Hunting Ground by J. Robert Janes

explosives.
    Michèle had a passing interest in him; he would die for her.
    And Dmitry Alexandrov, what of him? A White Russian from that quartier , he had about him the air of a closet Communist. Nini had picked him up in a bar and had felt sorry for him, but shouldn’t have. Not with that one. Dmitry probably knew every Russian waiter, chef, and plongeur in Paris, and what they didn’t steal for themselves from the kitchens, some of them would have stolen for him.
    He was twenty-six, short, with the broad shoulders, strong arms, and hands typical of the Russian peasant. A stocky ox with slicked down, flaxen hair, he had invested in a barber for the weekend, had made certain the haircut would last, but was it butter he had used, or the brilliantine of someone he’d met on the street?
    The faded, grey-blue eyes were seldom still, he taking in everything and giving little away. As a student of electrical engineering, the French army should have had him by now, for Paris and all the major centres had been systematically drained of tradesmen by the military. Had he ignored his call-up papers?
    He looked as if eating a last meal, as if searching for a way out, the eyes widely spaced about a cart driver’s nose and hooded beneath the strong, bland forehead with its thick, fair eyebrows.
    Marcel wasn’t particularly fond of him—overripe cheese on a plate of meringues—and was still in that faded blue smock he always wore, the red handkerchief knotted about that swarthy neck, the black beret looking like the drooping pancake of an angry albatross.
    Yes, Marcel Clairmont was being his usual self, smoking his filthy cigarettes, coughing, hawking up wads of phlegm to be chewed, swallowed, or spat to one side, gesticulating like a fisherman, regaling any who would listen with his stories, his lies, his laughter and politics, the paintings he hadn’t sold but was going to. Merde! Some men …
    Janine looked so lovely, fresh and gay. No housework, no meals to get. No children to care for or to keep you awake at night when they’re sick or there’s thunder and lightning or the distant sound of approaching guns.
    ‘Lily, what is it? What’s wrong?’
    Simone had been watching me from the doorway for some time and I, in my bitterness, hadn’t even realized she’d left the table. Jean-Guy and Marie-Christine were with her, haunted eyes surveying their mother.
    ‘Nothing. I’m just worried about this war. I’ll be down in a minute.’
    ‘It’s Jules, isn’t it? Jules and Janine.’
    I nodded. I couldn’t look at her. Even then I wasn’t worried about Jules and the Vuittons. I should have been!
    ‘Jean-Guy, take Marie and go downstairs to your father,’ said Simone. ‘Let me talk to your mother, just for a little.’
    She kissed them both and watched as they walked to the head of the stairs until I felt myself being taken and firmly held. Simone was taller than me, with thick, wiry, dark black hair that fell to her shoulders and was worn back off her brow and teased out at the sides. Her eyes were strikingly grey, the face a smooth, if delicate oval, the slender nose turned up a little and always shiny.
    ‘So what can I do to help?’ she asked. ‘Smack Jules’s face or Nini’s?’
    We kissed on the cheeks. She dried my eyes and somehow got me calmed down, but for a long, long time she simply held me, then we talked, just the two of us as we always did, and finally I told her what I’d done.
    The wine cellar was dank, low-ceilinged, and filled with rows of dusty bottles whose sleep had been left undisturbed except for the spiders. Simone knew of the cave , of course, but even so, was aghast at the bottles of Château Lafite, Château Latour, Château Mouton … ‘ Bon Dieu, de bon Dieu de merde, don’t you two ever touch these?’ she asked.
    ‘Not since Jules’s father died. Now the bottles just wait, and we spend our money drinking other stuff.’
    ‘But why?’
    I shrugged. ‘He has a thing about his