At first it crackled and buzzed. Then the anonymous authoritative voice, which he’d heard deliver announcements countless times, now declared flatly: the invasion had begun. While moving his arm in small circles to test where the knife wound was tender, Thalheim listened to the full report. Enemy maneuvers were now under way along nearly ninety kilometers of coastline. All troops were ordered to shoot any person seen cooperating with the invading forces, as well as any person giving shelter to enemy soldiers, sailors, or airmen.
Thalheim expected orders on where to report, the usual instructions unit by unit. Instead the broadcast ended. He waited, but there was nothing more. He raised his head, finding himself astride a motorcycle with broad fields on either side. He checked his pistol to be sure it was fully loaded. Then he started up, riding full throttle back toward the garrison.
Thalheim’s first stop was the mess tent, where he found a mystery. Normally at that time of day the area would be crowded and loud, hundreds of soldiers stuffing their bellies before the morning change of the watch. But now? No one present, not so much as a punished private peeling potatoes. One feral cat prowled by the serving tables, then spied him and darted out of sight. Tent flaps rose and billowed in the breeze.
He piloted to the supply depot to return the motorcycle. But the controlled place he’d left hours earlier had descended into chaos. The quartermaster was attempting to bring order but it was futile, his waving arms and shrill whistle ignored while senior officers shouted orders, lower ranks and privates ran like kitchen bugs exposed by an overhead light, trucks, machine-gun-mounted cars and half-tracks left without the driver fueling, or signing out, or performing any of the usual formalities.
The captain stood observing, waiting to see if a line would form or hierarchy coalesce. But no, the quartermaster continued to bellow, and departing troops continued to ignore him.
Thalheim rode past a cluster of arguing soldiers, reaching the place where his unit’s vehicles parked. The space, normally filled by three transport trucks, a mobile machine gun, and a command car, was as empty as an old man’s mouth. Whatever glory they were to accomplish that day, he would not be part of it.
Riding back to the motorcycle’s designated place, Thalheim struggled to stifle a surge of shame. He had done nothing wrong. He had followed orders and done his duty, as a good soldier should. The only question was what step he ought to take next.
As if in answer, a shell screamed overhead, clearing the commissary and landing hundreds of yards farther inland—but with an explosion so loud it concussed the air.
What could one man do? He could seek his place, and find his duty. Thalheim checked the fuel in several motorcycles, till he found one with a full tank, whereupon he gave himself authority to commandeer it. The colonel’s reply contained nothing that the Kommandant needed to hear. And Thalheim had to go to the water. He had to see for himself.
Odette sat in her cell, wishing she had possessed the presence of mind before leaving the kitchen to snatch the cheese cutter. A strong thick wire with wooden handles on each end, it would have made a perfect tool to garrote the contemptible Kreutz. The idea of it gave her a bleak satisfaction as she passed the night awake on the bunk, hours elongated because without a window she could not tell when dawn approached.
Yet she must have dozed at some point, because when a fraction of daylight did sneak down the stairwell into the basement, a new guard occupied the stool, and he with soft cheeks and slender, hairless wrists: a boy. The gun and uniform did not matter. With every detonation from above, she saw clearly, he flinched. What use could she make of his youth?
Pierre sat milking the first of his girls, wondering if a soldier would come to collect the pails that day. He patted his wool vest’s pockets again, trying to remember where he had left his pipe. Not in the hayloft, thank heaven. He remembered filling his bowl later, over by the eastern well. But where?
DuFour splashed water on his face, rinsed his mouth with anise, breakfasted on acorn tea. How was it that his loyalty to the occupying army did not merit rationing him some actual tea leaf? He dressed in professional fashion, set his beret in place, all while considering the documents he must process that day, the dispositions and requests, while making sure to allot time for a gloating visit to the café woman in jail.
DuFour paused in the entry of his home, relishing that particular prospect, how humbled she would be. And how pleased the Kommandant, possibly impressed at how his humble clerk had caused the woman to entrap herself. DuFour opened his door with a snap to his step. It lasted only a moment, gone before he had reached the street, as a gust brought thick smoke over the grass, the foul smell of rubber burning. Only then did the old man’s nighttime visit return to disquiet his mind. Should he actually go to work?
Monkey Boy dropped a bit of bark through the branches, watching it tumble. He had spent hours in certain trees, keeping watch, exercising his facility with numbers. Five hundred and five, that was how many dead bodies he had seen so far that morning. Before that day he’d seen only four, bringing his lifetime total suddenly to five hundred and nine. Meanwhile an average of thirty-eight men per landing boat, the ramp dropped and out they poured, the first wave falling from gunfire almost as one, others spilling over those bodies into waist-deep water, and on average eleven of them making it out to the sand.
The astonishing thing? The thing which he did not understand? Behind every landing boat, despite all those bodies lolling in the surf, more landing boats waited, foam at the bows as they surged forward. The ramps dropped and their men fell, and yet the next ones poured in immediately like an unstoppable tide of humanity.
Of ships, he had observed them left to right and out to the horizon more than a thousand, which was as high as he could count, and more. But there was a sense to it: behind the boats that carried soldiers, warships blasted away with their big guns. From time to time a detonation came from the distance, some even bigger battleship too far out to see, which flung missiles inland high over his head. The projectiles were huge. It was as though they were firing Jeeps. Long after the shell had passed overhead, there came a roar like a giant opened furnace, like a detonation of the planet itself, the sound of the shell’s firing delayed by distance, and Monkey Boy cupped his hands over his ears.
Still the sight remained, extending from the beach below him all the way to the horizon. It was the most elaborate, terrifying, beautiful thing he had ever seen. Someone else needed to witness this, and explain to him what it meant. Monkey Boy clambered down his special sycamore in search of someone to tell. But who?