Les Damnés de la Terre: a Vignette

Preface:

This work was originally posted on alternatehistory.com on October 23rd, 2015, as a response to a writing challenge poised by Fenwick.

“Do you have a reservation?” asked the restaurant receptionist, dressed in his fancy dress shirt and looking rather tired; when you have to be up that ungodly early, some tiredness is to be expected, thought Denis.

“Yes, I do. I am with Madame Lavoie,” he said plainly.

“Very well, Monsieur,” said the receptionist deferentially, and led Denis to the table where Madame Lavoie sat.

“A waiter will be with you shortly,” said the receptionist, who returned to his post at the entrance to the restaurant.

“Monsieur Tolbert,” she said coldly, “a pleasure to have you with us.”

“And a pleasure to be here with you, Madame,” he responded, keeping distance with formal pronouns.

“Let us not waste our time with pleasantries, Monsieur Tolbert,” she remarked. “Show me the book.”

He reached into his coat and placed it on the table. An old copy of Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, by Anatole France. In it was a red bookmark.

“So you are who they said you’d be,” she said, looking satisfied. “So you were debriefed by Vincent?”

“Yes, yes I was. Interesting fellow.”

“Anyone who fought out East during the war must be interesting. If they weren’t, they’d be dead.”

“Where was it that he fought? Minsk? Ryazan?”

“He fought at both Baku and Moscow. One wonders how he survived.”

“So tell me, Madame,” said Denis, wanting to get to the point, “where am I supposed to meet the Americans?”

“At the Pitie-Saltpetriere hospital, in the thirteenth arrondissement at noon. They’ll be there in civilian clothing, albeit with large trench coats. You are to go there wearing the suit you have on now –“

She paused. Her eyes widened.

Into the room walked a man in a pitch black suit, military uniform, and swastika armband. He had a gun in a holster on his belt. He was alone.

Madame Lavoie quieted immediately. She made sure the SS man was not listening, or so he appeared. He took out a book from a bag he was carrying and began to read.

She leaned close into Denis’ ear. “Wear this suit you have, or something like it, but wear this tie.” She handed him a tie under the tablecloth; he could not see it but he could feel it. “They’ll have for you the guns and the bombs you need to make the distraction, among several other things. Information included.”

He nodded. She continued. “I would love to stay and chat with you, but that SS man is uncomfortably close. Good luck.”

She rose from the table and left the restaurant before ordering anything. He nodded as a farewell, but little else.

Once the door had made the light colliding noise that it did when it closed, he shifted his head leftward, locking eyes with the SS man.

He got up. So did the SS man. They both left the restaurant, again without ordering anything.

They went behind the building in a small alleyway.

“Sieg Heil,” said the SS man, saluting in the stiff armed manner that they did.

“Sieg Heil,” responded Denis, or more properly Marwin.

“Herr Bretschneider,” said the SS man, I see that the meeting went well. Tell me, what are the Communists’ plans?”

“They want me to meet the Americans at a hospital in the thirteenth arrondissement. They gave me this tie to wear.”

He extended his hand and produced a garishly ugly purple tie with green and yellow stripes.

“These Bolsheviks haven’t the fashion sense that you’d expect the French to have,” remarked the SS man, with snark. “I gather that they think it is too bourgeois.”

“Whatever you think of their fashion sense, at least they have something that we can use to track them,” responded Marwin. “And it’s noticeable.”

“That it is. Which hospital did you say that the Bolsheviks wanted you to go to?”

“The Pitie-Saltpetriere,” Marwin replied.

“Good, very good. Since it is clear that the Bolsheviks want to send the city to hell, what you have given us will protect the Marshal from whatever they throw his way. After all, this is something the Fuhrer himself is attending, and I’m certain that we do not want the guest of honor to be denied a host by a bullet or a bomb, now do we?”

“Of course, sir,” said Marwin. “Do tell the headquarters back in the sixth arrondissement that the Americans are indeed involved as we had suspected. And tell our men in Washington as well.”

“Certainly.”

“It’s a plot against the Reich, it has to be. I don’t know what it’s about, but they clearly don’t want us surviving.”

“It’s the Bolsheviks, of course. They wanted a counterweight to Germany and to National Socialism, but now, since we beat the Russians in their own country, no such counterweight exists.”

They both nodded. There was a final understanding, a final knowledge of what these Bolsheviks were actually doing. There had been many long sessions of yelling and angry speculation in the sixth arrondissement, going after lead after lead after pointless lead, where nothing ever came of the little evidence they had. Now, since they were able to worm their way into the Bolshevik cell, they could now act with foreknowledge, if only a few hours.

“Now go,” said the SS man, “to the thirteenth arrondissement. Do whatever it takes to get the Americans into a place where we can surround them. The police will be informed, and so will the SS in the area. Sieg Heil.” He gave the stiff-armed salute. Marwin gave the same.

They departed and went their separate ways.

Marwin figured that he ought to get to the hospital early, so he went to the street and hailed a cab. He took a seat in the leather couch that made up the back of the vehicle, informed him of his destination, and the driver went off.

Among the streets were the common juxtaposition of the French tricolore and the German swastika, draped side by side. The Fuhrer himself would be coming to Paris to congratulate the Marshal on the twenty-ninth anniversary of the Armistice between the two countries. One banner read “Peace at last,” referencing how inimical the two countries had been for so many years.

And yet the Americans, warmongers as they tended to be, wanted to shatter that peace. When the Russians bowed out of the war, it should have been clear that Europe wanted peace. And yet, as they had done to Japan, the Americans wanted more devastation.

The Reich would not stand for this.

The streets were aligned with posters and banners, flags and flowers, celebrating the anniversary. On one building, two portraits, one of Hitler, one of Petain, were right next to each other, proudly proclaiming the declaration of the new French government back in the forties. “This day,” Petain said on the fifth anniversary, “we celebrate our liberation from useless mob rule.” It was, after all, called Liberation Day.

The taxi arrived at the hospital. He paid the driver and got out.
It was eleven in the morning. He had an hour. Still with his wallet out, he inserted some coins into a newspaper box on the side of the street, sat down on a bench, and began to read.

The front page was about the day’s celebrations. The Fuhrer had promised “a grand occasion” for the anniversary, but that was the same thing the Fuhrer promised every anniversary. What Marwin found so interesting was an announcement from the speaker of the American House of Representatives. His name was Tuck; it seemed like an odd name to Marwin. American names sounded so much less refined than their British counterparts; perhaps it was due to their backgrounds as commoners.

Tuck was going on about how “the coming celebration in Paris reflects the enslavement of the French nation to the whims of Berlin.” Marwin glanced through the article, and noted that this man was from Virginia, a segregated state. Some grand fellow to be speaking about enslavement, now wasn’t he?

Cars passed, the engines making a rumble that he was now immune to. That was common in a city like Paris; not so in his hometown, Hochstadt am Main in Bavaria, which was small and insignificant. It was not close to either Munich or Nuremberg, the two truly important cities in the region.
He checked his watch. 11:45. fortunately he was near the hospital.

He did realize, however, that he had not put on the tie. He already had a suit on, which was useful. He scanned the area for anyone who may have been watching him. Nobody.

Just to be sure, he made his way into a café and entered the restroom. Inside a stall, he put on the hideous tie. He strained himself trying to put it on without a mirror, as he did not want anyone, even someone who happened to be using an adjacent stall, to see him, lest they be working for the Bolsheviks or the Americans.

He walked back out. He noticed a tracked vehicle with Wehrmacht markings. Not just the police, they thought, but the military. It was a model that they used for carrying troops.

He thought these new ones were somewhat odd. The government loved to tout the image of the soldiers back in the war in the forties. They would always have halftracked vehicles with automobile-style wheels in the front, connected to the engine, with troops shooting from an area in the back.
These new ones ditched the wheels and were fully tracked. It was a change from the vehicles that his father had used.

11:53. The Americans had to be here soon.

He postured himself outside the hospital gate, a very ornate gate from the last century. He made sure to button his suit jacket in such a manner that the tie was distinctly visible to anyone who could see. Most people would brush him off as someone with questionable fashion sense.

The Americans, however, would see him as an ally.

Just before they were arrested, so he hoped.

There was a light breeze, which he could feel, not so much hear. The traffic was loud.

“Excusez-moi,” said a voice that had a distinctly non-French, non-German accent. It wasn’t British, either, so Marwin assumed that these were the Americans.

“Comment vous appelez-vous?” asked one of them; there two, both in tan trenchcoats and brown hats.

“Denis Tolbert,” responded Marwin with his French pseudonym. “Et vous?”

“I’m William Gaither,” said the first one, eschewing all pretense of being French. “And this here is Philip Holden,” he said, gesturing to the other. Holden nodded. “I assume that you are the ones that the Communists sent to meet us?”

“That I am,” replied Marwin, keeping the persona. “Perhaps we ought to go somewhere more secluded to prevent the police or the military from overhearing this?”

Gaither looked at Holden, who nodded. “I see no reason why this shouldn’t be,” he asked Marwin. “Do you know of any watering hole that you enjoy nearby?”

“Indeed, I do,” exclaimed Marwin. He led them back to the very same restaurant in which he had put on the tie. They sat down.

“Here,” whispered Gaither. He propped him a box under the table. Marwin took it.

Out of the window, he noticed the tracked vehicle moving towards the restaurant.

“And what about the weapons?” asked Marwin.

“Your organization has enough of them, for the most part. The information other members have given us is more than enough. However, we thought you would be able to use some armor piercing bullets; if the Marshal’s in an armored vehicle, and you have no other chance, you could use it.”

“Thank you,” said Marwin, “but why did they tell me you had weapons?”

“Diversionary tactic. It would throw the Germans off, wouldn’t they?”

“But you have the plans.”

“That we do. Good to make sure there is enough secrecy.”

As if on cue, Wehrmacht men kicked the door down and marched all the way to the table where the three men were sitting. They pointed their guns at the two Americans. “You two are under arrest for attempted assassination of a head of state.”

“Two?” asked Holden. “What about Denis here?”

“You mean Marwin?” asked the chief. “He’s our mole.”

Marwin inhaled, somewhat frustrated. He wasn’t supposed to tell them that. But no matter, he consoled himself. The rest won’t know.

The two Americans looked at him incredulously. “You fucking turncoat!” spat Holden.

Both of them drew their guns. Marwin’s eyes flared; he could die if he didn’t act quickly. He rolled to the floor off of the chair; the impact hurt his upper left arm a bit but that was nothing that needed medical attention.
He heard the ricocheting gunfire, the bullets ramming into flesh. He saw one of the Wehrmacht men fall to the ground, blood oozing out of a wound in his chest.

It seemed like an eternity. Odd, how that always seemed to happen. That sting against the SAS men in Wiener Neustadt, the Bolshevik (actual, as in from Russia, not domestic) cell in Breslau and Kattowitz, the liberals in Dusseldorf, all of them had shootouts where the shortest of moments was seemed like the longest of wars. He wondered how his father felt fighting in Poland, in Belarus, in Azerbaijan, in Russia. That was several years. It must have felt like eon upon eon being condensed together as if it was nothing, like how whatever divine providence that happened to exist would look upon human civilization, like how a scientist in the labs in Heidelberg must examine cells dividing and dividing over the course of only a few minutes.

There was a rotten smell, a disgusting odor that betrayed death. The gunshots quieted. He grabbed on the table to look up; both Holden and Gaither were dead, the former slunk on the chair, half his head unceremoniously ripped from the rest of his body, the latter with three bullet wounds, one in the right shoulder, one in the stomach, one on the left breast.

“Marwin,” said the commander, “are you in good condition?”

“First of all, how do you know my name?” asked Marwin, “and secondly,
I’m fine, other than an arm hurt from the fall. Nothing serious.”

“I was informed by the SS man you met back in the sixth arrondissement. The name’s Klemens Kaulitz. National Security was threatened enough that they deemed it necessary to send the occupational troops rather than the local police. After all, we can’t let the spectacle be disrupted. That would be bad for all of us.”

“Of course, of course, I understand that, but wouldn’t think that losing one puppet would be all that bad.”

“They could get the Fuhrer,” snapped Kaulitz. “And if they get the Fuhrer, the French could rebel. And if the French rebel, the fatherland would lose so many more men in a pointless war that could have been prevented.”

Marwin nodded. He couldn’t disagree with that.

He looked around. There were people in the café, all shocked at the violence. One of them saw the cause to throw a glass at the troops.

“Get out of this country, swine!” yelled a young woman, perhaps around twenty-five. She next threw a plate at the soldiers; it landed on the one who was gravely injured, with the gunshot wound in his chest. He winced in pain.

Kaulitz drew his gun and shot her in the head. It exploded in a manner that made the resulting carnage look something like a rose. Reading Homer had instilled that comparison in Marwin’s mind, and he thought it an odd, but fitting, comparison.

The whole café was now staring at them. Men, women, and children were slackjawed in fear. The waiters stood there with the food on their trays.
The owner and manager, even, were there in fear.

“What are we going to tell the occupational authority?” asked one of the soldiers. “What are we going to tell the press?”

Kaulitz grunted. “Shoot them all and tell them the Americans did it. We
can’t let this sensitive information get out into the city, or there will be hell to pay.”

The soldiers raised their guns. The onlookers were cowering. It was another endless and rapid slaughter. Marwin did his best to ignore it.

“Come, Herr Bretschneider,” beckoned Kaulitz, “let’s get you back to the nearest outpost.”

“Was that really necessary?” asked Marwin, looking around the restaurant, cadavers littering it. “Killing all these people?”

“Had we been caught, you would be in their place,” snapped Kaulitz.

“Knowing you, and all the experience that I had been informed that you had, I would have expected you to have figured that out.”

Kaulitz inhaled, clearly exasperated. “Come with us back to the local headquarters. We have room in the Hanomag for you. They’ll probably want to see you, and the documents that you have.”

“Jawohl,” responded Marwin. He noticed how Kaulitz singled out the documents. He knew that the military and the police and the SS never had any real interest in him personally, more so what he had to bring them. He was a courier, and a good one; so long as he continued to do that well, they would pay him handsomely.

As he walked out he saw Kaulitz talking with a member of the local police and a member of the press. “The Americans did this. They wanted to go out by killing as many people as they could. It’s disgusting, yes, but what do you expect from them?” He did not flinch at the bald-faced lie he was telling. He was a professional dissembler, it seemed.

Marwin clambered into the musty vehicle. There were firing ports, but that was the extent of the view outside. The men followed him, and Kaulitz entered at the end of the line. “Take us back, Franz!” he beckoned to the driver. “We’re done here.”

“Jawohl,” obeyed the driver, and the guzzling, sputtering machine began moving. It smelled of diesel fuel.

After a drive that felt like at most fifteen minutes, they arrived at the headquarters, a very stern looking structure with garages and barracks built into it.

He exited. A young man in a low-ranking army uniform went up to the vehicle and waited for Marwin. “Herr Bretschneider?” he asked.

“Ja, that is me,” replied Marwin, somewhat apprehensively.

“Come. Superiors of yours would like to speak to you.”

“Very well.” Marwin followed this man to an office, in which sat several men in SS, or more properly SD, uniforms. One of them was the man he had talked to after meeting with Madame Lavoie.

“Herr Bretschneider,” he said, rising. “Sieg Heil.”

“Sieg Heil.” Marwin gave the salute.

“I will not waste your time,” said the man from before. “Let us see the documents.”

Marwin forked them over. The higher-ups peered over them intensely. “No weapons?”

“It was a bluff to ward us off, except for some bullets." He dropped them on the table. "The two Americans, and the Bolsheviks, are rather intelligent.”

“That they are. Malicious, too. But of course, without that much fashion
sense.”

The rest of the SD men laughed.

“Herr,” asked Marwin, “I don’t believe the two of us have been formally introduced. What may I call you, sir?”

“Just Weisskopf,” he said plainly. “Weisskopf will do.”

“Very well, Herr Weisskopf. I know you know my name.”

“That I do. Tell me, Herr Bretschneider,” he asked pensively, “you are trained as an assassin, correct?”

“That I am. I’ve done that kind of work in Breslau and in Zurich.”

“Then we don’t have to ask Berlin for another one,” he said contentedly. The men around him nodded. “Soon we’ll be giving you information about taking down at least one of the would-be assassins that may try to kill the Marshal. Judging by these plans,” he said while looking over the document, “there are a few that we could use you for.”

He continued reading. “How about defusing bombs?”

“Some experience, not my specialty.”

“They have plans for several rigged cars and trucks along the parade route. We have bomb control teams, but saving time and manpower is always useful.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

Weisskopf looked over the plans that the Americans had given him. “Could you take down a sniper on the roof of one of the buildings that they say that they’re on?”

“I believe I could.”

“Could you do several?” Weisskopf’s eyes pierced him.

“I suppose I could, yes,” he responded. This sounded difficult. But no more difficult than Breslau.

“Well then, I’ll have you taking down five snipers throughout the parade route down the Champs-Elysees. Two of them are in the forest; three of them are atop shops. We have Wehrmacht and French military forces stationed throughout the city, including gyrocopter support if absolutely necessary.”

Weisskopf leaned into Marwin and glared at him. “Do not make it necessary.” He handed Marwin a piece of paper with the addresses of the buildings and relative positions of the snipers, as well as a portable radio.

“But do keep me informed if things do go wrong. Rather you dead than the Marshal or the Fuhrer.”

“When do I go?” asked Marwin, trying to provoke the SD man.

“Parade is in an hour,” remarked Weisskopf. “You ought to get going.”

“Very well, mein herr,” said Marwin, and departed.

He took the meandering subway network to the Arc de Triomphe; the parade would start there and end at the Place de la Concorde. He couldn’t help but notice it was the same route that they took on Bastille Day. Nowadays, the day of the Armistice was the more celebrated one, in no small amount due to the German influence.

The Fuhrer and the Marshal were, since the end of the war, very close with one another, and it was clear to most, including Marwin, as well as the men in Washington, that the Fuhrer was the one calling the shots. France was essentially a buffer zone for the Germans, so that if the British and the Americans saw cause to invade they would have to fight through another country before entering the Fatherland itself.

He got off at the station closest to the Arch and looked at the paper that Weisskopf had handed him. The first sniper was on the third floor of a hotel, room 372. He checked his watch. It had taken him a while, for the stations were crammed with tourists and civilians looking to see the parade. An indictment of how the Germans had successfully changed the national holiday of another country, he thought. He wasn’t sure Bastille Day celebrations were this well attended.

That watch ultimately was not necessary. He heard footsteps in absolute synchronization. The parade had begun.

They would be escorting an armored motorcade with the Marshal and the Fuhrer inside a limousine; they were therefore very close.

As if to punctuate the atmosphere several jet fighters flew over the boulevard in formation, leaving a trail colored to look like the French banner.

He walked briskly (he did not want to attract too much attention to himself) and entered the hotel. “Do you have a reservation?” asked the receptionist.
“I am merely here to meet somebody; I’ll be out soon,” he said, not bothering to stop.

He pressed the third floor elevator button, and got on. Without any ceremony he got off and navigated through the meandering halls of the hotel to find that room.

He saw ‘372’ on a mahogany door in gold lettering. He knocked. “Excuse me, this is housekeeping,” he said in his most posh French that he could muster.

“I’m sorry,” called the man inside, “I am terribly busy right now and need the room to myself.”

“My apologies, Monsieur,” responded Marwin, “but I really ought to be cleaning this room. Hotel policy.”

“Wait just a minute, please.”

“I insist, sir, that you open the door.”

“Go find some other person to bother,” responded the assassin.

This wasn’t working. He always carried a pistol under his coat. He took it out, shot the hinges, and then kicked the door down.
He saw the assassin with a sniper rifle on the balcony, one of several that the hotel had to offer. The assassin heard the noise and looked at Marwin in fear.

He grabbed something from behind the curtain. “The Germans have got me. No idea whether I’ll survive.”

A radio. Without speaking, he shot the assassin dead.

He took out his own radio. “Herr Weisskopf, the first one is dead.”

“Good, go get the next one.”

He looked at the paper with the locations. Next one was in a small food cart that sold mostly sausages to newcomers. He chuckled to himself; the opponents of Germany would use a German import to hide their schemes. He darted back down to the lobby, being careful not to needlessly bother anyone. He was not the type to shoot up innocents in a café. That was simply not his style.

As he exited the hotel he saw the opening troops, followed by two Hanomags, followed by the limousine, a French and a German flag on either side of the hood atop the headlights. He had to move quickly.

He ran down the Champs-Elysees and scanned the food carts that were catering to the tourists, many selling traditional French food, others German food, and, somewhat ironically, American food. Their corporations were very good at selling their products on this side of the Atlantic. To a degree he did not blame the people; American food could be quite good.

But that didn’t matter. What mattered was finding the sausage cart.

He briskly made his way through the crowds, pushing people aside but not throwing them to the ground. As in the hotel he did not want to attract too much attention.

He checked the paper, ducking into an alleyway to check. It was in front of a bank. The paper had noted that it had several large columns flanking the entrance.

He dashed down the boulevard, looking for a bank with that description. Through mobs of people, and frantically looking at both sides of the street, he saw the bank, with both national flags flying from it, once more as a celebration. From the pillars were four portraits; the Fuhrer, the Marshal, Hitler, and Petain. They were common portraits; there were also the occasional ones of Napoleon and Joan of Arc, as well as figures during the war.

Sure enough there was the sausage cart. It had a “closed” sign on it, and the windows on the small trailer facing the sidewalk were covered with curtains.

He saw no reason to be diplomatic. He kicked down the door (he knew how to; enough training with the SD and the Gestapo would teach him as much) and found another man with a sniper rifle waiting to strike. The convoy was coming with disturbing speed.

Without bothering to talk to the assassin, Marwin drew his pistol and shot him dead. He slunk out of the window, his bloody head hanging out of the frame.

The crowd noticed, and many on the other side of the street were staring in horror, mouths gaping, some pointing. Scanning the area, he noticed, on top of another building, a man with a radio.

They knew.

He grabbed his own radio. “Herr Weisskopf,” he urged.

“Ja?” asked the SD man.

“I’ve killed the second one, but there appears to be one of their men on top of a building. They have to know by now.”

“God damn it, Bretschneider, I told you to not need the military. But at this point, we have no choice. I’ll alert the local garrison. Apprehend that guy with the radio; the Wehrmacht can take care of the rest of the assassins.”

“Jawohl,” obeyed Marwin, and leapt out of the window.

As he darted across the street, dust and light came from his left, followed by a stench of human remains.

He looked, and saw the opening escorting soldiers had been strewn around. Must have been a grenade thrown from a roof.

The roof with the fellow with the radio.

He entered the building, a bookshop, kicking open the door. “The terrorist who threw that grenade is on top of your roof!” he screamed at the woman maintaining the books. “I’m with the SD!” Her eyes widened, realizing the magnitude of the situation. He drew his pistol. “Take me to the roof this instance!” he barked.

“Come this way,” she said, clearly shaken. She led him upstairs and then to the stairwell that took him to the roof. “Thank you, miss,” he said, hardly looking her in the eye.

Coming to the roof, he saw the radioman running across the rooftops towards the motorcade. He had drawn a submachine gun from his coat and was firing down at the crowds, sowing terror, and at the motorcade. Most of the bullets bounced off of the limousine, but some made cracks in the glass.

Marwin fired a shot at him. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself; it missed, grazing the radioman’s coat but not striking him down. The radioman turned and noticed the pursuit. He aimed the submachine gun at Marwin.
Marwin leapt behind a chimney, the bullets ramming into the brick.

He took the time to reload the pistol, in case he would need them. Knowing the current situation, he would.

He glanced down to the street, and saw that the motorcade had come to a stop, and was guarded by a perimeter made up by the two Hanomags and the survivors of the grenade attack, as well as the troops and vehicles that had followed them. Tanks had made their way into alleyways and were engaging partisans that had erupted from seemingly nowhere.

“They’re everywhere,” he muttered to himself.

He took his radio to his mouth and asked Weisskopf, “Could you send some backup to the rooves? You’ll be able to see the radio guy with a submachinegun.”

“Give me a moment,” said Weisskopf. By the tone of his voice, he was coordinating with the military very frantically.

The bullets kept coming, and the chimney felt like it was beginning to wear out. Marwin took his pistol and fired a few shots over at the radioman.

“Marwin,” came Weisskopf’s voice from the radio, “I’ve managed to get a gyrocopter coming in to assist you. Hold out there and it’ll be there in a few minutes.”

As the bullets kept coming, and the chimney continued to deteriorate, where there was the noise of a car being pushed to the limit. He glanced down to the Champs-Elysees, and saw a car charging down the street, running over whoever was unfortunate to be in front of it. It was aimed straight at the limousine holding the Marshal and the Fuhrer.

Since he was pinned down, he figured he could help out the soldiers down there. He took his pistol, waited, and when the car was just in the right position he pulled the trigger.

He aimed for the driver, but even if he didn’t hit him the shattered glass would disorient him enough, hopefully, that the car would veer off course.
The windshield shattered, and the car careened towards the side of the street that the radioman was on. It exploded, shaking the foundations of the entire block.

The bullets stopped. He glanced over the chimney and found that the radioman had fallen over.

He jumped out from behind the chimney and ran towards the radioman. He drew his pistol and fired several rounds into the radioman.

The radioman dropped dead. Marwin ran up and inspected the corpse.
The radioman was not a man, he realized.

It was Madame Lavoie.

How odd, that this mission would start and end with the same adversary.

He stood there, without doing much. He felt that if this were some moralistic story in some pretentious novel, he would be thinking something profound. But there was no profundity here. Only death.

He realized that he was still wearing that hideous tie she had given him. He undid it and dropped it on her corpse.

“Weisskopf was right,” he snarked. “You Bolsheviks really have no fashion sense.”

As he was in this state of non-profundity, the gyrocopter came swooping in.

In German, the pilot asked through a loudspeaker, “do you need help?”

“No,” he called, “Radioman, or properly radiowoman’s, dead.”

“Ah, good, very good,” responded the pilot. A ladder unfurled down from the body of the gyrocopter. “Herr Weisskopf has said that you have no reason to be here any longer. The Wehrmacht can take care of these.”

“So be it,” replied Marwin. He took the ladder, entered the copter, and was flown back to base.

He had a few hours to recuperate; it was a busy day, and he was exhausted. He was left in a small waiting room with some German beer and a newspaper, and just waited.

“Herr Bretschneider,” proclaimed a booming voice.

“Ja?” asked Marwin, looking up. It was Weisskopf.

“Good job out there. The intelligence you found has led us to taking down their leadership in the second arrondissement. Unfortunately the incident down on the Champs-Elysees was a little chaotic.”

“Did the Marshal and the Fuhrer survive?” asked Marwin?

“Fortunately, they did. Less fortunately, that section of the Champs-Elysees is destroyed.”

“I would expect as much,” remarked Marwin. “What about the Americans?”
“The Foreign Minister publically released the information after it was sent to Berlin. We’ve already recalled our ambassador in Washington and he’ll be back in the country by tomorrow.”

“Are the French revolting?”

“Of course, some of the leftists are, but it’s been quiet across the country. Wehrmacht garrisons in Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseille, and Clermont Ferrand report nothing.”

“Well, then,” sighed Marwin, “I’m guessing we’ll see all sorts of nonsense in the next few days.”

“Like it hasn’t been already,” quipped Weisskopf.
Les Damnés de la Terre
By SpanishSpy



“Do you have a reservation?” asked the restaurant receptionist, dressed in his fancy dress shirt and looking rather tired; when you have to be up that ungodly early, some tiredness is to be expected, thought Denis.

“Yes, I do. I am with Madame Lavoie,” he said plainly.

“Very well, Monsieur,” said the receptionist deferentially, and led Denis to the table where Madame Lavoie sat.

“A waiter will be with you shortly,” said the receptionist, who returned to his post at the entrance to the restaurant.

“Monsieur Tolbert,” she said coldly, “a pleasure to have you with us.”

“And a pleasure to be here with you, Madame,” he responded, keeping distance with formal pronouns.

“Let us not waste our time with pleasantries, Monsieur Tolbert,” she remarked. “Show me the book.”

He reached into his coat and placed it on the table. An old copy of Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, by Anatole France. In it was a red bookmark.

“So you are who they said you’d be,” she said, looking satisfied. “So you were debriefed by Vincent?”

“Yes, yes I was. Interesting fellow.”

“Anyone who fought out East during the war must be interesting. If they weren’t, they’d be dead.”

“Where was it that he fought? Minsk? Ryazan?”

“He fought at both Baku and Moscow. One wonders how he survived.”

“So tell me, Madame,” said Denis, wanting to get to the point, “where am I supposed to meet the Americans?”

“At the Pitie-Saltpetriere hospital, in the thirteenth arrondissement at noon. They’ll be there in civilian clothing, albeit with large trench coats. You are to go there wearing the suit you have on now –“

She paused. Her eyes widened.

Into the room walked a man in a pitch black suit, military uniform, and swastika armband. He had a gun in a holster on his belt. He was alone.

Madame Lavoie quieted immediately. She made sure the SS man was not listening, or so he appeared. He took out a book from a bag he was carrying and began to read.

She leaned close into Denis’ ear. “Wear this suit you have, or something like it, but wear this tie.” She handed him a tie under the tablecloth; he could not see it but he could feel it. “They’ll have for you the guns and the bombs you need to make the distraction, among several other things. Information included.”

He nodded. She continued. “I would love to stay and chat with you, but that SS man is uncomfortably close. Good luck.”

She rose from the table and left the restaurant before ordering anything. He nodded as a farewell, but little else.

Once the door had made the light colliding noise that it did when it closed, he shifted his head leftward, locking eyes with the SS man.

He got up. So did the SS man. They both left the restaurant, again without ordering anything.

They went behind the building in a small alleyway.

“Sieg Heil,” said the SS man, saluting in the stiff armed manner that they did.

“Sieg Heil,” responded Denis, or more properly Marwin.

“Herr Bretschneider,” said the SS man, I see that the meeting went well. Tell me, what are the Communists’ plans?”

“They want me to meet the Americans at a hospital in the thirteenth arrondissement. They gave me this tie to wear.”

He extended his hand and produced a garishly ugly purple tie with green and yellow stripes.

“These Bolsheviks haven’t the fashion sense that you’d expect the French to have,” remarked the SS man, with snark. “I gather that they think it is too bourgeois.”

“Whatever you think of their fashion sense, at least they have something that we can use to track them,” responded Marwin. “And it’s noticeable.”

“That it is. Which hospital did you say that the Bolsheviks wanted you to go to?”

“The Pitie-Saltpetriere,” Marwin replied.

“Good, very good. Since it is clear that the Bolsheviks want to send the city to hell, what you have given us will protect the Marshal from whatever they throw his way. After all, this is something the Fuhrer himself is attending, and I’m certain that we do not want the guest of honor to be denied a host by a bullet or a bomb, now do we?”

“Of course, sir,” said Marwin. “Do tell the headquarters back in the sixth arrondissement that the Americans are indeed involved as we had suspected. And tell our men in Washington as well.”

“Certainly.”

“It’s a plot against the Reich, it has to be. I don’t know what it’s about, but they clearly don’t want us surviving.”

“It’s the Bolsheviks, of course. They wanted a counterweight to Germany and to National Socialism, but now, since we beat the Russians in their own country, no such counterweight exists.”

They both nodded. There was a final understanding, a final knowledge of what these Bolsheviks were actually doing. There had been many long sessions of yelling and angry speculation in the sixth arrondissement, going after lead after lead after pointless lead, where nothing ever came of the little evidence they had. Now, since they were able to worm their way into the Bolshevik cell, they could now act with foreknowledge, if only a few hours.

“Now go,” said the SS man, “to the thirteenth arrondissement. Do whatever it takes to get the Americans into a place where we can surround them. The police will be informed, and so will the SS in the area. Sieg Heil.” He gave the stiff-armed salute. Marwin gave the same.

They departed and went their separate ways.

Marwin figured that he ought to get to the hospital early, so he went to the street and hailed a cab. He took a seat in the leather couch that made up the back of the vehicle, informed him of his destination, and the driver went off.

Among the streets were the common juxtaposition of the French tricolore and the German swastika, draped side by side. The Fuhrer himself would be coming to Paris to congratulate the Marshal on the twenty-ninth anniversary of the Armistice between the two countries. One banner read “Peace at last,” referencing how inimical the two countries had been for so many years.

And yet the Americans, warmongers as they tended to be, wanted to shatter that peace. When the Russians bowed out of the war, it should have been clear that Europe wanted peace. And yet, as they had done to Japan, the Americans wanted more devastation.

The Reich would not stand for this.

The streets were aligned with posters and banners, flags and flowers, celebrating the anniversary. On one building, two portraits, one of Hitler, one of Petain, were right next to each other, proudly proclaiming the declaration of the new French government back in the forties. “This day,” Petain said on the fifth anniversary, “we celebrate our liberation from useless mob rule.” It was, after all, called Liberation Day.

The taxi arrived at the hospital. He paid the driver and got out.
It was eleven in the morning. He had an hour. Still with his wallet out, he inserted some coins into a newspaper box on the side of the street, sat down on a bench, and began to read.

The front page was about the day’s celebrations. The Fuhrer had promised “a grand occasion” for the anniversary, but that was the same thing the Fuhrer promised every anniversary. What Marwin found so interesting was an announcement from the speaker of the American House of Representatives. His name was Tuck; it seemed like an odd name to Marwin. American names sounded so much less refined than their British counterparts; perhaps it was due to their backgrounds as commoners.

Tuck was going on about how “the coming celebration in Paris reflects the enslavement of the French nation to the whims of Berlin.” Marwin glanced through the article, and noted that this man was from Virginia, a segregated state. Some grand fellow to be speaking about enslavement, now wasn’t he?

Cars passed, the engines making a rumble that he was now immune to. That was common in a city like Paris; not so in his hometown, Hochstadt am Main in Bavaria, which was small and insignificant. It was not close to either Munich or Nuremberg, the two truly important cities in the region.
He checked his watch. 11:45. fortunately he was near the hospital.

He did realize, however, that he had not put on the tie. He already had a suit on, which was useful. He scanned the area for anyone who may have been watching him. Nobody.

Just to be sure, he made his way into a café and entered the restroom. Inside a stall, he put on the hideous tie. He strained himself trying to put it on without a mirror, as he did not want anyone, even someone who happened to be using an adjacent stall, to see him, lest they be working for the Bolsheviks or the Americans.

He walked back out. He noticed a tracked vehicle with Wehrmacht markings. Not just the police, they thought, but the military. It was a model that they used for carrying troops.

He thought these new ones were somewhat odd. The government loved to tout the image of the soldiers back in the war in the forties. They would always have halftracked vehicles with automobile-style wheels in the front, connected to the engine, with troops shooting from an area in the back.
These new ones ditched the wheels and were fully tracked. It was a change from the vehicles that his father had used.

11:53. The Americans had to be here soon.

He postured himself outside the hospital gate, a very ornate gate from the last century. He made sure to button his suit jacket in such a manner that the tie was distinctly visible to anyone who could see. Most people would brush him off as someone with questionable fashion sense.

The Americans, however, would see him as an ally.

Just before they were arrested, so he hoped.

There was a light breeze, which he could feel, not so much hear. The traffic was loud.

“Excusez-moi,” said a voice that had a distinctly non-French, non-German accent. It wasn’t British, either, so Marwin assumed that these were the Americans.

“Comment vous appelez-vous?” asked one of them; there two, both in tan trenchcoats and brown hats.

“Denis Tolbert,” responded Marwin with his French pseudonym. “Et vous?”

“I’m William Gaither,” said the first one, eschewing all pretense of being French. “And this here is Philip Holden,” he said, gesturing to the other. Holden nodded. “I assume that you are the ones that the Communists sent to meet us?”

“That I am,” replied Marwin, keeping the persona. “Perhaps we ought to go somewhere more secluded to prevent the police or the military from overhearing this?”

Gaither looked at Holden, who nodded. “I see no reason why this shouldn’t be,” he asked Marwin. “Do you know of any watering hole that you enjoy nearby?”

“Indeed, I do,” exclaimed Marwin. He led them back to the very same restaurant in which he had put on the tie. They sat down.

“Here,” whispered Gaither. He propped him a box under the table. Marwin took it.

Out of the window, he noticed the tracked vehicle moving towards the restaurant.

“And what about the weapons?” asked Marwin.

“Your organization has enough of them, for the most part. The information other members have given us is more than enough. However, we thought you would be able to use some armor piercing bullets; if the Marshal’s in an armored vehicle, and you have no other chance, you could use it.”

“Thank you,” said Marwin, “but why did they tell me you had weapons?”

“Diversionary tactic. It would throw the Germans off, wouldn’t they?”

“But you have the plans.”

“That we do. Good to make sure there is enough secrecy.”

As if on cue, Wehrmacht men kicked the door down and marched all the way to the table where the three men were sitting. They pointed their guns at the two Americans. “You two are under arrest for attempted assassination of a head of state.”

“Two?” asked Holden. “What about Denis here?”

“You mean Marwin?” asked the chief. “He’s our mole.”

Marwin inhaled, somewhat frustrated. He wasn’t supposed to tell them that. But no matter, he consoled himself. The rest won’t know.

The two Americans looked at him incredulously. “You fucking turncoat!” spat Holden.

Both of them drew their guns. Marwin’s eyes flared; he could die if he didn’t act quickly. He rolled to the floor off of the chair; the impact hurt his upper left arm a bit but that was nothing that needed medical attention.
He heard the ricocheting gunfire, the bullets ramming into flesh. He saw one of the Wehrmacht men fall to the ground, blood oozing out of a wound in his chest.

It seemed like an eternity. Odd, how that always seemed to happen. That sting against the SAS men in Wiener Neustadt, the Bolshevik (actual, as in from Russia, not domestic) cell in Breslau and Kattowitz, the liberals in Dusseldorf, all of them had shootouts where the shortest of moments was seemed like the longest of wars. He wondered how his father felt fighting in Poland, in Belarus, in Azerbaijan, in Russia. That was several years. It must have felt like eon upon eon being condensed together as if it was nothing, like how whatever divine providence that happened to exist would look upon human civilization, like how a scientist in the labs in Heidelberg must examine cells dividing and dividing over the course of only a few minutes.

There was a rotten smell, a disgusting odor that betrayed death. The gunshots quieted. He grabbed on the table to look up; both Holden and Gaither were dead, the former slunk on the chair, half his head unceremoniously ripped from the rest of his body, the latter with three bullet wounds, one in the right shoulder, one in the stomach, one on the left breast.

“Marwin,” said the commander, “are you in good condition?”

“First of all, how do you know my name?” asked Marwin, “and secondly,
I’m fine, other than an arm hurt from the fall. Nothing serious.”

“I was informed by the SS man you met back in the sixth arrondissement. The name’s Klemens Kaulitz. National Security was threatened enough that they deemed it necessary to send the occupational troops rather than the local police. After all, we can’t let the spectacle be disrupted. That would be bad for all of us.”

“Of course, of course, I understand that, but wouldn’t think that losing one puppet would be all that bad.”

“They could get the Fuhrer,” snapped Kaulitz. “And if they get the Fuhrer, the French could rebel. And if the French rebel, the fatherland would lose so many more men in a pointless war that could have been prevented.”

Marwin nodded. He couldn’t disagree with that.

He looked around. There were people in the café, all shocked at the violence. One of them saw the cause to throw a glass at the troops.

“Get out of this country, swine!” yelled a young woman, perhaps around twenty-five. She next threw a plate at the soldiers; it landed on the one who was gravely injured, with the gunshot wound in his chest. He winced in pain.

Kaulitz drew his gun and shot her in the head. It exploded in a manner that made the resulting carnage look something like a rose. Reading Homer had instilled that comparison in Marwin’s mind, and he thought it an odd, but fitting, comparison.

The whole café was now staring at them. Men, women, and children were slackjawed in fear. The waiters stood there with the food on their trays.
The owner and manager, even, were there in fear.

“What are we going to tell the occupational authority?” asked one of the soldiers. “What are we going to tell the press?”

Kaulitz grunted. “Shoot them all and tell them the Americans did it. We
can’t let this sensitive information get out into the city, or there will be hell to pay.”

The soldiers raised their guns. The onlookers were cowering. It was another endless and rapid slaughter. Marwin did his best to ignore it.

“Come, Herr Bretschneider,” beckoned Kaulitz, “let’s get you back to the nearest outpost.”

“Was that really necessary?” asked Marwin, looking around the restaurant, cadavers littering it. “Killing all these people?”

“Had we been caught, you would be in their place,” snapped Kaulitz.

“Knowing you, and all the experience that I had been informed that you had, I would have expected you to have figured that out.”

Kaulitz inhaled, clearly exasperated. “Come with us back to the local headquarters. We have room in the Hanomag for you. They’ll probably want to see you, and the documents that you have.”

“Jawohl,” responded Marwin. He noticed how Kaulitz singled out the documents. He knew that the military and the police and the SS never had any real interest in him personally, more so what he had to bring them. He was a courier, and a good one; so long as he continued to do that well, they would pay him handsomely.

As he walked out he saw Kaulitz talking with a member of the local police and a member of the press. “The Americans did this. They wanted to go out by killing as many people as they could. It’s disgusting, yes, but what do you expect from them?” He did not flinch at the bald-faced lie he was telling. He was a professional dissembler, it seemed.

Marwin clambered into the musty vehicle. There were firing ports, but that was the extent of the view outside. The men followed him, and Kaulitz entered at the end of the line. “Take us back, Franz!” he beckoned to the driver. “We’re done here.”

“Jawohl,” obeyed the driver, and the guzzling, sputtering machine began moving. It smelled of diesel fuel.

After a drive that felt like at most fifteen minutes, they arrived at the headquarters, a very stern looking structure with garages and barracks built into it.

He exited. A young man in a low-ranking army uniform went up to the vehicle and waited for Marwin. “Herr Bretschneider?” he asked.

“Ja, that is me,” replied Marwin, somewhat apprehensively.

“Come. Superiors of yours would like to speak to you.”

“Very well.” Marwin followed this man to an office, in which sat several men in SS, or more properly SD, uniforms. One of them was the man he had talked to after meeting with Madame Lavoie.

“Herr Bretschneider,” he said, rising. “Sieg Heil.”

“Sieg Heil.” Marwin gave the salute.

“I will not waste your time,” said the man from before. “Let us see the documents.”

Marwin forked them over. The higher-ups peered over them intensely. “No weapons?”

“It was a bluff to ward us off, except for some bullets." He dropped them on the table. "The two Americans, and the Bolsheviks, are rather intelligent.”

“That they are. Malicious, too. But of course, without that much fashion
sense.”

The rest of the SD men laughed.

“Herr,” asked Marwin, “I don’t believe the two of us have been formally introduced. What may I call you, sir?”

“Just Weisskopf,” he said plainly. “Weisskopf will do.”

“Very well, Herr Weisskopf. I know you know my name.”

“That I do. Tell me, Herr Bretschneider,” he asked pensively, “you are trained as an assassin, correct?”

“That I am. I’ve done that kind of work in Breslau and in Zurich.”

“Then we don’t have to ask Berlin for another one,” he said contentedly. The men around him nodded. “Soon we’ll be giving you information about taking down at least one of the would-be assassins that may try to kill the Marshal. Judging by these plans,” he said while looking over the document, “there are a few that we could use you for.”

He continued reading. “How about defusing bombs?”

“Some experience, not my specialty.”

“They have plans for several rigged cars and trucks along the parade route. We have bomb control teams, but saving time and manpower is always useful.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

Weisskopf looked over the plans that the Americans had given him. “Could you take down a sniper on the roof of one of the buildings that they say that they’re on?”

“I believe I could.”

“Could you do several?” Weisskopf’s eyes pierced him.

“I suppose I could, yes,” he responded. This sounded difficult. But no more difficult than Breslau.

“Well then, I’ll have you taking down five snipers throughout the parade route down the Champs-Elysees. Two of them are in the forest; three of them are atop shops. We have Wehrmacht and French military forces stationed throughout the city, including gyrocopter support if absolutely necessary.”

Weisskopf leaned into Marwin and glared at him. “Do not make it necessary.” He handed Marwin a piece of paper with the addresses of the buildings and relative positions of the snipers, as well as a portable radio.

“But do keep me informed if things do go wrong. Rather you dead than the Marshal or the Fuhrer.”

“When do I go?” asked Marwin, trying to provoke the SD man.

“Parade is in an hour,” remarked Weisskopf. “You ought to get going.”

“Very well, mein herr,” said Marwin, and departed.

He took the meandering subway network to the Arc de Triomphe; the parade would start there and end at the Place de la Concorde. He couldn’t help but notice it was the same route that they took on Bastille Day. Nowadays, the day of the Armistice was the more celebrated one, in no small amount due to the German influence.

The Fuhrer and the Marshal were, since the end of the war, very close with one another, and it was clear to most, including Marwin, as well as the men in Washington, that the Fuhrer was the one calling the shots. France was essentially a buffer zone for the Germans, so that if the British and the Americans saw cause to invade they would have to fight through another country before entering the Fatherland itself.

He got off at the station closest to the Arch and looked at the paper that Weisskopf had handed him. The first sniper was on the third floor of a hotel, room 372. He checked his watch. It had taken him a while, for the stations were crammed with tourists and civilians looking to see the parade. An indictment of how the Germans had successfully changed the national holiday of another country, he thought. He wasn’t sure Bastille Day celebrations were this well attended.

That watch ultimately was not necessary. He heard footsteps in absolute synchronization. The parade had begun.

They would be escorting an armored motorcade with the Marshal and the Fuhrer inside a limousine; they were therefore very close.

As if to punctuate the atmosphere several jet fighters flew over the boulevard in formation, leaving a trail colored to look like the French banner.

He walked briskly (he did not want to attract too much attention to himself) and entered the hotel. “Do you have a reservation?” asked the receptionist.
“I am merely here to meet somebody; I’ll be out soon,” he said, not bothering to stop.

He pressed the third floor elevator button, and got on. Without any ceremony he got off and navigated through the meandering halls of the hotel to find that room.

He saw ‘372’ on a mahogany door in gold lettering. He knocked. “Excuse me, this is housekeeping,” he said in his most posh French that he could muster.

“I’m sorry,” called the man inside, “I am terribly busy right now and need the room to myself.”

“My apologies, Monsieur,” responded Marwin, “but I really ought to be cleaning this room. Hotel policy.”

“Wait just a minute, please.”

“I insist, sir, that you open the door.”

“Go find some other person to bother,” responded the assassin.

This wasn’t working. He always carried a pistol under his coat. He took it out, shot the hinges, and then kicked the door down.
He saw the assassin with a sniper rifle on the balcony, one of several that the hotel had to offer. The assassin heard the noise and looked at Marwin in fear.

He grabbed something from behind the curtain. “The Germans have got me. No idea whether I’ll survive.”

A radio. Without speaking, he shot the assassin dead.

He took out his own radio. “Herr Weisskopf, the first one is dead.”

“Good, go get the next one.”

He looked at the paper with the locations. Next one was in a small food cart that sold mostly sausages to newcomers. He chuckled to himself; the opponents of Germany would use a German import to hide their schemes. He darted back down to the lobby, being careful not to needlessly bother anyone. He was not the type to shoot up innocents in a café. That was simply not his style.

As he exited the hotel he saw the opening troops, followed by two Hanomags, followed by the limousine, a French and a German flag on either side of the hood atop the headlights. He had to move quickly.

He ran down the Champs-Elysees and scanned the food carts that were catering to the tourists, many selling traditional French food, others German food, and, somewhat ironically, American food. Their corporations were very good at selling their products on this side of the Atlantic. To a degree he did not blame the people; American food could be quite good.

But that didn’t matter. What mattered was finding the sausage cart.

He briskly made his way through the crowds, pushing people aside but not throwing them to the ground. As in the hotel he did not want to attract too much attention.

He checked the paper, ducking into an alleyway to check. It was in front of a bank. The paper had noted that it had several large columns flanking the entrance.

He dashed down the boulevard, looking for a bank with that description. Through mobs of people, and frantically looking at both sides of the street, he saw the bank, with both national flags flying from it, once more as a celebration. From the pillars were four portraits; the Fuhrer, the Marshal, Hitler, and Petain. They were common portraits; there were also the occasional ones of Napoleon and Joan of Arc, as well as figures during the war.

Sure enough there was the sausage cart. It had a “closed” sign on it, and the windows on the small trailer facing the sidewalk were covered with curtains.

He saw no reason to be diplomatic. He kicked down the door (he knew how to; enough training with the SD and the Gestapo would teach him as much) and found another man with a sniper rifle waiting to strike. The convoy was coming with disturbing speed.

Without bothering to talk to the assassin, Marwin drew his pistol and shot him dead. He slunk out of the window, his bloody head hanging out of the frame.

The crowd noticed, and many on the other side of the street were staring in horror, mouths gaping, some pointing. Scanning the area, he noticed, on top of another building, a man with a radio.

They knew.

He grabbed his own radio. “Herr Weisskopf,” he urged.

“Ja?” asked the SD man.

“I’ve killed the second one, but there appears to be one of their men on top of a building. They have to know by now.”

“God damn it, Bretschneider, I told you to not need the military. But at this point, we have no choice. I’ll alert the local garrison. Apprehend that guy with the radio; the Wehrmacht can take care of the rest of the assassins.”

“Jawohl,” obeyed Marwin, and leapt out of the window.

As he darted across the street, dust and light came from his left, followed by a stench of human remains.

He looked, and saw the opening escorting soldiers had been strewn around. Must have been a grenade thrown from a roof.

The roof with the fellow with the radio.

He entered the building, a bookshop, kicking open the door. “The terrorist who threw that grenade is on top of your roof!” he screamed at the woman maintaining the books. “I’m with the SD!” Her eyes widened, realizing the magnitude of the situation. He drew his pistol. “Take me to the roof this instance!” he barked.

“Come this way,” she said, clearly shaken. She led him upstairs and then to the stairwell that took him to the roof. “Thank you, miss,” he said, hardly looking her in the eye.

Coming to the roof, he saw the radioman running across the rooftops towards the motorcade. He had drawn a submachine gun from his coat and was firing down at the crowds, sowing terror, and at the motorcade. Most of the bullets bounced off of the limousine, but some made cracks in the glass.

Marwin fired a shot at him. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself; it missed, grazing the radioman’s coat but not striking him down. The radioman turned and noticed the pursuit. He aimed the submachine gun at Marwin.
Marwin leapt behind a chimney, the bullets ramming into the brick.

He took the time to reload the pistol, in case he would need them. Knowing the current situation, he would.

He glanced down to the street, and saw that the motorcade had come to a stop, and was guarded by a perimeter made up by the two Hanomags and the survivors of the grenade attack, as well as the troops and vehicles that had followed them. Tanks had made their way into alleyways and were engaging partisans that had erupted from seemingly nowhere.

“They’re everywhere,” he muttered to himself.

He took his radio to his mouth and asked Weisskopf, “Could you send some backup to the rooves? You’ll be able to see the radio guy with a submachinegun.”

“Give me a moment,” said Weisskopf. By the tone of his voice, he was coordinating with the military very frantically.

The bullets kept coming, and the chimney felt like it was beginning to wear out. Marwin took his pistol and fired a few shots over at the radioman.

“Marwin,” came Weisskopf’s voice from the radio, “I’ve managed to get a gyrocopter coming in to assist you. Hold out there and it’ll be there in a few minutes.”

As the bullets kept coming, and the chimney continued to deteriorate, where there was the noise of a car being pushed to the limit. He glanced down to the Champs-Elysees, and saw a car charging down the street, running over whoever was unfortunate to be in front of it. It was aimed straight at the limousine holding the Marshal and the Fuhrer.

Since he was pinned down, he figured he could help out the soldiers down there. He took his pistol, waited, and when the car was just in the right position he pulled the trigger.

He aimed for the driver, but even if he didn’t hit him the shattered glass would disorient him enough, hopefully, that the car would veer off course.
The windshield shattered, and the car careened towards the side of the street that the radioman was on. It exploded, shaking the foundations of the entire block.

The bullets stopped. He glanced over the chimney and found that the radioman had fallen over.

He jumped out from behind the chimney and ran towards the radioman. He drew his pistol and fired several rounds into the radioman.

The radioman dropped dead. Marwin ran up and inspected the corpse.
The radioman was not a man, he realized.

It was Madame Lavoie.

How odd, that this mission would start and end with the same adversary.

He stood there, without doing much. He felt that if this were some moralistic story in some pretentious novel, he would be thinking something profound. But there was no profundity here. Only death.

He realized that he was still wearing that hideous tie she had given him. He undid it and dropped it on her corpse.

“Weisskopf was right,” he snarked. “You Bolsheviks really have no fashion sense.”

As he was in this state of non-profundity, the gyrocopter came swooping in.

In German, the pilot asked through a loudspeaker, “do you need help?”

“No,” he called, “Radioman, or properly radiowoman’s, dead.”

“Ah, good, very good,” responded the pilot. A ladder unfurled down from the body of the gyrocopter. “Herr Weisskopf has said that you have no reason to be here any longer. The Wehrmacht can take care of these.”

“So be it,” replied Marwin. He took the ladder, entered the copter, and was flown back to base.

He had a few hours to recuperate; it was a busy day, and he was exhausted. He was left in a small waiting room with some German beer and a newspaper, and just waited.

“Herr Bretschneider,” proclaimed a booming voice.

“Ja?” asked Marwin, looking up. It was Weisskopf.

“Good job out there. The intelligence you found has led us to taking down their leadership in the second arrondissement. Unfortunately the incident down on the Champs-Elysees was a little chaotic.”

“Did the Marshal and the Fuhrer survive?” asked Marwin?

“Fortunately, they did. Less fortunately, that section of the Champs-Elysees is destroyed.”

“I would expect as much,” remarked Marwin. “What about the Americans?”
“The Foreign Minister publically released the information after it was sent to Berlin. We’ve already recalled our ambassador in Washington and he’ll be back in the country by tomorrow.”

“Are the French revolting?”

“Of course, some of the leftists are, but it’s been quiet across the country. Wehrmacht garrisons in Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseille, and Clermont Ferrand report nothing.”

“Well, then,” sighed Marwin, “I’m guessing we’ll see all sorts of nonsense in the next few days.”

“Like it hasn’t been already,” quipped Weisskopf.

[/p]