Original Novel Excerpt used for Video
Chapter 3: "Meeting Sarah"
The Emigres By David Hyde Robbins
(work in progress)
Chapter 18 --- Air Routes
Annette Benoit was a good bush pilot who had come to love cruising at treetop level at dusk just as the sky was deepening into night. Here she was in her element; nothing else, not even the war, seemed to matter. Being surrounded in the orange glow of sunset and alone with only the gargle of the sturdy little Cauldron Pelican’s engine to link her imagination to the real world added a calming presence to her solitude. Flying. There was nothing like it.
But she knew the Benoit Corporation with its airstrip in the Alps wasn’t her destination this time. All her brother Leon had been told over his wireless radio was that Annette would be flying a wounded woman to Geneva. She had prepared the backseat of the Pelican with a dirty duvet covered with a newly-laundered quilt to keep the passenger comfortable.
She spied the dim clearing of land ahead where she would be touching down. She had landed in this field outside of Roanne a few months before on a day mission, and remembered the landing had been rough. Too many ruts in the brutally hewn field which caused her plane to fishtail and nearly topple over. She was told that, this time, a proper runway now with lights will have been set up.
It was an unusually clear evening yet darkening quickly, as evenings tended to do in February. Through a squint into the distance Annette was able to take a bead on a little stone and clapboard farmhouse through the light patchy ground fog 600 feet ahead and below. In the distance to south of it a strip had been plowed; a long stretch of earth, perhaps for planting crops. It had become too dark to determine if this was supposed to be the landing strip.
She signaled her presence by taking a low swoop over the house, then doubled back for another pass as she set the mixture to full rich and slid the throttle forward to full to make some noise. She flew low and around, and noticed a two rows of dimmed lights blink timidly on. The Pelican shuddered as she lined up her approach and let down two notches of flaps. Once lined up on a single row of lights marking her approach at the east end of the runway, she leaned and idled the engine to cut the speed. The plane glided for about a quarter minute until she felt the purchase and squeak of the wheels lighting down upon the runway. It was a good, smooth landing, if a little bouncy. She increased the throttle a little to taxi to the runway’s end, then increased it more and applied the left wheel brake to swivel around to line up for take-off. She saw the runway lights flicker off while she killed the engine. She then noticed two men, one seemingly twice the age of the other, emerge from a shack off the runway and through the low ground fog as they approached the plane. The younger one waved.
“You landed well,” the older man said in French as Annette opened the cockpit door.
“Well, the lights work well. Good job,” she said in French.
“We got them and this portable runway from the Americans,” the younger man said.
Annette struggled from her harness then thumped an index finger on one of the gauges. “Ah. This one was stuck,” she muttered distractedly. “There. Okay it works.” She sidled from her seat and out of the plane. She gave the engine cowling an affectionate pat. She reached back through the cockpit door and pulled out the wool neck muffler she had draped over her pilot’s seat. “Shit. I keep forgetting how cold it gets here so close to the Alps. Paris is about ten degrees warmer.” She flung the muffler around her neck, then looked up at them. She smiled with half her mouth. “So, okay, Monsieurs,” she said in Americanized French, “What do you have for me?”
“We have good wine,” the older man said. “Come in and have some.”
Her smile broadened. “Not when I’m flying, but thanks.”
The younger one extended his hand. “I’m Phillip LeCous, and this is my father, Gaston,” he said.
She took his hand and canted her head to the right. “I’m, uh, Margarite,” she told him, using her resistance handle of Margarite. Then she brightened. “You speak English!”
Phillipe nodded.“You don’t remember from the last time you were here a few months ago? We spoke in English the whole time.”
Her little smile turned wry. “All I remember is that the landing nearly tore out my undercarriage.” She looked back at the makeshift landing strip. This is a definite improvement,” she heaved a sigh as she flicked some stray hair from the shoulder of her flight overalls, “So. What’s the story here?”
“Your passenger broke her ankle while she was running from some German soldiers…”
“ ‘German soldiers?’ Come on, Philippe, call them what they really are…fucking Nazis.”
“Right. She was running from some fucking Nazis, and broke her ankle quite badly. She’s okay to walk Short distances now, though.”:
“Uh-hunh,” Annette said as one of the hired hands placed Shelly’s luggage next to them. Annette took a hard look at the rucksack with the bow and quiver sticking out the top. “A crossbow? Really? Who am I flying out of here? Joan of Arc?”
“Some in her group may think so,” Phillipe mused, “But she’s not French.”
“This is the plane, eh?” Shelly said as she approached walking with a crutch.
Annette took a hard glance at Shelly, then at Phillipe. “She speaks English, too.”
“As I said, she’s not French.”
Annette ventured another look at Shelly over her shoulder, then turned back away. She had the blink of a thought there was something familiar about her, but she couldn’t place it. Shelly served back a nonchalant glance, then a brief, tight and uncomfortable smile.
“Uh, can this thing fly at night?” she asked, more to fill the silence.
Annette twitched a wry smile as she turned to look at Shelly. “Yes. I have flown it …at night… many times.”
She walked back to the Pelican, then fiddled exaggeratedly with the luggage compartment latch to open the hatch. Phillipe handed her Shelly’s little suitcase, and she slid it into the compartment. He then reached for the rucksack. “No Phillipe, I want to carry that with me,” Shelly said.
Annette regarded the sharp pionts of the bolts sticking from the sack “I’d rather you didn’t,” she said. “Pointy things may not do too well in turbulence.”
“But…” Shelly said as she looked at Phillipe as if for his opinion.
He placed his hand on her shoulder. “It’s best to stow it,” he told her, then stuffed it with some difficulty and Annette’s help into the compartment.
Annette turned toward Shelly, and intensified her gaze and canted her head. What was it that seemed so distantly familiar about her? “Come on, now… what’s your name?”
“Uh, her name’s Joanna,” Phillipe said.
Annette knew that couldn’t be her real name, as she knew all of those in the resistance had cover names.
“Yes,” Shelly said decisively. “Joanna.”
“Okay, Joanna. I’m Magarite, then. Well, let’s get you seated here in the back. You should be pretty comfortable there.” She guided Shelly toward the open door, which was wide enough for a rear-seat passenger to climb aboard. Obviously, her passenger wouldn’t be managing this on her own, so Phillipe took Shelly’s crutch and leaned it against a wing strut, then helped Annette to board her. Though the large backseat was a bench style, Shelly could not comfortably lie down. Instead, the best she could manage was to sit diagonally in it with her injured leg as strait out as it could be. “Okay, Joanna,” Annette said as she reached for Shelly’s shoulder to position her. Annette felt her stiffen and recoil. “It’s okay. I’ll need help to harness you in. This’ll keep you from falling out.”
“Oh, shit!” Shelly muttered nervously.
“It’ll be fine, I promise. It’s only a short flight to Geneva…”
Shelly glanced hard at Annette. “How short?” she asked suspiciously.
“I’d guess about 2 hours.” Annette told her as handed Shelly the slack end of the harness belt, then lifted the other end of the strap by its hardware. “You just need to slide this part in there.”
“Uh…hunh,” Shelly said uncertainly
Philippe took the crutch and slid it in to lie on the floor at the base of Shelly’s seat. He craned his head into the cockpit. “Okay, Joanna. Things are gonna be okay. It’s all set up for you in Geneva.” He extended an envelope to her. “This is for you. Fresh papers and some cash in case you need it. Which you will.”
“Really… How much?”
“Five hundred marks should see you through.”
“Marks?”
He grinned at her. “You’ve been in the woods too long, ma Cherie. The Franc is about worthless. Just be careful how you spend it. Switzerland is expensive.”
She took the envelope and struggled to lean forward toward him as best she could in the confined space of the cabin. “Come here, Phillipe. I might have forgotten how to spend money, but I haven’t forgotten how to kiss.” She pulled him to her and they kissed meaningfully. “I’ll be back to see you soon, I’m sure of it,” she told him in a hoarse whisper. “I’ll repay you for all you’ve done for me.” She held up the envelope. “And this.”
Annette sidled into the pilot’s seat and fiddled with knobs and gauges. She wondered how deep it had gone between the two of them, as she’d learned through her own experience that personal emotions never mix with fighting in the resistance.
“So you’ll be okay?” she heard him ask Shelly.
“Yeah, Phillipe. Everything’s jake. I took a few pills.”
Upon hearing Shelly say ‘Jake’ Annette felt stabs of numbness rush up her spine. She’d only heard that distinctly American term used by only one person before. But no. It couldn’t be. She shook the thought away. Impossible! “Uh, I hate to interrupt this tender moment for the two of you. But we gotta go. I heard there’s an ugly front moving in from the west, and we’ll want to be ahead of it.” There was a tinge of impatience in her tone.
“Fly well, Margarite,” Phillipe said as he stepped back.
Annette pulled the cockpit door mostly closed, and slipped on her headphones. She leaned forward, reached under her seat and pulled out another communications headset. She pivoted around on her seat then handed it back to Shelly. “Here. Put these on. It’ll get pretty noisy in here, and this way we can talk through it.”
“Thanks, I think,” Shelly said then struggled a bit to put her headset on.
“Oh, Joanna. Ready?”
“I… guess.”
Annette latched her harness around her. She closed the cabin door and yelled “Clear!” out its open window. The engine caught on as it stuttered and coughed to life.
She turned around and looked at Shelly. “Can you hear me through your headset back there?”
“Uh.., Yeah.”
“Okay. You’ve flown in a light plane before?” Annette said .
“Not that that I’ve ever enjoyed.”
“Alright, then, Joanna, try to sit back and I’ll keep the flight as smooth as possible. I’m pretty good at that. Anyway, we’ll need to stop over in Lyon for petrol and I also have to pick up a little more cargo to fly to Geneva. The stop-over should take no longer than a half-hour.” She noticed Shelly’s quick, nervous smile and nod, and knew she hadn’t heard a thing she said. “Right.” She turned toward the open window and twirled a finger emphatically in the air. “LIGHTS!” She shouted as she reved the engine full for departure. The runway lights flickered on, and she released the brake. The plane moved forward with momentum, and soon went wobbly as it became air-bound. Annette looked out the window to see the lights dim and extinguish 300 feet below.