One Shot Kill - Robert Muchamore Page 0,65
he’d been in Paris as a Luftwaffe man copied all his identity details into a ledger and then made him empty his pockets.
Marc left the station office with a square of canary-yellow cardboard which allowed him to enter the Luftwaffe zone and a strip of paper with details of how to apply for a special ration card if he wanted to eat or drink during his stay.
The last stretch was an hour’s walk. Marc felt his emotions rise as he ducked past the orphanage where he’d lived for the first twelve years of his life, reaching Morel’s farm just before three in the afternoon.
‘Are you back to work?’ the farm manager asked eagerly. ‘I lost four workers to German factories. Three more have gone on the run to avoid being rounded up.’
‘Just visiting,’ Marc said.
‘And who might you be looking for?’ the manager asked, before laughing at the absurdity of having to ask. ‘You’ll find her pulling up potatoes between the cow sheds.’
Marc smiled. Although it was relatively safe in the countryside, there was a war on and until that moment he wasn’t even certain Jae was still alive. He bolted off, passing through fields that verged on derelict.
France would face a long and hungry winter if Morel’s farm was typical, but aching legs and doom-laden thoughts vanished the instant Marc saw the girl he loved. Jae had grown a couple of centimetres and farm work had built shoulders atop her thin body. To make the moment more perfect, Jae had her back to Marc, so he crept up.
‘Need a hand with those?’ he asked noisily.
Jae jumped and screamed when she saw who it was. ‘Bloody hell!’
They were both crying as they embraced. Marc gulped Jae’s smell, the mix of earth and sweat dredging up a million memories of the previous summer.
‘I love you so much,’ Marc said. ‘I’ve thought about you every day.’
‘One of Daddy’s Luftwaffe friends mentioned that a plane got stolen,’ Jae said. ‘But I had no idea if you’d made it back to Britain alive.’
‘Our landing was a bit bumpy,’ Marc said, but tailed off as they joined at the lips.
The next ten minutes was all slurps and groping. Jae was always in Marc’s dreams and he half expected to wake up in his campus dorm, breathing Luc’s farts. When they finally broke apart, they backed away and stood admiring one another in a state of awe.
‘So how’s life?’ Marc asked.
‘Horrible,’ Jae said. ‘And not just because I miss you. We’ve got nobody to work the land and Mr Tomas and the requisition authority make our lives hell. He’s never liked my dad, and he’s really had it in for him since you left last year.’
Marc shook his head at the thought of Tomas. As orphanage director Tomas had made Marc’s childhood a misery. When the war began, he’d taken a job with the Nazi Requisition Authority. This much-loathed organisation controlled everything France produced, from trucks to tomatoes, and demanded that an ever increasing share of it was sent to Germany to feed the war effort.
‘Tomas constantly has my dad arrested on charges of black-market dealing,’ Jae explained. ‘It’s like the stress is rotting him from inside. He’s lost his hair. And he was always thin, but now he’s like a ghost.’
‘I can only stay one night,’ Marc said sadly. ‘I’m in France for another mission.’
‘Dangerous?’ Jae asked.
Marc tried to make light of it. ‘When are they not dangerous?’ he asked. ‘But they haven’t killed me yet.’
‘What a hero,’ Jae said, as she gave Marc a kiss. ‘I’ve been arrested too. Three times. The last time Tomas’ mob dragged me off the land in my rubber boots. They put me in a room and wouldn’t let me go to the toilet, so I peed in a boot and threw it in Tomas’ face.’
‘Classic,’ Marc laughed.
‘Daddy told me off. He said I could have got into serious trouble.’
‘He’s not wrong,’ Marc said, but Jae gave him a soft slap across the arm.
‘Don’t take his side. It’s OK for you, gallivanting off having adventures. What do I get? Cow shit under my nails and constant backache.’
‘But you’re the world’s sexiest crap-sweeping potato-picker,’ Marc said cheekily.
Marc turned and ducked as Jae sent a dry clod of earth skimming over his head. Her next shot disintegrated as it hit him in the back and they threw more stuff at each other until Marc fell over and they started snogging again.
*
Even in bad times a family with as much land as