Clash by Night by Doreen Owens Malek Read Free Book Online Page A

wait at the door. The boy moved away and Becker took a step closer to Lysette.
    “Do you have other duties besides this...” he gestured impatiently at the walls.
    “I run the school with Madame Duclos,” Lysette replied evenly.  
    “Ah, yes,” Becker said, as an image of the mouthy redhead with the American passport flashed across his mind. He could well imagine that the two women were friends; the Yankee was probably giving this field mouse impertinence lessons.
    “And your husband?” he asked, aware that he was overstepping the bounds of necessary information and entering the realm of curiosity.  
    Lysette hesitated a beat. “Missing in action. Presumed dead.”  
    “I see.” The whole area had been decimated by the short war with his country. No wonder these people hated their conquerors. Becker tried to imagine his wife in this woman’s situation, and could not.
    “I will exchange these for others when I am finished,” he announced, rousing himself from the unproductive reverie. “Good day.”
    Becker whirled for the door and Kurt fell in behind him. As the younger man passed into the hall Lysette sagged against her desk, releasing a long breath.  
    So that was the commandant. Not exactly what she’d expected, but then, she didn’t share the local prejudices against his kind. To the other villagers the Germans were the oppressors, the hated, vilified boche. But to Lysette they were the source of her liberation and the solution to her problem: they had released her from the tyranny of her husband.  
    She filled out a slip for the books Becker had taken, humming under her breath. She had not caused the war and she couldn’t help rejoicing in its result for her. She shared these thoughts with no one, aware that they were selfish, but they colored her attitude toward Becker. She saw him as just a man, like any other. As she placed the “out” card in her file box she wondered when he would be back and shook her head slightly, as if to clear it.  
    * * *
    Four weeks later, while Dan Harris was at Parris Island preparing for his upcoming mission, Laura sat in the kitchen of the house in Fains waiting for Alain to return. She was supposed to be correcting papers, but the copybooks lay piled on the kitchen table, undisturbed, while she listened for the faintest sound that might indicate his arrival. The windows were open to the summer night, and she could hear the crickets out shouting each other in the hydrangea bushes and Henri’s horse chomping grass in the field behind the house. Every half hour, like the tolling of a bell, the sound of the German staff car making its slow, careful way along the road was discernible. It grew late and still the boy did not come. She drained her pot of tea, and the last cup of it, stewed too long in the leaves, was the color of iodine. She drank it anyway for something to do.
    The waiting was awful, and she would much rather be a participant on this night, as she’d been on others. Their involvement with Vipère, named for the venomous snake which strikes quickly and with deadly effect, was supposed to be a secret. But Laura guessed that both Brigitte and Henri knew and merely pretended ignorance. Their frequent nocturnal absences were not discussed, and on a couple of occasions when Alain had returned home injured Brigitte had patched him up without asking any questions. Henri was doubtless terrified that his German cohorts would find out what he was harboring in his own house. Henri had always been the type to avoid controversy if he could, so he closed his eyes and did nothing. Thus Alain was free to continue his covert activities, and it had reached the point where he regarded his job at the factory as a mere cover for his real vocation, driving the Germans out of France.
      Laura usually went with him on his nightly rounds, translating what they overheard, gathering intelligence. But this time he had left her behind, saying that what he had to do was best done