The Iron Storm by CW Browning (classic literature books TXT) 📕

have seen a blue Citroen filling up that morning. It was a filling station just outside the city where he’d finally had some luck and found what he was looking for. The owner remembered the Citroen. It was driven by a young man and he had a young woman in the car with him. That was a surprise to Eisenjager, but not something that would cause any significant difficulty. He would simply have to adjust how he approached Jens now that he wasn’t alone. He didn’t care who the woman was. She was irrelevant. Jens was his target. After talking to the station owner for a few minutes, he left knowing which road Jens had taken, and which direction. He was going to France, along with hundreds of others who had gone past that same station.

Once the lights of the border had disappeared behind him, Eisenjager pulled to the side of the road and switched on the interior dome light. He pulled out a road map and opened it, spreading it over the steering wheel while he studied it pensively. Jens would head to Paris, of that he had absolutely no doubt. He would be assured of finding lodging and help in the nation’s capital. He would have despaired of his quarry already having reached the city of lights, but he knew that he would have been stuck in the same slow-moving traffic that Eisenjager had been. He was no doubt already in France, but he wouldn’t be very far ahead.

Rubbing his eyes, Eisenjager focused on the map, stifling a yawn. If there had been any doubt at all regarding the path Jens had taken, it was dispelled this evening when he stopped at a roadside market stand. They had just been closing up, but he’d managed to get their last bag of apples. While he was talking to the woman, he asked if a blue Citroen had passed by recently. Her tired face had lit up at the question and Eisenjager had his answer. It transpired that she remembered the young man because when he was pulling back onto the road, she noticed that one of his tail lights was broken. She’d thought about waving him down to tell him, but had decided against it in the end. After all, they had enough to worry about right now and she didn’t think a broken light was of any importance when weighed against the invading German army. He was such a nice young man. She hoped he made it somewhere safe quickly. She hoped they all did.

After deciding on his route, Eisenjager looked at his watch. It was late and he was tired, but he couldn’t stop. He reached into the bag on the passenger’s seat and pulled out an apple, biting into it as he switched off the light. He folded the road map again and put it on the seat next to the apples, then pulled back onto the road. This route would take him into Maubeuge where, if Jens had any sense, he would have stopped for the night. From there, it was a fairly straight drive to Paris. With any luck, he’d catch up with Jens before he reached Paris the following day.

Evelyn looked up at the soft knock on the door. Josephine had ensured that she and Jens had eaten before showing her upstairs to a small room in the eaves of the old, sprawling farmhouse. The room had a bed and a nightstand, and was graced with the smallest window she had ever seen, but it was clean and warm and Evelyn was very grateful to have it to herself. Jens, she knew, was sleeping in the same room as Luc tonight. At least she had her own space to call her own.

“Enter!” she called, lifting her nightgown out of her suitcase.

Josephine came in, ducking under the low doorframe and looking around.

“I came to make sure you have everything you need,” she said with a smile, closing the door behind her and crossing over to the bed. She dropped down next to the open suitcase and glanced inside cursorily. “Have you got everything?”

“Yes, thank you.” Evelyn set the night dress on the bed and closed the case, latching it again. “I appreciate your letting us stay for the night. I don’t know how much further Jens could have gone, and he was adamant that I not drive. I think he’s afraid that I might be a terrible driver.”

“And are you?”

“No.”

Josephine laughed. “I don’t imagine you would be,” she said, watching as Evelyn lifted the case off the bed and set it next to the wall under the small window. “I think you probably excel at anything you put your mind to. Are you really on your way to Paris?”

“Yes. Jens wants to make sure I make it back safely.”

“Oh I know that’s where he thinks you’re going, but is it really?”

Evelyn chuckled and turned back to the bed, her eyes meeting Josephine’s. “Briefly. I’ll be taking a train to Calais.”

The other woman nodded and leaned back against the headboard, making herself comfortable.

“I thought so. How is Bill these days? I haven’t heard from him since you came to see me in Metz.”

“He’s fine, I believe. Rather tired, but that’s to be expected, I suppose.”

“We all are these days.” Josephine shrugged prosaically. “It’s just how it is.”

“But what are you doing here?” Evelyn asked, sitting on the foot of the bed and stretching out on her side facing her friend. “Why aren’t you still in Metz?”

“We’ve been going back and forth over the border to Belgium, gathering information. I was sent here last month, shortly after I saw you in Metz. Marc was already here, and we pulled in the others over the course of the past month.” Josephine’s lips twisted. “I go where I’m told, my dear, even when it’s an old, drafty farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.”

“Where are the farmers?”

“Do you know, I have no idea? I think they’ve probably