Swiss Vendetta (Agnes Luthi Mysteries #1)(54)

Agnes could picture the Mediterranean landscape of France. There were similarities to Switzerland: the hills verdant slopes leading to mountainous crags and isolated villages. She leaned back on the soft cushion and let his voice float through her.

“I made my way north, through Vichy toward occupied France, with no plan, only a need for action. I slept out of doors, stealing small bits of food from gardens and eating nuts from the forest. I needed to destroy the Germans. I needed revenge for the way my mother and sisters had died. I saw people on the road and we exchanged stiff greetings from a careful distance. I didn’t know how to say: I want to help you rid yourselves of the Germans, are you loyal to France or do you support the invaders? This is not a question easily broached. I have told you that evil does not rest on a man’s face when he walks a country lane on a Sunday afternoon.”

Agnes poured herself another glass of wine, feeling slightly drunk. The candlelight flickered and for the first time in days she was warm. She registered the idea of George and Carnet deep in her mind but at the same time it seemed a distant problem. The image of war, and of a young Russian man wandering the French countryside, occupied her. War and the millions who died. How could her trouble compare when this man had lost so much more and at such a young age? She took another mouthful of wine and enjoyed the rawness on her tongue.

“My mission found me. I had been watching a farmhouse for a week. Men came and went in the middle of the night. They weren’t in uniform and Germans wouldn’t behave this way. I sat and waited and pondered. I was a boy who understood the life of a small place, and I tried to imagine what my family would do if a stranger approached them. I tried to decide what to say.”

“Even a perfect accent wouldn’t hide that you were a foreigner.”

“You know this, but I didn’t.”

“I was born here, my French is as good as anyone’s, but they know.” Agnes waved her hand, encompassing the room. “They know I’m different, somehow. They know my parents weren’t Swiss, so I’m not really Swiss. Not like they want me to be.”

Arsov blew a series of perfect smoke rings. Agnes inhaled.

“I was concealed at the edge of a wood,” he said. “This night I would approach. They had to be working against the Germans. I could help them.”

Agnes felt her eyes close and shook her head to wake. The warmth, the wine, the smoke, and his voice were lulling her into a stupor. She picked up the trail of his words.

“Foolish idea. At the very moment I thought it was time to approach, I heard voices, then men running and the noise of a car. There were gunshots, rat-a-tat-tat. The noise was close enough that for a moment I thought I had been hit. Not five meters from me heavy cars careened around the final bend in the road to the farmhouse and men clambered out; they were in uniform and I held my breath. Were they friends of the household, these Germans? If so, then I had a near escape.” He turned to look directly at her. “What do you think, Inspector Lüthi?”

She nearly dropped her wineglass on the table. “I think the men you were watching—the household—they weren’t friends of the Germans. I think they were in danger and you were right to be frightened.”

“You are correct, and if I had gone to the farmhouse earlier I would have been rounded up and shot, for they died right there. The Germans left the bodies and drove off.” He shifted the blanket covering his chest, gripping the trim in his thin hands. “I was lying there, wishing I had a cigarette, when I heard a sound. A scrape. Then a moan, very faint, but something human. I replayed the events in my mind. Had a man fallen from one of the cars? The Germans would not leave any of their kind behind. Then I remembered those first shots, when they had fired into the night before they arrived. The night sounds of the forest were loud and it took me some time to pinpoint the human ones. I had not lived through Stalingrad by luck alone and I was suspicious. I crept up to the man as if he was a threat. When I neared, I saw that he was dressed as a peasant and that he was bleeding badly. He looked at me and raised his gun.”

Agnes gasped and Arsov gave a hacking laugh.

“You are afraid for wrong reason. This man raised his gun to his own head. Like I say, I have a great deal of experience, and we Russians would have done the same to escape the war camps of the Germans. I was healthy and strong and fast and held his hand. As we struggled, I identified myself. I was strong enough to take the gun and he had to listen. It was my clothing that convinced him. I would have been a terrible spy in those days. My shirt and pants and coat weren’t French. The cut was close enough to pass at a distance in the country, but to a man whose life depended on detail I looked foreign. In those first moments that helped him believe my story. I helped him bind his wounds and together we made our way north. When I returned his gun, he invited me to join his band of the Resistance. I had arrived.”

“Amazing luck,” Agnes said.

“In the balance of my experiences this was nothing. The great fortune was in who he was. The modern generation, your Officer Petit, you want your heroes. Well, this is one. I was a boy with nothing to lose. I was an adventurer who went from experience to experience, always coming out alive and having learned something; this man could have chosen the path of diplomacy, or the regular army, or simply escaped the war entirely, but he had selected his path deliberately. I hated the war and what it did to my family and my country; this man was a one-man army determined to stop the Nazis. It is for him that I made use of what I had learned at Stalingrad. My skills with munitions. It is for him that I wired cars to explode and train engines to melt. We were together for over two years.”