50
The farmhouse north of Marseille
“Jeremy! I can’t believe it’s you,” Nicolas enthused when they saw each other. He wrapped his arms around Jeremy in a bear hug. “No one told us you were the one coming. You’ve been gone barely a week. And you survived the ship that sank.”
Jeremy was equally surprised and thrilled to see Nicolas and Jacques. “I made it thanks to you two. I didn’t know you’d be our guides. This is great.” He introduced them around. “These are the men who got me out of France. Nicolas brought me out of Dunkirk down to Saint-Nazaire. He knows the country. Jacques got me out to the ship.”
“Seeing you is like seeing a ghost,” Jacques chimed in. “I didn’t know if you had survived.”
Théo regarded Jeremy with new respect. The farmer and his wife called everyone to breakfast. While they ate, Jeremy noticed an undercurrent of anger coming from Jacques and Nicolas despite the pleasant surprise of seeing each other, and they both appeared distracted.
Then the farmer asked, “Have you heard anything about what agreement Marshal Pétain is making with the Germans?”
Jacques scowled. “The swine,” he muttered, and looked across at the farmer’s children. Seeing that as a cue, the farmer’s wife shooed them into another room.
“What’s happened?” the farmer asked.
“That damnable traitor gave away more than two-thirds of the country. It was in the news this morning.”
Nicolas looked equally disgusted but let Jacques do the talking. He just shook his head and said, “It’s true,” while seething with fury.
Jacques uttered a string of epithets. “That cowardly ‘hero.’” He said the word with animated contempt. “He gave the Germans the industrial north of France all the way south of Bourges and a wide swath of land along the entire French Atlantic coast. Most of our army is to be disbanded down to one hundred thousand men. Citizens will be disarmed, and the French police have to assist in putting down anti-Nazi unrest.”
“So that part of France belongs to Germany now,” Jeremy asked, appalled.
“In theory, no. The French government supposedly has administrative control over all of France with the capital still in Paris, but Pétain’s government is moving from Tours to Clermont-Ferrand. The Germans will occupy most of the country, and you know they’ll never give it back. Not willingly.”
“What about our navy?” the farmer asked.
“Oh, we get to keep it,” Jacques said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “But what good is it? It’s parked on the coast of North Africa.” He laughed, a loud, angry guffaw. “We call our new country New France.”
His face had flushed a deep red. It contorted with rage. He dropped his voice, striking a threatening note. “I promise you, that traitor, that collaborateur, will learn what it means to betray France. Death to him, and death to all collaborateurs.”
The small group sat in stunned silence.
Jacques started up again. “He ordered a change to our national motto. According to this great defender of France and our culture, it is no longer, ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.’” He jerked from his seat in fury. “Now, according to him, it is, ‘Work, Family, Country.’ He thinks he can take freedom away from us with the stroke of his pen. Who does this scum think he is? God? And he gives away our country.”
He jabbed a finger in the air. “I’ll tell you who he is. He’s not just a Nazi sympathizer.” He spat out his next words. “He is a fils de pute Nazi!”
While Jacques ranted, Jeremy kept a close eye on Brigitte and Théo. If their discomfiture rose, they did not show it. They sat in their chairs, stoic and listening.
When Jacques had run down, Jeremy said softly, “Should we be going soon?”
Jacques seemed to come out of a reverie. “I’m sorry,” he said. He stood, stepped around the table, and offered his hand to Brigitte. When she lifted hers, he took it in both of his cupped palms. “I apologize. I was rude.” He did the same with Théo.
“Perfectly understandable,” Théo said. “If Mr. Churchill had given away most of our country, I’d be upset too. But that’s why we’re here, to help get it back, isn’t it?”
Jacques bowed his head graciously and made apologies to the farmer and his wife. They waved it off, sharing his sentiment and rage.
Only much later in the afternoon did Jeremy and Nicolas find themselves alone with a chance to talk. The group had already divided up into their traveling mode. Jeremy resumed his persona as “The Fool,” led by Nicholas. The others traveled singly under the watchful eyes of their escorts, and Jacques maneuvered out front. Before leaving the farm, they checked and double-checked each other’s forged papers, and ran through reviews of their cover stories. Théo was much more comfortable and even amused when Jeremy morphed into his brain-damaged alter ego.
“How’s your family,” Jeremy asked when he and Nicolas had placed distance between themselves and anyone else. He noticed that his friend had lost much weight, that his skin was tanned, and he looked much more serious than when the two first met in the barn of his family’s dairy farm in Dunkirk. He quickly found out that Nicolas had not shed his humor.
Nicolas grinned. “Why don’t you ask the question you want to ask?”
Jeremy’s cheeks flushed. “All right, how is Amélie?”
“She’s fine and thinking of you all the time. She’s in love.” He laughed. “I told you, the two of you are right for each other.”
Jeremy shoved Nicolas’ shoulder. “Where is she?”
The humor dropped from Nicolas’ face. “Think, brother. I cannot tell you that. What if you get captured? Under the circumstances,
