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Authors: T. Davis Bunn

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BOOK: Gibraltar Passage
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The ancient conductor handed back Jake's papers and
snapped off a second salute. Jake accepted the papers and brushed one hand across the front of his close-cropped hair. The conductor spun around, shut the compartment door behind him, and talked excitedly with the people jamming the corridor who immediately crowded around him. From the looks cast through the smudged glass partition, Jake assumed the old man was recounting Pierre's story.

Jake leaned forward and muttered, “What was that all about?”

“I was simply telling them a little of who you are,” Pierre replied.

Jake shot a glance toward the growing number of faces pressed against the glass. “You don't say.”

“Believe me, I was defusing trouble before it could take hold,” Pierre replied. “Not everyone you meet in Marseille greets Americans as friends.”

“Why is that?”

“There was a terrible bombing here in 1944,” Pierre answered. “The city's worst destruction from the entire war.”

“By the Americans?”

Pierre nodded. “The Allies decided the city was important enough to be bombed, since Marseille was a German submarine harbor. They wanted to destroy three points—the central train station, a storage center, and the submarine base. The Americans came with their great bombers called Superfortresses. But not one bomb found its target. Not one. Bombs fell all over the city. The worst destruction was in the Quartier Saint Charles, not far from the station. Over three thousand people were killed that night, all within two hours. It was tragic. The city's highest death toll in all the years of war.”

Jake sat back in his seat. “I'm really sorry, Pierre.”

His friend replied with another smile that did not reach his eyes. “In some ways, the city of Marseille is but a very large village. By tomorrow it will be known all through the markets that a great American hero has come to visit their
beloved town. And that he will stay in the home of their own Resistance hero, the famous Patrique Servais.”

Marseille was a bustling, thriving city. It was also a city wed firmly to the sea. The Bay of Marseille bit out a mighty chunk, as vast as a great inland lake. Hills rose on the north and east, giving the impression from seaside that the entire town looked out upon water. The deep blue Mediterranean waters caught the sun's rays and brushed the tired land with hope of a new tomorrow.

As the train wound its way toward the station, Pierre pointed out a great medieval castle, rising from the city's southern tip. It was the Fortress of Saint John, he said, from which Crusade ships journeyed into the unknown dangers of the Ottoman Empire.

The train platform was jammed solid. When Pierre stepped into view, a great cry of joy arose from the throng. He was immediately swept into a huge crowd of laughing, crying, singing, shouting people. Jake stood on the train's top step and watched as a diminutive woman in black stepped forward. The crowd quieted and drew back a step as she reached up one age-scarred hand to stroke the side of Pierre's face. When Pierre reached down and enveloped the woman, a second great cheer arose. He reached out behind the woman and made room in the embrace for a bespectacled man who held his sparse frame rigidly erect. Tears streamed from every face in view.

A champagne cork popped, then another, and suddenly every hand was holding a mug, a cup, a glass. Pierre turned to find Jake still standing at the crowd's periphery and shouted for silence. He waved Jake over and said in English, “Come join me, my friend.”

A space was made through which Jake walked. Pierre raised his voice and spoke briefly in French, ending with the words, “Colonel Jake Burnes.” A murmur of greeting rose in reply.

“These are friends and family,” Pierre explained. “Many have traveled from Montpelier to welcome me home.”

Pierre's mother reached over and gripped Jake's arm with surprising strength. She spoke rapidly, her voice trembling slightly, her eyes shining despite the tears.

“My mother tells me to apologize for her lack of English,” Pierre translated. For this moment at least, the shadows were gone from his eyes. “I am to tell you that she has read from my letters about your parents' accident and the loss of your brother in the war, and that she grieves for you. She says that she would consider it an honor if you would consider our family to be your own.”

A pewter mug full of champagne was thrust into Jake's hand. A great salute rose as Pierre raised his own cup and toasted the crowd and his parents. Then he turned to Jake and said, “Welcome home, my friend.”

Chapter Three

Jake awoke to the sound of church bells clanging directly beside his head.

He groped his way upright, rubbed his eyes, and realized that the bells were ringing through his open window. He stumbled across the room, but just as his hand gripped the ledge the clanging stopped. The air ached with the sudden stillness.

Thoroughly awake, Jake took in his surroundings. The Servais family did not live in the city of Marseille itself, but in Le Rouet, a small farming village near both the city and the sea. The village church stood to Jake's right, bordering the cobblestone plaza. To his left rose houses so old they appeared to have grown naturally from the earth. Beyond the village stretched vast fields of verdant green.

Jake leaned on the windowsill and watched the gentle colors strengthen into full-fledged day. Great wild birch and umbrella pines acted as natural windbreaks for the ancient houses. Hoopoes and robins and nightingales and song thrushes sang the glory of Pierre's homecoming.

Through his window Jake saw a fox shepherd her three cubs across the field. Herons stood in white calmness about the edge of a distant lake. Flamingos fed with the foolish intricacy of ballet dancers. Ducks mocked all Jake's worries. Beyond the fields and lake stretched the wetlands, silver-white with salt.

His attention was drawn downward at the sound of a closing door. He watched as Pierre's father and mother, dressed in suit and dress of basic black, exited the house and walked arm in arm toward the chapel.

Pierre swung the bedroom door open. “Ah, you're awake. Good.”

“It'd be easier to sleep through D-day than that racket.”

“Yes, my father says he has never found it so easy to be on time for morning Mass.” Although the joy of yesterday's homecoming had dimmed, Pierre's sardonic smile appeared to be firmly in place. “I spent much of last night going over places we need to check. Shall we get started?”

“Give me two minutes to throw on some clothes,” Jake replied, “and I'm with you.”

First stop was the port of Marseille. The harbor seemed to be flourishing. Fishing vessels of every size and make bustled in smoky confusion between the great gray hulks of the American battleships. With the Sixth Fleet using Marseille as a major center for offloading supplies, the streets were full of American uniforms.

Tankers and cargo vessels lay at anchor or vied for space at the crowded docks. The surrounding streets were jammed with every imaginable form of transport, from donkey carts to military trucks to human-powered pushcarts. People shouted and cursed and fought their way through the crawling traffic. The air stank from rotting fish and seaweed, from the refuse of a thousand broken food crates, from the fumes of the overheated trucks.

Pierre did a slow circle, took a deep breath, and smiled with vast pleasure. “Ah, my friend, it is so good to be home!”

Alleys opening off the main thoroughfares widened into markets selling everything from fish to fashionable clothes, from seaweed fertilizer to silverware. Time after time Pierre and Jake's progress was stopped by stall holders who dropped their wares, shoved aside impatient customers, and rushed to greet Pierre with cries of welcome. Large women swathed in layers of frayed sweaters and stained with fish scales enveloped Pierre in their fleshy arms, tears of joy streaming down their broad faces. Old fishermen overturned packing crates and scattered ice and nets in their haste to rush over and pound his back.

Each time Pierre extricated himself from their blows, he
pointed toward Jake and spoke an introduction. They turned and doffed battered berets, their hands curled into stone-hard rigidity by decades of fighting nets and fish. Leathery seams creased until dark eyes almost disappeared, and smiles revealed a few remaining smoke-stained teeth. Then Jake was pulled into the back-slapping circle, where his total lack of French in no way slowed down the questions thrown his way. Jake replied with shrugs and smiles, while Pierre tried to keep up with a dozen people demanding answers at once.

Whenever the name of Patrique was brought up, the crowd quieted. A moment of reflecting upon the ground, the sky, the harbor's scummy waters, and then quietly Pierre would ask his question. Eyes widened, the group tightened, voices tensed. Jake watched faces, since he could not understand the talk, and repeatedly saw a struggle pass over their weather-beaten features. They drank in Pierre's news with breathless unease. They wanted to believe, tried to believe. But in the end they turned away with sorrowful shakes of their heads. Patrique, to their minds, was no more.

“They don't know anything,” Jake said with certainty when they stopped for a breather at a harbor cafe. The air was redolent with the pungent odor of French cigarettes and cheap wine. Jake followed Pierre's example and hunched down over his coffee. That appeared to be the universal signal for privacy, and no one approached them unless one or the other straightened up.

“I think you are right,” Pierre said. “No one has heard anything to suggest Patrique is alive.”

“You don't seem surprised.”

“No,” he agreed. “If Patrique had made it this far, the family would have heard. Of this I am sure.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“Planting seeds,” Pierre replied. “All I need is for one to grow and bear fruit. The fishermen and the smugglers and these local traders often work together, you see. There is the
chance that someone stopped somewhere to pick up an illegal shipment and heard something which he discounted.”

“Up to now,” Jake added.

“Exactly. So he hears that Pierre is back and is spreading word that Patrique might be alive. Of course, most people will say it is a futile hope, but who knows what might turn up?”

“They all seem to think a lot of you.”

“Patrique and I both worked as boys on fishing boats,” Pierre said. “We had an uncle who was a fisherman, and he used to tell us stories of foreign ports and mysteries of the sea. My father is a very wise man. He knew that if he was to forbid our going to sea, we would both have run away. So instead he urged us to spend our summers working for my uncle. Although we learned to love the sea, we also learned that the hard life of a fisherman was not for us.”

Pierre sipped his coffee, then continued. “When the Resistance was starting here, Patrique used his old connections to organize those smugglers and fishermen who wished to help. When I was home on leave, I worked with him.”

“Patrique led the local Resistance?”

“There was no single leader. Cells, or units, were formed. Patrique worked with a number of these units.”

Jake decided he could ask what had been on his mind since his arrival. “Will you tell your parents what you've learned?”

“My father only,” Pierre replied, his face somber. “I told him last night. He agrees we must say nothing of this to my mother.”

“That's probably wise.”

“Losing Patrique almost killed her. We cannot speak with her until we know for certain, and then only with the greatest caution.” He dug in his pocket, tossed a coin on the counter, and rose to his feet. “Come, let us go plant some more seeds.”

They exited the cafe, crossed the main port road, passed through a tiny arched portal, and descended a dozen grime-encrusted stairs into a miniature market square. Another
shout greeted their entry. Jake held back and watched Pierre being swept up by another joyful crowd.

A gentle tug on his sleeve caught Jake's attention. He turned, the smile in place, expecting to find some ancient fisherman wanting to pump the hand of Pierre's friend.

Instead, he confronted a slender figure covered from head to toe in a great gray cape. The hood was slid so far forward that the face was totally lost in shadow. A honey-coated woman's voice said in English, “Step back away from where he can see us.”

“What?” Jake took a reluctant step as the figure backed between two stalls toward the ancient stone wall. When he hesitated to move farther, the figure raised one fine hand and beckoned impatiently.

“Who—”

His words were cut off as the hood was folded back to reveal one of the most beautiful faces he had ever seen.

Great eyes of darkest jade captured him and held him fast. High cheekbones slanted above a finely carved jawline, the sharp features balanced by full red lips. Rich, dark hair was gathered over one shoulder and held by a silver clasp inscribed in a writing that Jake could not fathom.

The eyes. They held him with a sorrowful calmness that stilled his ability to question.

“You are Pierre's friend,” she said, her voice as soft and rich as her gaze.

Jake could only nod.

“I am Jasmyn.” Her gaze flickered behind him. Slender hands rose to sweep the hood back forward, and the beautiful face was lost once more to the shadows. “We haven't much time, Pierre turns this way. Tonight or tomorrow he will take you to a restaurant called Le Relais des Pêcheurs. There is a cafe next door. I will await you.”

“Jake!” Pierre's voice called from amidst the throng.

The hand reached out and grasped his arm with a power
that seemed to scald through his uniform. “Do not tell him I have seen you. But come. Please come.”

“Jake! Come on over here!”

“I have heard of your search for Patrique,” said the hidden woman. “You
must
come. I have news.”

BOOK: Gibraltar Passage
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