Task: Story Composition
Input (English): Fact1: Gene Summers is selected by Kimball kill man believed to be double-agent working in French Resistance, Fact2: Leonie gives Summers more information about man, Fact3: cats are being killed due to food shortages time, Fact4: Lafitte saves Summers from being detained by German troops by allowing Summers to take shelter in Lafitte 's office, Fact5: son was killed in War
Output (English): Gene Summers Paul Massie, a young American fighter bomber pilot, is selected by Maj. Kimball to go on a mission to Nazioccupied Paris and kill a man believed to be a doubleagent working in the French Resistance. Summers is picked because of his military experience and fluency in French. He receives rigorous training by his handler Maj. MacMahon Eddie Albert and a British Naval Commander James Robertson Justice. Summers is enthusiastic, and remembers all of the information he needs by setting it to melodies of childhood songs. MacMahon, however, has misgivings about Summers boyish enthusiasm, and fears that his youth and inexperience might jeopardise the mission. Arriving in France, Summers meets his Resistance contact, Leonie, a dressmaker whose clients include the girlfriend of a highranking German officer. Leonie gives Summers more information about the man he is to assassinate, Marcel Lafitte. However, after observing and then unexpectedly meeting Lafitte at a cafe, Summers begins to have second thoughts about his mission. Lafitte presents as gentle, polite, friendly and intelligent, has a wife and daughter whom he obviously loves, and also dotes on his cat Mimieux, carefully protecting her from harm at a time when cats are being killed and eaten due to food shortages. At a subsequent meeting, with the curfew hour drawing near, Lafitte apparently saves Summers from being detained by German troops who are hunting a Resistance assassin by allowing Summers to take shelter in Lafittes office. Summers misgivings deepen and he begins to doubt whether Lafitte is really guilty. Summers runs back to Leonie and reveals his doubts about Lafitte. She rebukes him sharply for his folly and reminds him that he would not have been given his orders without reason, and then furiously upbraids him after he reacts to her tirade by inadvertently revealing details of his war service. Leonie points out to Summers that he dropped hundreds of bombs on people while he was a pilot. Summers protests that there is a difference between killing a lot of people at a distance and one person up close. When I dropped bombs I wasnt there at the other end. Leonie then apologizes for her curt behavior and explains to him that her son was killed in the War, and she counters his doubts about Lafittes supposed innocence by questioning how Lafitte could have known in advance about the German manhunt that Lafitte had helped Summers to evade. His confidence regained, Summers prepares to kill Lafitte. Returning to Lafittes office he first cracks a blunt object over the mans head, but the blow merely stuns him. The stricken Lafitte turns over to look directly up into the eyes of the young man, and utters a single word: Why? In a panic, Summers stabs Lafitte with a pair of scissors, killing him. He steals money from Lafittes table and tries to make the scene look like a robbery. Narrowly escaping the Gestapo, the distraught Summers hides the money in a cemetery. He tries to contact Leonie, but it is too late: the Nazis have captured her. Racked with guilt, Summers goes off into the night. Several months later, after Paris has been liberated, Maj. MacMahon is giving the newly promoted Colonel Kimball a tour of the now liberated Paris and informs Colonel Kimball that Summers is in a military hospital. After the assassination, Summers became a drunkard, using the money he stole from Lafitte to pay for his addiction. Summers finds out that Leonie was killed by the Nazis after her capture. At first, the Major and the Colonel try to convince him that Lafitte was guilty and that many lives were saved by killing him. However, Summers is not convinced and, after Kimball departs, insists that MacMahon tell him the truth. MacMahon confirms that Lafitte was in fact innocent. In the final scene of the film, Summers leaves the hospital and visits Lafittes wife and daughter, who are now impoverished. Unable to tell them the truth, Summers tells them that Lafitte was one of their best agents in the Resistance, and offers them the small compensation of his own back pay.