The Darkest Hour(74)
“Bonjour,” he says quietly, in a heavy accent. “I’m Emilio.”
I think I must’ve heard him wrong. This enormous man is “Little Emilio”?
“Little Emilio is a nickname,” he’s quick to add. “You’re the ‘cousins,’ I presume?” Then he recites the code phrase that Maurice told me, and I tell him the response word for word. It appears that this giant of a Spaniard, who looks like he could kill me with one blow of his fist, will be our next escort.
“The train should be leaving on the hour. I’ve already purchased the tickets.” He motions for us to start moving. “Shall we?”
I hand him a few coins to repay him for our tickets and follow right after him, because I’m too tired to ask anything else. Emilio cuts through the throng like a blunt butcher knife and finds a row of seats at the back of one train car. Once on board, he waits for the train to start moving before he fills me in on the details of our journey, his voice muffled from the rumble of the tracks below. That’s how I find out that we’re making our way to Spain’s northern coast, where a fisherman awaits to take us across the sea. Usually the Resistance prefers to smuggle refugees down to Gibraltar or into Portugal, since Spanish ports are carefully monitored, but they’ve made an exception for Tilly and me. The sooner we reach Allied soil, the better.
The ride to Barcelona is thankfully uneventful, and Tilly and I spend most of that leg curled up fast asleep. From there, we switch trains to Zaragoza, with our destination set for the coastal city of Bilbao, the last major town on our route. Along the way we see more than a dozen Spanish civil guards with their snug gray-green uniforms, but they shuffle past us without much trouble. That’s the benefit of having Emilio as our escort.
When we disembark in Bilbao, a quick-moving breeze greets us and tells me we’re nearing the ocean. Emilio deposits Tilly and me on a wooden bench while he uses some ration tickets to purchase food. Spain might be neutral, but it has had to enforce rations because of the war, too.
While we wait for Emilio to return, Tilly and I stretch our legs and rub the cricks from our necks. We’ve been in Spain for over thirty hours, almost all of it spent on trains or waiting in steaming-hot stations. But we’re nearly there. We only have to take one more train to a little port town before we can climb aboard the fishing boat that’s bound for England. For the first time since we left the laboratory, I’m tempted to think that we’re truly going to make it.
And as soon as that thought takes form in my head, trouble finds us again.
Beside me, Tilly’s back goes as straight as a broomstick. “Lucie,” she whispers.
The hairs on the back of my neck prick up. I’ve told her too many times to use my false name. “What is it? Do you see Emilio?”
“No, look!” She points toward a flock of passengers who’ve recently disembarked from Pamplona. They shuffle by in a tired line, some carrying heavy valises and others carrying children. I try to shush Tilly, but she’s insistent. She juts a finger at a bearded old man struggling with a suitcase in each hand.
“Please sit down,” I whisper to her. I clamp a firm hand around her arm, but she jerks away, her eyes glowing bright.
“It’s him!”
“Who? We don’t know that man.”
“He’s found us!” She waves at him with both arms. “Dr. Nacht!”
Merde. Aside from his white beard, that man is a far cry from the doctor. Not that Tilly notices or cares. She barrels toward the old Spaniard, babbling in a mixture of French and German, and the entire station stops to stare at her. Murmurs erupt. Whispers pummel my ears. It isn’t long before a Spanish civil guard takes notice of the fracas. He was leaning against the ticket counter just a second ago, but now he’s making a beeline toward Tilly. I search wildly for Emilio but he’s nowhere to be seen.
With no other options, I wrench Tilly to my side and give the guard an apologetic smile before I bury us in the next wave of passengers. I search for an exit and pretend not to hear the guard shouting from behind in alarmed Spanish. I spot a pair of doors and quicken our pace to reach them, but as I grasp the handle I bump into Emilio, literally. He almost drops the paper bag he carries, which smells strongly of fried fish.
“What’s the matter?” he asks me, a cross look on his face. “I told you I’d be back—”
“Behind us!” I whisper.
Finally Emilio sees the guard hollering at us, and he blanches. “What happened? Never mind, never mind.” He tosses aside the food and shoves us outside. “Run!”
Tilly has gone frantic. She claws at my arms and asks to see Dr. Nacht immediately, but Emilio and I wrestle her into the street, where we take off sprinting. Emilio spots an idling taxi and shoves us into the backseat, at which point the driver starts yelping and flapping his hands for us to get out. But he’s silenced once Emilio reaches into his pocket and tosses a pile of cash at him.
“Conduzca,” Emilio barks, and the car peels onto the road. Struggling to catch my breath, I glance out the back window but see no sign of the civil guard. Though that doesn’t mean we’re safe—not by a long shot.
We bump along the road for a few miles, bypassing a handful of horses and wagons, until Emilio insists that we stop and take the bus to cover our tracks. This doesn’t prove very easy, because there’s a gas shortage in Spain, and the bus schedules have grown as unreliable as the water pipes in Paris. But through sheer force of will and a little bribe money, Emilio locates the correct route that we need and delivers us to the port.