by Manda Scott
‘Why has she changed her mind now?’
‘She heard you threaten McKinney with French counter-terrorism laws if he held anything back. I think you frightened her.’ With a small, tight smile, Martin Gillard slides off the desk and heads for the door. ‘Good luck finding the oldsters. They were trained in a far more brutal era than ours.’
18–20 June 1944: Allied forces take Elba, Assisi and Perugia.
SOE, F-Section, 9–20 June: Jedburgh triads – Ammonia, Frederick, Gilbert, Hamish, Ian, Marmalade, Quinine and Veganin – parachute behind enemy lines. Though in uniform, under Hitler’s Commando Order of October 1942 they were liable to be tortured and executed if caught.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
NORTH AND EAST OF SAINT-CYBARD
25 June 1944
RED TO GREEN: The light above his head.
A confusion of scuffles, a tight grin, thumbs up, a man’s hand on his back – don’t think – and he is falling again, into the endless night.
One, don’t think. Two, don’t think. Three, don’t think. Four, don’t—
Jesus Christ.
The harness grabs at his groin and shoulders. The canopy unfurls to a taut shape blotting out the stars. Impact comes sooner than Laurence expects. He rolls with it well enough and rises to haul in the lines. A dark mass targets him from the sky and he skips swiftly left.
The earth judders under his feet. A big, muscled body careens past his head, slams into the ground six feet away and, grunting, rises: white teeth, grinning; red-gold hair above; a square jaw, pale, almost luminous grey eyes and a profusion of broad freckles laid over a southern-suntan that nine months in Britain hasn’t washed away.
‘So this is France?’ Hands on hips, Paul Rey surveys his new domain. Princeton-educated, born with a mouthful of silver dollars, he has the same effect on women that the late Julie Hetherington used to have on men. Laurence has seen entire bars fall silent at his entry, giggling coteries who skin men alive with a glance reduced in a handful of seconds to slack-jawed, glaze-eyed putty in his hands. He is waiting, with some interest, to see the impact this paragon will have on Sophie and Céline.
Rey looks around. ‘Where’s Gaspari?’ he says. ‘He jumped first.’
‘Over here, where there’s a proper view.’ Toni Gaspari speaks English like a Valleys Welshman and French like a Marseillaise. His Italian, one assumes, is equally ripe. His Morse averages twenty-two per minute and he can put out the eye of a seagull at four hundred paces with a rifle. Whippet-thin and wiry, he has shaggy black hair that falls to his shoulders in contravention of every regulation of every one of the world’s military institutions.
He grins at Laurence and then, to Paul Rey, says, ‘I thought your Yank flyers were supposed to get us to the right place?’
‘We’re in France, what more do you want?’ Paul Rey joins them on the higher ground. They are on a long, low slope with trees at the far end, but there are no flares, no torches, no fires. He pulls a face. ‘So where’s the reception committee? I can’t wait to meet the legendary boy-chief.’
Nor can Laurence. Two nights ago the Brigadier plied him with wine, venison and coffee in that order and, amidst a cloud of relatively innocuous gossip, let slip that Fabien, the codename of the Patron of the Maquis de Morez, is, in fact, the fresh-faced, almost-certainly-underage Alain Devereaux from Laurence’s group at Arisaig.
‘He’s doing well for himself politically. There’s word that he’ll be in the French cabinet when the dust settles.’
‘He’s a communist.’
‘Yes, well, I’m sure that can be smoothed over when the time comes. The point is that he’s good. He’s got a grip on his men and he knows how to use them strategically.’
‘And Theodora is with him.’
There was the briefest of pauses at this juncture. There is a family fiction which maintains that Theodora is still on English soil. The same brand of mythology swears that Laurence, too, will never leave. The women of the family may not wholly believe it, but they will disembowel any man who sends their loved ones into harm. The Brigadier has the grace to look discomfited. Then: ‘Indeed. Theodora is with him. I gather they make rather a good team.’
And so here they are, three officers of differing nations, come to offer the advanced services of the Allied Expeditionary Force to this legendary team. Except they have missed on the drop.
‘We’re not too far off.’ Gaspari has a compass in one hand and a silk handkerchief-map in the other. ‘If that mountain is the one I hope it is, they’re somewhere between three and five miles that way as the crow flies.’ He points one thin arm south and east. ‘By road, it’s probably twice as far.’
Rey shrugs. ‘That’s what comes of jumping in the middle of an invasion. We got the navigators from the bottom of the barrel.’
Mildly, Laurence says, ‘We got the USAF, which isn’t even in the barrel. The RAF never misses.’ And before Rey can respond: ‘Hands on belts, children. Best foot forward. People are waiting for us, at great risk to their lives. It would be a pity to let them down. Shall we go?’
They have trained for this. Ten miles is barely a warm-up. By starlight, they march, each man holding the belt of the one in front, except Laurence, who is in the lead and so has nobody’s belt to hold, but the night is clear and warm and the roads are small, winding and empty, and he can see well enough.
Periodically during the second hour, Laurence puts his cupped hands to his mouth and makes the noise of a hunting tawny owl, three times over. One hundred and two minutes after they leave the landing ground, with the sky one shade darker than night and the first dunghill cockerels rustily rehearsing, he hears a response. ‘That’s them.’
Gaspari says, ‘Sure it’s not an actual owl?’
‘I’m sure. Actual owls either to-wit or to-woo. They don’t do both in the same sentence.’
‘Not even French ones?’
‘Particularly not French ones.’ A new call comes, long and high, almost a yodel. His heart leaps strangely in his chest. ‘That’s definitely not an owl.’ He angles his torch. He hasn’t seen her since Julie died. He has no idea— ‘Céline! My God, you look like an Amazon warrior. Let me see …’
‘Larry. Charming to see you, too.’ She’s stronger now, and not only physically. Her face is Mediterranean brown. Her pale hair shines silver in the narrowed light. She carries her weapon effortlessly. And she is smiling. It’s a tight, dry smile, with the same old grief at its core, but it lifts his heart in ways little else has done these past months.
They embrace, closely. He asks, ‘Are you well?’
‘Under the circumstances.’ Her grasp is brisk and firm. ‘You got my last message?’
It was arcane, even by her standards, but yes, he did, and yes, it has shadowed his last hours. ‘You have a mole. We’ll find who it is.’ Unless it’s Sophie Destivelle, in which case, she may well have been doing her job. She is alive too, if the cables are right.
Now is not the time to share secrets. His cousin’s gaze sweeps over Rey and Gaspari as only an upper-class Englishwoman’s can do. ‘Were you going to introduce us?’
‘Captain Paul Rey, Lieutenant Antonio Gaspari, please meet my cousin. For ease and security, we shall call her Céline. When the war is over, we’ll introduce you properly. Céline, meet Jedburgh team Marmalade.’
‘Please tell me you didn’t choose that name.’
‘It was that or Marcel, so yes, I did.’
‘Heaven help us all.’
There is a shaking of hands that tests mettle and balance. Rey and Gaspari step back from it, uncharacteristically quiet. Laurence says, ‘We’ll need a fuller briefing than the cable.’
Céline says, ‘And I’ll give it, but we had an order from SHAEF this afternoon sending us on a jaunt that seems rather urgent. Fabien’s been dragged off to some post-war political preparation committee, so this is mine, which means if you come, you’re under my orders. If you’d rather not join in, you will be escorted back t
o camp.’
Patrick is at the camp.
Patrick. Alive. Injured. Céline’s ciphers refused to say how badly. At the last analysis, the frantic pulling of strings these past twenty-four hours were designed so that Laurence could take over from Patrick, but now that he is here, it is clear that he is redundant: Céline can do anything he could do, and better.
One hour more, maybe two at the most, with a chance to watch Céline leading. Laurence says, ‘What’s the jaunt?’
‘Tank trapping. Or rather, engineering with a view to tank trapping. A Panzergrenadier division from the Eastern Front is due to pass north of here sometime soon after dawn, heading for Normandy. We need to blow a bridge before it gets there.’
The sky is more grey than black. The dunghill cocks are more musical. ‘Are we not too late? If the Luftwaffe see you in daylight …’ He has read the reports of what happens when the Maquis work without cover of night.
She shrugs. ‘We’ll make the time. The question is whether you three are with us or not.’ She directs her question this time to Paul Rey, who is standing an arm’s length away, holding his helmet as if it were a cap. Laurence has never seen him look subdued by rank or anything else. He salutes, crisply. ‘At your service, ma’am. Jaunts always welcome.’
Céline rolls her eyes. ‘And your other friend?’
Gaspari is standing some distance off, feigning inattention. Laurence says, ‘Toni will kill anyone who tries to get in the way of his killing Germans. They slaughtered his entire village after the Italian surrender, last year. The women were raped while they lay dying, the men were gutted and shot in the knees and elbows and left to scream. He was away, which is why he is the sole surviving member of a four-generation family that once boasted twenty-seven members within a two-mile radius. You will have to shoot him if you want to stop him going with you.’
‘And you can wait?’
Always, she knows what matters. ‘Unless you think it’s unwise.’
‘Quite the reverse: I think it’s the best decision you’ve made for months.’ She is already turning. ‘JJ, we’re all going together.’
Céline has two trucks under her command, both petrol-driven.
Laurence rides in the back of the second, sitting on a rough bench with Paul Rey and Toni Gaspari on one side and Céline and JJ on the other. Opposite, seven men cradle guns. None makes any effort at conversation.
Laurence says, ‘I thought your motive power was dried cattle dung?’
‘Not these days. Patrick stole …’ She stops, stares at the floor. He sees her blink. ‘He led a jaunt in the last week before he was captured. They took a stonemason who knew how to break through the wall of a barn in a way the Boche couldn’t see afterwards. They tapped off an entire tank of fuel, then bricked up the hole and rolled off down the hill. We have enough gasoline for the rest of the summer.’
‘Well done, Patrick.’
‘You can tell him when you see him.’ And thus, the conversation dies.
They wind along lanes for a bone-jarring eternity, at the end of which the driver cuts the engine and they coast down a long, gentle slope, pull off to the left at the foot, and sigh to a halt.
The dawn rustles to the movement of silent men disembarking, and now they have no need of torches. The horizon is a layering of apricot and peach. Beads of dew dangle from the tall grasses. Céline raises both hands and combs her fingers through her hair. ‘That was the easy part. Now we find out if the Boche have put a guard on the bridge.’
‘Is it likely?’ Laurence asks.
‘They’d be stupid not to, and they haven’t been stupid up to now. Desperate, maybe; angry, definitely; but never stupid.’
They are not stupid. The bridge is two hundred and fifty yards long. In one elegant concrete and iron arch, it spans a fast-flowing, mountainous river from east to west. It is just wide enough to take a tank, providing the driver can keep to a straight line. On both sides of the river are German officers and men in generous numbers.
Laurence lies on his belly amongst the pines, two hundred yards up the western slope, looking down through his field glasses, relaying all that he sees in a quiet murmur. ‘Two platoons at least. Estimated number of men – one hundred, maybe more. Motorcycles, trucks and one Horch sedan staff car with an MG40 mounted on the back. They’re rare as hen’s teeth these days: only the corporal’s favourite friends get one, so they’re taking this seriously. The officer’s just beyond the staff car. There’s an Oberstleutnant in there; they really are taking this seriously. His guards have Schmeissers. Everyone else has Karabiners. No heavy artillery. Most are on the far side. On this side, one Rittmeister and a dozen men with motorcycles and a radio. They’re brewing coffee.’
The morning air is crisp with pine resin, loam and the light, heady scent of gun oil. Sitting up, he says to Céline, ‘If they’ve sent this many, they either know you’re coming or the tanks are close. Or both.’
‘Never let it be said we don’t offer sterling entertainment.’ She has her own glasses, big as pint jugs. She stands with one shoulder pressed to a tree for support. Like Laurence, she speaks quietly, under the rustle of the pine needles. ‘If we could hit the lieutenant-colonel, they’ll be headless until someone else takes charge.’ She bites her lip. ‘Thierry’s not bad with a rifle, but it’s a long way to be accurate.’
Thierry is middle-aged, balding and lame in his left leg. He has a shy smile and the internal stillness of a shepherd. Laurence has no doubt he is accurate at reasonable ranges, but this is not a reasonable range. He says, ‘I brought you a sniper who can kill at four hundred yards.’
‘The Yank?’ She rolls her eyes. ‘He’s pretty, but is he any good?’
‘He’s the best I’ve ever seen, but not at this.’ Laurence points over his shoulder. ‘Gaspari’s good for twice this distance and he brought his own rifle. If your man Thierry can take out the captain, they’ll be paralysed for long enough for you to even out the numbers. Otherwise twenty to one hundred is a massacre in the making.’
‘It won’t be a massacre.’ She gives orders in a patois French too thick and fast for him to follow.
Left alone, he works his way down through the trees to the forest’s edge until he can stand behind one broad trunk and listen to the dozen men of the Wehrmacht section, who smoke, talk, stamp their feet a bare twenty yards away. A call comes in on the radio. The reception is exceptional, the sound quality high. A while later, he worms back uphill to Céline.
‘The tanks are due within the next forty-five minutes. The captain on this side is named Hauser. If I call him, bring him this way a bit, give Thierry a clear shot at him first, and Toni takes the colonel at the same time, then you can get on with your mortars.’
‘You don’t have to—’
‘Theo, I sat on my backside in an office, listening to you having all the fun. Let me do this.’
It’s the use of her name that makes the difference. She gives a short, one-shoulder shrug that he remembers from somebody else, and turns back to Gaspari. ‘Can you get the colonel while Thierry takes the captain? And if I give you a spotter each can you go on to take out everyone who looks as if he’s taking over command once they have gone?’
The little Italian is sitting with his back to a tree cleaning his rifle with the care of a mother for her newborn. His smile is angelic. ‘Hunting Boche is what I do. If I miss, I’ll parachute back up to the plane and go home again.’
Céline laughs for him, with him, then turns back to her men. ‘D’accord, mes amis …’
Laurence is alive, truly alive, for the first time in … too long. Possibly since he last flew a plane on his own. He has borrowed a grey coat from a Maquisard named Guillaume, who took it from the body of a German officer one week ago. There’s blood on the back, but they’re not going to see his back, so it doesn’t matter. He has no hat, but then the shine of his hair is half his disguise, so he doesn’t want one. He steps one pace out from the shelter of the last tree, raises his hands.
‘Schiessen Sie nicht! Ich bin Deutsch. Deutsch! Hauptmann Hauser! Eine moment! Ich muss mit Ihnen sprechen.’
The men by the bridge turn. They lift their rifles. His chest is a target. Every muscle braces. They do not shoot.
The radio hisses. A voice comes through the static. ‘Wer ist das?’
The captain signals his men to hold fire and takes three swift paces forward. ‘Wer sind Sie?’
And dies, neatly. Well done, Thierry.
‘Down! Laurence, down!’
His instincts are faster than he knows. He’s already down, crouching in the shelter of an oak before Céline’s shout reaches him. A mortar howls over his head. A dozen Stens clatter in counterpoint. He gets up, runs sideways and back into the shadows of the trees, finds new shelter, pulls his own Colt and fires two-handed at the three remaining Boche left standing on this side of the river. His shots are lost in the overwhelming fire of the Maquis de Morez. The three men drop. He has no idea if he killed them.
From high in the trees, he hears Toni Gaspari, clear in the chaos, shout, ‘Yes!’
So the lieutenant-colonel is down. Maquisards are running across the bridge, keeping up a smothering, lethal wall of fire. Céline is in the centre, her short hair loose in the wind, shouting orders.
He needs something better than a handgun. Dodging forward again, he wrests the Schmeisser from the dead German captain. Three times, maybe four, he has fired one of these, and each time has found it sits nicely in his hands. He joins the running ranks and ducks into the feeble shelter of a concrete pillar along the bridge, firing.
A round or two cracks past his head, but not many. The Maquis are well trained. There isn’t much cover, but they use what they have and the Boche have nothing to aim at. Céline is kneeling behind another concrete pillar one third of the way along. Laurence comes up beside her. ‘Where’s your plastique?’