He must go to Lucie. There was no one else. All remaining doors had slammed themselves shut behind him. He must continue moving forwards or the hounds of hell would bring him down and drag him with them back to Hades.
Ahead of him he saw the main Limoges-to-St-Junien road. He pulled up the bicycle. His leg was stiffening by the minute, and he suspected he would no longer have sufficient strength to cycle even as far as the outskirts of the city.
In the distance he saw a car approaching, and without allowing himself to think he hobbled out into the road and raised his hand. At the very last moment he recognised it as a black traction-avant Citroen – the Gestapo’s favourite make of car – and silently prayed that it wasn’t one of their ilk he was touching for a lift.
The car pulled up and a young Wehrmacht lieutenant emerged from the back seat, clutching a briefcase. He was wearing a puzzled expression on his face at the sight of an SS uniform out here in the boondocks.
Max limped towards him. ‘I am Haupsturmführer Kampfe. I have just escaped from my captors. I am injured. Take me immediately to Staff Headquarters at Limoges. The medics can attend to me there while I debrief.’
The young lieutenant stared open-mouthed at Max’s Knight’s Cross. ‘Mein Gott.’ He glanced uneasily back towards his driver.
‘Hurry, man, for God’s sake. The Maquis are close behind me.’
The young lieutenant ran forward and took Max’s arm. ‘Please. This way, Major. Everyone has been searching for you since yesterday evening. This is a miracle. How did you manage it? Did you kill them all? Nobody will believe this.’ His voice was jubilant, as if he could already see his promotion to a captaincy looming.
Max allowed the man to assist him towards the car. At the very last moment he paused. ‘Hand me your pistol.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Hand me your pistol, Lieutenant. Quickly. That’s an order.’
With a final, furtive glance at Max’s decorations, the lieutenant reached inside his holster and handed Max his Luger.
‘Now. Both of you. Move away from the car.’
‘I’m sorry, Sir. I don’t understand?’
‘You.’ Max pointed to the driver. ‘Over there. And you, Lieutenant, too. I won’t say it again.’
The two men moved across to the other side of the road.
‘You’re Maquis,’ the lieutenant said. His voice was shaky and close to tears. He was desperately trying to maintain face in front of his driver. ‘You’re a terrorist. You’ve killed Major Kampfe and stolen his uniform. And now you’re going to kill us.’
Max ignored him, and got into the Citroen. He tossed the pistol onto the passenger seat, put the car into gear and drove away.
* * *
Thirty kilometres short of Cahors Max pulled up beside a broken-down half-track and commandeered some fuel from its driver.
There was a considerable volume of traffic still moving on the roads, and the grease-stained sergeant who filled his tank for him was not suspicious. Just one more rogue officer, he thought to himself, travelling as usual in the wrong direction.
When he caught sight of Max’s combat medals he changed his mind and saluted as if he had just been summoned from a dress parade, rather than from the temporary replacement of a broken axle.
‘Thank you for the fuel.’
‘It’s a privilege, Herr Sturmbannführer. A rare privilege. Are we going to beat the Tommies? Drive them back into the sea?’
‘There’s no question about it. They may have the numbers, but we have the will.’
Later, when he thought about how easily the automatic words had tripped off his tongue, Max was surprised at just how quickly his cynicism seemed to have formed itself in counterbalance to his disillusion. It wasn’t the massacre at Oradour. Hadn’t been that. This crippling pessimism had been lurking just beneath the surface of his skin ever since the defeat at Kursk. And now he knew for certain that it would never leave him. Nothing would ever be the same again. Nothing could ever be the same.
The more he drove, the more he realised the loss of blood and the aftershock were beginning to affect his judgement. He caught himself swerving, from time to time, onto the verges of the road. The Citroen had a radio, and Max switched it on in a last-ditch effort to keep himself awake.
Mozart’s Mass in C Minor began to play – the Kyrie – and Max found himself weeping uncontrollably, as a child would weep, the steering wheel gripped between his hands like a protective talisman.
As the boy’s choir swelled behind the soprano – ‘Eleison, Eleison,’ they called – he could hear again the screams of the women and children in the Oradour church.
‘Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.’
Why had all this happened? Where was God? And why had He forsaken them?
PART EIGHT
Central France.
Saturday 10th June to Sunday 11th June 1944
The Return
9 pm: Saturday 10th June 1944
Max reached the scattered outskirts of St Gervais just as dusk was falling. He drove slowly, almost coasting, every nerve in his body at full stretch.
The town felt strangely unfamiliar to him, as if it had been his home many years before, and subtle changes had occurred in the interim. The streets were deserted – in fact he had difficulty identifying even the normal, comforting glow of people’s oil lamps through the shuttered windows. There was something different about the place, something almost sinister, but in his exhausted state he was unable to put a finger on it.
He pulled the Citroen up in front of Jeanne Léré’s restaurant and cut the engine. He sat for a few moments in the silenced car, gazing about himself, waiting for the ticking of the motor to still. The place felt as battlefields sometimes do in the run up to a great slaughter – as Kursk had felt the night before the Russians mounted their final, apocalyptic counter-offensive. Max reached cautiously across for the pistol on the passenger seat.
He opened the car door and eased himself out. His leg had entirely seized up on him now, and he had to lift it over the running board and drag it along behind him like a sack of rotting meat. He stood in the deserted street and listened. For anything. Any noise that would denote a town going about its private duties. People living their normal lives.
He turned his wrist up and glanced at his watch. Nine o’clock. Nine o’clock at night on a day out of hell.
He turned around in a laboured circle, pivoting on his one good leg. Slowly, reluctantly almost, he limped across to Lucie’s door and tried the handle. It was locked tight. He glanced up at the surrounding houses. He felt watched. As though people who wished him no good were monitoring his every movement, waiting.
He let the knocker fall three times. The sound echoed up and down the empty street, reverberating off the houses to lose itself in the darkness beyond.
A shutter cracked open above him. He looked up. No light shone out from behind whoever was watching him.
An eternity later, he heard slow footsteps coming down the stairs. Then the percussion of the bolts being drawn. The snick of the key in the lock.
He replaced the pistol in its holster and buttoned the flap. There is no danger here, he told himself. I have allowed my imagination to get the better of me.
The door opened to reveal Lucie’s face. but a Lucie transformed from his last, cherished vision of her, into something unnatural and grotesque. She was wearing a grubby white shift, similar to those worn by the inmates of an asylum for the insane, and her legs and feet were bare. Her hair had been brutally shaved, and a swastika had been drawn, in lipstick, onto her forehead. Congealed blood had trickled down her head and across her ear – in an uncanny echo of Meyer’s dying face – leaving what appeared to be a fracture mark across her etiolated features.
She stared at Max for a moment, her face dead, as if she hadn’t recognised him. Then her expression changed and her eyes clouded over with tears an
d she turned away from him, her hands thrown across her face.
Max limped forwards and drew her into his arms.
The Cleansing
9:25 pm: Saturday 10th June 1944
‘You must leave here. Now. This instant.’
‘Not without you.’
Lucie shook her head, her eyes evasive. ‘They will have seen your car. They will be coming for you.’
Max took her by the shoulders. ‘Who are “they”? And what about the garrison? Why didn’t they protect you?’
Lucie shrugged, her expression impassive. ‘There is no garrison any more. They left this morning. How else…’ Her voice broke, and her face began to crumple. ‘They killed my mother. Our own people killed her. This afternoon, late, when the Maquis realized the town had finally been abandoned, they came down from the hills. They took us out into the square. They took my mother, Monsieur Fombert, and Madame Foulquier to the churchyard. Then they shot them. When they came back they made Arnette Laclois, Claude Seret and me sit on chairs in the middle of the square. They shaved us and painted swastikas on our heads. Then they stripped us and put us into coffins, which they carried around the square, chanting. Then they left us in the coffins. Just left us.’ Lucie’s hands were shaking, and her eyes seemed unable to focus on Max’s. ‘Now they will come here and kill you too.’
Max shook his head. ‘No, they won’t.’ He kissed Lucie tenderly on the forehead, then took her firmly by the shoulders and walked her upstairs, dragging his injured leg behind him. He sat her on the side of her mother’s bed. Then he went downstairs and drew hot water from the tank above the furnace and carried it back upstairs in buckets, one at a time.
He pulled out the zinc cuvette from beside her mother’s bed and filled it from the buckets. Then he walked across to Lucie and pulled the shift over her head. She made no attempt to cover her breasts, nor, indeed, did she show any other sign of shyness. She merely sat there, her eyes fixed on his, and allowed him to undress her.
He led her across to the hipbath, and she dutifully squatted in it. He fetched soap and a sponge from her mother’s dressing table and began to wash her, starting with her head, destroying all signs of the swastika, scrubbing off the congealed blood from around her ear. He moved the sponge across her shoulders, down her back, over her breasts and belly, down her legs. He washed her in silence, and she received his ministrations equally silently, as if the very giving of herself to him in this way was, in itself, a cleansing.
When she was ready, he eased her to her feet and he poured the remaining water over her to rinse her off. She raised her arms, and he circled her with the last bucket, making sure that every vestige of soap was gone. He towelled her dry with her mother’s bedspread, and covered her in the sheets off her mother’s bed while he went next door to search for her clothes.
She allowed him to clothe her, too. Occasionally she would glance at his face in a quizzical way, as if she wished to ask him questions – what he was doing here, why he was limping – but could not bring herself to do so.
When she was dressed, he threw a few things into a bag for her – some fresh underclothes, a cardigan, some blouses, a scarf for her head – and led her downstairs. ‘Do you still have the money I sent for you when I left town? We will need it.’
She indicated a box in the hall.
He retrieved the notes and the gold pieces and buttoned them inside the top pocket of his tunic. ‘Are you ready?’
She nodded.
‘Then come.’
Walpurgisnacht
10:20 pm: Saturday 10th June 1944
They were waiting for him outside the house, just as Lucie had warned him. A circle of opaque faces, a metre or two beyond his car. No street lamps to light them in the darkness. Just a silent, expectant mass of people.
Max stood at the entrance to Lucie’s house and watched them, his heart frozen inside his chest. He eased Lucie around until she was behind him, then limped forward into the street. As Max’s eyes got used to the darkness he could see that some of the people carried knives. Others carried clubs, axes, scythes – anything they could lay their hands on. There was no possibility of escape. He might kill one or two, but the rest would simply tear him and Lucie apart with their bare hands.
He eased his pistol out of its holster, charily, butt first, half expecting the roar of a shotgun, the rattle of an automatic weapon, to bring him down. When nothing happened he walked towards the Citroen and laid the pistol carefully onto the bonnet, making sure that it didn’t slide off. Then he stepped back from the car and raised his hands above his head.
The mob began to inch forward. Max prepared himself for death. How silly this all was. How pedestrian. He should have died in battle. Should have died leading his men, instead of bludgeoned to death by a frightened rabble. He felt inside his shirt for his mother’s cross, and raised it to his lips.
Jean-Baptiste, as leader of the local Maquis, pushed his way officiously through the crowd. The mob wavered and then stopped, as though uncertain of its own legitimacy. Jean-Baptiste walked briskly across to the Citroen, opened the passenger door, and switched on the headlamps.
Max heard Lucie’s voice behind him.
‘Non.’
It wasn’t a shout. Hardly even an imprecation. It was almost a sigh. He dropped his hands and moved around the car, into the arc of the headlights.
Jean-Baptiste unslung his Sten gun from its position across his shoulders. One of his cohorts did the same.
‘Use the pistol, you damned fool. If you spray me with one of those things, innocent people will get hurt.’ Max felt like laughing. An officer to the very last. What an absurd final speech – suggesting which type of weapon his executioners should use.
A muttering began in the crowd. Max sensed that something was happening beyond his sphere of vision. He felt more than saw Jean-Baptiste step backwards, acknowledging the new arrival. Then he caught sight of Hervé, his face still livid with bruises.
‘You execute him, Hervé. It’s your right.’
There was a murmuring from amongst the mob.
So Hervé had squared it with the Maquis after all, thanks to his one-man camisado. That was better. There was some justice left in the world. Meyer had been right, as always. No man may serve two masters.
Hervé reached for the pistol. He refused to acknowledge Max’s gaze.
Max turned away. He searched for Lucie with his eyes. Some of the women were holding her, their hands across her mouth. He ignored them, and looked only at her.
‘I’m sorry. Bitterly sorry for the wrong that has been done to both you and your family because of me. Because of my people.’ He smiled, his eyes playing over her features, memorizing them. ‘But I was right to love you. I don’t regret that. It’s the only decent, sensible thing I’ve ever done.’
‘Get down on your knees. Over there.’
Max limped to where Hervé was indicating. It was some way away from the direct light of the headlamps. Max knew that if he attempted to kneel without support, he would fall to the ground. He braced himself on the door handle of the car, one hand on the running board, and eased himself into a crouching position. Then he extended his injured leg awkwardly behind him. He didn’t turn again towards Lucie. He could no longer bear to see her face.
Hervé moved up behind him. Max felt for his cross and kissed it. ‘Ich freue mich auf meinem Tod.’
‘Avalez ça, Connard!’ Hervé swept the pistol barrel across Max’s temple as if he were flailing corn. Max dropped without a sound.
Hervé straddled Max’s recumbent body. Then, with one final predatory glance at the mob, he put the pistol to the side of Max’s head and fired.
* * *
In the tortured silence which followed the pistol shot, Hervé hefted Max’s body and manhandled it into the rear compartment of the Citroen. At first, the deadweight of Max’s legs blocked the door. Hervé gathered both of Max’s legs under his arm and doubled them inside, as if he were dealing with a sack o
f kindling. Behind him, some of the townspeople were already starting to head home.
‘I’m taking Lucie with me. We’ll bury him together.’
The women holding Lucie hesitated.
‘She’s already paid you more than she owes. Leave her now.’
Lucie stood on the pavement, swaying. Her eyes were closed.
Hervé moved towards her and took her by the arm. One of the women handed him Lucie’s travelling case and made a slashing, derisive gesture with her hand. Hervé ignored her.
He guided Lucie off the pavement and towards the front of the car. He opened the passenger door and ushered her inside, supporting her full weight with his.
Lucie turned towards Max’s body, but Hervé stopped her. He shook his head at her, as if she were a child. ‘Not yet. You will only inflame them further.’ When Lucie disregarded his request, he bent across and cupped her forcefully by the cheek. ‘Listen to me. Listen to what I am telling you. Not yet. Do you understand me?’
Lucie rid herself violently of his hand. But she made no further attempt to reach for Max’s body.
Hervé sat down, reached forwards, and tried the ignition. The engine turned over and then died. Hervé switched off the headlights to ease the battery. He could see Jean-Baptiste and some of the other men watching him. Could hear their mumblings.
‘Does anyone object? Does someone want to come with me, perhaps? Help with the digging?’
Jean-Baptiste hesitated. Then he shook his head. ‘No. You killed him – you bury him. Just make damned sure he doesn’t come back to haunt us. The Germans aren’t beaten yet. They may still return. Then we’ll all be in the shit.’
‘I’ll make sure.’
The men turned away and began to disperse. Jean-Baptiste stopped, almost out of earshot. ‘You’ll keep his medals for me? For souvenirs? You won’t bury them with him? I want something to show my grandchildren.’
The Occupation Secret Page 33