‘Very good. You just keep on being cooperative, and you will do very well. Now, you say Sandrine went off with Tony. Why did you not go with him instead?’
‘He wanted to take her. He did not wish to leave her alone here with Ivkov. Ivkov fancied her. And besides, he had to be sure that the Serbs would take me in.’
‘It was not because he and Sandrine have become lovers?’
‘Well of course they are lovers,’ Elena said. ‘He is a virile man, and she is a virile woman – also a beautiful one.’
‘Is he not betrothed to you?’
‘I am very broad-minded.’
‘And her betrothal to me?’ Bernhard continued to speak quietly, but there was a good deal of suppressed emotion in his voice.
‘She hates you,’ Elena said. ‘If she were here now, she would shoot you, even if she died for it.’
Undoubtedly she felt sure they were within earshot. Tony had to suppress another convulsive wriggle. His big fear was that Sandrine would say something, or squeeze the trigger of her tommy-gun.
‘Well, then,’ Bernhard said. ‘It seems that I must hate her back. And Tony, to be sure. Now there is one other question. Where is this guerilla camp they have gone to?’
‘I do not know.’
‘Elena, be logical. These mountains cover a great area. You cannot possibly pretend that Tony and Sandrine just set off into the blue, in the hopes of encountering some of these people. They must have known where to go. That means you must also know. I wish you to tell me. Or if you cannot name the place, show me on the map.’
‘I do not know where they went,’ Elena said.
‘Elena, you are not cooperating. Well, then, tell me the direction in which they went.’
‘They climbed the hill over there. I do not know which direction they took after that.’
‘Elena,’ Bernhard said. ‘I wish you to concentrate, and listen to me very carefully. Like every other civilised person, I was appalled when Pavelic reported what you and Tony – and my fiancée – had done.’
‘What we had done? Do you know what he did, right here?’
‘He was carrying out a necessary duty. Your attack on his camp was an act of war.’
Elena snorted.
‘Thus we were ordered to find you, and punish you. I will confess that it never occurred to us that you might have returned here. It was not until our search aircraft reported that there was life in this village, and that the dead bodies had disappeared . . . Where are they, by the way? The dead bodies.’
Elena must have pointed. ‘There.’
‘In the tavern?’ Bernhard’s tone was incredulous. ‘How many?’
‘All of them.’
There was a moment’s silence, and Tony could envisage them staring at each other.
Then Elena said, ‘Why don’t you look?’
‘Sergeant!’ Bernhard snapped.
Boots clumped on the cobbles.
‘As I was saying,’ Bernhard went on. ‘When it was determined to check the village out, as it was supposed that it had been reoccupied by your group, I volunteered to lead the squad; I still hoped to be able, shall I say, to save you from yourselves. My request was granted, but as it is well known that Sandrine Fouquet is – or was – my fiancée, I was reminded that my duty as a German officer came before any other consideration, even that of love. And now, you see, even the consideration of love for that bitch no longer exists.’
Tony felt another flurry of activity against his chest.
‘However,’ Bernhard said, ‘I am still prepared to help you, if you will help us. But if you will not, as it is important that we find and destroy these guerilla groups as quickly and completely as possible, I am going to have to hand you over to the Gestapo for interrogation. There is a Gestapo headquarters established in Uzice. That is not far from here, and I will take you there now. I do not know if you have ever heard of the Gestapo, but in this situation they function as the military police for the Wehrmacht. Their methods are entirely their own, and are quite unspeakable. If I hand you to them, you will tell them the location of this guerilla camp in a few minutes, simply because you will be in such pain you will not know what you are saying. What is more, when they have finished with you, they will either lock you up or execute you, but in neither case will that mean anything to you, because once you have been interrogated by the Gestapo you can never again function as a normal human being. Please understand this. Listen, tell me where this camp can be found, and I give you my word, firstly, that Tony will be treated as a prisoner of war, and secondly, that Sandrine will be deported back to France.’
There was a peculiar sound, and then the sound of a slap. Tony estimated that she had spat at him, and that he had hit her.
‘That was extremely uncooperative of you,’ Bernhard said. ‘Very well.’ He switched back to German. ‘Call up the transport,’ he shouted, and then demanded, ‘Well?’
The sergeant’s voice was trembling. ‘They’re in there, Herr Hauptmann. Skeletons. Hundreds of skeletons. Grinning at us.’
‘Pull yourself together,’ Bernhard snapped. ‘Are you a soldier, or a frightened little girl? There cannot be hundreds, Sergeant: there were only a hundred people in the village in the first place. Set fire to the tavern. And have the village searched.’
They heard the sergeant’s heels click as he saluted, then all other sounds were drowned out by the noise of the vehicles coming up the hill. Tony pushed Sandrine in front of him, and they sidled along the alley until they reached the rear of the buildings.
‘What are we to do?’ she whispered.
‘Not get caught, for starters. Down there.’
He pushed her towards the slope, and a moment later they were sliding down the hillside, the noise of their descent shrouded in that of the engines. Their tracks would be clearly visible come daylight, but Tony did not think the Germans were going to hang around until then, shaken as they were by the discovery of the corpses in the tavern. This was now erupting into flames above his head.
They reached the bottom of the slope, panting and bruised. ‘Can we not kill them all?’ Sandrine asked.
‘You reckon?’
‘There are only thirty of them. We have your grenades, and my tommy-gun. And we would take them by surprise.’
‘The odds on the two of us, even taking them by surprise, being able to kill thirty armed men before they kill us are too great to be contemplated. And in any event, the first person to be killed would probably be Elena.’
‘And if she is not killed, what will they do to her? Do you know what they will do to her? The Gestapo? I have read about the Gestapo.’
‘Our dying will not help Elena,’ he said. He had to keep repeating this, over and over again, in the hopes that he would come to believe it.
‘That bastard was there,’ Sandrine said. ‘I could have killed him with a single shot!’
‘Maybe you’ll have another chance, some time.’
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
‘Snap,’ Tony said.
*
As Tony had estimated, the German search of the village was perfunctory; their sole desire was to get away from the mound of dead bodies as quickly as they could. But before they left they fired some of the houses, and the night sky above the village became quite bright.
Tony and Sandrine remained huddled in the shelter of the bushes at the foot of the slope until the little cavalcade had driven back down the road. Then they slowly climbed the hill again, and stood by the stream to look at the leaping flames. Sandrine’s knees seemed to give way, and she sat on the ground. Tony sat beside her.
There was nothing for them to say; they had too much to think about. Should he have dashed into the midst of the enemy, firing his pistol and hurling his grenades, waiting for the thuds as bullets tore into his own body? What purpose would it have served? In fact, the Germans would probably not even have considered it necessary to kill Elena before killing him.
And S
andrine? She would have followed him without hesitation, tommy-gun blazing, until she too had been cut down, that exquisite body a bleeding, shattered, hideous mess. But worse yet was the possibility that she might have been taken alive, handed over to the Gestapo, and suspended naked from the ceiling while electrodes were attached to her nipples and between her legs, to leave her, once the current was switched on, screaming and writhing in agony.
That was what was going to happen to Elena!
Almost without thinking he stretched out his hand to squeeze Sandrine’s. It was a long moment before she responded.
‘Did we cause this?’ she asked.
‘By coming back to the village? I don’t think so. Once they started looking, they’d have found us even more quickly in the open. Supposing we would have been able to survive, in the open.’
‘I meant, by loving where we should not have loved.’
‘Love is where you find it,’ he said. ‘It seldom is where it should be.’
‘You were engaged to Elena. She thinks you still are. That is why she has sacrificed herself for us. It was for you.’
‘I know that. It doesn’t make me feel very good.’
‘It makes me feel like a lump of shit,’ she said. ‘And Bernhard . . . I know if I had shot him, I would have died. We both would have died. I didn’t want to die, Tony. I don’t want to die, now. But I swear to you, if I survive this war, I am going to find Bernhard, and I am going to shoot him in the balls, and then stand on them while he dies.’
Tony gulped. He could never escape the feeling that Sandrine was in fact capable of doing the things she threatened, however often she changed her mind. And with every catastrophe that happened to her or around her, that streak of hardness, of ruthlessness, was growing.
And him? His trouble was that he was a professional soldier. He had wanted to be a soldier ever since he was a small boy. The proudest moment of his life was the day he had been accepted for Sandhurst. He loved everything about the army, and accepted its tenets as the basis for all life. One was not supposed to hate the enemy; rather, one was encouraged to respect him, both for his skill and his humanity. Certainly one did intend to kill him, but there remained the assumption that once one side understood that it was defeated, and surrendered, it had to be treated with every courtesy and respect. Personal feelings, personal prejudices, personal likes and dislikes – even personal loves – could not be allowed in any way to interfere with cold-blooded judgement. Hatred had no place in any of the above considerations.
That was why he did not hate Bernhard. To be sure, he had Elena. But he, personally, was not going to harm her. He was merely obeying orders in what had become, almost overnight, a very dirty war, the dirt inspired as much by Yugoslav internecine hatred as by Nazi ideology.
*
His fingers had gone limp as he brooded. Now Sandrine squeezed them. ‘What are we going to do?’
The summer sky was lightening, and the flames were dying down.
‘Let’s see what’s left, for a start,’ he suggested.
They stood up; Sandrine glanced to their left, and shuddered. Ivkov’s body lay where it had fallen. ‘Can we bury him?’
‘If we can find a spade. I don’t think they’ll be coming back in a hurry.’
‘Am I guilty of his death as well?’
He held her shoulders. ‘Sandrine, you are guilty of no one’s death.’
‘I had him driven from the village.’
‘If he had not been driven from the village, we would all be dead, or certainly prisoners, because we would still have been asleep when the Germans came.’
He led her into the village, both of them carrying their firearms at the ready. But it was utterly deserted. Even the dogs had abandoned it, probably because of the heat. Presumably they would be back, but they would have no reason to stay; the tavern was a collapsed and burned-out shell. No doubt there was still a mass of bones in there, but they were lost beneath the smoking timbers. The town hall had also been burned to the ground, and the houses to either side were at least partially destroyed.
Tony returned to the house he had shared with Elena. No doubt the Germans had looked inside, but only to ensure there was no one hiding there. He found his shirt and his shoes. Sandrine returned to her house as well, and found her boots. Then they hunted around, eventually finding a spade which was cool enough to touch. Tony returned to the stream and buried Ivkov in the soft earth beyond, while Sandrine knelt and watched him. It was now quite late in the morning. Neither of them felt like eating, but Tony knew that they had to, so they went into the fields and drew some carrots, which they ate raw; their food supplies as well as their matches had been in the town hall.
Then they moved back to the stream, drank some water, and sat beside each other. It was symptomatic of both their moods that Sandrine had no desire to bathe, and although she put her arms round him to hold herself against him, there was no sexual desire in her embrace.
‘Now what are we going to do?’ she asked.
The question he had dreaded.
‘I’m working on it.’
‘What can we do?’
There had to be something. Any plan, however hopeless, had to be better than just sitting here, waiting to die.
‘We find Mihailovic’s people,’ he said. ‘That is our best bet. He has no quarrel with us now that Elena is gone.’
She shuddered.
‘We may even be able to persuade him to lend us some people to mount a raid on Uzice, and perhaps get her out.’
‘Why should he want to get her out? She is a Croat.’
‘Well, maybe the past couple of months have taught him that they really are all one people.’
‘So, when do we leave?’
‘I would say as soon as possible.’
She released him and stretched on the grass. ‘I would like to lie right here, forever.’
Temptation. ‘We can’t do that, Sandrine. We’d starve.’
‘Can we not shoot a goat? Or kill a chicken?’
Amazingly, they were still there, clucking and pecking.
‘I’m sure we can. But how can we cook the meat?’
‘Do you have to have matches? Were you not a Boy Scout?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Well, I was a Girl Guide. I know how to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together.’
‘When did you do this last?’
‘Oh . . . twelve years ago.’
‘And then, I imagine, using appropriately carved and selected sticks, not the branches of a few stunted bushes. I think our best bet is to fill our pockets with carrots. That should keep us going for a day or two. In that time we should come across somebody.’
She gave one of her little shrieks, but this was of laughter. ‘What an inane conversation, at such a time.’
He lay beside her, on his elbow. ‘It made you laugh.’
‘Is that important?’
‘Very.’
She pushed herself up. ‘Then let us gather the carrots. Oh, shit!’
Tony sat up in turn, and saw five men standing on the other side of the stream. They had come up through the burned-out village, unseen.
Sandrine reached for her tommy-gun, but Tony grasped her arm. Not only did the men have their guns levelled, but they wore Yugoslav army uniforms. And one of them . . . He scrambled to his feet. ‘Svetovar!?’
‘Tony? What happened here?’
‘The Germans were here. They burned the village,’ Tony said.
‘They killed Elena?’
‘No, they took her prisoner.’
Svetovar’s face twisted. ‘Is that not the same thing? When did this happen?’
‘Last night.’
‘But you survived.’
‘Yes,’ Tony said, looking him in the eye. ‘We were lucky. They did not find us.’
‘You let them take my sister. Your fiancée!’ He glanced at Sandrine, who had moved closer to Tony.
‘Yes,’ Tony said. ‘I thoug
ht it best to stay alive. That way we may be able to rescue Elena. With your help,’ he added.
‘Rescue her,’ Svetovar said contemptuously. ‘That is a dream.’
‘Nonetheless, it is something I wish to discuss with General Mihailovic. Will you take us to him?’
‘Mihailovic?’ Svetovar’s tone was more contemptuous yet, and Tony realised that as he was a Croat he would hardly be any more welcome in the Serb camp than his sister had been.
‘You mean you are on your own?’ He looked from Svetovar to the other four men; they were all armed with rifles and bandoliers.
‘We serve the secretary-general,’ Svetovar said.
‘The . . .’ Tony frowned. ‘That sounds like a Communist official.’
‘That is correct. He sent us to find out what happened here, but we heard from the last village we were in how the people were wiped out by the Ustase, and how you fought them, and destroyed them.’
‘Not quite efficiently enough,’ Tony confessed. He had had no idea their conflict with the Ustase was so widely known; presumably Pavelic’s men had revealed what had happened.
‘Nevertheless, our general wishes to speak with you.’ Again his face twisted. ‘He had hoped to speak with Elena as well.’
‘We will certainly come with you,’ Tony said. ‘But let me get this straight: you are now a member of a Communist group?’
‘I belong to a group dedicated to ridding Yugoslavia of the Germans. We call ourselves Partisans.’
‘But your leader is a Communist.’
‘Yes.’
‘The Communists we met here would not fight against the Germans.’
‘That is all changed now.’
‘What caused this change?’
‘Haven’t you heard?’ Svetovar was amazed. ‘Germany has invaded Russia. It is our business to defeat them.’
*
Not for the first time in this so rapidly changing situation was Tony left utterly dumbfounded. Sandrine clapped her hands. ‘Then your general will help us to free Elena.’
‘We will have to see,’ Svetovar said. ‘Let us move out. Our camp is two days’ march from here. Have you any gear?’
‘What you see.’
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