Topaz - Leon Uris [95]
“Shut up, Robert!” Jacques ordered. “God, let me think ... that bastard ... that bastard!”
There was a sharp knock on the door. They all looked to it in terror.
4
ANDRÉ OPENED THE DOOR. They saw a small, stout man who gave off an air of professional eminence.
“I am Dr. Aumont,” he said, “the director of one of the sanitariums. May I come in?”
The curious visitor looked from one to the other. “You boys are escapees, are you not?”
There was no answer.
“Come, come now,” Dr. Aumont said, “I’m not going to turn you over to the police.”
André ignored Jacques’ shake of the head. “What does it matter, Jacques? Yes, we are escapees.”
“For what reason?”
“We are from along the Cher River. Our underground took Jews over to Vichy.”
“All right, boys, you can be easy. I am the head of a group here in Cambo who keep an eye open for escapees. We have set up a fund to help our boys get to the fighting forces.”
André leaned his face against the windowframe and the cheap lace curtain brushed against his beard and tears came to his eyes. “Thank God there are some decent Frenchmen left.”
“All right, boys, you must leave immediately ... now. You will make it to the village of Espelette. It will take several hours. Find the Berhard Inn. A waitress there named Geneviéve will find you a hiding place and will obtain a Basque guide to take you over the mountains.”
“Dr. Aumont, I can’t tell you ...”
“No time to tell anyone anything. Who is the leader?”
The other two nodded toward Jacques Granville. He handed Jacques a packet of bills, a hundred and fifty dollars in American money, and explained their worth in francs.
“Now you must bargain hard with the Basque guide,” Dr. Aumont instructed. “He will take you over for thirty dollars a head, but halfway through the passes he will try to extort more money out of you on the threat of leaving you alone in the mountains. Give him a few more dollars and promise him a few more when you reach Spain, but hide part of the money. I suggest you tie it around your waist. Well, good luck.”
They found Geneviéve in the Berhard Inn, and she fed them and hid them in a corncrib. All save Jacques, to whom she took an immediate liking. He had another bed for the night.
At the first light of dawn, a gruff, blocklike, leather-faced man dressed in heavy sheepskin and fur leggings appeared at the corncrib.
“I am Ezkanazi, Basque guide. I take you to Spain. Three thousand francs each before we start.”
As good Frenchmen they bartered and bickered before they struck a deal. Geneviéve fixed them each a small sack of cheese, bread, and a bottle of wine. The party then headed toward the bleak, foreboding mountains.
The smuggler trails known to centuries of Basques were made for goats rather than men. They climbed into the jagged wilderness with a howling wind beating the warmth from their bodies. Breathing became a struggle as they ascended higher and higher to the fringes of eternal Silowfielus.
The Basque cursed at their slowness but to no avail. By late afternoon, Robert Proust slumped to the ground, a beaten man. Heart pounding, throat caked from dryness, he mumbled that he could not go on.
Jacques and André dragged him to his feet. Then Jacques punctured him in the seat of the pants with a hypodermic needle that Dr. Aumont had given him filled with caffeine to sustain energy.
Darkness crept over the mountaintops. Ezkanazi stopped.
“More money,” he said.
They argued frantically.
“More dollars or I leave you here to find your own way.”
Jacques handled the situation masterfully, and paid some and promised some. The Basque snatched the money angrily and grumbled, then led them off the path into a high pasture where they came to an abandoned shepherd’s hut.
A fire was built and they nibbled listlessly at their food. Robert was shivering and moaned himself into a fitful sleep filled with high-altitude hallucinations.
André and Jacques took turns sleeping and sitting with their backs propped against the door, so the Basque would not try to escape.
The next day when they reached a small farm and were