A YOUNG SUCCUBUS NAMED DELICIA by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 17 – GUNS’R US

12:01 (Paris Time)

Saturday, November 28, 1942

Kitchen of the ‘Mille et Une Nuits’ Cabaret

Quartier Latin, 6th Arrondissement Paris, France

Paul Dujardin, assembled with the other employees of the cabaret around the radio receiver kept hidden in the kitchen, looked with shock at Marie Laurent, who had also been listening to the news from Radio Paris.

‘’The Germans have invaded the Free Zone? Why didn’t Marshal Pétain’s army resist the Germans?’’

‘’Because that so-called army had no guts, while that old Pétain is too senile to understand that he is only a mere puppet for Hitler.’’ replied Mélanie in a caustic tone. ‘’Hopefully, this will finally wake up a few of those idiots in the South who were hoping in vain to hide from the Germans while doing nothing to help free France.’’

‘’I hope that you are right about that, Mélanie, but don’t count too much on that.’’ replied Marie in a disillusioned tone. ‘’Even after all the abuses and atrocities committed around Paris by the Germans, there are still plenty of Parisians and other Frenchmen who are ready to collaborate with the Germans for money, food or favors, when they don’t do it out of fascist ideology.’’

‘’Well, you will have noticed that very few of those still brag about collaborating with the Germans, Mother. Those who did have mostly died by now.’’ Quite a few of the young women around the table exchanged knowing looks at those words. None knew to what extent Mélanie had been involved in the unmasking and killings of those who had been collaborating with the Germans around Paris, but they all believed that she had played at least an instrumental role in their demise. They also understood by now that Mélanie was a lot more than just talk when it came to fighting the Germans. Unfortunately, save for a very few exceptions, their neighbors around the cabaret still treated her like a collaborator and a despicable prostitute frequenting German officers. The injustice of it all made them sick and also often tempted the girls

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of the cabaret to shout the truth in the face of their more obnoxious and hypocritical neighbors. However, that would have only brought in short order the Gestapo to the cabaret, as some of those sanctimonious neighbors would have been the first to denounce Mélanie in exchange for favors and privileges.

The group had just dispersed out of the kitchen, with the cook having hidden again the radio, when someone knocked on the side service door, situated near the kitchen. Going to that door and looking out through its small window, Sylvie Renaudin saw that two men wearing civilian clothes were waiting outside the door. Them not looking at all like Gestapo agents, Sylvie decided to unlock the service door and cracked it open, its safety chain still on.

‘’What may we do for you, gentlemen?’’

One of the men, sporting a short, trimmed beard, politely raised his worker’s hat in salute while answering her.

‘’Could you please tell Lilie that Paul came to see her with a friend?’’

‘’Uh, of course!’’ said Sylvie, who knew that ‘Lilie’ was Mélanie’s nom de Résistance. Undoing the safety chain, she let the two men in, then locked back the door in their backs before leading the visitors to the kitchen, where she made them sit at the large dining table and put two wine glasses and a small carafe of red table wine in front of them.

‘’Please feel free to drink a bit of wine while I go get Lilie.’’ The second visitor, a tall man in his thirties, didn’t waste time tasting the wine, making an appreciative face.

‘’Hmm, not bad at all, this wine. Just this would justify our visit.’’

‘’Well, Lilie would be worth the visit by herself just for the pleasure of looking at her, Henri.’’ said Paul Romanov before taking a sip of his own glass. ‘’She is easily the most gorgeous girl I saw in my life. She is also a very brave one, apart from being very bright.’’

‘’Decidedly, I am getting more and more impatient to meet such a gem, Paul. We really need her help right now, if what you said about her ability to provide weapons is true.’’

‘’Oh, she never disappointed me in that respect, Henri. She is very resourceful and also has contacts with that legendary British commando unit hiding around Paris. They are probably the ones providing her the weapons she gave to my cell.’’

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Their conversation was then cut by the arrival of an impossibly beautiful teenager who stood a good 175-centimeter-tall. Henri could not help stare at her as she sat at the table, facing him and Romanov, to whom she smiled to first.

‘’Hello Paul! What may I do for you and your friend today?’’

‘’I came for extra supplies, for both me and my friend Henri here.’’

‘’I see! And how much supplies are we talking about exactly?’’ That was when Henry decided to jump in.

‘’Lots of them, Lilie! Let me present myself: Colonel Henri Rol, operational commander of the FTP units in the Paris area. While I have a lot of men willing to fight, I unfortunately have few weapons to arm them presently. However, you have been able to provide in the past many precious weapons to Paul’s cell, which is by far the best armed FTP cell in Paris. I came to see you in the hope that you could help me with more weapons, Lilie.’’

Mélanie stared at Henri for a moment, in order to make a judgment of him. What she saw and felt seemed right to her, so she smiled to him.

‘’Before answering your request, I must caution you that the day when we could realistically fight for the true liberation of Paris is still quite far, Henri. For that, we would need Allied forces to land in strength in France…for good, before we unmask our own forces. What happened in Dieppe last August was not encouraging at all. Now that the south of France has also been occupied, our position is more precarious than ever.’’

‘’What you said was quite true and I must praise the clarity of your military views, Lilie. However, I would need at a minimum enough weapons to start training a cadre of men large enough to be able to mobilize and train quickly a few thousand fighters when the time comes to free Paris. Would you be able to provide at least enough weapons for, say, one to two hundred men, along with good quantities of ammunition?’’ It took only a few seconds to Mélanie to take a decision then. Nodding her head, she got up from her chair and pointed at the rear door of the kitchen.

‘’I believe that I can help you, gentlemen. If you will please follow me.’’ Leading her visitors out of the kitchen, Mélanie made them climb down the stairs to the basement, where the wine cellar of the cabaret was. Once there, she led the two men to a large wooden locker set against one of the masonry walls of the cellar. Grabbing a flashlight hidden inside a nearby box and switching it on, she gave a sober look at the men.

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‘’No one but me and those who provided me with my weapons has seen before what I am about to show you. I will urge you to never describe to others what you are about to see. What I have here is possibly the key to the future liberation of Paris.’’

‘’We understand that, Lilie.’’ said Henri. ‘’We will not say a word about this place to anyone else.’’

‘’Thank you!’’

Mélanie then pushed to one side the wooden locker, unmasking a hole in the wall large enough to let a man step through with his head bent.

‘’This is the entrance to what I call my ‘Ali Baba Cave’. Watch your steps!’’ Now devoured with curiosity, the two communist fighters followed Mélanie down what appeared to be a very old stone staircase that went down steeply for about forty steps before ending in a pitch-black cave. There, Mélanie activated a light switch, illuminating a vast cave with the help of three overhead electrical lamps. Shutting off her flashlight, she then waved her arms around her, showing to the two stunned men the thick piles of crates and the long lines of weapons piled three to four deep all around the cave.

‘’My own treasure cave, gentlemen. What do you think?’’

‘’But, but that would be enough to arm a whole brigade!’’ exclaimed Henri, stunned by the amount of weapons and ammunition he could see around him. ‘’Do you have a written inventory of all this, so that I could choose what I would like to get?’’

‘’I don’t have such a written inventory, Henri, but I do have an excellent memory. My question now would be: would you prefer old French Army weapons, like those I gave to Paul, or captured and stolen German weapons. It would probably be easier for you to find men familiar with French-made weapons than with German-made weapons.’’

‘’True, and I would tend to agree with you on that, but I would still like some German-made weapons, so that my cadres could become familiar with them. After all, captured German weapons will probably become more and more the staple of our armory, in view of how difficult it is to obtain weapons from England.’’

‘’That is also true. I will thus provide you with both types of weapons. However, in view of the difficulties in transporting weapons around Paris, what with all those German checkpoints, I will bring your weapons by small batches to a number of separate caves and crypts of your choosing around Paris. I happen to know in detail the complex of tunnels, caves, quarries and crypts running under Paris and will use them to deliver your weapons. I will now make you tour my little secret domain, so that you could see exactly what I have and thus decide on what you want.’’

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‘’Well, if it would be only me, I would say that I would like all of it, Lilie.’’ replied Henri, grinning. Mélanie smiled at that, both fists on her hips.

‘’Typical man! He wants it all! You will take what I will give you, mister, plus a few good licks on my nipples.’’

‘’Deal!’’

The trio laughed in unison at that, then started going around the piles of crates and weapons, with Mélanie describing the weapons and ammunition as they went. Both the variety and quantity of the weapons, ammunition and explosives stunned but also overjoyed the two communist fighters. At the end of it, Henri brushed his hair with one hand, truly undecided.

‘’Hell, all of your weapons are tempting, I must say, but I agree to concentrate mostly on old French Army weapons and ammunition, plus a few German weapons destined for training.’’

Taking a decision herself, Mélanie gave an encouraging smile to Henri Rol.

‘’Well, no need to restrain yourself too much, Henri. I am ready to give your FTP all of my old French Army rifles, most of my French submachine guns and light machine guns and over half of my French pistols. That would work out to a total of 440 rifles and carbines, thirty submachine guns, twenty light machine guns and 120 pistols. Along with corresponding stocks of ammunition, I am ready to pile on top of that a thousand F-1 fragmentation grenades and a mix of 250 various German-made weapons with their ammunition. How’s that?’’

That announcement left both Henri and Paul grinning like idiots, them not having to hope for so much.

‘’That…that would be fantastic, Lilie!’’ said Henri. ‘’The Franc-Tireurs et

Partisans will never be able to thank you enough for that.’’

‘’It can thank me by shooting up and blowing up Germans around Paris. I will have only one request about the use you will make of these weapons: that you target in priority members of the SS, SD and Gestapo: I truly hate those bastards’ guts! I also believe that the members of the Luftwaffe and of the Kriegsmarine are by and large a much more decent lot than those SS monsters. In fact, Luftwaffe pilots are our preferred kind of German customers here at the cabaret. By specially targeting SS and Gestapo members, we would also rid Paris of the most dangerous opponents to our Résistance members. If we could run those SS and Gestapo bastards out of town and with their tails between their legs, then the better!’’

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‘’Hum, I can see the logic in your thinking. In fact, this could even create resentment between the SS and the other Germans in Paris. I like that idea!’’

‘’Good! Before we discuss together where I will drop those weapons for you, I have one last request: that you test for me something that I cooked up with stolen explosives and grenades.’’

Going to a wooden crate and opening it, she took out what looked like a large tin can from which a wooden handle stuck out, with the lot liberally taped together. Henri and Paul looked at the contraption with curiosity as Mélanie showed it to them.

‘’This is what I call a ‘Lilie Special’. It is a standard German stick grenade; half plunged in an old tin can and around which I melted about two kilos of RDX high-explosives. To use it, you just unscrew the end cap of the handle and pull on the chord inside to initiate its five-second fuse, then throw it. The grenade’s original charge then explodes, initiating in turn the RDX explosives surrounding it. This should be powerful enough to blow up an armored halftrack if thrown under its belly, or to blow off a tank track. Thrown inside a room via a window, its charge, equivalent to about three kilos of TNT, should be enough to kill everybody inside that room. I never had a chance to test one of those up to now. Would you mind doing that for me and then tell me how effective it is? I could give you twenty of those right now for field trials. If they prove useful, I will then make more of them.’’

Henri gently took the hand demolition device from Mélanie and weighed it while examining it closely.

‘’Well, it is much heavier than a normal hand grenade and won’t be able to be thrown very far, but it should make a good antitank device in any street fighting. I will be happy to test it myself, Lilie.’’

‘’Excellent! Now, let’s discuss the delivery points for those weapons…’’

About forty minutes later, both men left the cabaret, very satisfied with their visit and also packing two new pistols as gifts from Mélanie. On her part, the latter now was going to have soon some free space in her cave to stockpile more German weapons and ammunition, something that suited her just fine.

13:18 (Paris Time)

Thursday, December 10, 1942

Apartment building, 181 Rue de la Pompe, 16th Arrondissement

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‘’Get ready, men: here comes Pierre!’’

The four Frenchmen armed with rifles and hiding inside an empty third-floor apartment made sure that the safeties were off their weapons, then pointed them out as discreetly as possible through the two windows of the apartment. Right across the street from their building was the infamous 180 Rue de la Pompe, one of the centers of the Gestapo in Paris. Two uniformed SS soldiers guarded the main entrance of the six-floor apartment building converted into an interrogation and detention center by the Germans and their French collaborators but, due to the narrowness of the street, pedestrians using the street passed very close to those soldiers. Henri Rol was determined to use that factor to get one of his men to come as close to the building and its large ground level windows as possible. He anxiously watched as a solidly-built and muscular man wearing well-worn working clothes and carrying a canvas bag over his left shoulder calmly walked down the sidewalk towards the two German sentries. When the man got close to a German staff car parked in front of the Gestapo offices, less than twenty feet from the sentries, Henri snapped a single word.

‘’NOW!’’

The four riflemen fired nearly simultaneously, aiming at the two sentries. Shot from a distance of less than forty yards, the two SS soldiers fell to the ground, dead or dying. As soon as the sentries were down, the man with the canvas bag quickly took out a ‘Lilie Special’ from his bag, pulled the arming chord and, grabbing the wooden handle with both hands, quickly pivoted on his heels the way an Olympic weight thrower would, then let go his demolition charge. The charge flew in the air for less than six yards before crashing through one of the windows of the Gestapo building, where a number of alarmed Gestapo members alerted by the rifle shots were looking outside. The thrower then ran to take cover behind the parked staff car as soon as he had thrown his device and crouched behind the vehicle while covering his ears and opening his mouth wide. That was well advised of him to do so, as a tremendous explosion blew out all the ground floor windows of the Gestapo building and even projected in the street the bodies of six Gestapo members. The internal explosion, equivalent to that of over three kilos of TNT, was powerful enough to blow up the ceiling of the ground level, destroying as well the first floor and killing its occupants and having enough residual force to seriously damage the second floor. Pierre, with his ears ringing like crazy but being otherwise intact thanks to the cover given by the staff car, then ran away as the other pedestrians

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nearby fled in panic. Henri Rol had a last, satisfied look at the now ruined Gestapo building before patting the shoulder of the nearest rifleman.

‘’That ‘Lilie Special’ did the job splendidly. Time to go, men!’’ Rolling quickly their rifles in an old carpet, the Résistance fighters then hurried out of the building through its back door. By the time the first Germans to react were on the scene, the communists were long gone.