The list was well-rehearsed. It was unlike Maude Smith to do anything as spontaneous as purchasing airline tickets to Europe. Even to celebrate fifty years of marriage.
It hadn't taken Smith long to learn that it was Gert Higgins who had pushed Maude along. She was the one who had encouraged Maude to buy the tickets without "bothering poor, overworked Harold."
Of course, his first impulse was to return the tickets.
Maude had prepaid for them.
He was going to cash them in just the same. He had even gone so far as to contact the airline from his computer at Folcroft. But at the last minute he hesitated.
Fifty years.
There was a small part of Smith that felt a pang of guilt for the many years of deceit. For the years of placing his own life in danger without concern for his family. For years of being a bad husband.
In the end Smith had kept the tickets.
His wife had been overjoyed. Her reaction had produced even more guilt. The feeling had lasted several weeks.
Later that afternoon Harold and Maude Smith were scheduled to leave for Europe together. A couple in the twilight of their years enjoying a second honeymoon together. And Harold W. Smith had every intention of hating every minute of his time away.
For now, Smith had work to do. As the earliest streaks of dawn painted the sky, Harold Smith crawled through the silent streets of Rye to Folcroft.
Chapter 5
When Claude Civray had first come to work at the old deminage depot in the town of Guise one hundred miles northeast of Paris, he was more than just a little ill at ease. After all, he knew the history of the depository for old mines.
The depot had originally been constructed on the banks of the Oise River. A foolish decision, it was later learned, as no one had taken into account the fact that water had a messy tendency to rust metal. If such a consideration had been entertained, the location would certainly have been changed because no one at the Guise facility wanted the metal casings of the old mines to deteriorate.
It had.
The French government only discovered the shoddiness of its planning when the original facility had blown itself to kingdom come after a particularly soggy spring.
Afterward the Guise depot had been moved far away from the river. It was an easy move. After the explosion, what was left of the base fit into the back of an old dairy farmer's truck.
The accident had occurred back in 1951. The French government was never certain what had caused the base to go up the way it had. It could have been a sudden jostling of stored materials. A guard might have tripped and fell.
Eventually the blame was placed on a single chain-smoking watchman and a carelessly discarded cigarette. However, this was mere speculation. The real truth of what had happened would never be learned. Fiery death had erased all traces.
Claude wasn't sure what had caused the accident, either. But one thing was certain. Given the possibility of even a kernel of truth to the rumor, Claude Civray never, ever smoked at work.
He toured the facility now, cigarettes tucked away inside his pocket, careful of where he stepped. Though it was night, there were small spotlights positioned at strategic points around the various yards and buildings.
Claude found that the lights helped very little. Several had been angled, it seemed, to blind a casual stroller. One misstep and it could be 1951 all over again.
Worse than 1951. There were many more bombs now.
They were everywhere. Even in the shadows cast by the uncertain spotlights, Claude could make out the rusted casings piled high in the open yards. It wouldn't take much to set them off.
France had had the unlucky fate of being a focal point of the two major global conflicts of the modern era. For the French people, even after the armies had left, the wars were not over. By some estimates more than twelve million unexploded shells from World War I alone lay hidden in the fields and forests of Verdun.
The closer an area was to conflict, the more densely packed were the bombs that were left behind. And while Guise was certainly not Verdun, it had still seen its share of military action.
More than its share, if anyone had bothered to ask Claude Civray.
Claude was acutely aware that there were dozens of deaths or injuries every year directly attributed to shells that turned up in unexpected places. French farmers tilling their fields seemed to suffer casualties most frequently.
What was unearthed intact was brought here, to the depot at Guise and others like it. All around the acres of grounds that comprised the storage facility were piles upon piles of unexploded military ordnance.
The French government did try to safely detonate as many of the explosives as they could, but there were simply too many. All would be gotten to someday. In the meantime, they were stored away for that eventuality.
It was Claude's job to watch the bombs rust. And to hope that they didn't blow up in his face. Claude made his way around the far end of the depot. Back here were huge aerial bombs-five feet tall and so thick a man's arms could stretch around the corroded casing and still not meet on the other side. They sat upright on their fins-stranded birds with clipped wings.
Some of the ordnance had been at the depot so long that the earth was beginning to reclaim them. Mud had collected up around the bottommost shells. High weeds grew up around the stacks, partially obscuring them.
Civray rounded a cluster of rotting pallets laden with tons of unexploded 170 mm shells. This spot always made his stomach tingle. It was here that he was at the farthest point of his nightly circuit. He always imagined that this would be the place he would be when the depot went up in flames.
Holding his breath as he did every night, Civray quickened his pace. He stepped around the many stacks of huge shells and back out onto the road used by the demineurs' trucks. He moved swiftly away from the long 170 mm casings.
Only after he was a few yards distant did he release his breath. He had made it.
Claude wouldn't have to tour the yard for another two hours. Moving more briskly now, he made his way back to the main clapboard building near the barbed-wire-festooned gate of the large facility.
When Claude had hiked the quarter mile back to the front of the yard he was surprised to find the main gates open.
There were two large halogen lamps positioned on curving poles on either side of the gate. Insects fluttered crazily in the light.
Claude could make out a line of trucks sitting idle along the desolate dirt road leading into the depot. This was more than just a little unusual. The demineurs never worked at night. It was dangerous enough to stumble around fields in broad daylight looking for eighty-year-old shells. To do so at night would be suicide.
It couldn't be a delivery.
So what was going on, then?
Maurice St. Jean, the second man on duty that night, had been working alone in the main office when Claude left on his rounds. Now there seemed to be several figures moving in the windows of the wooden building. Something was wrong.
Thoughts of 1951 immediately sprang up in Claude's mind.
Heart fluttering, he hurried over to the office.
CLAUDE FOUND several men inside. None was a demineur. St. Jean was nowhere to be seen. As one, the men inside turned to the door when Claude entered.
"What is wrong?" he demanded anxiously. "You are Claude Civray?" one of the men asked. The speaker was old. Perhaps seventy, perhaps older. Though his words were French, they were spoken clumsily. He was clearly a foreigner.
Claude became immediately suspicious. And haughty.
"This is a restricted facility," he said, pulling himself up proudly. "What is the meaning of this invasion?"
The foreigner carried a walking stick. He tapped it on the wooden floor.