Volk by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Open Road Media

• • •

On the third day the news changed. “The Paris train is now available,” the officer said. “However, we have received word from General Franco’s administration that he has changed his mind and will not permit the Jews to cross the Pyrenees. Therefore other arrangements will have to be made, and you are free to go home.”

“But the money,” she said. “I must take the money back.”

“I have no authority to release funds to anyone. Appropriate application must be made and approved.”

Quality felt the sinking of her heart. “How long will that take?”

“It is hard to say. Perhaps only a week.”

And perhaps never. She knew what she had to do. “Then I must make the application. Do you have the proper forms?”

He rummaged in the desk. “It seems not. But you may write it out on a separate sheet. We are not such sticklers as the French for such things.”

She wrote out a request, knowing that the format hardly mattered. They were now entering a different phase of the game. She gave it to him. “Is it all right to inquire tomorrow, just in case there is a quicker approval?”

“Of course, Mädchen.”

And tomorrow, or the day after, as her personal money ran out and she became increasingly desperate, the officer would suggest that the approval might be expedited if certain conditions were met. In this manner, without violence or even open coercion, she would become an officer’s mistress. She had been warned of the way of such things in Spain. Enlisted soldiers raped, but officers had higher class methods.

She packed and went immediately to the train station. There was a train to Nantes, near the coast. That wasn’t where she wanted to go, but she took it anyway. She had to be out of Paris and far away before anyone thought to check on her. That was why she had written out the application: to gain a day’s time. Otherwise she could have found it impossible to leave Paris. That, too, was the way of it.

She breathed a silent sigh of relief as the train departed without challenge. She was on a legitimate mission, until someone thought to make a unilateral cancellation of it. If she cleared Nantes before tomorrow morning, she should be too difficult to trace, and they would not bother.

At Nantes she caught a train to Bordeaux, and thence to Toulouse, exhausting her money. She was hungry, being unable to buy anything more, but would survive.

But when she went to get her truck from the garage, there was another problem: she had paid for only three days, and it was now a week. She owed for four, and she had no money.

“There is a way,” the garage proprietor said, understanding her plight, which it seemed was not uncommon.

“No!” she said. She did not know what she was going to do. She couldn’t walk across the Pyrenees, even if well fed, which she was not. It was just too far.

“You misunderstand,” he said. “Look at me; I am an old man.

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