Red Rainbow by G Johanson (top books of all time TXT) 📗

collaborating to save lives and collaborating to ruin lives. Some used it as a tool to get ahead – though he’d done a bit of that. But never at anyone’s expense, bar the Germans. By shaking their hands, he had been able to steer them a fraction towards his and his country’s aims, but such distinctions would be lost on the angry mob. Naturally, his power would save him from a lynching, but his standing could have been tarnished if not for how his war ended.

He couldn’t have planned it better if he’d tried – and the bits he did plan were improved upon by others without his best interests at heart yet still worked in his favour. His arrest and the attempted arson at his workplace cemented his status as a patriot, some even claimed hero. His ill health even worked to his advantage, ‘proof positive’ of his maltreatment at their brutish hands. He came up smelling of roses yet again in newly liberated Paris. Good old Hippocrates took over his treatment, staying over at his townhouse to get him through the worst of it. For now, he was recovering with Marcella at his side. She was staying with him until he recovered – he was told this and accepted it, happy to have her there. How long the recovery time would be for near-death energy depletion from an energy vampire was anyone’s guess. He was fatigued but was working up to gentle exercise, a daily walk round the block. He saw Alexia on one of these walks. He would have thanked her for what she tried to do for him and would have promised her he’d not tell on her, but that wasn’t possible with Marcella by his side. Instead, he merely smiled, a smile that was noted by his nurse cum jailer.

Guillaume had never been to his main home before now. He popped around frequently enough now to fuck up the electrics. The expense didn’t bother César, it was the inconvenience of rewiring that he found a hassle. There was no point doing it until he was back on his feet fully and able to meet him on neutral ground. Patience had chosen to return to her old life but was staying in touch, Hilaire too. Florence – who knew where she’d gone to? César didn’t hate her even though he knew she’d almost accidentally killed him in the rescue attempt – down the guards, down the inmate too. The three gifted members of the Foundation had no control over their powers, which were constant. As she had said, she was not so different. The main thing was that the attack left no physical scars, not even superficial ones.

Forgiveness was easier when someone wasn’t around. César certainly wouldn’t want to see Florence outside his window late at night, that was for sure. The bogeymen were gone now. The hangings and shootings were not over, sadly. Head shavings were back too. Not everyone could forgive and forget. He had acted fast to spare Hector any consequences for his supposed betrayal by having him installed in his offices. This was a temporary position (which Hector felt was beneath him anyhow, hardly on a par with his civil service background), a method of rehabilitating him for his role in the Vichy administration. It was an attempt for his popularity to rub off on Hector – he vouched for him ergo he was okay.

Hopefully, in a few more weeks, months, France would be entirely free, at which point César could look at calling for his family to return home. Life would go back to normal. Any thoughts he’d had about going to Germany as a ‘prisoner’ or on business to infiltrate and manipulate were gone. His powers of persuasion seemed to work better at stalling them than making them follow his ideas. His group had not been militant, that was not their way, yet they’d still made an impact, a foundation for others to build on. He just had to think of a job for Nadine (who was now attending a specialist clinic as an outpatient to help her cope with her sickness as much as possible).

And think of a way of introducing Marcella to his family. She’d returned to stripping, just lunchtimes, coming back with stories of the Americans that wound him up. She tried giving him a Hershey bar that one of them had given her and took umbrage when he binned it. He then asked Miss Cartier to come over to type out a couple of letters for him when he knew Marcella would be around, tit for tat to make her jealous, but he needn’t have involved Fernande in it. A visit from Claude Escoffier and his much younger wife (45-47 – César wasn’t precisely sure and wasn’t going to ask, even Love Phantoms clearly not indestructible) did the job much better anyway. They’d fought and made up, and then this visit that he hadn’t even orchestrated knocked things back.

Old Claude was not the problem. Escolico Ltd was owned by Claude Escoffier and the Selico family. The Selico family, sensibly, had not been based in occupied Europe throughout the war. They were not usually based in France even in peacetime, the clan globetrotting where business and their whims took them. Claude Escoffier was not so well-travelled, spending most of his 73 years in his home country bar holidays and travelling in the racing season for big meets where his horses were running. They had been to the stables before popping round to visit him, Sebastienne Escoffier coming round in her famously skintight jodhpurs. She flirted with him a little in front of her husband, inviting him to the stables for a ride when he was up to it. There was nothing in it – he flirted back with her over the phone and when she came to the office, their chats rich in risqué innuendo, but he never did this in front of Claude. He would never