by Robert Rigby
He was cold and miserable. They’d given him nothing to eat and drink but a few squares of dark German chocolate and a cup of bitter coffee. He wanted – no, he needed – a drink; a beer, or preferably a glass of his favourite red wine. That might help him sleep, and even if it didn’t, it would make him feel a lot better.
Victor clicked his tongue irritably and shifted again in the chair. He’d seen no more of the twins. All he knew was that they were locked in one of the upstairs rooms with the Bernard woman.
This just wasn’t turning out the way Victor had expected. It would be different in future; the Germans could get on with the war without his help. After this operation, and his final payment, they could keep their money. It wasn’t worth the hassle; money wasn’t everything. And as far as his principles were concerned, they could change just as they’d changed before. He’d been a Nazi when it suited; now he’d go back to being a patriotic Frenchman.
But never mind the future, it was tomorrow, or rather today, that was worrying Victor the most. He dreaded returning to the café and trying to explain to Celine why he’d been out all night and what he’d been up to. It wasn’t completely unheard of for him to stay out for an entire night if he got into a heavy session with some of his old rugby friends. But there were always serious consequences. And whatever he told Celine when he next saw her, he knew she would never believe a word of it. It would turn into a huge row and probably a fight. Another fight.
Victor sighed heavily as he turned from one side to the other, pulling the blanket so that it moved with him. The smell of horse was even stronger. It really did stink; it made him gag, and he groaned in his misery.
Victor really didn’t feel well.
Alain Noury hadn’t meant to pull the trigger.
He was fed up, lying on his bed, listlessly staring down the length of his extended arm, aiming the pistol at a framed photograph fixed to a wooden beam, when suddenly it went off.
Alain’s arm jerked upwards as the round pierced his mother through the heart and buried itself deep in the beam.
Alain sat up and listened. He wasn’t too bothered about the shattered glass or the frame, which had crashed to the floor, or even about shooting his mother. He had plenty more photographs of his mother, boxes full back at the house in Espezel.
What Alain was worried about was the noise. It wasn’t a loud pistol, but it was loud enough for anyone nearby to have heard.
It suited Alain to have two homes: the old family house in Espezel and the rooms here in Lavelanet.
The small, scruffy apartment was sparsely furnished, unlike the house in Espezel, and was above a shop close to the centre of town. At this time of the morning the shop was unoccupied, of course, and Alain had no immediate neighbours on either side. The rooms above the shops to either side were used for storage. No one lived in them.
But there were people living close by.
Alain got up from the bed and switched off the dull electric light.
He was fully dressed, but had taken off his shoes, so he tiptoed lightly to the window, trying to avoid the glass splinters on the floorboards.
Cautiously he lifted the curtain and looked out to the street. It was deserted, and Alain was relieved to see that there were no lights on in any of the surrounding buildings.
He smiled: the people of Lavelanet were heavy sleepers. Or perhaps some of them had heard a noise and thought it was a door slamming, or something falling, or a car backfiring.
Or maybe some of them knew they had heard a gunshot and decided not to interfere, to keep their heads down and mind their own business. That was wisest these days.
Alain’s smile faded. He wished he had someone to talk to about the way he was feeling. But there was no one. His parents were dead, but he’d never conversed with them much anyway; they’d been simple country people who’d just got on with their lives. He had no brothers or sisters, and no real friends any more. There had been one, Yves Bessont, but they’d been more like drinking buddies than actual friends. Then they’d had a big row in a bar, and now they didn’t even speak if they spotted each other in the street. Gaston and Yvette were never friends, but at least back then he’d been part of something.
Now there was nothing. Even his twin cousins were not close friends. They tolerated him, indulged him, shared a beer now and then, but they didn’t really like him. Alain knew that. He wasn’t stupid.
Alain turned away from the window, took a couple of cautious steps and sat down on his bed. He’d been deep in thought just before the pistol went off, getting angry with Victor Forêt and then with Henri Mazet and his whole crowd.
“That’s it,” he said aloud, and felt his anger rising again.
Now he was furious.
Hauptmann Kurt Lau took a deep drag of his cigarette as he stood in the wood yard looking back to the house. Dull light shone from one downstairs window, but the rest of the building was in darkness. As dark as the night, which was ink black.
Low cloud shifted quickly across the sky, blocking out the starlight. Lau gazed up, hoping that the weather forecast for the coming day was right, and that by first light the clouds would have cleared completely.
The sounds of the night forest cut through the still air: the rustle and snuffle of nocturnal predators hunting for their victims, a fir cone striking a branch on its way to the ground, birds stirring and shaking their feathers before settling again.
The forest never slept.
Lau did not want to sleep either. He was glad to have taken his turn on guard duty. He often did; it was good for team morale. And Lau sensed that morale in the team was not at its highest. That was hardly surprising; there had been bad luck and a series of mistakes. That’s what came of depending on paid informers and traitors.
But Lau was confident that he would put things right. He had a fine reputation and the military honours and decorations to prove it. No mission of his had ever ended in total failure. Some had not gone completely to plan, of course; that was only to be expected in war. War was unpredictable; there were always difficulties, and sometimes even serious setbacks.
But setbacks had to be met head-on and overcome. Lau remained confident and convinced that in the coming hours everything would fall into place and his mission would succeed. His fine reputation, so hard won, would remain intact.
Across the yard, twenty metres away, the back door of the house opened and Erich Steidle emerged. He noiselessly closed the door and stood staring into the night.
Lau was cloaked in darkness, in the shadows of the trees and the cover of the clouds. He took a silent drag at his cigarette and waited. Steidle walked straight to him. He saluted. “My watch, sir. You need to get some rest.”
Lau smiled and took a final drag at his cigarette. The lit end glowed like a tiny beacon.
TWENTY-EIGHT
When the Brandenburgers went into action, they made an impressive sight. Every man had a designated task and each unit functioned like clockwork.
The two teams had synchronized watches; they were hitting the two houses at exactly the same moment; if they had telephones, Lau wouldn’t allow anyone in either house the slightest opportunity to make a hurried warning call to the other.
It was soon after first light. The lorry was parked just down the street from Henri Mazet’s house when Lau and two of his men, the Brothers Grimm as they called themselves, passed noiselessly through the unlocked gate in the back garden and hurried across the damp grass to the back door.
The doors and windows were firmly shuttered, but Lau had anticipated that. He watched as a small explosive charge was fixed to the back door shutters. As the fuse burned down, the Brandenburgers took cover. Lau was taking a calculated risk. The house was detached, surrounded by a high walled garden, and was a reasonable distance from its nearest neighbours. Lau had decided that even though the explosion might be heard by neighbours, it would be worth it in terms of the confusion it caused among those inside the house.
Speed and shock we
re the tactics: no one would get the chance to react and fight back.
Lau had his pistol at the ready; the two soldiers were armed with rifles.
The charge went off, loud but not thunderous, and the shutters disintegrated in a hail of splinters and shattered glass.
Lau and the other soldiers charged, kicking in what little remained of the back door and sprinting through the kitchen into the hallway. No one appeared at the top of the stairs. The Brandenburgers went rushing up the wide staircase.
Lau was at the front. He ran to the door furthest from the top of the stairs to ensure that no one got in anyone else’s way. He pushed open the door, pistol raised, and at the same moment heard his two men burst into the rooms back along the corridor.
Lau stared. There was no one in the darkened room. The bed was made and looked as though it had not been slept in. Fearing the worst, he stepped back to the corridor as his men emerged from other rooms. Both shook their heads.
There were only two more doors on the first floor, but Lau was already certain that the house was deserted as he went into the bathroom and then a final bedroom. They too, were empty.
“Search the place!” Lau barked to one of his men.
“But there’s no one here, sir.”
“I know that! You’re looking for clues. Something to tell us where they are; what they’re doing.” There was a hint of desperation in his voice. “Anything!”
Erich Steidle, accompanied by Rudi Werner, had chosen a different method from his boss. He was the leader of his two-man team, and it was up to him to dictate the operational tactics. Speed and stealth were his key words.
He was at the rear of Odile Mazet’s house while Werner waited near the front door, ready to stop anyone from fleeing that way.
The house, an old, end-of-terrace stone-built cottage close to the River Touyre, was much smaller than Henri’s. It was two-up and two-down, with a little glass-roofed lean-to on the back. And there were no shutters on either the door to the lean-to or the one to the kitchen. So there was no need for explosives.
Using his knife, Steidle forced the simple lock on the lean-to door. The rushing sound of the swiftly flowing river easily covered the slight creak of the door opening.
Steidle moved inside and found the back door equally easy to force. He entered the kitchen and paused, listening. Somewhere a clock was ticking, but there was no other sound. Swiftly but silently, he mounted the stairs; one of them creaked, but he reached the landing too soon for anyone to have time to react.
He pushed open the first door, a bedroom. It was empty.
He went to the second door and tried the handle. The door was locked.
Steidle stood back, raised one leg and smashed the heel of his boot against the woodwork. The door held. With the second kick it went crashing down.
The room was empty; the bed was made and had not been slept in.
The Brandenburger hurried down the stairs and unlocked the front door, where Werner was waiting. Steidle gestured to Victor Forêt’s car. “Let’s go.”
Victor was sitting in the back seat, peering out nervously through the rear window. He was afraid. He’d been bundled into his own car and ordered to sit in the back and stay quiet.
The Germans got into the car, Steidle in the driver’s seat. “We’re going to Mazet’s house; tell me the way as I drive.”
The car roared away. A few minutes later it passed the parked lorry and went through the open iron gates at Henri Mazet’s house.
“Out!” Steidle bawled at Victor.
“But—”
“Out!”
Victor hauled himself from the car and was manhandled into the house.
Lau was waiting in the hallway. He cursed as Steidle shook his head.
“Where is he?” Lau breathed ominously to Victor.
“You mean Bernard? I don’t know! How would I know? I thought he would be here or at Mazet’s mother’s place. It’s what you thought, too.”
“Are you playing me for a fool? Is that it? Double dealing?”
“No! I’m loyal to you. I told you, I’m a Nazi, I believe in everything you … in everything the Führer believes in.”
“Then how has he escaped us again? And where are Mazet and his family? Did you tip them off?”
“No! How could I, I’ve been with you! Perhaps … perhaps Mazet is at his factory.”
Lau was seething. “We can’t go there and make ourselves known, we might as well tell the whole town the German army is here! If they don’t know already!”
One of Lau’s men came hurrying down the staircase. He was carrying a radio transmitter, which was fitted snuggly into a brown leather attaché case. “Found this under the floorboards in one of the bedrooms, sir.”
Lau glared at Victor. “You’re right about something at last! Henri Mazet is Resistance.”
Victor felt his heart thumping in his chest. “Can I go home now, please?”
TWENTY-NINE
Otto Berg heard the shattering of glass and then wood splintering. The fools: they were trying to escape through the single small window in the room, smashing out glass and frame. They were going to jump for it.
Berg had climbed the stairs with bread and three cups of coffee on a tray; the prisoners had had nothing to eat since early the previous evening. Berg was tough like all the Brandenburgers, but he wasn’t heartless, and as he’d not been ordered to starve the prisoners to death, he’d decided to give them a drink and a bite to eat. But he wouldn’t take unnecessary risks. His pistol was in one hand and the tray was in the other.
The rule in this situation was to order the prisoners to stand away from the door, which he would unlock and open. Once he was certain they were at a safe distance, he would place the tray on the floor. One prisoner was permitted to come and pick up the tray and then move back so that the door could be closed and relocked. Simple: it was the accepted procedure.
But procedure had suddenly changed. Berg heard wood splinter again and guessed that the window was probably out. He had to move fast. There was no time to chase back down the stairs and sprint all the way around to the front of the house; all three might well have disappeared into the forest by then.
He put down the tray, whipped out the key to the room and unlocked the door. Turning the handle, he pushed open the door and saw one of the twins and Julia Bernard where the window and frame had been until a few seconds earlier.
The twin was in the process of helping Julia Bernard climb out through the gap.
“Stop!” Berg yelled, realizing that the other twin must already have jumped. “Stop or I’ll drop you both!”
Gilbert Noury instantly raised his hands. “No, please, don’t shoot!”
“Get down from the window,” Berg screamed at Julia. “Both of you, back away! Now!”
Julia climbed down without speaking. She raised her hands too.
“Quick, over there,” Berg shouted, indicating with his pistol where he wanted them to go so that he could get to the gaping hole to catch sight of the second twin before he disappeared into the forest.
Hands raised, Gilbert and Julia slowly edged backwards across the room.
Once he was satisfied that they were far enough away, Berg stepped further into the room.
He never knew what hit him.
He was halfway across the room, eyes fixed on Gilbert and Julia, when Eddie stepped from behind the open door and cracked him across the back of the head with a chair leg.
Berg didn’t scream in pain; he just dropped like liquid, out cold.
“That one’s for the dog,” Eddie said, tossing the chair leg aside and kneeling to check on the German.
“It wasn’t him who killed the dog,” Gilbert said.
Eddie looked up at his brother. “You think I care which one it was? They did it.”
“Is he dead?” his brother asked, picking up the pistol that had dropped from Berg’s hand.
A lump the size of a chicken’s egg had already appeared on Berg�
�s head. “No,” Eddie said. “He’ll live.”
“Tie him up and we’ll get out of here.”
The rope that had been used to tie the twins’ hands was on a chair. Eddie snatched it up and began binding the unconscious man’s hands and feet.
Berg suddenly groaned and opened his eyes a little. They were glassy and unfocused.
Eddie smiled as he continued with his work. “Think you know everything, you Germans. But you shouldn’t have been kind and untied us last night, my friend. A big mistake.”
Berg’s gaze seemed to fix on Eddie for a few seconds, but then his eyes rolled back in his head and he slipped back into unconsciousness.
“Eddie, we need to move,” Gilbert said. “We don’t know how long we’ve got before the others come back.”
Julia had been staring out through the hole in the wall where the window had been. “But where will we go?” she asked, looking back at Gilbert.
“We could take the police car if it’s still in the barn, and I’d guess it is. The Germans said yesterday it was too risky for them to use it again, but it’s a risk for us, too.”
“But we’d get away from here.”
“Yeah, and if we get halfway down the track and run into the Germans coming the other way we’re in big trouble. Our best chance is to strike out through the forest, go deeper and move down towards Bélesta. No one knows the forest like Eddie and me. Eh, Eddie?”
“Know every tree by name,” Eddie said with a grin as he got to his feet. “Let’s go.”
He spotted the coffee cups as they moved on to the landing. He picked one up and took a sip, and immediately spat the black liquid out onto the floorboards. “Those Germans make lousy coffee, too.”
THIRTY
Lavelanet market, like most markets in Southern France, started early and was generally finished by midday. Traders would arrive on site while it was still dark, putting up their stalls and setting out their wares, ready for the first shoppers on the prowl for bargains soon after sunrise.