“What kind of fuse?”
“Detonation cord. Also damp, but I cut off a small piece and it worked.”
“You have enough people?”
“Escobar. And three others.”
“It’s scheduled for eight-thirty,” Weiss said. He turned to the other man. “What about the power station?”
“I have somebody from the local office. It won’t be a problem.”
“Good.”
The two men said good night and left.
“We can’t get the right explosive,” Weiss said. “What we’re using now is Ammonal, powdered aluminum and TNT, mining explosive. We get it from the Poles who work the iron pits up in Nancy.”
“What do you need?”
“C4. Likely the English have something even better.”
“Do this tonight,” Casson said. “And they’ll give you whatever you want.”
8: 30.
Serra and Escobar were waiting in the shadows at the Coligny lock, on the edge of town where the Briare Canal met the river Loing. The Germans had lit the area with two powerful searchlights-which created a fine hiding place just beyond the beams. The lock had been built in 1810; heavy gates on either end of a long barrage, a dam of dry-masoned set stone that measured several hundred feet from end to end, large enough to hold thirty barges.
Serra had packed the Ammonal into a metal drum he’d found outside a workshop in Coligny. He’d punched a hole in the side and set the end of the fuse between two packets of explosive.
“A lot of people on the barges,” Escobar said.
“Yes. They’re waiting to go through in the morning.”
They could smell smoke from cooking fires. Somebody laughed, a woman called out to a friend.
“Who is at the power station?”
“Ivanic.”
“Then we don’t have to worry.”
“No,” Serra said.
“And the guards?”
“Four of them. Gendarmes, in the lockkeeper’s hut. They stay in there most of the time, people here say they go to sleep after midnight. I don’t think you should be worrying about them, somebody’s covering that side of the dam. They have a machine gun, the gendarmes will not argue with it.”
8: 44.
The searchlights flared brilliant white, then died away.
Serra closed his eyes and waited for the afterimage to fade. It was very dark now, a power failure in Coligny. A half-moon and a few stars showed through the scudding cloud, just enough light to catch the dull silver of the gasoline tanks on the barges.
“In a minute,” Serra said.
Some commotion, a single shout from the lockkeeper’s hut. Moments later a whistle, and a man came running low around the stone wall of the dam. “Serra, are you there?” he called in Spanish.
“Yes. What is it?”
A young man squatted beside him and whispered, “Do you have any cord?”
“No. What do you want with that?”
“The gendarmes. They say to tie them up, or else the Germans will shoot them.”
“I don’t know-use their belts. Certainly there is rope on the barges.”
“Serra, I just want to ask you, will the explosion hit the lockkeeper’s little house?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just do your job, and we’ll do ours.”
The young man gave him a look, then ran off and circled back around the dam.
“Now,” Serra said.
“Look.” Escobar pointed back toward the town.
“What?”
“Something’s on fire.”
“That’s the power station. Ivanic always burns something.”
The barrel of Ammonal went off at 8:46.
Serra had started his apprenticeship in the mines of Asturias when he was eleven years old. By the time he was twelve, he knew how to move rock around with explosive.
The barrel had been set snugly at the base of the stone wall of the dam and blew a great cloud of stone chips and dirt into the air. People on the barges screamed, leaped onto the embankment, and scrambled away into the darkness. Dust and smoke drifted slowly toward the town. The hole in the wall of the dam was only three feet wide to begin with, but the force of the water soon took away one piece of cracked stone block, then another.
The water ran into the backstreets of Coligny and down the grates of the medieval sewers, echoing in the huge vaults below the town. People heard it, opened their windows and leaned out, had a word or two with their neighbors across the street.
“Albert, is your power out?”
“Yes. Something blew up.”
“A bomb?”
“No. Nothing like that, probably those conards at the power station pulled the wrong lever.”
“Do you smell smoke?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we’ll never get to sleep now. Want to play cards?”
“What about Francoise?”
“Nothing wakes her, we can play in the kitchen.”
On the dam, the barges sank slowly, it took a long time for the water to run out of the hole blown in the stonework. Just about all of the people on the barges took advantage of it-some had to swim but most of them made their way from the deck of one barge to the next, stepped onto the shore, then stood and watched as the water went down. At the end, the barges bobbed for a moment on the blackish slime at the bottom of the empty dam, then settled softly into the mud.
11: 25.
In the room above the cafe, the light went back on. The workers in the power station had apparently rigged up an emergency system. A moment later, the telephone. Weiss waited, then picked it up. He listened for a few seconds, then hung up. “Four months,” he said.
“Can you be certain?” Casson asked.
“We know what it takes to build things. Thirty barges at the bottom of a well, that’s pretty much what’s happened. Twenty of them carrying fuel. Another hundred or so are headed south on the canals-they won’t be able to get through.”
“Well, then.” Casson didn’t know exactly what to say. He was too tired to feel victory.
Weiss smiled. “I have to go out for a time,” he said. “An hour, maybe. Then we’ll head back to Paris. It’s not a good idea to stick around after one of these things.”
Casson stood, they shook hands.
He was exhausted, he realized. He turned the light out, sat at the desk, and almost went to sleep. The phone rang. Casson reached for it, couldn’t decide whether to answer or not, but it didn’t ring again.
Back to Paris. To start again, some new operation. It wasn’t going to end for a long time. If they took the night train he could sleep-even that seemed like a luxury now.
One ring. Why? A signal?
No. He was letting his imagination get the better of him, a bad idea. He stood up, walked to the window,
