Poets and Chess Players #6-1: In Which Miss Martin Demonstrates The Use Of A Rifle (Part One)
He looked over grimly. “Sorry, amigo - pretty sure you’re about to be raided.”
This is chapter 6 (part one) of Poets and Chess Players, a WWII spy adventure and drama serial. Previously, Echevarria found out that his old friend Vic survived the Purge and is tangled up somewhere on the other end of this mess, and Miss Martin and Ibarra struck a deal to do just one more job. This time, trouble once again finds them before Matia can figure out what’s really going on…
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November 27, 1941
Haute-Garonne, France
Echevarria woke again, all at once, to a heavy silence. He opened his eyes slowly and pulled his hands from under his coat to rub the feeling back into them, wondering if it was the cold that had woken him - God, he missed Panama already. It was still night. There was a hole in the roof directly over his head, and he squinted up at the stars before deciding it had been about five hours since he passed out. The fire was still lit, too, though lower now. One man was taking his turn to keep it fed; the rest seemed to be soundly asleep. He didn't see Miss Martin anywhere. The cold wasn't the problem, he realized: he still had a soldier's instincts, and something in the silence of the night felt wrong. Matia dragged himself up to his feet and picked his way across the one-room building towards the hearth, where most of the sleeping bodies were clustered. He and the luckless sentry grunted at each other in passing as he turned, on a sudden urge, to head for the door instead.
It was only a little colder outside than it had been in his dark little corner, but now it completely encompassed him. The dead grass crackled underfoot. Overhead, the clear and sparkling winter sky seemed a window into an entirely separate sphere of existence, orders beyond his own, untouchable - except for the corner in which the stars were dimmed by the distant city lights. The hint of civilization reassured him. It’s just another quiet country night, Matia thought. Jeannie’s worries must have worked their way into the back of his mind while he was sleeping, met up with everything Otsoa had said about Víctor, and conspired with it to snap him back three years in time. There was no war here.
The thought of our Vic, alive out there clawed at his heart. It was rare for Matia to formulate anything like a plan, but he now had, at least, a list of things he intended to do. He would pull off this job, whatever it was Ibarra wanted, and find out what a girl like Jeanne could do well enough to impress that jackass. Assuming they all got out of it intact, he’d take whatever help and information she was willing to give and go to Geneva. From there, probably telegraph back to Lou with his findings. But after that-
He froze. That light between him and the stars had just shifted.
Matia waited, holding his breath to be sure, and he saw it flicker and then move again. It wasn’t from the city, as he had thought, but two - no, at least three - separate beams of light originating just on the other side of the ridge above. He exhaled in a long burst and scrambled back into the hut.
“Cold, eh?” the man at the fire said.
“Worse luck.” He looked over grimly. “Sorry, amigo - pretty sure you’re about to be raided.”
The other cursed and spat on the hearth, and kicked one of the sleeping forms beside him until Ibarra sat up angrily. “What do you think-”
“Any good reason for somebody to be skulking up the hill?” Mat interrupted.
Ibarra’s expression went cold immediately. “No,” he said, and jumped up to push past him to the door. He was back again within moments, that old cruel smile playing on his lips. “That’s the police, all right. Nanterre, get the boys up. Annie-”
“What?” Jeanne was already awake, poking her head down from a tiny loft Matia hadn’t noticed before.
“First of all, I don’t want any lip. Second, I got some target practice for you.”
“Well, ain’t you lucky I came prepared,” she said. Her face disappeared into the hayloft, and a chill zipped down Mat’s spine as he heard the familiar clatter of a full stripper clip hitting the guts of a bolt-action rifle.
Down on the floor, the room was coming alive around him. Somebody shoved an old Velo-Dog revolver1 into his hand - already loaded, by the weight - and he tucked it inside his coat in the hopes that it both could and would still do some damage at close range. “What’s the plan, chief?” he asked Ibarra.
“Not much. We don’t have the arms here for a shootout,” Ibarra said as he filled his own pockets with cartridges. “There’s an empty farmhouse up toward the river where we keep some stuff, bikes and all that, so it’s scatter and regroup there. You’d better stick with the girl. She can show you the way.”
Matia saluted and went back to the corner to loot his bag of whatever he could carry quietly. To his surprise, Jeanne hadn't come down yet by the time he was done. “Hey, are you coming?” he asked.
“Gimme a minute. You heard the man - somebody’s got to draw off their attention while everybody else runs for it.”
He found the ladder and climbed up to join her, muttering all the way that this was not what he agreed to, Otsoa - not leaving Jeannie behind in harm’s way like this, and not leaving him there either. The girl was lying prone behind a small gap in the crumbling stone wall, rifle in her arms, her attention fixed through a tacked-on scope. “Didn’ he just say we weren’t starting a shootout?” he said, crouching beside her.
She snorted. “Of course we aren’t. You know they still use the guillotine in this country, right? I ain't shooting a gendarme over guys like these.”
“But-”
“Chut2. Make yourself useful an’ count the lights for me.”
Matia pulled a face at the back of her head, but got up and found another spot to look through. The police had crested the ridge and were beginning the trek down, apparently under the impression all was still quiet below. “Two moving towards us. Three up top, might be headlights,” he said.
“Sounds about right.” She adjusted her aim slightly, and then he heard her take a breath.
BLAM chuk-chak-
BLAM chuk-chak-
BLAM chuk-chak-
BLAM chuk-chak-
BLAM chuk-chak-click-ick-ick-chak-clinkety-clink-
He looked down from the sudden darkness outside to see Jeannie already up on her knees, shoving spent brass into her coat pocket as she swung herself over toward the ladder. “C’mon, let’s go. That won’t slow ‘em down long.”3
“Yeah, I’m coming,” Matia said vaguely, stealing another look out at the chaos that he could only hear. No wonder. If he hadn’t just watched Jeanne make every shot against flashlight bulbs at five hundred feet plus, he wouldn’t have believed the rebels had anyone that could do it.
“Hurry up!”
Matia pulled his sleeves over his hands and slid down the ladder in one motion. “Sure,” he said as he hit the floor. “Just give me a couple clips first.” Jeanne looked at him skeptically from her place half in, half out of the window as she popped two clips off the belt slung over her shoulder and tossed them over. He caught them and threw them both into the hearth, kicking coals over the top before sprinting after her. “All right, now hurry!”
They both landed in the dirt and scrambled up to keep running, Matia straining just to follow the girl in front of him as his eyes adjusted from the firelight. It was only seconds, his vision still gauzy-gray, before shouts broke out somewhere in front of them. Jeanne grabbed his arm and pulled him sideways, up the slope, as the commotion spread.
“Down,” she hissed suddenly, yanking him through the branches of a hedge and into a hidden hollow. Mat fell on top of her painfully, and rolled off just in time to look up through the brush at the back of a gendarme’s head. His stomach turned: they’d been surrounded. The men who got out ahead of them had fled into a trap.
For a breath or two, he and Jeanne lay curled together as still as they could. Every heartbeat made the world shake. The shouting hadn’t stopped, and lights were flashing across the sky and trees as the searchers slowly closed their net. The man next to them turned his head from side to side, scanning the valley. He had a dark mustache, thick, a little too long. Matia watched the hairs move beneath the breath from his flaring nostrils, and reached slowly inside his coat for the revolver.
A bit of gravel shifted underneath their weight suddenly, too-loud-far-too-loud, daring their pursuer to turn further. His fingers tightened around the grip.
And then - gunshots from below, or something very like them. The cartridges were exploding in the fire.
The gendarme took off, rifle in hand, and Matia slumped down against Jeanne in relief. She pushed him off and was away up the hillside almost immediately. He suppressed all other thoughts and pulled himself up to follow her.
Jeanne was running flat out through the scrub like a wild goat, and didn’t slow down until they were over several hills and stumbled, splashing, into a shallow brook. Matia jogged past her by accident while she was doubled over the bank, gasping for breath. “Hold up,” she managed to say. “Hey-”
“Yeah, I’m here,” he said, wading back to her. “You all right?”
“Will be.” She threw herself back on the ground, her chest heaving, arms stretched out as she stared up at the sky. Mat took the opportunity to sit down himself while he waited. “Did - did you see who else-?”
He shook his head. “I couldn’ see anything.”
Jeanne grumbled a curse he only half understood and sat up slowly. “All right,” she said, still winded. “How d’you want to do this?”
“Shit, you’re asking me?” Matia tried to consider their options. He wasn’t sure he knew exactly what all those options were - there couldn’t be many, though. He’d have to be more practical than usual with Jeanne in tow, and unless the girl was also a secret strategic genius, he didn’t see a way for the two of them alone to successfully go up against whatever Ibarra’d had coming. And they would be alone; anybody else who’d made it out would feel he was better served running for the next département than stopping to help. Otsoa himself, for all their history, hadn’t scrupled to leave him behind back there. If he had Vic, maybe…but Vic wasn’t here. He was in Vienna. And in the meantime, he had his own job to take care of.
“I guess -” He swallowed. “Well, I guess we got to get back to the hotel and get out of town. Not much we can do here.”
“Agreed,” Jeanne said. She didn’t look terribly concerned about her former allies’ fate, but then he hadn’t seen much of any emotion from her yet - besides anger. “We won’t get far now with wet feet, anyway. I’ll take you up to the garage and we can figure it out from there.”
He stood up after her, willing his aching legs to continue as he had so often done before. The way was fairly easy now as Jeanne got them back onto a path, and not too far. Matia had almost talked himself into feeling optimistic about the rest of the evening when voices ahead pricked his ears, and he dove into the brush on instinct. The girl followed a second later, crawling past him with a gesture to wait for her return. He didn’t have to wait for long.
“It wasn’t just a raid - looks like somebody sold ‘em out,” she whispered. “Gendarmerie’s up here too. I guess they’re waitin’ for anyone who wasn’t caught down at camp.”
Matia wrinkled his nose. “Not that I’m complaining, but they’re being awful loud for an ambush.”
“It’s something in the wine, I swear. They all think they’re playin’ games - both sides. It drives me up…” She sighed, cutting herself off. “Never mind. How d’you feel about hiking back after all?”
“Don’ worry about that,” he said, smiling a little as inspiration hit. “I have an idea.”
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A low-powered, comically small pocket revolver produced widely throughout Europe from the 1890s on, originally for cyclist self-defense.
Shhh.
If you like guns, you’ve probably already heard an M1903 firing. I’m linking this anyway for the vibes.