“I was thinking about that earlier, around the time when you were telling me not to get nasty again. On that note, you’ll have to tell me exactly when I was nasty at all. But I digress. Let’s say they did split things up. Knowing Mum, she probably gave up her cut because it was dirty money.”
“There you go again. I get it: your mother was a saint. But if that’s so true, then the poison-pen would have to be pretty na?ve to think that the bonds were some lost treasure that would just pop up untouched after thirty-six years. Unless . . . the poison-pen knows, just like the cop was hinting at, that part of the lost treasure can’t be cashed in.”
30
ROBERT
June 1944, outside Montauban
It was late in the day and Robert had been pedaling nonstop for hours. The pain was nearly unbearable. Ten kilometers earlier, he had been forced to make another stop to vomit on the side of the road. Sitting on the slope, he unbuttoned his shirt and looked over the splotchy fresh bruises across his chest and arms. His eyes were nearly swollen shut, his lips puffed up to twice their normal size. Blood flowed sporadically from his nose, and his whole mouth tasted metallic from the blood from his split lip. Robert’s hands were the only part of him left unscathed. They had been bound behind his back, and thus spared the onslaught that the rest of his body had endured for hours on end.
Most of his memories of the torture were hazy, with only small interludes of consciousness. None of that mattered. Robert had neither time for self-pity over what had happened nor the heart to dwell on it. He had only one thought: reach the hunting lodge before the enemy.
Robert at last made it to the foot of the path and threw the tandem into a ditch. He ran the length of the path through the woods, using his last ounce of strength to make the upward climb to the lodge. The loose dirt kept slipping beneath his feet, but he managed to grab hold of branches to keep pushing onward, until the hunting lodge finally came into view at the top of the hill in a haze of smoke.
Everything was calm, far too calm. Robert heard something crackle and crouched down, then made his way cautiously closer to the lodge. When he caught sight of Antoine’s corpse sprawled out on the ground in front of the porch, he knew he was too late. The windows had all been shattered by heavy gunfire, the facade riddled with bullet holes. The front door had been obliterated, leaving only a shredded plank of wood swinging from a hinge.
Carnage awaited him inside. The furniture had been torn to shreds in the hail of bullets, and three partisans lay dead on the ground in a horrific state. It was a grisly scene—one had been disemboweled, the other had lost both his legs to a grenade blast. The third could only be identified by his thick build—his face was completely covered by a mask of dirt and blood.
Robert doubled over and dry-heaved, having vomited all the contents of his stomach on the side of the road. Heart pounding, he scanned the space desperately.
“Sam! Hanna!” he shouted. Nothing but dead quiet in response, no signs of life. Robert rushed into their bedroom and froze in the doorway. Sam was slumped backwards over the foot of the bed, his eyes staring blankly into space, his arm dangling with a pistol resting in his hand. A stream of blood trickled from his temple.
Robert knelt before the body and wept as he closed Sam’s eyes. Composing himself, he pried the pistol from his friend’s lifeless hand and shoved it into his belt. Next, he returned to the porch to scan the woods around the lodge, praying that Hanna made it out alive and was hiding somewhere out there, unlikely as it seemed.
“Hanna!” he shouted. Apart from a crow cawing in the distance, the woods were silent. Robert was terrified at the thought of Hanna being taken by the militiamen, not daring to imagine what might happen to her. He stood motionless for a moment, brought to tears once more as he caught sight of the tree stump where he had sat so often smoking side by side with Sam. The art dealer had told him all about his past, how he had met his wife, how dearly he loved his daughter, his deep passion for art, and his pride at acquiring the precious Hopper masterpiece.