The Children of Freedom. Marc Levy

take your bike and stop moaning.

      -Why can’t I have the red one?

      -Because it’s too big for you!

      Claude started moaning again, and I pointed out to him that we were on an official mission and that this was not the time for an argument. He shrugged his shoulders and mounted his bicycle. A quarter of an hour later, pedalling flat out, we were following the route of the disused railway line in the direction of the small former railway station at Loubers.

      

      Emile opened the door to us.

      ‘Look at these bikes, Emile!’

      Emile assumed a strange expression, as if he wasn’t pleased to see us, and then he let us in. Jan, a tall, thin guy, looked at us and smiled. Jacques was in the room too; he congratulated us both and, seeing the red bike I’d chosen, he burst out laughing again.

      ‘Charles will disguise them so they’re unrecognisable,’ he added, laughing even louder.

      I still didn’t see what was funny about it and apparently neither did Emile, in view of the expression he was wearing.

      A man in a vest came down the stairs. He was the one who lived here in this little disused station, and for the first time I met the brigade’s handyman. The one who took apart and reassembled the bikes, the one who made the bombs to blow up the locomotives, the one who explained how, on railway flat wagons, you could sabotage the cockpits assembled in the region’s factories, or how to cut the cables on the wings of bombers, so that once they were assembled in Germany, Hitler’s planes wouldn’t take off for quite a while. I must tell you about Charles, this friend who had lost all his front teeth in the Spanish Civil War, this friend who had passed through so many countries that he had mixed up the languages and invented his own dialect, to the point where nobody could really understand him. I must tell you about Charles because, without him, we would never have been able to accomplish all that we were going to do in the coming months.

      

      That evening, in that ground-floor room in an old, disused railway station, we’re all aged between seventeen and twenty, we’re soon going to make war and despite his hearty laugh just now when he saw my red bike, Jacques looks worried. I’m soon going to find out why.

      Someone knocks at the door, and this time Catherine comes in. She’s beautiful, is Catherine, and what’s more, from the look she exchanges with Jan, I’d swear they’re a couple, but that’s impossible. Rule number one: no love affairs when you’re living a secret life in the Resistance, Jan will explain while we’re sitting at the table, as he introduces us to the way we must behave. It’s too dangerous; if you’re arrested, there’s a risk that you’ll talk to save the one you love. ‘A condition of being a partisan is that you don’t get yourself attached,’ Jan said. And yet he feels an attachment to each one of us and I can work that out already. My little brother isn’t listening to anything, he’s devouring Charles’s omelette; at times, I tell myself that if I don’t stop him, he’ll end up eating the fork as well. I can see him eyeing up the frying pan. Charles sees him too, and smiles. He gets up and goes to serve him up another portion. It’s true that Charles’s omelette is delicious, even more so for our bellies, which have been empty for so long. Behind the station, Charles cultivates a kitchen garden. He has three hens and even some rabbits. He’s a gardener, is Charles, anyway that’s his cover and the people around here like him a lot, even if his accent makes it clear that French isn’t his native tongue. He gives them lettuces. And besides, his kitchen garden is a splash of colour in the dreary area, so the people around here like him, this improvised colourist, even if he does have a terrible foreign accent.

      

      Jan speaks in a steady voice. He is hardly any older than I am but he already has the air of a mature man and his calm commands respect. What he tells us thrills us, there is a sort of aura around him. What Jan says is terrible: he talks to us about the missions carried out by Marcel Langer and the first members of the brigade. They’ve already been operating in the Toulouse area for a year, Marcel, Jan, Charles and José Linarez. Twelve months, in the course of which they’ve thrown grenades at a dinner party for Nazi officers, blown up a barge filled to bursting with petrol, burned down a garage for German lorries. So many operations that the list alone is too long to tell in a single evening; Jan’s words are terrible, and yet he exudes a sort of tenderness that everyone here misses, abandoned children that we are.

      Jan’s stopped talking. Catherine is back from town with news of Marcel, the leader of the brigade. He’s incarcerated in Saint-Michel prison.

      His downfall was so stupid. He went to Saint-Agne station to collect a suitcase conveyed by a young woman in the brigade. The suitcase contained explosives, sticks of dynamite, of ablonite EG antifreeze, twenty-four millimetres in diameter. These sixty gramme sticks were put aside by a few Spanish miners who were sympa-thisers, and who were employed in the factory at the Paulilles quarry.

      It was José Linarez who had organised the mission to collect the suitcase. He had refused to let Marcel get on board the little train that shuttled between the Pyrenean towns; the girl and a male Spanish friend had made the return trip alone as far as Luchon and taken possession of the package; the handover was to take place at Saint-Agne. The halt at Saint-Agne was more of a level crossing than a railway station proper. There weren’t many people in this undeveloped corner of the countryside; Marcel waited behind the barrier. Two gendarmes were patrolling, looking out for any travellers transporting foodstuffs destined for the region’s black market. When the girl got off, her eyes met those of a gendarme. Feeling she was being watched, she took a step back, immediately arousing the man’s interest. Marcel instantly realised that she was going to be stopped, so he stepped in front of her. He signalled to her to approach the gate that separated the halt from the track, took the suitcase from her hands and ordered her to get the hell out of it. The gendarme didn’t miss any of this and rushed at Marcel. When he asked him what the suitcase contained, Marcel replied that he didn’t have the key. The gendarme wanted him to follow him, so Marcel told him that it was a consignment for the Resistance and that he must let him pass.

      The gendarme didn’t care about his story, and Marcel was taken to the central police station. The typed report stated that a terrorist in possession of sixty sticks of dynamite had been arrested at Saint-Agne station.

      

      The affair was an important one. A police superintendent answering to the name of Caussié took over, and for days Marcel was beaten. He didn’t let slip a single name or address. The conscientious superintendent went to Lyon to consult his superiors. At last the French police and the Gestapo had a case that they could use as an example: a foreigner in possession of explosives, and what’s more he was a Jew and a Communist too; in other words a perfect terrorist and an eloquent example that they were going to use to stem any desire for resistance in the population.

      Once charged, Marcel was handed over to the special section of the public prosecutor’s department. Deputy Public Prosecutor Lespinasse, a man of the extreme right who was fiercely anti-Communist and dedicated to the Vichy regime, would be the ideal prosecutor; the Marshal’s government could count on his fidelity. With him, the law would be applied without any restraint, without any attenuating circumstances, without any concern for the context. Scarcely had Lespinasse been given the task when, swollen with pride, he swore before the court to obtain Marcel’s head.

      

      In the meantime, the young woman who had escaped arrest had gone to warn the brigade. The friends immediately got into contact with Maître Arnal, one of the best lawyers at the court. For him the enemy was German, and the moment had come to take up position in favour of these people who were being persecuted without reason. The brigade had lost Marcel, but it had just won over to its cause a man of influence, who was respected in the town. When Catherine talked to him about his fees, Arnal refused to be paid.

      

      The morning of 11 June 1943 will be terrible, terrible in the memory of partisans. Everyone’s leading their own lives and soon destinies will intersect. Marcel is in his cell. He looks out through the skylight at the