attacks on convoys or banks. At that level of resistance, a submachine gun with a thousand rounds will raise hell.”
Degrave cut up another pear and handed a piece to Casson. “The sad fact is, the FTP is the best fighting group in France. They’re organized, disciplined, they have clandestine experience, and they control the unions. They’re brave. And cold-blooded- reprisals don’t concern them. We know what they can do, we’ve been enemies for twenty years.”
“And now, allies.”
Degrave smiled. “Raison d’etat, as old as the world. I’ll tell you something, Casson. People in my trade have to live with some hard truths. One of them is that sometimes you want men and women to fight for freedom, sometimes you don’t.”
Degrave finished his pear, worked the porcelain cap free on one of the bottles, took a long drink, and handed it to Casson.
The water was cold, and tasted good despite the bitter mineral. “I’m going to sleep for a while,” Degrave said. “Four hours, then wake me up. You have guard duty until then.”
Casson tucked the Walther in his belt, back where it couldn’t be seen. Then he leaned against the door of the truck and watched the sun set.
16 January.
He woke up suddenly, cold and stiff, with no idea where he was or what he was doing-for a moment he thought he was on location, making a film. No, he was lying across the front seat of a truck, breathing gasoline vapor, the night beyond the windshield black and starless. He forced himself to a sitting position, cranked the window down. Degrave was standing by the front fender. “Almost dawn,” he said.
Casson took a sip from the water bottle, spit it out, then drank. He lit a cigarette, and rubbed his eyes. “My turn to drive,” he said.
The narrow dirt roads zigzagged northwest, northeast. Sometimes they had to drive south. The villages got darker and quieter as they neared the center of the country, people stared from doorways. There were no cars on the road, sometimes a horse and cart, once a wagon loaded down with cut lavender.
At seven in the morning they stopped so Degrave could probe the gas tank with a stick. “Not good,” he said, checking the level against a mark he’d made the day before. “Let’s go another hour, then fill up.”
Casson tried to save gas, pushed the clutch in going downhill, which worked until he tried to slow down. Third gear screamed as the pedal came up, and he had to double-clutch to ram the thing into second. Still too fast. A sudden curve, he fought the wheel, the back end started to swing. He hit the brake, the pedal went to the floor. Degrave swore. Casson tried again, pumping gently until he felt it grab. At last the road flattened out and Casson let the truck coast to a stop. His hands were shaking.
Degrave stared out his window, into the gorge at the bottom of the hill. “Probably all kinds of old trucks down there,” he said. He turned to Casson. “I’ll drive, if you like.”
“Next village,” Casson said.
The next village was Beaufort-St.-Croix. An old woman in a shawl hobbled past the parked truck, a basket over her arm. She stared at them-who are you? Don’t stop here.
Degrave drove to the other end of the village and pulled over. By the road was a wayfarer’s shrine, a cross of woven willow twigs on a wooden box atop a post; inside, a carved saint, his white robes and red wounds faded by snow and sunlight.
Degrave unscrewed the cap on the gasoline drum, ran a rubber hose from the drum to the gas tank, sucked on the line, and eventually got it to flow-siphoning worked better in theory than in practice. He spat gasoline on the ground when he was done, then got behind the wheel and started up the mountain road. Carefully, he maneuvered the truck over a long patch of black ice, then stood on the brake as they sped down a steep grade. “Another day of this and it’s behind us,” he said.
Casson leaned over to get a better angle in the rearview mirror. On the way into Beaufort he’d seen a black Citroen appear and disappear as the road curved. It could certainly go faster than ten miles an hour, but didn’t bother to pass.
“You still have the Citroen?” he said a few minutes later.
Degrave looked up at the mirror. “Yes.”
“What’s he want?”
“Maybe nothing.”
He accelerated, a minute went by, then he sped up a little more. “Stays right there,” he said. “Since Beaufort.”
“Earlier,” Casson said.
The road widened and Degrave let the truck roll to a stop. “Get out for a minute,” he said.
Casson stood by the side of the road, unbuttoning his fly. As he stared down at the weeds, the Citroen went by, very slow and determined. When he got back in the truck Degrave said, “About nineteen, the driver. There are three of them, they’re wearing armbands.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know.”
They waited twenty minutes, plenty of time for the Citroen to go on its way, to disappear.
Degrave threw his cigarette away and looked at his watch. “Enough,” he said. “If they are actually going somewhere, we’ll never see them again.” He got behind the wheel, coaxed the engine to life, and raced it in neutral a few times.
“It sounds to me,” Casson said, “like we have unwatered gasoline.”
“We do. You wouldn’t believe what I had to pay in Nice to get it. Nowadays it’s like buying wine, you have to know the vintage.”
Degrave turned the truck onto the road and moved off slowly. Almost immediately they began to climb, past sloping meadows used to graze livestock in the spring and summer. Five minutes passed, then ten more. Casson kept looking at his watch. The road crested a hill, then turned left. The truck slowed as they climbed a steep curve past stone barns on the mountainside.
“I like this better than the south,” Degrave said.
“So do I.”
“Ever make a movie here?”
“No.”
“Nobody bothers with it, the Dauphine.”
“What would you do-lovers on the run?”
“Why not?”
Casson shrugged. “You ever know any lovers on the run?”
Degrave laughed. “No, now that you mention it.”
“And, if they ran, they wouldn’t run here.”
“They’d run to Paris.”
“That’s right,” Casson said. “And there goes the scenery.”
Fifteen minutes. Casson had another look in the mirror. Black and low, long hood, flat top on the passenger compartment, running boards swept gracefully into panels that curved over the front wheels. A Citroen 7C-you saw them everywhere.
“Still with us,” Casson said.
Degrave sighed. “I know,” he said.
The Citroen followed them around another curve, then, when the road ran level, it sped up and drove alongside the truck. From the passenger seat window, an arm waved for them to pull over.
Degrave took his foot off the gas. “All right,” he said, sounding tired. “Let’s get it over with.”
The truck rolled to a stop. On both sides of the road were hay fields cut down in autumn; up ahead, an old forest with large, bare oak trees. The Citroen pulled up a few feet away, blocking a sudden escape.
Nineteen was about right, Casson thought as the driver got out. The second might be a little older-tall and fat, wearing a ski sweater with a snowflake pattern. The third was younger, maybe the driver’s younger brother. They all wore armbands, white initials stitched on a blue field-MF, for Milice Francaise. The driver, clearly the
