Читать книгу Cry Heaven, Cry Hell - Howard Gordon - Страница 15

Chapter 2

Having established rapport with the Vichy government and the Underground during the war, Rodin was able to operate with a free reign. Because of this he was able to affect a rescue that was based on a connection with his past. A B-17 bomber was sent to blow up a munitions plant that was sending rockets across the channel from the Danish peninsula. It was intercepted by a squad of Messerschmitts and shot down. There were two survivors that had to outrace German troops. Suddenly shots rang out ahead of the crewmen. The Germans lay dead behind them. Rodin stepped out of the bushes and demanded to know who the survivors were. The first one answered, “I am Lieutenant Patrick Mikawber, of the U.S. Army Air Force, and this is Sergeant Corlando Moran, of the same. Rodin had thought that this first one looked familiar. He told him that he knew his father and mother from Lafayette Escadrille. He recounted some of their adventures, and Pat updated him on what had happened to his family and their emigration. He did not talk about his father’s escapades, just mentioned that he had started out as a truck driver and had started his own company (which actually happened).

He wanted to accomplish his mission. The Underground unit and the two flyers planned to disguise them as workers in the plant wearing face masks in the likenesses of two Underground that actually worked there. They sneaked dynamite and fusing in their lunch pails and planted it at various sites in the plant. Corlando almost got them caught when he tried to look up the skirt of a female employee that had bent over to pick up a dropped part. They tied the fusing to the ends of the dynamite sticks, then knotted all the sticks together. When they got out, they tied a knot to another length of fusing and tied this length to the detonator. When the plunger was pushed, the explosion rocked the village, and whatever employees could get out barged through the door. Corlando saw the girl at whom he peeked, run out; he ran up to her and kissed her. After the war, he went back and started a relationship with her.

Now the task was to get the flyers out of the country. They were smuggled out in a boatload of llamas, aardvarks, and anteaters bound for an Amsterdam zoo. After this, they were transported to the Cliffs of Dover at the bottom of a garbage scow. Pat wrote his father and Molly about this adventure and added greetings from Rodin.

Rodin was always serious about his dual role. However, he enjoyed the opposite sex and had an opportunity to meet a woman that thought the war was absolutely the most stupid endeavor entered upon by mankind because she felt that men’s egos were not worth the slaughter in which they were engaged. She also did not approve of the hypocrisy of speaking about protecting freedom and creating a minority of the citizens of the indigenous peoples of the nations they colonized. Her name was Liana Dobrovna, and she worked as a dancer in a local bar. She approached him to buy her a drink, but a Nazi officer wanted her attention and pulled her away from him. He also began to twist her arm. Rodin began to sing “Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles” and embraced the officer, encouraging him to walk outside with him and sing along. When they were out in the alley, the Underground leader took out a knife and stuck the German in the throat. As he walked back, he saw a Frenchman trying to sweet talk her into going home with him. Rodin asked the man what he wanted with his wife. The masher turned white and made a hasty exit. Liana asked La Monde to escort her home. They sang all the verses of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” all the way to her apartment and “God Save the Queen” after which they made passionate love. In the morning, their throats were hoarse, and neither could walk, so they stayed in bed and did it again. Over time Liana began to see the double game he was playing and joined in the duplicity.

Liana caught onto the double game that Rodin was playing and joined him in it. On one occasion, he played a pro Vichy prostitute leading some German officers to a hidden allied air base, in the guise of Rebaza, while she pretended to be an Underground male that had been caught by the Gestapo and traded his life for taking the Nazis to a secret arms cache. They led them into a machine gun nest of American infantry men. The Germans were slaughtered.

The war ended and La Monde and his female companion went to Vietnam under the nationalistic guise they had worked so hard to create. It was 1946, and Ho Chi Minh had organized the Vietminh to further confuse the French, disorganized by the war. A propaganda machine was set up that fed the villages and reminded the people in them about the guillotined youth who had dared to stand up to this European invader that used their women and exploited their resources. They also denounced the Americans that boasted of their democracy, yet backed a colonial power out of fear of expanding communism. He and Liana were part of the anti West propaganda machine. The Japanese had made use of tunnels, as part of their strategy in their Asian war. Liana and Rodin used this, whether or not using this device was an invention of General Giap or a memory of the Japanese invaders. Liana and Rodin became part of training the farmers to use such weaponry against France. They were also part of the movement to not support the monarchy proposed that was within the French Union. Dressed as Rebaza, La Monde railed against the death of a son who had died in the war for France so that they could starve at the hands of this European opportunist that was no better than the Nazis were to them.

Suspicion was being aroused, and the couple had to go underground until the agents of the intruder had started to stop asking questions of the other French colonials. They began to pursue their cover jobs as a photographer for a magazine and a historian from the Sorbonne until Dien Bien Phu, where Rodin caused confusion by going back and forth through the French battleground and the Vietnamese by going back and forth through tunnels. Liana continued to lie low.

After France lost its Vietnam colonial privileges, Rodin and Liana felt that they had to mosey on down the line. Their next stop was Quebec. The Parti Quebec had been agitating for freedom from Britain. But Rodin had other ideas. From the British side, Liana sat in on Parliamentary sessions and brought up the issues of bringing Papist doctrine and Mafia influence to a free country. She also talked about the effect of losing the tourist trade, industry, and trade advantage with France, by having an alliance with part of the British Commonwealth. From the Quebekan side, Rodin talked about America and Britain being allies, and a loss of British protection possibly meaning a loss of friendly relations with America. He also stressed that this could initiate a new version of the One Hundred Years’ War between France and Britain and as well as weaken the economic effects of being tied to Britain, while sacrificing friendly relations with the U.S.A. because of the common Anglo/American history. He also discussed the economic advantages of being tied to the British Commonwealth and the healthy tourist trade with the U.S.A. They lectured at universities in Toronto, Ottawa, Alberta, Manitoba, British Columbia, McGill University, University of Montreal, and Concordia University. They went to resort camps in both Ontario and Quebec to spread their propaganda and create an agitated atmosphere against further connection to France.

Rodin, in one instance gathered a group of students at the park that was made out of the battlefield at the Plains of Abraham and reminded them of the battle fought, in which French clumsiness cost them Quebec, and how France was so unstable after the war that it could not even keep a government together. He reminded them that the French and Indian War was the tail end of the One Hundred Years’ War and, for all the talk of the “Glory that was France”, they lost the war. He also stated that, de Gaulle to whom they were looking for leadership, was hiding in England for a good part of the war shooting his mouth off on the radio, instead of fighting. Of course, both of them gave false names and wore disguises so that they were unrecognizable. This caused the French Government to discount their importance.

They met in Toronto and went to see the museums and a Latin American festival that had very sensuous music and dances that really turned both of them on sexually. That night in their hotel room Liana came to Rodin in a low cut, backless, translucent mini gown that stressed her pointed nipples and her long, shapely legs. She felt his tumescence and took it in her hand. He groaned and started to undress and let her finish the process for him. She lay down on the bed and slowly began to wriggle out of the gown pulling the still swollen Rodin down to her. Before entering her, he began to kiss her thighs and the triangle between them. As he entered her he began to nuzzle her thighs and her hardened nipples and her large apple shaped breasts, touching one and kissing the other. She moaned and begged him to take her. They began to rock together, and the room seemed to shake. They were as one and wanted their lovemaking to go on forever. Their juices met, and they fell exhaustedly asleep in each others’ arms.

They also went to Haiti, French Guiana, and any other place where there might be any hint of French influence to be sought and undermined whatever grain of it was possible. They also repeated the process of using false names and disguises that rendered them unrecognizable. They even went back to France itself and pointed out that the growing population of Arabs was creating a minority that agitated against the past brutalities that occurred when the countries were colonies, and they brought a growing amount of hatred against Jews with them. It was translated by physical individual attacks and destruction of temples. This created pockets of dissension that were expressed in newspapers, discussions in shuls, and meetings of the legislature.

The couple felt that they were achieving a certain notoriety as dissenters, and, in order to prevent the government from launching a full blown investigation, they decided to curtail their activities and concentrate more on lovemaking. During this period Rodin began to question the decision his family held about vengeance, and he began to share his queries with Liana. She, at first, was reluctant to give up the excitement, but it was replaced with an urge for motherhood.

When Rodin met Malkia and Craine in Lafayette Escadrille, he had no idea that he would become so attached to them. He at first saw them as an instrument to learn how to smuggle information to his family, as he saw them do. His aim was to use France to understand their strategy and employ the skills he learned against them in their empire. The love he learned for them marred his clever intention to just use them to learn how to defeat his mortal enemy. This would re-enter his persona when he learned that revenge was a sickness.