The Girl in the Baker's Van

by Richard Savin

  ‘Arrêtez, monsieur! Halt!’ The man stopped; he stood rigid. ‘Put your hands in the air,’ Grainger said in French – then for good measure he repeated it in German. ‘Hände hoch!’ The man complied obediently.

  Grainger looked at him for a moment, sizing up his position. He stepped closer to the man. This was, he knew, a dangerous and risky thing to do, to get too close to a potential assailant; if the man turned or moved quickly he would have no choice but to shoot him. He was so close he could hear the sound of his breathing. Raising both arms, he chopped down deep into the man’s neck with his left hand and, at the same time, smashed the gun into his head with the other. His pursuer fell like a pole-axed steer and crumpled to the ground. Grainger looked around, the place was deserted; stuffing the gun back into his coat he dragged the body into the cover of the bamboo. He felt for a pulse – it was there but it was weak. Searching through the man’s pockets he stopped abruptly as the thought struck, ‘Christ, Evangeline.’ He needed to get to her before she took off with the car.

  He found her waiting where he had told her, her look of anxiety melting into one of relief. ‘What happened? Is he dead?’

  ‘No. I clobbered him but I don’t know for how long he’ll be out.’

  ‘Who was he? Did you get a look at his papers?’

  ‘I searched him but he was carrying nothing.’

  ‘No papers?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That’s strange – everyone carries papers.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t – not that I could find anyway.’

  The road to Fabrezan was roughly paved and it had tram lines running down the centre. They caught the wheels of the Talbot and flicked the car uncomfortably from side to side. Though the tram had not run since 1934 nobody had bothered to pull up the rails.

  ‘We’re here,’ Grainger said under his breath. On their right as they drove into the village they passed the Mairie; after that the road veered round a steep curve to the right. There was a small park on their left with a memorial to the Great War and a café opposite, exactly as the sketch map showed. After that the road divided and there was another café on the corner. He stopped the car and looked around. ‘I think we go left. I can see a church but I don’t see a tower.’ The road descended an incline for about a hundred metres then switched left and onto a stone bridge. Below it in a deeply carved riverbed scoured out over the centuries a shallow river drained the distant hills. They crossed over the bridge leaving the village and began to head out into open vineyards.

  ‘You’ve gone too far,’ Evangeline told him. ‘We need to turn back and go into the village again – this is the wrong way.’

  A bit further on he came to a track that led into one of the vineyards. He turned the nose of the car onto the track and then reversed back out. As the nose of the Talbot turned to point back at the village they saw it. Sticking up on the horizon above the ramparts and cresting a line of medieval stone houses, there was the tower. Grainger stopped the car; they sat looking at it with the engine softly ticking over. He pulled out the sketch and held it up to the skyline. ‘That’s it all right – and, look here, it must have been drawn from around this viewpoint.’

  He shoved the gear lever forward and moved slowly across the bridge. When he got to the village side he turned left onto a quay and parked. They got out and looked up at the tower. At first sight it seemed to be buried in the depths of the village. Grainger walked a short way along the roughly paved road that formed the old quay, looking for a street that would lead to the tower, but there was nothing. ‘We’ll have to go on foot. I can’t see how we get up there otherwise.’ He gestured to a gap in the old walls, ‘that looks like a passage over there.’

  The passage was steep, surfaced only with a slippery layer of mud and shingle. It was narrow, hemmed in by the bulging walls of roughly constructed stone houses, houses built centuries before, which had slowly settled and moved, causing their occupants to shore them up against the insistence of gravity with straps of iron and crude stone buttresses. At the top they entered into a small square shaded by tall chestnut trees and hedged around by the doors and shutters of some more narrow irregular dwellings – homes and workshops. As they crossed the square a dog barked and an old woman looked suspiciously out of an upper casement, spying on what these strangers might be up to.

  On the far side of the square they came out into a broad street with much larger and more prosperous houses, but they had lost sight of the tower; it had crouched in behind the close high buildings and for a moment they stood just looking around. They turned left and walked a little further. Without warning, Evangeline suddenly grabbed his arm, pulled him round and, throwing her arms around his shoulders, pulled him to her and kissed him. He was so taken by surprise he stood momentarily paralysed. She broke off from the embrace. ‘Keep looking at me.’ There was urgency in her voice. ‘It’s Kasha. He’s crossing the street behind you. Stay still; I’ll tell you when you can move. Kiss me and make it look convincing.’

  She uncoupled from the embrace and stood back. ‘He’s gone.’ She pointed to a side street a few yards ahead of them. At the corner of the street they stopped. Grainger poked his head carefully around the stone coping. There was the tower. Parked in front was a grey van with the sign of a Narbonne builder painted on it.

  The tower was a massive stone rectangle that reached thirty metres or more into the air. An arch-topped solid wood door was hanging ajar. ‘I don’t want to go in head on. I don’t know what we’ll find in there.’ He pointed across the square. ‘There’s another street coming in on the corner. If we can work our way around to that we can probably get up close to the tower door without them seeing us.’

  They went back into the main street again and started out in what looked like the right direction, but the road veered away and they had to come back to where they started. ‘Maybe if we go back to the quay,’ Evangeline suggested, ‘down the passage we came up, then go a bit further along. Perhaps there is a way up from there.’

  ‘Full marks for navigation,’ Grainger said quietly when at last they entered the street they had been looking for. They stopped just short of the Place de la Tour from where they could see the side of the tower. Grainger looked at Evangeline with an awkward expression. ‘He’s going to ask me to do something stupidly risky,’ she told herself, and waited.

  ‘Look,’ he said, as if he were about to reproach himself, ‘I haven’t a clue what’s going on here and I don’t think my turning up will be that welcome. So,’ he paused, ‘I need a diversion.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Not much. Just walk in through that door and let’s see what reaction we get.’

  ‘Just that?’

  ‘Just that. Don’t worry, I’ll be right behind you.’

  She pushed hard on the heavy door. Crossing the threshold she strained to see into the gloom. Under her feet the floor was an uneven mass of cobbles studded with smooth stone sets; the whole thing was hard to walk on and made her feel unsteady on her feet, never sure which way they might twist her ankles. In front of her she was dwarfed by a line of gigantic foudres – oak maturation barrels that would hold thousands of litres, but had not been used for years. She stood for a moment, waiting for her eyes to accustom to the dim light. There were sounds of someone or something knocking, the dull chinking of metal on metal – a hammer perhaps, or a chain being dragged. Then something scurried past her feet. She stood motionless as a rat the size of a small cat brushed against her. She restrained an involuntary urge to scream – she hated rats.

  From the back of the room she could see a light and hear the sound of muted voices. She squeezed in through the gap in the giant barrels and worked her way along between them until she reached the far side. There were four figures gathered around the dull light of a storm lantern. One, she could tell from his size, was Kasha and another was so tiny it had to be Cigale. The other two gave the appearance of men,
but she had no idea who or what they were. She heard another movement behind her and saw Grainger slide in through the doorway. He moved closer to her; his nearness was reassuring and she immediately felt more composed. ‘What now?’ she whispered, as he moved up close behind her.

  ‘Step out into the light and get closer so they can see you.’ He put out a hand and gave her shoulder a little squeeze of encouragement. ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She emerged from the gap between the barrels and briefly stood still as if reluctant to go any further. Ahead of her she saw that Kasha and one of the men were gathered around a tripod gantry with a chain draped across a block-and-tackle device; it was set over the mouth of what she took to be a well. They were hauling on the chain; this was the metallic noise she had heard. The second man had now disappeared and the first thought to cross her mind was that she had been seen and he had gone to get behind her. She edged closer all the time, looking right and left for the other man. Her heart was beginning to pound in her ears, thudding so heavily she briefly had to stop for fear of passing out.

  The chain clanked link by link; then she saw the head of the missing man appear from the depths of the hole and rise up under the tripod. Inch by inch his whole body rose clear of the hole. The man was sitting astride a box-like object and, as that cleared the top of the hole, he hauled himself up on the chain, swung sideways and jumped onto the cobbled floor. There was an excited murmur, then Kasha put out an arm, grabbed the object and swung it away from the well head. The chain was let go and there was a heavy resonant thud as whatever was on the end of it hit the floor. All four gathered around the object.

  Evangeline stepped forward, but nobody seemed to notice; they were all focused on what she could now see was an iron-banded box with a padlock hanging from a hasp on one side. She took another step forward and then cleared her throat to attract attention. Even that didn’t seem to work. ‘Bonjour,’ she said clearly. That worked. Kasha spun round, standing up as he did so. The others just stared.

  Kasha grinned. ‘Ha, we have a visitor.’ He came at her with a hand outstretched and she winced, expecting to be hit. In that same instant there was a deafeningly loud bang that made her ears sing and at first she thought she had been shot; then she saw Grainger standing beside her, the gun in his hand emitting a small curl of blue smoke from the shot he had just fired into the rafters. It was now pointed at Kasha, who stopped coming forward and just stood there, assessing the position like a cornered beast weighing up the chances of pouncing on its hunter and turning the tables.

  ‘Actually you have two visitors.’ Grainger put on a forced grin and waved the gun in the direction of the box. ‘So what’s this about?’

  ‘How did you find me here?’

  ‘Does it matter? What’s in the chest?’

  The Pole picked up the oilcloth package, opened it and took out the key. ‘Shall we find out?’

  Grainger nodded. ‘Okay, might as well since we’re here. Would be a shame to chuck whatever it is back down that well and never know the answer.’

  Kasha smiled. ‘Ah, a man with curiosity. I believe in your culture they say it can be a dangerous thing – for cats.’ He took the key and fitted it to the padlock; it was rusted and resisted but finally, using all his force, Kasha slowly turned it, then tugged on the lock until it gave up. He lifted the lid on the box and let it drop open on its hinges. Inside were a number of dark brown leather bags, each with a lead seal. Kasha pulled out a bag and broke the seal, snapping the cord that bound the neck. He turned the bag on its side; the contents spilled out onto the stone floor and the lamplight, dull though it was, picked up the unmistakable glint of gold.

  ‘Gold Napoleons.’ Kasha picked up a single coin and held it out to Grainger. Evangeline just stood there, her mouth open, saying nothing. It was surreal.

  Grainger took the coin and examined it. ‘So this is what it’s about – money. Not loyalty to your country or helping us to win this bloody war – just a grubby treasure trove.’

  ‘Not entirely. I do have something for the Americans, which they will be most pleased to receive. You can still have your successful mission and your allies can have their secret – and we can all go our ways. You can go home with the knowledge that you have helped in the fight against Hitler. They will probably give you a medal.’

  Grainger waved his hand at the gold coins spilled out on the floor. ‘And what about this?’

  ‘These are the spoils of war. Not this war, of course. This gold was being sent south by Napoleon to pay his soldiers fighting in the Peninsula War. I am told it was captured by Catalonian resistance fighters, who put it down this well then made a plan to come back for it. Who knows what happened after that? Perhaps they fell out. Perhaps they were themselves killed. Maybe it was just forgotten in the turmoil of war.’

  ‘So how did you come by it?’

  Kasha waved the oilcloth package at him. ‘This. It found its way into the hands of a dealer in antiquities, a man in Berlin. He was arrested by the Gestapo for some petty black market dealing. A man called Kraus, an agent in the Sicherheitsdienst, someone I had, shall we say, worked with,’ and here he gesticulated, oscillating his hand in a gesture of vagueness, ‘he brought it to me. He was running a small-time racket with a records clerk in the Gestapo, a very dull Bavarian – Herr Kandler. They were closing and burying the files on prominent German businessmen, most of them Jews, in exchange for money. When the clerk made the dealer an offer to close his file for a payment the man pleaded that he had no money, but he told him he had a document that would make him rich and he would share what he got for it with him; but the man died from a heart attack before they could do anything. Kandler had the key to the man’s apartment in the file so he took it to Kraus. He was sure whatever was in the apartment was valuable, but he didn’t know what it was. Ludwig Kraus was a clumsy man, not subtle. He agreed a price with the stolid Bavarian for the key. Then, who knows for what reason, Kandler got the idea that whatever was in the dealer’s apartment had to be valuable and upped the price; he demanded too much money. He had some idea he could get a share of this as well and threatened to expose Kraus.’

  ‘Blackmail?’

  ‘You could say. Anyway Kraus arranged to push him under a train and be rid of him.’

  ‘Why would an agent of the Sicherheitsdienst want to get involved?’

  ‘He was a double agent. After Hitler opened the Russian front he no longer believed Germany could be victorious. He decided to make provision – to hedge his bets. I was his conduit to the British and the Americans.’

  ‘That was the man you killed, the man who came after me at the farm,’ Evangeline butted in. ‘He was your partner and you killed him?’

  Kasha shrugged and looked at her blankly. ‘Like the clerk, Kraus got greedy. He came after me with a Gestapo policeman, a man with a reputation for thoroughness. I was certain he was preparing to double-cross me, turn me in to the Gestapo and walk off with everything. Instead the policeman arrested your brother. He got the wrong man but that’s not my fault.’

  ‘Why did you kill Paul Varailles? He knew nothing that could possibly harm you.’

  Kasha looked puzzled for a moment. ‘I didn’t know he was dead. If he has been killed it wasn’t by me.’ The reply caught Grainger by surprise; it was not what he had been expecting. But if it was true then what had happened to Paul? He put the thought aside; he still had to get this spy and his secret to the Americans, no matter how untrustworthy the Polish agent was turning out to be, because if he did have what the Americans were so concerned to get their hands on then Grainger still had a mission. He instinctively disliked the motives that had driven Kasha on his sordid treasure hunt, the more so because he had believed he was involved with a patriot, who now turned out to be just adventurer on the make. He turned it over and decided to throw the ball into the Pole’s court.

  ‘And what now? What about this?’

  ‘This is mine. It goes with me. Maybe
I will give you a little,’ he laughed, ‘for your cooperation, that is. I still need you to get me to the Americans.’ There was a conciliatory lilt in his voice like that of a man trying to sound reasonable. ‘I left you only because I needed to get this over the mountains first. I always intended to come back to seek your help once I had it somewhere safe.’

  ‘Why should I believe that? You’d be as rich as Rockefeller with this little haul. Why bother with the Americans?’

  The Pole shook his head. ‘No, I need the Americans. Who wants to be marooned in a backwater of fascism like Franco’s little peasant garden? They are my ticket out of Europe and this whole bloody mess. My country is fucked whichever way you look at it. Whoever wins, we will be under the same yoke – Hitler’s Nazis or Stalin’s Communists – it’s all the same. I have a life to live, a life beyond this war and the ambitions of crazy dictators – their absurd politics; I have done my share – I have a right to retire.’

  Grainger understood but he baulked at the idea. It went against the grain of his culture and upbringing; criminals should not succeed. ‘Can’t let you do that,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t be right.’

  Kasha shook his head. ‘You are out of your depth, my friend. Go home, Alpha Six. You are not wanted here – or needed.’

  ‘Well, maybe,’ Grainger was saying when he stopped abruptly. Evangeline saw him fall and heard the pistol clatter on the stone floor. She turned to look over her shoulder. ‘You!’ It was an involuntary gasp more than a conscious statement. She looked straight into the face of Father Guillaume, then down at the crumpled figure of Grainger. There was blood seeping from the back of his head where the priest had struck him with a heavy piece of stone. She felt faint and her mind began to spin. Kasha grabbed her by the wrist, pulled her towards him, and delivered a firm slap across her cheek with the back of his hand.