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liebgotts-lovergirl · 2 years

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Fire On Fire: Chapter 8

(Ch. 7), (Ch. 6), (Ch. 5) (Ch. 4), (Ch. 3), (Ch. 2), (Ch. 1)

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Summary: Alix (Codename: Juliette) and Nixon (Codename: Édouard) hunt for a Gestapo informer masquerading as a Resistance fighter. Will they sniff out the rat in time or will the collaborator complete their objective of seeing the Carentan faction eliminated? WARNINGS: The usual war + espionage stuff Taglist: @latibvles @softguarnere

Contemporary: June 10th, 1944. Saint-Hilaire-Petitville, France.

Alix had seriously underestimated the amount of waiting around that came with being an OSS operative.

“Thérèse, this is Juliette,” she stated for the third time into the handheld transceiver, doing her best to enunciate clearly so her French wouldn’t be scrambled by the radio. “Do you read me? Verify status. Over.”

Silence.

Alix chewed on her bottom lip nervously. It didn’t usually take this long to clear a dead drop and lateness in espionage never boded well.

The Resistance fighter in question, codenamed Thérèse, was a new trigger but she had been trained well by the group, especially on such short notice. After a string of recent arrests, she was the only member of the on-the-ground surveillance team left.

Fortunately, the trigger position wasn’t too difficult: scope out potential sabotage locations, report on potential targets, and pick up any info that was dropped off in locations near her designated watch zone. Thérèse was a “pavement artist”– it was her job to blend in with the scenery and she was damn good at it.

While she waited for their contact to answer, Alix took the opportunity to subtly survey the flat and its occupants from the cluttered desk. Resting an elbow on top of one of Henri's many medical textbooks, she leaned her head on her hand as she quietly took note of the scene.

Everyone was spread out across the small bedroom, each of the Resistance members staking an unspoken claim to their particular section.

Their 20 year old courier, codenamed Camille, was stretched out on the far side of the bed, dozing off after 48 hours straight of helping Alix organize supplies for the front lines. For someone perpetually in motion, seeing her nearly still was as jarring and unnatural as a blizzard in the middle of summer.

Pacing by the boarded-up window like a restless ghost was Henri who had been thrust into the position of impromptu leader out of necessity. The quick work of the informer– whoever he or she was– had resulted in the recent capture and arrest of four founding members just the week before Alix's arrival, crippling the faction's leadership and momentarily disrupting their operations.

After the arrest of the former leader, a Jewish teenager from Coutances codenamed Toulouse, Henri had seniority so despite his initial reluctance to take the spotlight, he did eventually assume the role.

He was a pre-med student who had just turned 21 but carried himself with the solemnity of a man twice his age. He never complained but the ever-present dark circles under his eyes had become so deep as of late that they had begun to look like bruises.

Their resident bombmaker (or “Bang-Bang Boy” as the guys at HQ jokingly referred to them) was a schoolboy of about 16, codenamed Edgar, who was sitting in the chair opposite Alix, leafing through the latest issue of Défense de la France, a popular underground newspaper the Resistance had been distributing.

Gaunt with a lank flap of ash-blond hair and a sickly, almost anemic pallor, it was easy to see why no one would suspect him of being a saboteur for the Resistance– he looked as though a sudden breeze might strike him dead.

Jean-Pierre, their bagman, sat cross-legged on the closest side of the bed, lazily whistling the best part of "Sing Sing Sing" as he checked his watch again for the millionth time.

A fisherman’s son from Calais who had fled to Carentan at 19 after his family were killed, he was one of the newer Resistance members but also one of the most effective. Jean-Pierre had a sort of breezy charm about him which was a necessity for a bag-man. It allowed him to quickly ingratiate himself with the local authorities, bribing them for information and in many cases, for their silence as well.

Despite his generally easy-going nature, JP could be brash at times; he and Alix had quickly bonded over their shared tendency toward recklessness and a passion for Benny Goodman records.

Like her, he also wanted to be as involved in every mission he could. If he wasn't in the field bribing officials, he was helping to plan operations, forge documents, mark maps, whatever was needed. Having been rejected by the French army for having severe asthma, JP told her he was sick of feeling helpless, a feeling Alix knew all too well.

Sitting around, waiting for her targets to arrive in the Kill Zone made her feel helpless too. It’d already been almost a week since D-Day and she had yet to go on a single assassination operation.

Instead, she was relegated to planning acts of sabotage and organizing supplies for the front lines, a fact that was eating away at her like a poison.

All the smatterings of gunfire in the distance, the explosions and the roar of tanks nearby, all the screaming and crying and bleeding and dying, and she wasn’t doing a damn thing to stop it.

Her boyfriend, her best friends, and thousands of others were out there risking their lives and she was stuck inside with a radio and a map. It was beyond maddening.

In selling out four founding members of the Carentan Resistance just a week shy of Alix's arrival, the Gestapo's mole --whoever he or she was-- had essentially upended every pre-planned operation in the OSS playbook and made it virtually impossible for her to do her job as planned.

She couldn't complete her assassination ops without Resistance support and her contact -- who she'd spent months building a cover and rapport with through correspondence-- had already been arrested and was most likely enduring unimaginable horrors at the hands of the Gestapo. He was French, Jewish, and a Resistance leader: there was no way the Nazis would interrogate him without employing incomprehensible methods of torture designed to maximize his pain, regardless of what he said or did.

Alix felt her throat beginning to burn at the thought of her ally's suffering and she squeezed her eyes shut before any tears could surface.

Whenever I find the mole who sold him out, she vowed silently as she clenched her fist and tried to steady her breathing. I'm going to rip them limb from limb.

Suddenly, the transceiver on the desk crackled to life again and her eyes shot open.

“Juliette, this is Thérèse. Drop cleared. Dry-cleaning now. Out.”

From the window, Henri exhaled audibly, his shoulders relaxing in his relief.

One part complete.

"Took her long enough," Camille mumbled without even opening her eyes.

"See, what did I tell you?" Jean-Pierre prodded as he fiddled with the much-larger radio set Alix had brought them earlier in the week. "Thérèse was being followed. Why else would she be trying to evade a tail after the pick-up?"

“Gee, I don’t know,” Camille muttered bitterly, sitting up with her back against the wooden headboard. “Maybe because she’s lying?”

"Here we go again," Alix grumbled and Henri just sighed.

Camille's outbursts didn't usually end well.

"And why would she be lying, Camille?" Jean-Pierre asked in a monotonous voice of exaggerated tolerance, his expression pinched. “Do remind us. I don't think you've said it in the last 30 minutes."

"Don't patronize me, JP, you know why!" Camille's voice rose to a fever pitch. "It's because she's the fucking mole!"

Alix's eyebrows shot up to the ceiling and in front of her, Edgar slammed his newspaper shut so quickly that the front page ripped.

“She’s my sister," he retorted incredulously. "She's not the mole!”

“And how would you know, little one?” Camille shot back, her green eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Perhaps it’s you!”

“We’re twins!” Edgar burst out with a surprising amount of aggression given his frail appearance, his French coming out so quickly that Alix could barely understand him. “We share everything! I would know if she was!”

“Camille,” Alix said measuredly, trying her best to be diplomatic. “We know how much Toulouse meant to you, but-”

"You don't know anything, Juliette," Camille snapped, rounding on her. "You have barely been here a week! How do we even know we can trust you?! Toulouse trusted you and now he's-"

The words died in her throat.

Alix clenched her jaw, forcing down her rising rage.

Camille's running on 48 hours of no sleep, she reminded herself, lighting a cigarette to help cool her down.

And her boyfriend is probably being brutalized right now, if he's not already dead, because he was betrayed by someone he knew. She's just looking for someone to blame. How would you feel if you lost Joe like that?

"You've seen my bona fides," she stated tersely after taking a long drag. "You've seen every document. You've spoken to my case officer. You've read the letters-- seen the code. You know I'm clean."

"Jules has no reason to lie," JP chimed in, aiming a nod of support to Alix. "She has no motive."

"Thank you-" Alix said with a small huff of irritation and a There-You-Have-It gesture but JP wasn't done.

"But you know who does…?"

He swiveled his head toward Henri with an accusatory glare.

It was an allegation so audacious that it took a second for it to fully set in.

"Me?" Henri took a step back, brown eyes wide. "You must be joking!"

But no one was laughing.

"You did say your parents were Party members once…" Edgar mused, suddenly eyeing their leader with a newfound suspicion.

"I've never hidden that," the older boy replied evenly, meeting his gaze with a calm defiance. "I despise them and everything they stand for. That’s no secret.”

“Why're you always shortchanging me then?” Jean-Pierre demanded as he got to his feet.

Henri’s brows furrowed in confusion.

"What on Earth are you on about?"

"Oh don't play stupid, Henri," Jean-Pierre scoffed, crossing his arms contemptuously. "It doesn't suit you."

"If you have something to say, then say it," Henri challenged, nearly bellowing. It was the loudest Alix had ever heard him speak and she jumped at the sound.

"Very well," Jean-Pierre sighed, sounding almost reluctant as he shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

"I've tried to cover for you this long because I like you, Henri, but you leave me no choice. You barely give me enough money for me to do my job! How am I supposed to bribe officials for valuable intel with barely enough money to feed a rat?"

"If there's not much, it's because we don't have a lot left after expenses," Henri contested angrily. "Sabotage materials aren't cheap, you know!"

"Or you're skimming off the top," Jean-Pierre prodded, giving his nose a quick scratch.

"My God," Henri marveled with a hollow laugh. "All my money goes to the Resistance or to my studies! If I was stealing from our funds, do you honestly think I would still be living in a place like this?"

He gestured to the tiny run-down flat they were in and Alix certainly saw his point.

With its yellowing wallpaper already dog-eared and peeling, the ever-present drip…drip…drip of the faucet, and the faint smell of mildew, she couldn't imagine living in a place like that unless it was an absolute necessity but Jean-Pierre clearly wasn't convinced.

"Perhaps it's not even about the money," he posited, his startlingly gray eyes blazing. "Perhaps it's just about sabotaging us so you can help out your degenerate parents!"

"You take that back," Henri growled but with a shout of "Traitor", Jean-Pierre swung at the older boy, leading to an immediate scuffle on the carpet.

Alix swore in French and stubbed her cigarette out quickly before springing into action.

Apparently today, "aiding the Resistance" meant keeping the members from killing each other.

Edgar didn't move from his chair, busying himself with a homemade pencil fuse instead, while Alix and Camille rushed to separate the two boys.

Camille grabbed a panting Henri by the back of his heavy wool sweater and hauled him off of his assailant just as Alix managed to drag JP to his feet and wrench his arms behind his back, effectively restraining him despite his irate protestations.

The agent was about to cuss them both soundly for engaging in such idiocy without a speck of proof, when a loud clatter down the hall quieted her instantly.

Instinct took over and before she knew it, she was standing in the bedroom doorway, revolver at the ready with Jean-Pierre behind her, his own handgun loaded as well.

While the pair waited with bated breath, Henri scrambled to disassemble the larger clandestine radio, Camille raced to stash the smaller handheld one, and Edgar began shoving as many contraband newspapers under the chair cushion and mattress as he could.

With a silent signal to JP, Alix crept soundlessly out the door and he followed in her footsteps down the hall, when they both lowered their weapons with a collective sigh of relief.

It was Thérèse, still clad in her school clothes: a rumpled wool sweater too large for her frame, loafers, and a gingham skirt, making her look even younger than her 16 years.

She never gets to be a child, Alix thought sadly as the girl gave them a small wave. Now she’s a soldier.

“Good to see you, Thérèse,” Jean-Pierre proclaimed with a wide smile as the three headed back into the cramped bedroom of Henri’s tiny flat.

Once they entered again and locked the door, Edgar rushed to embrace his twin sister, the two chattering back and forth in rapid-fire French.

“You had us worried,” Henri chided the girl gently as she took a seat. “Was there something wrong with the initial drop?”

Thérèse shook her head emphatically, causing the black ribbon to slowly slip out of her hair.

“Not at all,” she replied as she turned the ribbon over in her hand. “The drop itself was fine but there was a point when I suspected I was being tailed. So I dry-cleaned for a little bit. You know, to keep from being spotted.”

She and Alix exchanged furtive giggles.

It was a common joke in the intelligence community because trying to lose someone following you was known as “dry-cleaning”.

Lewis Nixon had taught the joke to Alix during her training as a way to remember the term and when Alix first arrived at the Resistance, she had taught it to Thérèse as well because she was on the main surveillance team.

“Who did you think was tailing you?” Alix asked, sobering quickly.

Enemy intelligence already had one mole in the Carentan faction of the Resistance. If they were starting to pick out Resistance members on the street too, their jobs had just become a lot more dangerous.

Thérèse shrugged before delicately nudging her wire-rimmed spectacles further up her nose.

“I’m not sure exactly,” she divulged as she began to gingerly remove a lengthy strip of paper that had been carefully concealed inside the ribbon. “Perhaps it was just me being paranoid but I felt as though I was being watched so I took precautions, just to be sure.”

Once she had removed the hidden note, she passed it over to Alix who squinted at it. It was badly crumpled, the creases so deep that she had to iron it out on her leg to be able to make out the writing on it, which was in script so cramped that it took her multiple tries to figure out what it said.

Goddamn it, Nix, she scolded him in her head, making a mental note to repeat it later over the radio when they next had contact. Your handwriting is atrocious. Didn’t they ever teach you to write legibly at Yale?

She skipped to the postscript first. He had promised to keep her updated...

“DJS all accounted for. You’re welcome.”

Don, Joe, and Skip were safe. Thank God.

“It’s from Édouard,” she announced to the rest of the group as she scanned the document for the actual contents.

Nixon’s codename was the French version of Edward, a not-so-subtle reference to the famous Edward Teach also known as Blackbeard.

Very clever, Lieutenant, she thought, inwardly rolling her eyes.

“It looks like the Oberleutnant is arriving early,” she summarized.

“He’ll be passing through here in the next couple days on the way to Carentan. We should be able to catch him by nightfall the night after next, if all goes according to plan."

But of course, things never did.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Contemporary: June 12th, 1944. Saint-Hilaire-Petitville, France.

“Édouard, this is Juliette. We have a visual. Requesting permission to engage. Over.”

Alix drummed her fingers impatiently against her thigh as she awaited her handler’s response.

Any day now, Nix.

Peering through the stained curtains, she had a perfect view of her target: Oberleutnant Walter Hahn, who was chatting idly to a couple soldiers across the way, blissfully unaware that he was being watched by a team of Resistance assassins.

All Alix had to do was slip out the door, "accidentally" bump into Hahn as he made his exit, flirt a little bit, get him alone, and then it was going to be auf wiedersehen and good riddance to the Nazi bastard.

Technically, Hahn wasn't supposed to be her problem until that night but it appeared that he and his men had arrived even further ahead of schedule than planned.

And who was Alix to question fate?

It would be dangerous, no doubt. They would be in broad daylight and Alix’s training specified that she was to wait until nightfall, when her identity was easier to conceal.

But she was restless, growing more and more frustrated with her own inaction as the days went by. She was tired of planning, of smuggling supplies, of being safe while her loved ones were out there somewhere, fighting and dying. Like a tiger trapped in a cage, she wanted out. She wanted to do something. She wanted to help.

But she also knew that it only took one person in the immediate area remembering her face or clothing to have the entire Gestapo out looking for her. But she wanted to help! And besides, such a risky mission might take the mole, whoever he or she was, by surprise.

“Édouard, this is Juliette,” she repeated, overenunciating her French to be sure she’d be understood. “We have a visual. Repeat: We have a visual. Requesting permission to engage. Over.”

She didn’t have to wait long that time.

Nixon’s response was swift and predictable.

“Negative, Jules. Too risky. Over.”

Alix sighed in frustration, the crackles echoing across the line.

"Apologies," Henri said with a sympathetic shrug. "But you heard the man."

By the mirror, Camille stopped brushing her short-cropped brown hair to check her watch.

"It won't be that much longer," she assured Alix. "Only a couple more hours."

"By then it could be too late," Jean-Pierre countered, echoing Alix's own thoughts. "They could've moved on to Carentan. She should go now."

Henri balked at the suggestion.

"And risk exposing the whole operation, are you mad?!"

"It is a gamble," Jean-Pierre conceded. "But it could pay off."

"Or, most likely, it could blow up in our faces and get us all killed." Camille shook her head.

"I vote no, and I know Edgar and Thérèse would say the same if they were not blowing up bridges right now.”

“If Toulouse were here-” JP countered but Camille cut him off instantly.

“Well he isn’t!” Her voice quavered and Alix instantly averted her gaze.

Her stomach flip-flopped with anxiety; she felt like she was intruding on a private moment of grief. She’d never been fortunate enough to meet Toulouse personally before his arrest but from their written correspondence in the weeks before her arrival, he’d seemed like an unusually bright and courageous person and she had looked forward to working with him.

It felt strange in a way, to grieve the loss of a person she’d never officially met. A part of her felt like she didn’t have a right to feel sorrow over it. After all, she didn’t even know his real name and he hadn’t known hers.

Toulouse was to be her main contact in France; they had been tasked by the OSS to establish a trail of fake correspondence before her arrival, knowing without a doubt that all postcards and letters would be monitored by the Nazi authorities. Since the Nazi takeover, identification and alibis were meticulously investigated so every cover had to be a deep one.

“Dear Jules,” one of her favorite letters read.

“Mother is pleased to hear you may come to visit us! She's already planning a party of sorts– you know how she is. My girlfriend is very much looking forward to your arrival too! She's been very curious to meet my favourite cousin! Also, she's quite the musician and is dying to hear you play something when you arrive! Perhaps some Rachmaninoff– I’ve always been partial to Piano Concerto No. 2, myself. We are in desperate need of some music here. Regardless, I’m certain you two will get along wonderfully. I hope to propose to her soon, whenever this damn war (and more importantly, her father) will let me. I had hoped her little brother Gilles would be able to meet you as planned but he and some of his schoolmates have recently fallen ill and some are already in hospital. Hopefully it doesn't come to that for him or I fear we all may catch it. Anyway, I’ve got to be off now. Shabbos preparations wait for no one!

All the best,

Your favourite (and only) cousin,

Toulouse

PS. Enclosed is a photograph of Voltaire, who also sends his best (and a hairball, for good measure)."

A seemingly innocuous letter, just two cousins conversing about an upcoming family get-together.

Certainly not an OSS agent and her Resistance contact discussing an upcoming sabotage attempt, the arrest of a Resistance member, a request for a clandestine radio to send further reports, and that the leader suspected more arrests might follow.

But despite every line being coded, Toulouse had still managed to slip some of his sunny personality in-between. He reminded Alix a lot of Skip in that way: ever an optimist, even in the darkest of times. She wished she could've had the chance to introduce the two. She knew they would've been good friends.

The best covers were made of partial truths and their faked correspondences had been no different. The photo of Voltaire, Toulouse's pensive-looking Persian cat, had been real as were his feelings for Camille.

According to Thérèse, when Pascal's flat was raided and the arrests had been made, Toulouse had actually been carrying the engagement ring he'd hoped to give Camille in his pocket.

Alix couldn't even begin to fathom the agony that Camille must live with every day knowing how close the pair of them had been to happiness. If God forbid that ever happened to her and Joe, Alix knew she would lose her mind.

“Toulouse isn’t here,” Camille repeated, clasping her trembling hands in her lap in a futile attempt to still them. “The Gestapo have him. So it doesn’t matter what he would’ve done.”

No one spoke for a moment, her words hanging in the air like a death knell, before Henri broke the silence in his usual understated way.

"Well as leader, my say is final and I say you’re waiting until nightfall. Sorry, Jules."

With that, he turned back to his work, manning the larger radio and quickly tapping out signals as Camille scribbled down codes via headset, monitoring the progress of nearby skirmishes.

“You don’t have to listen to them, you know,” Jean-Pierre whispered out of the corner of his mouth as he began measuring out the coordinates on his end of the map spread out in front of them. “You work with us, not for us, yes? You don’t take orders from them.”

Alix checked her notes before stretching an arm out halfway on her side of the map and deftly marking the coordinates of another supply drop zone.

“I know," she acknowledged as she returned to her notes.

"But I'm required to take orders from my handler and he said to wait too.”

Jean-Pierre barked a low laugh.

“Perhaps it is different with you Americans but in France, we do not need nursemaids to look after our operatives. We have common sense."

“Oh fuck off," Alix quipped as she reached around him to steal a pushpin from his pile. “Maybe Édouard is right in this case, okay?”

Jean-Pierre made a skeptical noise in the back of his throat.

"Are you trying to convince me or yourself?"

It took all of Alix’s self-control not to elbow him in the ribcage.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

About thirty minutes went by uneventfully before JP set his pencil down.

"Finally," he remarked with a dramatic wipe of his brow. "All finished."

He took a surreptitious glance at his watch which Alix thought was unusual but she dismissed it.

"Now if you all will excuse me, I'm going to grab a glass of water. I'm parched."

Henri nodded in the direction of the kitchen, hardly looking up from his work.

"You know where everything is."

"Don't get lost," Alix joked and JP flashed her a quick grin.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Gesturing to a sheet of paper by his side of the map, he noted, "By the way, Jules, could you be a lamb and double-check my coordinates while I'm gone? The notes are over there. Wouldn't want any supplies getting misplaced on my account."

After the door closed behind him, Alix reached over to pick up the sheet of paper, a frown appearing on her face as she tried in vain to make out the slightly-smudged numbering.

She squinted, held it up to the light, and even turned it upside down for a new angle but to no avail. It still looked like chicken-scratch. It wasn’t worse than Nixon’s cramped script, which nearly had letters written on top of each other at some points, but it certainly came close.

After a final, futile attempt, Alix resignedly glanced over to the desk in the corner where Camille and Henri were hunched, still working with the larger radio.

There was nothing she hated more than admitting she couldn’t do something but she had work to do.

"Camille, can you come look at this real quick?" she asked, swallowing her pride and holding up the paper for her to inspect. "I can't make heads or tails of this line."

The French girl let out a reluctant sigh, as though helping Alix was the world’s biggest inconvenience, but she still put down the headset and got up, with the air of a martyr. Just as she reached the table, Alix passed the paper over to her, accidentally knocking a pen to the floor with her sleeve.

This is why they should let me wear civvies in my off-time too, she thought in annoyance as she rolled up the sleeves of her uniform. These uniforms are just too damn big.

She had just crouched to retrieve the pen when all of a sudden, the window shattered and Camille came crashing down onto the carpet beside her, green eyes wide with shock.

Clutching a hand to her chest, scarlet was starting to stain her shirt, pouring like paint through her fingers and Alix felt her own blood run cold. Leaping into action, she began to stifle the bleeding as best she could with her hands as a scream of warning ripped from her throat to the others:

"Sniper!"

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liebgotts-lovergirl · 1 year

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Fire On Fire: Chapter 9

(Ch. 8), (Ch. 7), (Ch. 6), (Ch. 5), (Ch. 4), (Ch. 3) (Ch. 2) (Ch. 1)

Gallery II Taglist Application II Symbol Guide

Summary: A spy's job is to complete their mission, even if it means hunting down a former friend. WARNINGS: Injury, Death, War things Dedication: To my dearest Poe & Dove whose writing never ceases to inspire me & to Lara without whom this whole work wouldn't exist 💖💖💖 Taglist: @latibvles @wwhatev3r @softguarnere @brassknucklespeirs

Contemporary: June 12th, 1944. Saint-Hilaire-Petitville, France.

The sniper had them pinned but luckily, there was still one miniscule blessing.

"There's no way he can see through the curtains!" Alix yelled over the continued smatterings of gunfire. "He’s firing blind!"

“Hold on, Cami,” she urged her comrade, trying her best to apply more pressure to the wound but the blood just kept bubbling over her hands, no matter how much she pressed. “Just hold on.”

Camille's breath was coming in short, ragged gasps as she fought for air and Alix’s mind raced as she struggled for things to say to keep Camille awake and focused.

“We’re gonna get you through this, Camille, I promise,” she vowed but the frothing noise emanating from the wound was rapidly filling her with dread.

That couldn’t be a good sign.

“Think about Toulouse,” she implored her friend, whose green eyes were starting to become unfocused. “You remember Toulouse, right?”

The thinnest smile crossed Camille’s blood-streaked face so Alix took that topic and ran with it.

“Of course you do,” Alix affirmed warmly, trying her best to seem enthusiastic, positive, and not at all scared to death.

“He's your boyfriend, right? He said you’d known each other a long time. You’re the one who gave him Voltaire, aren't you? God, he loved that cat. I don't think I ever got a letter without a photograph of him attached to it!"

Alix babbled on about Toulouse, about Voltaire the cat, everything she could possibly remember from their letters, exhorting Camille to keep her eyes open while Henri, who had managed to bring the handheld radio down to the floor with him, was hurriedly tapping out urgent messages to their contacts in the area, informing them of their dire situation and requesting aid.

“There’s an attack going on in Carentan right now!” he shouted as another explosion went off. It sounded much closer than before. “We’re on our own!”

Shit.

The sniper had deliberately targeted them when they were stranded, cut off from any outside help by two opposing armies.

But how could he have known where his target would be standing without a visual…?

And just like that, the wheels of Alix’s brain began to turn.

The only way the sniper could’ve known where everyone was would be if someone had radio’d him everyone’s positions, meaning the Gestapo’s mole had to have been someone in the room at the time.

It couldn’t be Edgar then, Alix thought, as he was helping another faction of the Maquis bomb a bridge on the outskirts of Carentan. He had no part in intelligence gathering anyway; he was purely a saboteur.

It couldn’t be Thérèse either as she had been tailing Oberleutnant Hahn throughout the day. All her intel pertained solely to him.

Camille would never have put a hit out on Toulouse, no matter what. She certainly had no faith in Alix but even still, the agent had no doubt that Camille would never have tried to put a hit out on her either.

So that left Henri and…

She and Henri looked up at the same time, the same look of recognition dawning on both their faces.

Jean-Pierre.

It all made sense now. He had been feeding them deliberate misinformation to throw them off the scent of the actual Nazi plans. More than likely, he'd been the one pocketing the leftover money too.

He'd only been working with the Carentan Resistance a couple months and in that time, he'd already sold out the group's former leader and three other long-standing members without ever being suspected. He was friendly, he was funny, he was convincing, and he was practically still a teenager…No wonder the Gestapo had him on payroll.

He was the perfect spy.

All the nervous scratching his nose, the glancing at his watch…he had been waiting for the right time to signal the attack.

JP's voice rang in her ears:

"By the way, Jules, could you be a lamb and double-check my coordinates while I'm gone? The notes are over there. Wouldn't want any supplies getting misplaced on my account."

It had been a set-up. He had deliberately tried to anchor her to the path of the sniper's bullet.

Alix had been the target, not Camille.

It took every ounce of strength in Alix’s body not to go running after the bastard right then for hurting Camille in her stead but she couldn’t leave her friend.

Every violent cough produced lengthy rivers of bright red that streamed from her mouth down her neck and Alix quickly went from scared to terrified.

“Henri, I need you to hurry,” she cried nervously.

Henri, who was already steadily army-crawling toward the pair, began crawling even faster.

“Put more pressure,” he ordered as he dragged himself along the floor. “The bullet's caused a pneumothorax!"

Alix stared at him blankly but obeyed, immersing her hands even deeper in the blood and gore as Camille's coughs came quicker and more forcefully.

Henri was always forgetting that other people didn't read med-school textbooks in their free time.

"It's caused a what?!"

"A pneumothorax!" he repeated as though she had simply misheard him.

But when Alix shook her head, he elaborated, "A collapsed lung! It needs to be sealed!"

Luckily, he had just reached them and immediately took over, his med-school training kicking in like second nature as he carefully inspected the wound.

“You go after JP," he yelled to Alix over the sound of a nearby explosion. "I can handle things here!"

Alix didn't need to be told twice.

Keeping her head low and her stomach pressed to the carpet, she began dragging herself toward the door by her elbows, pausing only to retrieve the handheld radio and her aid bag.

All her false IDs were inside.

She wasn't sure how much Jean-Pierre knew so it was impossible to tell if her cover had been completely blown yet, but she'd probably have to burn this identity's passport anyway later, just in case.

Once she reached the hallway, she scrambled to her feet but a near-deafening wail shook the walls around her and before she could blink, she was on her knees again as the sounds of artillery explosions and shattering glass nearby roared like an oncoming train.

That one was way too close, she thought. Looks like I'll be crawling out the back way too.

The only blessing was that the sniper had no way of knowing he hadn't hit his target. The gunfire had stopped fairly quickly after Camille was shot, Alix remembered.

More than likely, he'd already packed up and gone, thinking his job was done.

Well think again, asshole, Alix thought as she clambered to her feet and sprinted out the back door.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

The once quiet, picturesque village of Saint-Hilaire-Petitville was unrecognizable now.

Skeletons of buildings stood tall against a smoke-darkened sky like ancient ruins and plumes of fire from artillery cast the wreckage in a hellish orange glow.

The screams of the injured and dying clogged the air in every language, the details of their final words drowned out by the thunder of explosions and gunfire.

If there is a Hell, Alix decided as she hurried toward Carentan, it definitely looks like this.

She knew better than to run openly in the street where she could be seen– spies were not soldiers, after all– so she clung to the long shadows of still-standing buildings, ducking in and out of doorways as she dodged debris and quickly made her way out of the falling village.

Soon, she had made it far enough out onto the open road that the only sound nearby was the crunch of gravel under her boots and her own heavy breathing. Part of her wished she could radio back to check on Camille, but ultimately, Alix knew better. Radio transmissions were dangerous enough under normal circumstances; trying to send a message from out in the open would be suicide.

All she could do was hope for the best and keep moving.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Reaching Carentan had been the easy part; tracking down Jean-Pierre was going to be a whole lot harder.

Alix wracked her brain as she slipped behind a half-timbered farmhouse at the edge of the city.

It provided minimal protection but it was still better than remaining totally exposed to the bullets raining down like hail from above the thoroughfare.

Peeking out from behind the relative safety of the painted wall, she could see the streets were littered with corpses.

Blood trickled down the cobblestones in tiny streams and the final agonies of the dying piercing the air like sirens but the young spy closed her eyes, fighting the chaos of her surroundings so she could focus.

She had a mission to complete and that meant finding Jean-Pierre, her friend— No.

That train of thought needed to stop right there. Jean-Pierre was a lot of things: an enemy agent, a target, a chicken-shit coward, and a traitor. But he was not the friend she thought she’d known. That person didn’t exist.

The Jean-Pierre she thought she knew had died the moment he handed Toulouse over to the Gestapo a week before her arrival. Everything else was just performance.

By betraying Alix’s friends, JP had made himself a target and now he would be hunted and killed like one too.

The OSS operative parsed through her own training from years earlier.

“When evading a pursuer in an urban environment, remember the acronym: PIC,” she recalled Lieutenant Nixon stressing during one of their evasion drills.

"Number 1: Protection from the environment.

Number 2: Invisible to the enemy.

Number 3: Comfort for quality rest."

So the farmhouse was out. It could offer protection and comfort but not invisibility; it was the only building in the area whose roof and doors were painted a rather violent shade of plum, which stuck out like a sore thumb against the more muted landscape surrounding it.

What would qualify as invisible in a small, rural town like Carentan, Alix mused. Somewhere strong enough to provide protection, spacious enough to provide comfort, and somewhere most people would overlook…

Her dark eyes scanned the town’s landscape for a moment, passing over shops and houses.

A spy would know better than to hole-up somewhere so densely populated. It was too easy to corner someone between buildings that tightly packed.

Then, her eyes landed on Notre-Dame de Carentan, the parish cathedral, and a lightbulb went off in her head.

Large and sturdy enough to provide protection, just out of the way enough to avoid being interrupted by enemy combatants raiding for food like they would in a shop, spacious enough to provide multiple nooks within as well as multiple exits.

And what self-respecting Catholic would desecrate the house of God? It was the perfect hiding spot.

She needed to get over there fast.

Luckily, an opportune explosion a few houses down drew some scattered German soldiers from the nearby area.

A welcome distraction.

Keeping a death-grip on her aid bag and her head tucked low, Alix hustled to the other side of the street as quickly as she could, taking momentary refuge behind some nearby shrubbery before shoving the heavy cathedral door open with a grunt and slipping inside.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Despite the chaos raging just outside its doors, the inside of the cathedral was hauntingly still.

The booming explosions and percussive rat-a-tat-tat of scattered firefights in the nearby area were virtually swallowed up by the sheer size and strength of the stone columns within.

If Alix closed her eyes, the dulled echoes from outside could almost be mistaken for thunder and rainfall. Almost.

Below the majestic vaulted ceiling, faint glimmers of sunlight streamed through the stained glass-adorned walls, scattering colorful beams of light onto the pews and aisle of the otherwise dimly-lit cathedral.

The rolling smoke from external fires combined with the glow of candles from the apse added an ethereal element throughout.

It was strange being in a Catholic church again after three years away, simultaneously alien but familiar, like visiting the new owners of your childhood home. As she stood in the church’s lobby, just inside the doors, Alix felt a twinge of shame for not having been in so long.

But as quickly as the guilt surfaced, so too did the suppressed rage.

If God wanted me to keep going to Mass, she thought bitterly. then He shouldnt’ve let my fucking brother die.

Her heart pounding in her ears as she entered, Alix slipped a hand into her aid bag and retrieved her handgun. She was not going to be caught off-guard in here.

Wherever Jean-Pierre was hiding, she would be ready for him.

Marble statues of the saints adorned the walls, staring pitilessly down at her with their stony gaze as she scoured the cathedral for her target.

Where are you, you traitorous piece of shit, she wanted to yell, but she knew better.

She’d have to catch him, like a rat, because he wouldn’t come out on his own.

Stalking down the center instead, aisle by aisle, the soft sound of her boots against the cold marble floor was muffled by the drumming of artillery fire in the distance.

Suddenly, a small nook ahead to the left side caught her eye. Tucked just steps away from the main altar, this section of the chapel appeared to be specifically dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Situated neatly atop the altar sat a painted statuette of the Holy Mother draped in blue, smiling serenely down at the empty rows in front of her, oblivious to the rage simmering within the OSS agent striding towards her sacred space.

And there, in the farthest corner pew, hunched over a tiny notebook, sat Jean-Pierre.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

"Well if it isn't our local turncoat," Alix remarked loudly, the venom in her voice echoing impressively in the smaller chamber.

"I'm surprised you didn't just incinerate walking in here. Isn’t treachery a mortal sin?”

Jean-Pierre looked up from his notebook, the fake smile on his face just begging to be clawed off.

"Nice to see you too, Jules," he replied cheerily as if she'd wished him a Good Morning instead of an insult. "It's always good to see a friendly face."

"I'm glad because it's the last face you're going to see," Alix snapped as she approached the pew where he sat.

"You can drop the act, JP, I know what you did."

JP raised his eyebrows, innocent and unconcerned.

"Do you now?"

Alix ignored him. She was not going to partake in his mind games.

"How long have you been working for the Nazis," she demanded as she sat down forcefully, her back bumping against the wooden pew in her haste.

Sitting within two feet of the man who had sold out her friends made her sick but she had no choice; she needed to be close enough to observe him during interrogation.

Her nostrils were flaring with her barely-contained fury but JP casually lit up a cigarette as though he hadn’t noticed.

"You're going to have to be more specific, Jules," he stated after taking a short drag, still acting as if they were old friends catching up over breakfast. "The Milice or the Gestapo?"

"Either. Both."

"The Milice for about two years, since I was 17. I was assigned to liaise with the Gestapo more recently. I’ve been an undercover provocateur for about…"

He took a second to ponder, before responding “About 4 months now, I think.”

Alix took a hard look at the boy sitting next to her.

Jean-Pierre was only nineteen; he should’ve been studying at university, going to dance halls, asking a girl from one of his classes out on a Saturday night just to make a complete fool of himself, he should’ve been able to be a kid and make memories with his friends.

Instead, there was a war on, kids younger than him were fighting and dying to defend their countries from the evils of fascism and here JP was, a Nazi turncoat…for what? What could make someone so young so self-serving, so full of apathy?

“You were never rejected by the French army,” she surmised aloud, thinking back to earlier that day. “That was just part of your cover so you could have an excuse to be more heavily involved in the planning, wasn’t it?”

“Very good, Jules,” JP commented. “You put it together quicker than Toulouse did. What brought you to that conclusion?”

“Well, you got into that scuffle with Henri earlier without hardly breaking a sweat,” the OSS agent acknowledged before nodding to him. “And look at you smoking now. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smoke before. If you were actually asthmatic, you’d be hacking up a lung.”

JP took another short drag before responding with a simple “Bravo” and a sarcastic round of applause, the clatter bouncing mockingly off the marble as though even the cathedral itself was laughing at her.

"How do you sleep at night," Alix wondered aloud from between gritted teeth. "Knowing all the people you've betrayed, good people who trusted you?"

Jean-Pierre cocked an eyebrow and took another drag.

"Trusting me was their fault," he replied coolly, the smoke curling into the air. "Not mine. These are dangerous times, you know."

Alix was seized with the overwhelming urge to throttle him but she bit it back.

"As for my conscience?" He shrugged. "Completely clear. I just provide intel– for a price, of course. Whatever the Milice and the Gestapo choose to do with that intel is their business, not mine."

"You signaled the sniper earlier, didn't you? And Camille was what, just collateral to you?"

Jean-Pierre shrugged again.

"Business is business."

"If you wanted me dead that badly, you could've left the others out of it."

Jean-Pierre pursed his lips.

"Oh but we don't want you dead," he replied flippantly, as though that somehow made it better. "Just wounded enough to be taken in without issue. And I did try to leave them out of it, but you wouldn't let me. Their deaths are on your hands, Jules, not mine. I got the transmission shortly before you arrived.”

"You're lying," Alix insisted, trying in vain to shove down her mounting panic.

He was just trying to get into her head…right?

"Henri and Camille were both alive when I left."

Jean-Pierre made a Voilá gesture.

"My point exactly. They were both unfortunate casualties of your negligence. Our sniper had a perfect vantage point and we were all ready for you to make your move on Hahn...you would never have made it within a meter of him. But then, out of the blue, you decide to follow orders for once and stay put!"

His voice rose slightly and for a split-second, Alix thought she glimpsed lines of frustration creasing his brow as the mask slipped…but then, like a good agent, it was back to baseline: cool, calm, and collected.

"So we had to improvise. I got out of the line of fire, tried to keep you in place, everything was good to go…and then Camille got in the way."

He clucked his tongue.

"I was sure it was you but when our sniper went back to verify the kill, who should he find but Camille already dead on the carpet, you nowhere to be found, and Henri operating an illegal radio? And…well, we couldn't have that. You understand."

Alix felt a pit forming in her stomach like she'd swallowed a boulder.

If she had just disobeyed Henri's order like JP had urged her to in the first place, Camille and Henri would still be alive…She herself might've died but that was inconsequential. It was her they wanted; no one else had to get hurt.

Jean-Pierre was so nonchalant, it was maddening. He acted like he had all the time in the world, like he wasn't sitting next to a former friend with a gun in her hand, still drenched in the blood of their other friend…former friend, now deceased.

At least he hadn't mentioned Edgar and Thérèse, Alix thought.

The twins must have gotten Henri's last radio transmission and gone on the run.

She put her free hand to her rosary, sending a silent prayer up that the two kids would make it to a neutral zone safely. She wasn’t sure if any god, angels, or saints were listening but she was in a church and she figured it couldn’t hurt to try.

Taking a steadying breath and resisting the urge to just shoot the bastard, Alix decided to try something.

“I’m going to ask you this one time and one time only,” she stated firmly, trying to remain calm and forget about the handgun she was clutching in her right hand.

“Who gave you the order to bring me in? And why not Henri or Camille? Why me?"

"I don't ask those sorts of questions," JP said simply. "And neither should you."

Alix set her jaw.

Don't tell me how to run my interrogation, she wanted to snap but she knew better. She would have to let it slide for now, if she wanted any answers at all.

"Alright, next question: What did you do to Henri?" she asked tersely, forcing her face to remain impartial.

She would not show this bastard fear.

"I didn't do anything to anyone," JP replied snippily. "But don't worry, my partner was quick. Henri wasn't going to be of any use. He and Camille were worth more dead than alive anyway."

"Not like Toulouse," Alix guessed. Jean-Pierre stared her down, his startlingly gray eyes piercing her like a spear.

"Toulouse was more trouble than he was worth," he practically spat. "Three days of continuous torture and still no information. What a waste of time.

Someone finally had to shut him up for good on the fourth day because he wouldn't stop singing 'Le Chant des Partisans' at the top of his lungs and it was riling up the other prisoners."

Alix couldn't help but smile.

"Le Chant des Partisans", the song of the Resistance.

Leave it to Toulouse, the eternal optimist, to be rallying others until the end.

“I’m glad he gave you trouble,” Alix uttered acerbically, fire blazing in her dark brown eyes. “I hope he cursed you all the way to his grave.”

She couldn’t imagine the look on Toulouse’s face when he discovered that it was a friend who had betrayed him, who intended to destroy everything he’d built…The thought hurt too much.

Jean-Pierre turned his cigarette pack over and over in his hands, studying it meticulously before looking up, his flint-sharp eyes boring holes into her.

“Is that what you’re going to do, Jules?” he asked. “Curse me all the way to your grave when you go?”

He didn’t look afraid, just amused, like he was watching a particularly clever rat slowly navigate its way through a maze.

Alix glared at him.

His deliberate nonchalance was tap-dancing on her last nerve and she’d just about had enough.

“It’s Juliette,” she said coldly. "Jules was for friends.”

JP cocked his head curiously.

“We’re not friends anymore, Jules? Pity, I actually liked you.”

Alix once again found herself resisting the temptation to throttle the kid into unconsciousness.

"You’re a duplicitous piece of shit and I should've seen it sooner.”

“Agreed," JP acknowledged evenly. “But it's in your nature to care about people, to your own detriment. Your loyalty makes you naive."

He gave her a look filled with sickening pity, as though she were a bird with a broken wing, and she was struck by how much older he looked. The intelligence game had aged him. He looked too tired, too bitter, too malicious for a boy of nineteen.

"This is what happens when you care about people, Jules," he stated with a general gesture around them. "In our business, caring for people is their death sentence. Toulouse, Henri, Camille…You did this to yourself."

Alix's heart jumped into her throat. It felt like she was being strangled, like someone had sucked all the air out of the room, and her eyes were beginning to burn.

JP’s words echoed not only around the church but in her head as well:

This is what happens when you care about people…You did this…You did this…

Alix cocked the gun at her side with a click.

"Interrogation’s over, JP,” she said quietly, getting to her feet. “Stand up, unless you want to die on your ass.”

“So soon?” Her former friend remained seated, raising an eyebrow as he searched her face for any sign of weakness. “Did I hit a nerve, Jules?”

“Of course not,” Alix lied, thanking God that her training had been good enough to mask most of her emotions even in a foreign language. “Like you said, business is business. Now get the fuck up.”

Jean-Pierre didn’t move.

“You really think killing me is going to wash all that blood off your hands?” he inquired, watching her expectantly from his seat with those ice-cold eyes, like a bird of prey staring down its dinner, searching for a weakness to exploit.

“You think it’s going to make you a ‘better person’?”

He barked out a hollow laugh.

“Because I hate to break it to you, Jules, but we’re in a war zone: There are no good people.”

"There are still good people, JP,” the OSS agent replied, her broken voice barely above a whisper. “My mistake was thinking you were one of them."

#Band of Brothers #BoB #FireOnFire #Band of Brothers fandom #Band of Brothers fanfic #espionage fanfic #spy fic #Alix Martinelli #BoB fic #Joe Liebgott x OC #Joelix #OSS #FOFChapters

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