Free Clash by Night by Doreen Owens Malek Page A

this country holds that grudge, Captain. And everyone in the world should,” Laura answered.
    Their voices were barely audible, the atmosphere between them rife with tension. Alain and Langtot watched the Americans in silence, like an intimate audience at a two-character play.
    Harris broke the spell by holding up a placating hand. “Hey, I’m not arguing, I agree with you.” He dropped his cigarette and crushed the butt out thoroughly with his shoe. “Besides, people with grudges work real hard and I’m going to need all the help I can get.”  
    “I can assure you that you’ll receive whatever assistance you require, Captain,” Laura said crisply.
    He winced. “Please stop calling me ‘Captain.’ It makes me feel like I should be saluting you. My name is Dan.”
    Laura relaxed a little and smiled. “All right, Dan.”  
    “That’s better.”
    “We should be going,” Alain said to Laura curtly, stepping forward.
    “When will you be back?” Harris asked.
    “Same time, tomorrow night,” Laura replied.
    He nodded. “Okay.”  
    He was looking after her as she left with Alain. Langtot was the last to go, and the old man took the oil lamp with him, hanging it outside the door as he shut it behind him.
    Harris was left in darkness, alone with his plans and his thoughts.  
    The next morning he was up early, studying the blueprints Patric Thibeau had given him. It was already hot in the barn, and sweat trickled down his arms and between his shoulder blades as he made notes in the margins with a pencil. His back was itchy, and he scratched it absently until he realized that the irritant was random sticks of straw, plastered to his skin with perspiration. Sighing, he bent closer to the drawings, then started when Langtot’s horse, still loose from its exercise, put its wet velvet nose against the nape of his neck.
    “Well, boy,” he said, craning his head around to look at it, “what do you think? The side entrance, or the rear one?”
    The horse, who apparently spoke only French, stared back at him blankly.
    “Ah, what do you know?” Harris muttered, throwing down his pencil and putting his chin in his hand.
    The Duclos woman kept drifting across his mind, breaking his concentration. He’d never particularly cared for redheads; the typical combination of carrot top and freckles always reminded him of saucer eyed Orphan Annie in the comic strip. But Laura Duclos’ hair was the color of a well used copper penny, and her skin a flawless, alabaster white. Her green gaze had held his with a guileless candor when she spoke to him, and he felt he’d scored a goal when her serious expression had at last relaxed into that final, hard won smile.
    He shook his head and closed his eyes. Stop thinking about her, man, he instructed himself. Her husband has been dead less than a year and you have a job to do. Get on with it.
    He picked up his pencil again and went back to work.  
    * * *
    In the hospital at Bar-le-Duc, Becker looked up from his work as Hesse entered his office with a stack of papers for him to sign.
    The colonel rose, as if he’d been waiting for the younger man, and said, “Just leave those on the blotter, I’ll attend to them later. I’m going to have a look around and then take these back to the library.” He indicated two of the books he’d borrowed, picking them up from the shelf under the window. “If DeGaulle arrives with a battalion of the Free French to take over the area you’ll find me at the school across the way,” he added, in the slightly satirical tone that could still confuse his aide after almost a year in his service. It was sometimes impossible to tell whether Becker was serious or not.
    “Yes, sir,” Hesse responded, usually a safe reply. He wondered briefly, as Becker walked past him, why the colonel hadn’t given him the books to return, as such errands were usually part of his duties. Then he realized that Becker wanted to see that librarian again.
    Becker was