The Last of the Stanfields(75)

June 1944, outside Montauban

It was late in the day and Robert had been pedaling nonstop for hours. The pain was nearly unbearable. Ten kilometers earlier, he had been forced to make another stop to vomit on the side of the road. Sitting on the slope, he unbuttoned his shirt and looked over the splotchy fresh bruises across his chest and arms. His eyes were nearly swollen shut, his lips puffed up to twice their normal size. Blood flowed sporadically from his nose, and his whole mouth tasted metallic from the blood from his split lip. Robert’s hands were the only part of him left unscathed. They had been bound behind his back, and thus spared the onslaught that the rest of his body had endured for hours on end.

Most of his memories of the torture were hazy, with only small interludes of consciousness. None of that mattered. Robert had neither time for self-pity over what had happened nor the heart to dwell on it. He had only one thought: reach the hunting lodge before the enemy.

Robert at last made it to the foot of the path and threw the tandem into a ditch. He ran the length of the path through the woods, using his last ounce of strength to make the upward climb to the lodge. The loose dirt kept slipping beneath his feet, but he managed to grab hold of branches to keep pushing onward, until the hunting lodge finally came into view at the top of the hill in a haze of smoke.

Everything was calm, far too calm. Robert heard something crackle and crouched down, then made his way cautiously closer to the lodge. When he caught sight of Antoine’s corpse sprawled out on the ground in front of the porch, he knew he was too late. The windows had all been shattered by heavy gunfire, the facade riddled with bullet holes. The front door had been obliterated, leaving only a shredded plank of wood swinging from a hinge.

Carnage awaited him inside. The furniture had been torn to shreds in the hail of bullets, and three partisans lay dead on the ground in a horrific state. It was a grisly scene—one had been disemboweled, the other had lost both his legs to a grenade blast. The third could only be identified by his thick build—his face was completely covered by a mask of dirt and blood.

Robert doubled over and dry-heaved, having vomited all the contents of his stomach on the side of the road. Heart pounding, he scanned the space desperately.

“Sam! Hanna!” he shouted. Nothing but dead quiet in response, no signs of life. Robert rushed into their bedroom and froze in the doorway. Sam was slumped backwards over the foot of the bed, his eyes staring blankly into space, his arm dangling with a pistol resting in his hand. A stream of blood trickled from his temple.

Robert knelt before the body and wept as he closed Sam’s eyes. Composing himself, he pried the pistol from his friend’s lifeless hand and shoved it into his belt. Next, he returned to the porch to scan the woods around the lodge, praying that Hanna made it out alive and was hiding somewhere out there, unlikely as it seemed.

“Hanna!” he shouted. Apart from a crow cawing in the distance, the woods were silent. Robert was terrified at the thought of Hanna being taken by the militiamen, not daring to imagine what might happen to her. He stood motionless for a moment, brought to tears once more as he caught sight of the tree stump where he had sat so often smoking side by side with Sam. The art dealer had told him all about his past, how he had met his wife, how dearly he loved his daughter, his deep passion for art, and his pride at acquiring the precious Hopper masterpiece.

Night fell. Finding himself truly alone now, Robert wondered how many more nights he would last. In just a few hours, the sun would set in Baltimore. He thought of his parents and the comfort of his bedroom on their sprawling estate, all the lavish dinners he had enjoyed there, and the reading room, where his father squandered his fortune in poker games he always lost. Robert remembered finding him one morning in his office, sitting there, drunk, sobbing with rage. He would never forget the shame on his father’s face, the look that plunged Robert deep into despair. And he was reminded once more that he was about to die thousands of miles from home because of those poker games.

The thought filled Robert with rage, and the burst of anger gave him a second wind. Sam had taken his own life rather than die at the hands of his enemies, and that act of bravery reminded Robert of the promise he had made. If there was a chance, however slim, that Hanna was still alive, he would find her. With the help of his comrades, he would hunt down Hanna’s captors and rescue her, even if it meant taking her place as their prisoner.

“Comrades. What comrades?” Robert mumbled to himself. “The only comrades you had are all lying here, dead, and anyone left alive would be after your hide.”

Yet Robert was spurred on by youthful determination. He swore to himself that he’d stay alive long enough to honor the pact he had made with the old art dealer. He would return home a hero, living up to his name, and continue his rise to prominence just as all the men of his family had, save his father. Robert thought of the paintings hidden down in that hole at the back of the cellar. Even if Robert didn’t make it home, even if he couldn’t save Sam’s daughter, the priceless works of art mustn’t stay down there, lost for eternity.

The moon had risen in the sky, casting its light over the treetops. Robert, knowing that Sam still lay there in the bedroom, with the corpses of his other friends close by, had not yet found the strength to set foot inside the hunting lodge again. He took a deep breath to steel himself, and decided it was time to head in.

He spotted a banged-up oil lamp on the floor and lit the wick, averting his eyes from the gory scene. He headed straight for the trapdoor to the cellar, swung it open, and lowered himself inside.