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Fire On Fire: Chapter 8

(Ch. 7), (Ch. 6), (Ch. 5) (Ch. 4), (Ch. 3), (Ch. 2), (Ch. 1)

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Summary: Alix (Codename: Juliette) and Nixon (Codename: Édouard) hunt for a Gestapo informer masquerading as a Resistance fighter. Will they sniff out the rat in time or will the collaborator complete their objective of seeing the Carentan faction eliminated? WARNINGS: The usual war + espionage stuff Taglist: @latibvles @softguarnere

Contemporary: June 10th, 1944. Saint-Hilaire-Petitville, France.

Alix had seriously underestimated the amount of waiting around that came with being an OSS operative.

“Thérèse, this is Juliette,” she stated for the third time into the handheld transceiver, doing her best to enunciate clearly so her French wouldn’t be scrambled by the radio. “Do you read me? Verify status. Over.”

Silence.

Alix chewed on her bottom lip nervously. It didn’t usually take this long to clear a dead drop and lateness in espionage never boded well.

The Resistance fighter in question, codenamed Thérèse, was a new trigger but she had been trained well by the group, especially on such short notice. After a string of recent arrests, she was the only member of the on-the-ground surveillance team left.

Fortunately, the trigger position wasn’t too difficult: scope out potential sabotage locations, report on potential targets, and pick up any info that was dropped off in locations near her designated watch zone. Thérèse was a “pavement artist”– it was her job to blend in with the scenery and she was damn good at it.

While she waited for their contact to answer, Alix took the opportunity to subtly survey the flat and its occupants from the cluttered desk. Resting an elbow on top of one of Henri's many medical textbooks, she leaned her head on her hand as she quietly took note of the scene.

Everyone was spread out across the small bedroom, each of the Resistance members staking an unspoken claim to their particular section.

Their 20 year old courier, codenamed Camille, was stretched out on the far side of the bed, dozing off after 48 hours straight of helping Alix organize supplies for the front lines. For someone perpetually in motion, seeing her nearly still was as jarring and unnatural as a blizzard in the middle of summer.

Pacing by the boarded-up window like a restless ghost was Henri who had been thrust into the position of impromptu leader out of necessity. The quick work of the informer– whoever he or she was– had resulted in the recent capture and arrest of four founding members just the week before Alix's arrival, crippling the faction's leadership and momentarily disrupting their operations.

After the arrest of the former leader, a Jewish teenager from Coutances codenamed Toulouse, Henri had seniority so despite his initial reluctance to take the spotlight, he did eventually assume the role.

He was a pre-med student who had just turned 21 but carried himself with the solemnity of a man twice his age. He never complained but the ever-present dark circles under his eyes had become so deep as of late that they had begun to look like bruises.

Their resident bombmaker (or “Bang-Bang Boy” as the guys at HQ jokingly referred to them) was a schoolboy of about 16, codenamed Edgar, who was sitting in the chair opposite Alix, leafing through the latest issue of Défense de la France, a popular underground newspaper the Resistance had been distributing.

Gaunt with a lank flap of ash-blond hair and a sickly, almost anemic pallor, it was easy to see why no one would suspect him of being a saboteur for the Resistance– he looked as though a sudden breeze might strike him dead.

Jean-Pierre, their bagman, sat cross-legged on the closest side of the bed, lazily whistling the best part of "Sing Sing Sing" as he checked his watch again for the millionth time.

A fisherman’s son from Calais who had fled to Carentan at 19 after his family were killed, he was one of the newer Resistance members but also one of the most effective. Jean-Pierre had a sort of breezy charm about him which was a necessity for a bag-man. It allowed him to quickly ingratiate himself with the local authorities, bribing them for information and in many cases, for their silence as well.

Despite his generally easy-going nature, JP could be brash at times; he and Alix had quickly bonded over their shared tendency toward recklessness and a passion for Benny Goodman records.

Like her, he also wanted to be as involved in every mission he could. If he wasn't in the field bribing officials, he was helping to plan operations, forge documents, mark maps, whatever was needed. Having been rejected by the French army for having severe asthma, JP told her he was sick of feeling helpless, a feeling Alix knew all too well.

Sitting around, waiting for her targets to arrive in the Kill Zone made her feel helpless too. It’d already been almost a week since D-Day and she had yet to go on a single assassination operation.

Instead, she was relegated to planning acts of sabotage and organizing supplies for the front lines, a fact that was eating away at her like a poison.

All the smatterings of gunfire in the distance, the explosions and the roar of tanks nearby, all the screaming and crying and bleeding and dying, and she wasn’t doing a damn thing to stop it.

Her boyfriend, her best friends, and thousands of others were out there risking their lives and she was stuck inside with a radio and a map. It was beyond maddening.

In selling out four founding members of the Carentan Resistance just a week shy of Alix's arrival, the Gestapo's mole --whoever he or she was-- had essentially upended every pre-planned operation in the OSS playbook and made it virtually impossible for her to do her job as planned.

She couldn't complete her assassination ops without Resistance support and her contact -- who she'd spent months building a cover and rapport with through correspondence-- had already been arrested and was most likely enduring unimaginable horrors at the hands of the Gestapo. He was French, Jewish, and a Resistance leader: there was no way the Nazis would interrogate him without employing incomprehensible methods of torture designed to maximize his pain, regardless of what he said or did.

Alix felt her throat beginning to burn at the thought of her ally's suffering and she squeezed her eyes shut before any tears could surface.

Whenever I find the mole who sold him out, she vowed silently as she clenched her fist and tried to steady her breathing. I'm going to rip them limb from limb.

Suddenly, the transceiver on the desk crackled to life again and her eyes shot open.

“Juliette, this is Thérèse. Drop cleared. Dry-cleaning now. Out.”

From the window, Henri exhaled audibly, his shoulders relaxing in his relief.

One part complete.

"Took her long enough," Camille mumbled without even opening her eyes.

"See, what did I tell you?" Jean-Pierre prodded as he fiddled with the much-larger radio set Alix had brought them earlier in the week. "Thérèse was being followed. Why else would she be trying to evade a tail after the pick-up?"

“Gee, I don’t know,” Camille muttered bitterly, sitting up with her back against the wooden headboard. “Maybe because she’s lying?”

"Here we go again," Alix grumbled and Henri just sighed.

Camille's outbursts didn't usually end well.

"And why would she be lying, Camille?" Jean-Pierre asked in a monotonous voice of exaggerated tolerance, his expression pinched. “Do remind us. I don't think you've said it in the last 30 minutes."

"Don't patronize me, JP, you know why!" Camille's voice rose to a fever pitch. "It's because she's the fucking mole!"

Alix's eyebrows shot up to the ceiling and in front of her, Edgar slammed his newspaper shut so quickly that the front page ripped.

“She’s my sister," he retorted incredulously. "She's not the mole!”

“And how would you know, little one?” Camille shot back, her green eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Perhaps it’s you!”

“We’re twins!” Edgar burst out with a surprising amount of aggression given his frail appearance, his French coming out so quickly that Alix could barely understand him. “We share everything! I would know if she was!”

“Camille,” Alix said measuredly, trying her best to be diplomatic. “We know how much Toulouse meant to you, but-”

"You don't know anything, Juliette," Camille snapped, rounding on her. "You have barely been here a week! How do we even know we can trust you?! Toulouse trusted you and now he's-"

The words died in her throat.

Alix clenched her jaw, forcing down her rising rage.

Camille's running on 48 hours of no sleep, she reminded herself, lighting a cigarette to help cool her down.

And her boyfriend is probably being brutalized right now, if he's not already dead, because he was betrayed by someone he knew. She's just looking for someone to blame. How would you feel if you lost Joe like that?

"You've seen my bona fides," she stated tersely after taking a long drag. "You've seen every document. You've spoken to my case officer. You've read the letters-- seen the code. You know I'm clean."

"Jules has no reason to lie," JP chimed in, aiming a nod of support to Alix. "She has no motive."

"Thank you-" Alix said with a small huff of irritation and a There-You-Have-It gesture but JP wasn't done.

"But you know who does…?"

He swiveled his head toward Henri with an accusatory glare.

It was an allegation so audacious that it took a second for it to fully set in.

"Me?" Henri took a step back, brown eyes wide. "You must be joking!"

But no one was laughing.

"You did say your parents were Party members once…" Edgar mused, suddenly eyeing their leader with a newfound suspicion.

"I've never hidden that," the older boy replied evenly, meeting his gaze with a calm defiance. "I despise them and everything they stand for. That’s no secret.”

“Why're you always shortchanging me then?” Jean-Pierre demanded as he got to his feet.

Henri’s brows furrowed in confusion.

"What on Earth are you on about?"

"Oh don't play stupid, Henri," Jean-Pierre scoffed, crossing his arms contemptuously. "It doesn't suit you."

"If you have something to say, then say it," Henri challenged, nearly bellowing. It was the loudest Alix had ever heard him speak and she jumped at the sound.

"Very well," Jean-Pierre sighed, sounding almost reluctant as he shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

"I've tried to cover for you this long because I like you, Henri, but you leave me no choice. You barely give me enough money for me to do my job! How am I supposed to bribe officials for valuable intel with barely enough money to feed a rat?"

"If there's not much, it's because we don't have a lot left after expenses," Henri contested angrily. "Sabotage materials aren't cheap, you know!"

"Or you're skimming off the top," Jean-Pierre prodded, giving his nose a quick scratch.

"My God," Henri marveled with a hollow laugh. "All my money goes to the Resistance or to my studies! If I was stealing from our funds, do you honestly think I would still be living in a place like this?"

He gestured to the tiny run-down flat they were in and Alix certainly saw his point.

With its yellowing wallpaper already dog-eared and peeling, the ever-present drip…drip…drip of the faucet, and the faint smell of mildew, she couldn't imagine living in a place like that unless it was an absolute necessity but Jean-Pierre clearly wasn't convinced.

"Perhaps it's not even about the money," he posited, his startlingly gray eyes blazing. "Perhaps it's just about sabotaging us so you can help out your degenerate parents!"

"You take that back," Henri growled but with a shout of "Traitor", Jean-Pierre swung at the older boy, leading to an immediate scuffle on the carpet.

Alix swore in French and stubbed her cigarette out quickly before springing into action.

Apparently today, "aiding the Resistance" meant keeping the members from killing each other.

Edgar didn't move from his chair, busying himself with a homemade pencil fuse instead, while Alix and Camille rushed to separate the two boys.

Camille grabbed a panting Henri by the back of his heavy wool sweater and hauled him off of his assailant just as Alix managed to drag JP to his feet and wrench his arms behind his back, effectively restraining him despite his irate protestations.

The agent was about to cuss them both soundly for engaging in such idiocy without a speck of proof, when a loud clatter down the hall quieted her instantly.

Instinct took over and before she knew it, she was standing in the bedroom doorway, revolver at the ready with Jean-Pierre behind her, his own handgun loaded as well.

While the pair waited with bated breath, Henri scrambled to disassemble the larger clandestine radio, Camille raced to stash the smaller handheld one, and Edgar began shoving as many contraband newspapers under the chair cushion and mattress as he could.

With a silent signal to JP, Alix crept soundlessly out the door and he followed in her footsteps down the hall, when they both lowered their weapons with a collective sigh of relief.

It was Thérèse, still clad in her school clothes: a rumpled wool sweater too large for her frame, loafers, and a gingham skirt, making her look even younger than her 16 years.

She never gets to be a child, Alix thought sadly as the girl gave them a small wave. Now she’s a soldier.

“Good to see you, Thérèse,” Jean-Pierre proclaimed with a wide smile as the three headed back into the cramped bedroom of Henri’s tiny flat.

Once they entered again and locked the door, Edgar rushed to embrace his twin sister, the two chattering back and forth in rapid-fire French.

“You had us worried,” Henri chided the girl gently as she took a seat. “Was there something wrong with the initial drop?”

Thérèse shook her head emphatically, causing the black ribbon to slowly slip out of her hair.

“Not at all,” she replied as she turned the ribbon over in her hand. “The drop itself was fine but there was a point when I suspected I was being tailed. So I dry-cleaned for a little bit. You know, to keep from being spotted.”

She and Alix exchanged furtive giggles.

It was a common joke in the intelligence community because trying to lose someone following you was known as “dry-cleaning”.

Lewis Nixon had taught the joke to Alix during her training as a way to remember the term and when Alix first arrived at the Resistance, she had taught it to Thérèse as well because she was on the main surveillance team.

“Who did you think was tailing you?” Alix asked, sobering quickly.

Enemy intelligence already had one mole in the Carentan faction of the Resistance. If they were starting to pick out Resistance members on the street too, their jobs had just become a lot more dangerous.

Thérèse shrugged before delicately nudging her wire-rimmed spectacles further up her nose.

“I’m not sure exactly,” she divulged as she began to gingerly remove a lengthy strip of paper that had been carefully concealed inside the ribbon. “Perhaps it was just me being paranoid but I felt as though I was being watched so I took precautions, just to be sure.”

Once she had removed the hidden note, she passed it over to Alix who squinted at it. It was badly crumpled, the creases so deep that she had to iron it out on her leg to be able to make out the writing on it, which was in script so cramped that it took her multiple tries to figure out what it said.

Goddamn it, Nix, she scolded him in her head, making a mental note to repeat it later over the radio when they next had contact. Your handwriting is atrocious. Didn’t they ever teach you to write legibly at Yale?

She skipped to the postscript first. He had promised to keep her updated...

“DJS all accounted for. You’re welcome.”

Don, Joe, and Skip were safe. Thank God.

“It’s from Édouard,” she announced to the rest of the group as she scanned the document for the actual contents.

Nixon’s codename was the French version of Edward, a not-so-subtle reference to the famous Edward Teach also known as Blackbeard.

Very clever, Lieutenant, she thought, inwardly rolling her eyes.

“It looks like the Oberleutnant is arriving early,” she summarized.

“He’ll be passing through here in the next couple days on the way to Carentan. We should be able to catch him by nightfall the night after next, if all goes according to plan."

But of course, things never did.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Contemporary: June 12th, 1944. Saint-Hilaire-Petitville, France.

“Édouard, this is Juliette. We have a visual. Requesting permission to engage. Over.”

Alix drummed her fingers impatiently against her thigh as she awaited her handler’s response.

Any day now, Nix.

Peering through the stained curtains, she had a perfect view of her target: Oberleutnant Walter Hahn, who was chatting idly to a couple soldiers across the way, blissfully unaware that he was being watched by a team of Resistance assassins.

All Alix had to do was slip out the door, "accidentally" bump into Hahn as he made his exit, flirt a little bit, get him alone, and then it was going to be auf wiedersehen and good riddance to the Nazi bastard.

Technically, Hahn wasn't supposed to be her problem until that night but it appeared that he and his men had arrived even further ahead of schedule than planned.

And who was Alix to question fate?

It would be dangerous, no doubt. They would be in broad daylight and Alix’s training specified that she was to wait until nightfall, when her identity was easier to conceal.

But she was restless, growing more and more frustrated with her own inaction as the days went by. She was tired of planning, of smuggling supplies, of being safe while her loved ones were out there somewhere, fighting and dying. Like a tiger trapped in a cage, she wanted out. She wanted to do something. She wanted to help.

But she also knew that it only took one person in the immediate area remembering her face or clothing to have the entire Gestapo out looking for her. But she wanted to help! And besides, such a risky mission might take the mole, whoever he or she was, by surprise.

“Édouard, this is Juliette,” she repeated, overenunciating her French to be sure she’d be understood. “We have a visual. Repeat: We have a visual. Requesting permission to engage. Over.”

She didn’t have to wait long that time.

Nixon’s response was swift and predictable.

“Negative, Jules. Too risky. Over.”

Alix sighed in frustration, the crackles echoing across the line.

"Apologies," Henri said with a sympathetic shrug. "But you heard the man."

By the mirror, Camille stopped brushing her short-cropped brown hair to check her watch.

"It won't be that much longer," she assured Alix. "Only a couple more hours."

"By then it could be too late," Jean-Pierre countered, echoing Alix's own thoughts. "They could've moved on to Carentan. She should go now."

Henri balked at the suggestion.

"And risk exposing the whole operation, are you mad?!"

"It is a gamble," Jean-Pierre conceded. "But it could pay off."

"Or, most likely, it could blow up in our faces and get us all killed." Camille shook her head.

"I vote no, and I know Edgar and Thérèse would say the same if they were not blowing up bridges right now.”

“If Toulouse were here-” JP countered but Camille cut him off instantly.

“Well he isn’t!” Her voice quavered and Alix instantly averted her gaze.

Her stomach flip-flopped with anxiety; she felt like she was intruding on a private moment of grief. She’d never been fortunate enough to meet Toulouse personally before his arrest but from their written correspondence in the weeks before her arrival, he’d seemed like an unusually bright and courageous person and she had looked forward to working with him.

It felt strange in a way, to grieve the loss of a person she’d never officially met. A part of her felt like she didn’t have a right to feel sorrow over it. After all, she didn’t even know his real name and he hadn’t known hers.

Toulouse was to be her main contact in France; they had been tasked by the OSS to establish a trail of fake correspondence before her arrival, knowing without a doubt that all postcards and letters would be monitored by the Nazi authorities. Since the Nazi takeover, identification and alibis were meticulously investigated so every cover had to be a deep one.

“Dear Jules,” one of her favorite letters read.

“Mother is pleased to hear you may come to visit us! She's already planning a party of sorts– you know how she is. My girlfriend is very much looking forward to your arrival too! She's been very curious to meet my favourite cousin! Also, she's quite the musician and is dying to hear you play something when you arrive! Perhaps some Rachmaninoff– I’ve always been partial to Piano Concerto No. 2, myself. We are in desperate need of some music here. Regardless, I’m certain you two will get along wonderfully. I hope to propose to her soon, whenever this damn war (and more importantly, her father) will let me. I had hoped her little brother Gilles would be able to meet you as planned but he and some of his schoolmates have recently fallen ill and some are already in hospital. Hopefully it doesn't come to that for him or I fear we all may catch it. Anyway, I’ve got to be off now. Shabbos preparations wait for no one!

All the best,

Your favourite (and only) cousin,

Toulouse

PS. Enclosed is a photograph of Voltaire, who also sends his best (and a hairball, for good measure)."

A seemingly innocuous letter, just two cousins conversing about an upcoming family get-together.

Certainly not an OSS agent and her Resistance contact discussing an upcoming sabotage attempt, the arrest of a Resistance member, a request for a clandestine radio to send further reports, and that the leader suspected more arrests might follow.

But despite every line being coded, Toulouse had still managed to slip some of his sunny personality in-between. He reminded Alix a lot of Skip in that way: ever an optimist, even in the darkest of times. She wished she could've had the chance to introduce the two. She knew they would've been good friends.

The best covers were made of partial truths and their faked correspondences had been no different. The photo of Voltaire, Toulouse's pensive-looking Persian cat, had been real as were his feelings for Camille.

According to Thérèse, when Pascal's flat was raided and the arrests had been made, Toulouse had actually been carrying the engagement ring he'd hoped to give Camille in his pocket.

Alix couldn't even begin to fathom the agony that Camille must live with every day knowing how close the pair of them had been to happiness. If God forbid that ever happened to her and Joe, Alix knew she would lose her mind.

“Toulouse isn’t here,” Camille repeated, clasping her trembling hands in her lap in a futile attempt to still them. “The Gestapo have him. So it doesn’t matter what he would’ve done.”

No one spoke for a moment, her words hanging in the air like a death knell, before Henri broke the silence in his usual understated way.

"Well as leader, my say is final and I say you’re waiting until nightfall. Sorry, Jules."

With that, he turned back to his work, manning the larger radio and quickly tapping out signals as Camille scribbled down codes via headset, monitoring the progress of nearby skirmishes.

“You don’t have to listen to them, you know,” Jean-Pierre whispered out of the corner of his mouth as he began measuring out the coordinates on his end of the map spread out in front of them. “You work with us, not for us, yes? You don’t take orders from them.”

Alix checked her notes before stretching an arm out halfway on her side of the map and deftly marking the coordinates of another supply drop zone.

“I know," she acknowledged as she returned to her notes.

"But I'm required to take orders from my handler and he said to wait too.”

Jean-Pierre barked a low laugh.

“Perhaps it is different with you Americans but in France, we do not need nursemaids to look after our operatives. We have common sense."

“Oh fuck off," Alix quipped as she reached around him to steal a pushpin from his pile. “Maybe Édouard is right in this case, okay?”

Jean-Pierre made a skeptical noise in the back of his throat.

"Are you trying to convince me or yourself?"

It took all of Alix’s self-control not to elbow him in the ribcage.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

About thirty minutes went by uneventfully before JP set his pencil down.

"Finally," he remarked with a dramatic wipe of his brow. "All finished."

He took a surreptitious glance at his watch which Alix thought was unusual but she dismissed it.

"Now if you all will excuse me, I'm going to grab a glass of water. I'm parched."

Henri nodded in the direction of the kitchen, hardly looking up from his work.

"You know where everything is."

"Don't get lost," Alix joked and JP flashed her a quick grin.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Gesturing to a sheet of paper by his side of the map, he noted, "By the way, Jules, could you be a lamb and double-check my coordinates while I'm gone? The notes are over there. Wouldn't want any supplies getting misplaced on my account."

After the door closed behind him, Alix reached over to pick up the sheet of paper, a frown appearing on her face as she tried in vain to make out the slightly-smudged numbering.

She squinted, held it up to the light, and even turned it upside down for a new angle but to no avail. It still looked like chicken-scratch. It wasn’t worse than Nixon’s cramped script, which nearly had letters written on top of each other at some points, but it certainly came close.

After a final, futile attempt, Alix resignedly glanced over to the desk in the corner where Camille and Henri were hunched, still working with the larger radio.

There was nothing she hated more than admitting she couldn’t do something but she had work to do.

"Camille, can you come look at this real quick?" she asked, swallowing her pride and holding up the paper for her to inspect. "I can't make heads or tails of this line."

The French girl let out a reluctant sigh, as though helping Alix was the world’s biggest inconvenience, but she still put down the headset and got up, with the air of a martyr. Just as she reached the table, Alix passed the paper over to her, accidentally knocking a pen to the floor with her sleeve.

This is why they should let me wear civvies in my off-time too, she thought in annoyance as she rolled up the sleeves of her uniform. These uniforms are just too damn big.

She had just crouched to retrieve the pen when all of a sudden, the window shattered and Camille came crashing down onto the carpet beside her, green eyes wide with shock.

Clutching a hand to her chest, scarlet was starting to stain her shirt, pouring like paint through her fingers and Alix felt her own blood run cold. Leaping into action, she began to stifle the bleeding as best she could with her hands as a scream of warning ripped from her throat to the others:

"Sniper!"

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