Games at Deauville

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Barry had been sedated a second day and lay in his room, dreaming whatever dreams morphine imparted those injected with it. I didn't envy him the pain or the necessity to relieve it. I also did not allow myself to worry that morphine was a derivative of opium, an addictive drug. I wanted to get him home to England where I knew he would receive the best care in the world.

Dunham was secreted in Barry's room. Less than ten minutes earlier, I'd peeked out into the sitting room and saw that the door to his bedroom stood slightly ajar. A moment later, the man had told me to get back to my room and to stop offering my head for target practice. The Brigadier was on duty. I gripped the pistol he'd given me earlier and returned to my bed with no increased sense of security for its presence in my hand.

It was silent in the château. But I could not sleep, it was much too early for that—only a few minutes before eleven. I wasn't allowed to read, however. Dunham had insisted that I have no light in my room. Bored, I tried to sort out what could be going through Gisele von Kys' mind to entice her to follow through on this caper.

Janus had once intimated that his wife was insane when he was still alive, but the strikes against my home and my person this past week forced me to believe my dead friend. I lay back against the pillows of my bed and allowed my thoughts to roam freely.

It took an insane person to launch an attack on my home. True, the presumed goal was to retrieve Willi—but she could have done so through the courts when I was seeking to adopt him. No English court of law would have awarded him to me, no matter his father's will, if his natural mother had made any effort to thwart me. Instead, she had remained silent in Berlin and allowed me to gain legal custody and even adopt the boy. And, all the while, she'd plotted an armed expedition against my home.

Worse, it had been a two-pronged attack with more military precision than any one had reason to expect. The second prong had been aimed at me personally. That was the most insane part of her whole scheme.

Admittedly, I would have been quite miffed at someone who had shot me and left me unconscious in a stables that was about to burst into flames. In that regard, I couldn't see that I was different from her.

But Gisele had carried it further than simple anger. Much further. She had set out to kill me and destroy my home. To destroy Petersholme. And she had done so in her official capacity within Germany's ruling party's military arm. She had involved her government, making my destruction a German goal.

I allowed myself to wonder if I would ever again be able to move about freely, like any Englishman had the right to do. And I knew that I wouldn't—not as long as Gisele von Kys remained alive.

But I would not be able to kill her tonight. I could disarm her. Even wound her if it came to that. But I could not conceive of killing her, or any woman.

The slightest creak sounded as the door from the sitting room to the corridor opened. I sat upright, staring at the closed door of my bedroom and gripping my pistol.

I forced my heart out of my throat and slipped silently off the bed. In a crouch, I hurried to the position behind the door that I'd given myself earlier. Holding my breath, I listened for another sound.

It was as still as a grave.

Light flared and wobbled beneath my door. An electric torch, I guessed.

"Which room did your whore say was his?" Gisele asked in a hoarse whisper.

I pressed my back against the wall. I allowed myself to wonder how the woman could be so stupid as to think that we would not defend against a second attack. I blanked that out of my brain as the light beneath the door grew brighter as someone approached it. I reckoned that her companion had told her where to find me—the same companion who had set her up for this with Dunham the night before.

"Kill the Baron's Drecksau, Obersturmführer," she said and I heard her step towards my door.

In the dim light, I watched as the knob turned and, in a moment, the door begin to open. I saw the cone of light from her torch touch the wall opposite me and begin to search my bedroom as the door continued to open.

I held my breath, my finger on the trigger of the pistol at my waist, pointing at the door where I assumed her body to be.

"Verdammt!" she hissed. I saw her gloved hand holding the torch then.

"Halt!" a voice in French commanded.

The light arced crazily back across the room, as Gisele pivoted to see who had interrupted her.

* * *

D'Orléans reached the first floor landing and positioned the three gendârmes behind him in a line that spread across the corridor. His hand closed on Pettigrew's arm. "You come with me," he whispered. "And not one sound, Englishman."

They moved silently along the corridor towards Baron Petersholme's apartment. D'Orléans saw the torch switch on and hurried his pace, pulling the unresisting Pettigrew along with him.

The door to the sitting room was open. D'Orléans squatted before moving into the open doorway. Two of the gendârmes took up positions on either side of the door while the third slipped past him and entered the sitting room.

To his right, he could make out a large figure with a lighted electric torch in one hand and the knob of a door that was partially open in the other.

"Halt!" he commanded, aiming his revolver at the figure.

"Verdammt!" the figure hissed.

D'Orléans was surprised to hear a feminine voice. He watched as the light quickly swung around towards him. "Drop the torch, Mademoiselle," he ordered her, but it had already moved to blind him.

Fire exploded in his arm then. In reflex, he squeezed off a round at the woman as she fired a second time.

All of the gendârmes fired and continued shooting as the large female figure jerked. Her pistol lowered and slipped out of her hand as her legs buckled. She looked down at the floor before looking back at d'Orléans.

"Drecksauen!" she grunted as she collapsed to her knees. Her gaze never left d'Orléans as her body began to topple forward.

* * *

"Hold your fire!" I called from behind the door where I'd been hidden when the fullisade began.

I stepped out from behind the door as Dunham opened the door to Barry's room. "He's one of ours," I cried to the Frenchmen. "Don't shoot!"

"Switch on a lamp," Dunham ordered as he stepped into the sitting room, speaking French with no accent. "We need to see to sort out this mess."

When the light came on, I saw a young German was standing against the far wall, his hands over his head. I wasn't the only one who saw him; two gendârmes pointed their revolvers at him. He glanced to Brigadier Dunham fearfully. "Bitte," he pleaded.

"Le Comte is shot," the third gendârme told us.

"Hold your fire," I told the two covering the German and stepped over to Philippe. He held his left arm over his chest and the whole left side of his uniform jacket was soaked. "Where are you hit?" I asked.

"The arm," he answered.

"Let's see."

"See to your traitor first, Robert. He's in the corridor unless he's escaped."

I looked to the open doorway and saw Pettigrew move to look into the room. "What's this about you being a traitor, lad?" I asked.

He looked at me sheepishly. "It seems our French captain thought I wanted you left unprotected."

"You had the policemen occupied then?" Dunham asked, moving to stand beside the German.

"Just as you ordered me to do, Brigadier," Pettigrew answered.

"Good."

"This German is one of yours?" d'Orléans growled. I noticed that he'd begun to pale.

"He's one of ours," Dunham told them. "Now, we need to get him out of here so that he and his driver can get to Paris."

"Who is he?" d'Orléans demanded.

"No names, gentlemen," Dunham told them as Elizabeth ran into the room and stopped beside young John. "There can't be any record of him being here."

"Elizabeth, Pettigrew," I called them to me. "Help me with Philippe. Elizabeth, you get some water and, John, help me strip off his tunic and blouse." She leaned the shotgun against the wall and was gone. I heard the echo of her running down the corridor beyond the door.

Admittedly, I knew little about treating gunshot wounds, but there seemed to be far too much blood. Barry had not bled as much.

"Are there men at the foot of the servants' stairs?" Dunham asked the two gendârmes still guarding the German. One nodded. "Good thinking. I'll need one of you to go back downstairs via the grand staircase and approach your men normally." He pointed to the fittest looking man. "You. Tell them that all is well and that we'll be coming down." He looked to a second man as the first sprinted out into the corridor. "You'll come with us."

"One of them needs to call a doctor," I said. The first man slipped into the hallway.

Dunham stepped over to Gisele and felt her wrist. "She's dead," he told the room in English.

"Was bedeutet 'dead'?" the German asked.

"Tot," the MI5 agent told him.

I glanced up in time to see a smile tug at the German's lips.

Pettigrew had knelt on d'Orléans' other side as I unbuttoned his army tunic. He helped the Frenchman slip his good arm from the sleeve. With his help, I had Philippe stripped to his waist in moments.

He had taken Gisele's bullet in his upper arm. Fresh blood welled in the jagged wound with his every heartbeat. "Give me your belt, Pettigrew," I told my countryman.

I didn't know if d'Orléans' artery had been nicked but, from his paleness, I thought that a tourniquet wasn't a bad idea. Pettigrew didn't argue. He quickly stood and pulled off his belt to hand it to me.

I was fixing it to d'Orléans' arm at the shoulder when Elizabeth returned. "Is he going to be all right?" she demanded as she came up to us. Pettigrew took the bowl of water from her and she knelt at Philippe's head, cradling it in her lap.

"I think so," I told her. "I've had the doctor called."

Pettigrew reached for the flannel in the bowl of water and squeezed it before beginning to clean the Frenchman's arm.

"It's nothing," Philippe mumbled and tried to pull his arm from John. Pettigrew was having none of it, however, and held him in place against his thigh.

D'Orléans attempted to sit up but instantly collapsed back against Elizabeth before his head left her lap.

"Fiddlesticks!" she yelped, looking down at him. "You lie still, Philippe." Her hands went to his cheeks and she looked up at me then, her eyes searching my face. "Robbie—?"

"I've stanched the flow of blood, Liza," I told her. "And John is cleaning the wound. We'll have a doctor here soon. He'll be fine, you'll see."

I glanced over to where Gisele's body lay. Even with the greatcoat around her, she appeared to have put on weight since I'd seen her in Berlin only two months earlier. Relief flooded over me then. Willi was mine now—totally. There was no one left in Germany to try to claim him.

Brigadier Dunham motioned Schmidt to him before turning to the gendârme he'd designated to join them. "We need to get this man back out to the woods so that he can make his escape," he told the Frenchman. The gendârme nodded and led them into the corridor.

"Swear to me that there will be no record of our agreement in France," Schmidt said as he followed the intelligence officer to the servants' stairs.

"There won't." Dunham assured him as they followed the Frenchman down the steps to the ground floor. "Officially, the Obersturmbannführerin and an accomplice will have broken into the château on an ill-conceived mission to murder Lord Petersholme. The accomplice will have escaped when Petersholme's guards fired at them."

"That'll be good," Stefan told him as he stood at the outer door. "I can make up a story that fits that record."

"We have everything we need from you, Obersturmführer. We'll be in touch with you in Berlin," Dunham told him as he opened the door for the German.

Schmidt paused and looked back at the Englishman. "Your man in Berlin must be very discrete, Herr Brigadier. I don't want to return to Berlin only to have my head chopped off."

"No one will know," Dunham promised.

Schmidt nodded and stepped out into the night.

NEXT CHAPTER

First posted 2006
Updated 2 July 2025