In under half an hour, all the loot was in Ruac, the Resistance leadership none the wiser.
In their underground chamber, Bonnet took a crowbar to the crate and splintered the plywood. Inside was a painting. A beautiful pale-faced young man draped in fur.
‘Fat-arsed Goering wanted this,’ Bonnet announced spreading his arms wide, holding it up to the villagers. ‘Probably worth a lot. Here, Odile, this is for you, a pretty boy for you to look at. You earned this tonight.’
She instantly fell in love with the portrait. She didn’t care if it was valuable or not. The young man in the painting was hers now. She’d put it on the wall over her kitchen table to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with him.
He was a pretty boy.
By the light of bare bulbs, they counted the cash and stacked the gold bars into the night. Giddy with victory and drink they listened to Bonnet’s final tally, which he punctuated with the following proclamation: ‘There’s enough here to set us all up for life.’ He raised his glass. ‘My friends and family, here’s to long lives!’
It was after one in the morning. Despite the endless day, Luc wasn’t tired. Numb, but not tired. The woman he was staring at was one hundred and sixteen years old. But she looked sultry and supple, like a dishy forty-year-old.
‘Since the war, we’ve lived peacefully,’ she said. ‘We don’t bother anyone, nobody bothers us. We want to live our lives. That’s all. But then you came here and everything changed.’
‘So this is my fault?’ he asked incredulously. ‘You’re saying that I have the blood on my hands of the people you killed?’
There were heavy steps coming from the kitchen. Luc turned quickly at the sound. Bonnet filled the doorway with his bulky frame. He hadn’t shaved in a while and his cheeks were white with stubble.
‘We have a right to protect ourselves!’ He was almost spitting. ‘We have a right to be free. We have a right to be left alone. I will not permit us to be studied and poked and prodded and treated like animals in a zoo. All that will happen if you continue with this goddamn cave.’
His son was behind him, the sleeves of his T-shirt stretched tight over his bulging biceps. Both men strode into the sitting room. Their boots were muddy.
Luc stood and faced them down. ‘Okay, I’ve listened to Odile. I have some understanding of who you are. Fine. Now let me see Sara and let me bring her home.’
‘We need to talk to you first,’ Bonnet insisted.
‘About what?’
‘About who else knows? Who else did you tell about us?’
If they were intending to intimidate him with their glowers and their body language, they succeeded. Luc was large but he wasn’t a fighter. These men were capable of extreme violence, that much was clear.
‘No one else knows, but if anything happens to me, everyone will know. I’ve left a letter to be opened if I die or disappear.’
‘Where’s this letter?’ Bonnet demanded.
‘I’ve got nothing more to say. Where’s Sara?’
Jacques was sneering now. ‘She’s not far. I’ve had my eye on her.’
That big oafish face oozing with sexual innuendo set Luc off. It didn’t matter that he was going to get the worst of it. It wasn’t a rational move, but he lunged forwards and caught Jacques firmly on the cheekbone with his clenched right fist.
It seemed to hurt his hand more than the man’s face because Jacques was able to shake it off and deliver a hard knee to Luc’s groin, dropping him on all fours and submerging him in a deep pool of pain and nausea.
‘Jacques, no!’ Odile screamed as her brother swung his leg back to kick him in the crotch again.
‘Not there!’ Bonnet ordered, and his son backed off. The mayor stood over Luc and smashed his fist down onto his neck with a hammer blow. ‘Here!’
THIRTY-FOUR
Luc awoke with a dull throbbing in his head and a sharp pain in his neck. He squeezed the spot that hurt. It felt tender and bruised but his fingers and toes were moving so nothing was broken, he reasoned. He was on his side on an old musty camp bed facing a stone wall. Cold grey limestone, the backbone of the Périgord.
He rolled onto his back. Above him was a bare bulb hanging from its cord. He rolled again, this time onto his right side, and there was that face.
His skin was so white and pure it almost seemed ghostly. The young man was staring back at him every bit as steadily as the Mona Lisa stares down her admirers in the Louvre. It was the Raphael. The Portrait of a Young Man rested on a crate with German stencilling, propped against the damp stone wall as if it were a worthless canvas awaiting the dumpster or a yard sale.
He swung his legs and sat up. His head was pounding but he was able to stand. The room was about the size of Odile’s sitting room, cluttered with crates, rolled carpets and a hodge podge of bric-a-brac: candle sticks, vases, lamps, even a silver tea service. He picked up a candle stick and it was awfully heavy.
Christ, he thought, solid gold.
There was the clunk of a bolt unlocking and the door creaked open.
Bonnet and his son again.
They saw he had a candlestick in his hand. Bonnet pulled a small pistol from his pocket. ‘Put it down,’ he demanded.
Luc snorted at him and tossed it hard on the floor, denting it. ‘There goes half its value.’
‘Who has this letter you say you wrote?’ Bonnet asked again.
Luc thrust out his jaw. ‘I’m not saying anything else until I see Sara.’
‘You need to tell me,’ Bonnet said.
‘You need to screw yourself.’
Bonnet whispered into his son’s ear. Both men left and locked the door again. Luc had a better look around the room. The walls were stone, the floor concrete. The door was a solid-looking affair. The ceiling was plastered. Maybe there was an opportunity there. It wouldn’t be hard to climb up onto the crates and poke around. Then in the corner behind some cardboard boxes he noticed a jumble of hardware and cables. He swore out loud. His computers!
The door opened again.
This time Sara was there with Odile behind her. ‘Ten minutes, that’s all,’ Odile said, giving Sara a small shove. The door slammed again and they were alone.
She looked small and frail but at the same time she beamed at the sight of him. ‘Luc! My God, it’s you!’
‘You didn’t know I was coming?’
She shook her head and lowered it to hide her tears.
He moved forward and pulled her to his chest so she could cry against it. He felt her sobs with the palms of his hands pressed against her shuddering back. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be okay. You’re not alone anymore. I’m here.’
She pulled away to dry her eyes and managed to smile again. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked. ‘Did they hurt you?’
‘No, I’m fine. Where are we?’
‘I’m not sure. I haven’t seen anything but the inside of a room like this one and a tiny loo. I think we’re underground.’
‘I’ve been sick with worry about you,’ Luc said. ‘You fell off the face of the earth. I had no idea what happened. I went to your flat. I called your boss. I tried to get the police to investigate.’
‘I never made it out of Cambridge,’ she replied weakly.
She’d stayed at Fred Prentice’s side in the bustling corridor of the Nuffield Hospital. Luc had told her there’d been an emergency back in France. Something bad, nothing more. He had to go, he was sorry. He’d call when he knew the facts, and then he was gone.
Fred saw she was shaken, and in his fractured state, he was the one consoling her.
‘I’m sure it’ll be all right,’ he said.
‘Fred, for God’s sake, don’t worry about me!’
‘You look upset. I wish you had a chair. Maybe they can bring one.’
‘I’m fine.’ She leaned over his railing and patted him on his only uninjured limb. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you found?’