Prosper (War Shadows: Book 1) SAMPLE

i-iv. Opposition

The town of Fresnes, located just thirty minutes outside Paris, was a very beautiful town, where ancient stone churches mingled with cars and powerlines. The German occupation had turned it on its head, however, and even after two years of occupation, the citizens were weary of the soldiers who were stationed there. Heinrich Krüger, who'd been there since the beginning of the occupation, sometimes found it strange how everyone still looked at his Gestapo uniform in fear; even the people who worked at the boulangerie where he got his breakfast every morning (damn pain au chocolate; it would be the death of him someday, he was sure of it) would stare at him in fear every time he came in.

Of course, when days like that one came along, he began to understand it more: who wouldn't be afraid of someone that could have them killed with just a flick of their wrist?

The day was chilly, with a bright blue sky dotted with only a few clouds and a slight breeze that made the red, orange, and yellow leaves dance and sing in the trees. Nooses were hanging from the ceiling of Fresnes Prison's execution chamber, with old, wooden stools beneath them. On the other side of the room stood members of the Abwehr and Gestapo, all of whom, like himself, had worked on bringing down the Carté Organization, a resistance network that had operated in Paris. It had almost been three months since they'd first begun to arrest the agents involved with them, and only now were they seeing the demise of the last few members of the network.

As they waited for the prisoners to be brought in, Bergfaulk, an overweight Abwehr agent he'd had the displeasure of working with, walked up to him. He couldn't help but notice the powdered sugar smeared across his lips, likely from the countless beignets he'd shoved into his mouth like some sort of human assembly line.

"I thought that you were squeamish," he said. Of course, he did. Most of the people he worked with thought he was that way, mostly because he didn't normally attend executions; he always thought it was more important to do his job - tracking down spies, keeping order in the prison, arresting Jews - than it was to watch prisoners die. That day, however, was the exception. He'd worked three months on bringing down this network, and he thought that it might be a little more rewarding to see this job through to the end this time than to just receive a pat on the back for what he'd accomplished.

"No, I'm not squeamish," Krüger said. "I prefer to do my job rather than watch men die for doing theirs. I'm sorry if that offends your primitive tastes."

Before Bergfaulk could respond, the prisoners - four men and one woman - were marched in. It was obvious that their months in prison had taken a toll on them. Where they once walked with a quiet confidence in their steps and their heads held high, they now walked with hunched shoulders and their heads down, waiting for another boot to kick them, another hand to slap them, or another butt of a gun to hit them. The men's faces had become prickly from beards forming, the woman's hair had turned into a greasy mess and her face was covered in tear streaked grime; the people that were brought into the room were not the same ones that entered the prison three months earlier.

After each prisoner was helped onto a stool and a noose was placed around their necks, their names, crimes, and sentences were read out loud; however, Krüger didn't listen to most of them. If he hadn't been there for their arrests, he'd been there for their interrogations. As the names were read out, he remembered where each of them had been arrested: a back alley behind a butcher's shop for one, the steps of a cathedral with a priest and a few church goers acting as concerned onlookers for another; however, he remembered the woman's arrest the clearest. She'd managed to avoid arrest the longest of any member of the network, long enough that they almost gave up all hope of finding her. Krüger had finally gotten a tip on where she was, though, and had tracked her down to a train station, where she was about to get on the afternoon train to Bordeaux. When she'd seen him, she'd frozen up in terror and actually passed out on the platform; if he hadn't caught her as she fell, she would've smacked her head on the concrete platform. It seemed that he'd saved her from one fate just for her to meet a different one.