Cold Lonely Courage (Madeleine toche Series Book 2) by Soren Petrek Page B
Authors: Soren Petrek
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loud, feeling strengthened by the wine and fond memories. There’s been so much death. I just have to make it through.
Outside the cave the day quieted into twilight. Madeleine ate her meager meal and concentrated on the wine. Feeling a bit drunk, she was happy the mission went so well. Marc was out of the area and back into the hills with the Maquis. He’s safe. He gave me the exact information I needed, she thought, raising the wine skin in a silent toast.
Madeleine opened the pages of the Resistance paper ‘Combat’ and leaned towards the fire so she could read it. Eventually they’ll put another story about me in here and the Gestapo will read it. If I can get it, they can too.
Madeleine glanced over the front page. Every article seemed to mention that America was in the war now, and invasion was coming. It can’t come soon enough for me. I’m tired of running and hiding. Has it almost been three years? she asked herself.
The articles updated her on the attacks on Germany. The bombers flew over Germany in ever-increasing numbers, and the resistance to them dwindled. Now the German people are suffering. Good, she thought. The day of reckoning was coming. Soon the BBC will send the invasion code.
“Don’t start a war you can’t finish. You brought it down on yourselves,” she muttered, taking another drink.
Madeleine spread out the remnants of the fire and covered them with dirt, making sure there was no trace left. She took her blanket and walked to the rear of the cave where there was an entrance to another, larger chamber. She squeezed through the opening and lowered herself onto a bed of grass that she had accumulated over the times she’d slept there. A man, especially one with a gun, would have one hell of a time getting in here, she thought. I could stay inside and shoot them when they tried to get through. But eventually they’d use grenades and seal up the entrance.
As she drifted off to sleep she thought about home and her parents. She wondered what other desperate souls over the centuries had used the cave as a sanctuary. She said a quiet prayer and fell asleep.
.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Horst Stenger stood inside the police station and stared down at the corpses of the Gestapo officers. He was a regular army major and a criminal investigator. His authority was all but autonomous as Berlin’s fear of insurgency increased in every quarter. He was often called in to look into such matters, and lately there seemed to be more work. He sighed as he thought of his civilian job, in Berlin, before the war, working in an organized police force as a detective with a solid reputation for solving difficult crimes. Vichy had called him in to avoid the Gestapo simply rounding up a bunch of civilians and shooting them. His first order of business was to declare this an outside professional assassination and not the work of any local Resistance group. That would be easy, he thought. He knew who did this. As soon as the police officers described the young girl, who had mysteriously disappeared, he’d known. She was called the Angel of Death. An apt name, he thought, as she seemed to target the Gestapo and SS almost exclusively. He smiled inwardly as he thought of the religious analogies of the whole thing. You butcher innocents and God sends down one of his less compassionate angels to straighten things out. The description was usually the same: a young beautiful girl, on the petite side. She was undoubtedly the type that would blind recollection with her beauty. It was an odd notion, but men were men. They simply acted differently in the presence of a dramatically beautiful woman. But this one never seemed to be described in exactly the same way. Nor did she always follow the same procedure. It puzzled him. Most of the time she wasn’t seen. Still, when he read the reports, he knew it was she. Many people can kill, but few are surgical assassins. He shuddered a bit at the idea that anyone so young could be so
Outside the cave the day quieted into twilight. Madeleine ate her meager meal and concentrated on the wine. Feeling a bit drunk, she was happy the mission went so well. Marc was out of the area and back into the hills with the Maquis. He’s safe. He gave me the exact information I needed, she thought, raising the wine skin in a silent toast.
Madeleine opened the pages of the Resistance paper ‘Combat’ and leaned towards the fire so she could read it. Eventually they’ll put another story about me in here and the Gestapo will read it. If I can get it, they can too.
Madeleine glanced over the front page. Every article seemed to mention that America was in the war now, and invasion was coming. It can’t come soon enough for me. I’m tired of running and hiding. Has it almost been three years? she asked herself.
The articles updated her on the attacks on Germany. The bombers flew over Germany in ever-increasing numbers, and the resistance to them dwindled. Now the German people are suffering. Good, she thought. The day of reckoning was coming. Soon the BBC will send the invasion code.
“Don’t start a war you can’t finish. You brought it down on yourselves,” she muttered, taking another drink.
Madeleine spread out the remnants of the fire and covered them with dirt, making sure there was no trace left. She took her blanket and walked to the rear of the cave where there was an entrance to another, larger chamber. She squeezed through the opening and lowered herself onto a bed of grass that she had accumulated over the times she’d slept there. A man, especially one with a gun, would have one hell of a time getting in here, she thought. I could stay inside and shoot them when they tried to get through. But eventually they’d use grenades and seal up the entrance.
As she drifted off to sleep she thought about home and her parents. She wondered what other desperate souls over the centuries had used the cave as a sanctuary. She said a quiet prayer and fell asleep.
.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Horst Stenger stood inside the police station and stared down at the corpses of the Gestapo officers. He was a regular army major and a criminal investigator. His authority was all but autonomous as Berlin’s fear of insurgency increased in every quarter. He was often called in to look into such matters, and lately there seemed to be more work. He sighed as he thought of his civilian job, in Berlin, before the war, working in an organized police force as a detective with a solid reputation for solving difficult crimes. Vichy had called him in to avoid the Gestapo simply rounding up a bunch of civilians and shooting them. His first order of business was to declare this an outside professional assassination and not the work of any local Resistance group. That would be easy, he thought. He knew who did this. As soon as the police officers described the young girl, who had mysteriously disappeared, he’d known. She was called the Angel of Death. An apt name, he thought, as she seemed to target the Gestapo and SS almost exclusively. He smiled inwardly as he thought of the religious analogies of the whole thing. You butcher innocents and God sends down one of his less compassionate angels to straighten things out. The description was usually the same: a young beautiful girl, on the petite side. She was undoubtedly the type that would blind recollection with her beauty. It was an odd notion, but men were men. They simply acted differently in the presence of a dramatically beautiful woman. But this one never seemed to be described in exactly the same way. Nor did she always follow the same procedure. It puzzled him. Most of the time she wasn’t seen. Still, when he read the reports, he knew it was she. Many people can kill, but few are surgical assassins. He shuddered a bit at the idea that anyone so young could be so
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