.
“Where are they?”
“Locked in the prison below, Monsieur,” replied one of the policemen.
“Bring them. Let us have a personal chat with them.”
The two policemen nodded in approval and left the room, leaving Alexandre Reythier, lieutenant of the French intelligence agencies, alone with Klaus. They spoke nothing before the policemen returned with two young adults, no more than twenty years old each, dirty and ragged, dressed in brown tattered clothes and reeking of body odour. The two policemen threw the prisoners onto the desk with alarming brutality, chaining them down to the small wooden chairs underneath. Not content with the chain, they pinned them down to the edge of the table and took out their pistols, sticking them against the prisoners' necks. Reythier said nothing, and neither did Klaus, since neither of them had any idea of how dangerous these two prisoners were.
Reythier took up a chair and sat down, eyeing both of the boys.
“Apparently, both of you tried to gather information about the Maginot line. Can I ask why were you so curious about it?” asked Reythier in perfect German.
Neither of the boys said anything. Their eyes were fixed on Reythier, but he only returned an elegant smile with the corner of his mouth. He turned his head to Klaus and nodded, to which the German-born Frenchman produced from his overcoat a small notebook. Alexandre took the notebook and opened it on the table, hunching closer to his prisoners.
“Two weeks, that's all it took you. Two weeks in which you bought rifles, war grenades, stabbed two innocent farmers and proceeded to investigate the south part of the Maginot line. And on top of that...” Reythier paused, extracting two files from the back of the notebook. “You two are apparently part of the Nazi youth. Top recruits.”
Reythier expected no reaction. He got none from them, except two dismissive shrugs and a roll of the eyes. Alexandre flipped the notebook around.
“All of this gets you prison for life. Or, in the worst case, a quick hanging in the woods just down the river.”
The remark hit a soft spot. One of the boys, a short-haired blonde with scratch marks all over his face, hissed towards Reythier.
“Herr Hitler will save us.”
Reythier laughed. “Your own superiors won't even know you're missing by the time the local judge orders your execution. So, in case you want to live, help us. I believe you can help us answer the question of what were you doing around the Maginot.”
“We were doing nothing. We are tourists, nothing more!”
Reythier sighed. He nodded off to one of the policemen, who saluted and left the room, leaving Klaus to attend to one of the prisoners. Alexandre closed he notebook, rose from the table and headed for the window behind him. The window's handles were black, rotten bits of wood, forcing him to twist the mechanism by itself, before the window finally budged from its position. Cold winter air swept inside the room with an almost destructive force. The unsecured papers on the shelves and on the table quickly flew through the room. It didn't bother Klaus, or Reythier for that matter, who lighted up another one of his Turkish cigarettes at the edge of the window. It was only a short puff before he heard the crackle of the gun echo in the Colmar silence.
Before Reythier reacted, and before Klaus even understood what happened, the door swung wide open and stopped violently against the edge of the wall. A lone gunman, dressed in a beige overcoat, held up a large calibre revolver and barged inside the room. With quick movements he shot the last policeman square in the head, before he aimed for Klaus who ducked underneath the table. The gunman shot at Klaus but missed his target, shooting off the last bullets in the two prisoners who did not even turn their heads to face the gunman. In a rather late reply, Reythier took out his own pistol and fired two quick shots towards the gunman. The bullets hit the assailnt in the chest and the neck, severing the carotid artery, before he collapsed in a pool of blood by the edge of the door.
The whole encounter lasted less than twenty seconds. And Alexandre quickly realised that the two policemen were now dead. And so was the assailant. But so were the two prisoners.
Only Alexandre and Klaus survived.
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