by Robert Rigby
But Paul was up for the battle now. Releasing his hold, he swiftly drew back his fist and delivered a sharp, stinging punch into the side of Alain’s face, connecting with his cheekbone.
This time, Alain’s scream was of pain rather than fury. He tried to swing his own arm to get in a punch, but Paul dodged it easily, too fast for the heavier man. He landed a second heavy punch, and as they scrambled to their feet, Paul took a glancing blow to the side of the head as Alain lashed out wildly.
It was all or nothing now. Alain charged in to grab his opponent around the waist, but Paul was faster, kneeing the bigger man in the groin.
Alain gasped in shock and agony. Without stopping to think, Paul headbutted him, making bone-crunching contact with the bridge of Alain’s nose.
Blood spurted and Alain toppled backwards. He screamed, rolled from his back onto one side, fat tears mingling with the blood streaming down his face.
“Please, that’s enough, that’s enough,” he wailed. “I give up! Please don’t hit me again!” He curled into a ball, both hands to his face, and lay there.
Head spinning, Paul was suddenly aware of Max, grunting and fidgeting on the chair, trying to get his attention. His mouth was still gagged. Paul struggled to his feet and staggered across the room to pull the gag free.
“Untie my hands,” Max said, gasping for air. “Let me help you.”
Paul nodded. He kneeled again to untie the thin cord. It was a simple knot, but his head was reeling and his hands were trembling from the fight. With his vision blurred, he was struggling to focus. He wiped the back of a hand across his eyes and forehead, and saw that it was smeared with blood. An accompanying jolt of pain made him realize that his own head was bleeding and that he must have split the skin when headbutting Alain. He blinked a few times and his vision began to clear.
The knot was almost undone when Max shouted. “Paul! Paul, he’s running!”
Alain was heading for the back door. Paul was still unsteady from the fight. He hauled himself to his feet as the van’s engine coughed into life.
“He’s getting away,” Max said, wriggling to free his hands. “He’ll go for the Germans.”
“I’ll stop him! Paul yelled, sprinting towards the front door.
Alain had left the key in the lock. Paul wrenched open the door and was outside as the van negotiated the tight turn from the back garden. The space was narrow and Alain was driving recklessly, desperate to get away. There was a high-pitched screech as the side of the vehicle scraped against the corner of the wall as it completed the turn.
His head still spinning, Paul stood his ground for a moment, but even in his dazed state he knew that to remain in front of the vehicle would be suicidal. There was only one other option.
He stepped back, and as the van went by, he leapt onto the open back and clung on.
FORTY-THREE
Night had fallen, and in the cloudless spring sky the stars were already piercing the darkness.
Alain had not paused to switch on the van’s lights as he jumped into the vehicle and drove off. Now, moving away from the house, it was picking up speed, racing downhill into the village of Espezel.
Paul’s hands were wrapped around the metal bar at the top of the backboard behind the driver’s cab. He was hanging on for his life.
The wood-planked open back was rough and uneven, with jagged splinters sticking up everywhere. The van was not designed for comfortable travel. It was a working vehicle, used mainly for transporting the many and various items Alain bought or bartered for on his travels. It now sped into the wide, sprawling area that opened like a funnel at the centre of the village. An elderly couple, walking arm-in-arm, stopped and stared as the vehicle, still showing no lights, went tearing by, smoke belching from the exhaust.
Alain knew perfectly well that Paul was clinging precariously to the backboard; he’d glimpsed his leap and felt the impact as Paul landed heavily on the wooden planks. He glanced back through the small oblong window behind his head and grinned at the young man staring at him through the glass.
Alain’s face was a bloody mess and his nose had swollen to twice its normal size, but he seemed oblivious of the pain as he laughed aloud. “Come for a ride, have you, Paul?” he yelled. “Well, I hope you enjoy it!”
Throwing up clouds of dust, the van cleared the village and the driver at last switched on the headlamps. They barely disturbed the darkness of the road ahead.
Paul was on his knees, keeping low, trying to think of how he would or even could halt Alain’s flight. But as the van bounced onward and he was tossed from one side to the other, all Paul could focus on was his own survival. At least the rushing night air had cleared his head.
Hardly slowing the vehicle, Alain wrenched at the steering wheel, turning off the main road, which ran in one direction towards the mountain town of Ax-les-Thermes and the Pyrenees and the towns of Quillan and Limoux in the other. He was once again on the small road that cut all the way across the plateau and down through the forest to Bélesta.
He pressed the throttle to the floor, looked over his shoulder to the small window and shouted, “Here we go, then! Hold on tight!” He yanked the steering wheel sharply to the right. Paul’s body jerked to the side and he clung on desperately as his legs slithered across the rough wooden planks and his feet dangled over the side edge.
Before he could even haul himself back to the centre, Alain had pulled the wheel the opposite way and Paul was slithering again. This time a needle-sharp splinter pierced his trousers and speared into his leg. He yelled out as the van swerved to the right again and his body slid painfully across the rough wood. One hand lost its grip, and for a few terrifying seconds Paul thought he was going to be thrown off the van to the ground, but with a desperate lunge he managed to grab hold again.
Both his legs were dangling over the edge as Alain hauled the vehicle into another dramatic swerve. But this time Paul pulled in his legs, tucking them tightly against his body so that the sideways movement was much less severe.
Alain looked back and saw Paul’s hands clenching the bar.
“Still there, Paul?” he shrieked. “Well, enough is enough. I’ve got things to do, people to see, so this time it’s goodbye.”
He wrenched at the steering wheel even harder, and the vehicle swerved so violently that it rose up on two wheels and almost toppled over. Realizing that the manoeuvre had been too extreme, Alain yanked the wheel in the other direction. The van thudded down, swerving wildly, wheels juddering and tyres screaming in protest as the panicking driver wrestled with the wheel, struggling to keep control.
In a last frantic effort, Alain stood on the brakes and the van jerked and bucked like a wild horse. The brakes locked up, and as the vehicle skidded sideways, a threadbare front tyre exploded, sending strips of rubber into the air.
The vehicle’s nose dipped to the right, the exposed metal rim of the front wheel sending up a shower of sparks as it made contact with the ground and then dug into the cracked mud at the roadside.
This time the van did go over, crashing down on its side and skidding onward in a cloud of dust and mud.
Paul was flung into the air. All that saved him from death was the fact that the battered vehicle had been slowing dramatically as it went over. He landed on one shoulder and rolled over and over, ending up on his back. The soft, crumbling surface of the plateau had cushioned the impact.
Paul lay still, staring up at the stars, amazed that he was alive and conscious. Slowly he sat up. The van was on its side. The engine had stalled and the lights were smashed. There was no movement. Paul was certain that Alain could not have survived the crash.
But then the door at what was now the top of the vehicle creaked open a little. It fell back, then opened again and fell shut a second time. Alain was trying to get out, but could not push the door fully open.
As Paul got to his feet, he heard the window slide down and then, in the darkness, he saw Alain’s head appear. He glanced around bef
ore pulling himself up and out onto the side of the vehicle. It wobbled unsteadily and he jumped down to the ground.
Paul was painfully aware of the splinter buried in his leg and what seemed like a hundred bruises on every part of his body, but he remained determined to prevent Alain from getting away. He moved cautiously forward. Alain saw him coming. “Get away from me!” he shouted. “Haven’t you had enough?”
Paul said nothing; he just kept walking.
“Get away!” Alain yelled again, then turned and ran onto the plateau.
“Alain!” Paul shouted. “Stop! Give up; it’s over! It’s madness to run out there; stop!”
But Alain kept running and quickly disappeared into the night.
Paul followed, peering into the darkness, trying to catch sight of Alain and staying alert for lurking danger. The treacherous plateau was risky enough in full daylight, but in darkness it was as dangerous as walking into a minefield.
“Alain!” Paul yelled. “Alain, come back, please!”
There was a sudden short scream and then a splash.
Paul stopped, his eyes wide. “Alain! Alain!”
There was no reply.
“Alain!”
Nothing.
Paul walked on, trying to figure out where the shout had come from, but on the vast emptiness of the plateau it was almost impossible to judge.
He stumbled forward, repeatedly calling Alain’s name and stopping every thirty seconds or so to listen for a sound or a cry for help, but nothing came back.
Treading cautiously he arrived at a hole, no more than a metre and a half across. Standing on the crumbling edge, he stared down and saw water about a metre below, a jet-black pool; a sinkhole. The water appeared undisturbed, and terrifyingly dark. A single bright star up in the night sky was reflected on the surface.
Paul looked up and gazed out in every direction. There was nothing to be seen; the night was perfectly still.
He glanced briefly at the water again and then turned to retrace his steps. The van was no longer in sight.
Paul could see nothing he recognized. He was totally confused and lost.
FORTY-FOUR
There was an overwhelming smell of rotting and fermenting fruit.
Didier had been stunned by the fall into the cellar, but the thick old rug had prevented any broken bones. He came round, feeling as though he had a hangover.
Max and Julia were calling to him.
“Didier!”
Dust was clogging his throat.
“Didier!”
He coughed. “I’m all right,” he finally croaked.
“Are you hurt?”
“I … I don’t think so.”
It was blacker than night in the cellar and looking up, Didier could only just make out the outline of the two heads staring down from above.
“Can you get me out?” he asked, getting to his feet.
“We don’t know,” Max answered. “It’s so dark and there are no electric lights, we can’t even find any more candles. There must be some, but in all this clutter…”
“Keep looking,” Didier told him as his night vision started to kick in.
He began to explore the cellar, searching for a way out. The entire space appeared to be packed and stacked with food. Cans were piled high on shelves, sacks of vegetables sat against the walls, there were rows of bottles containing preserved and pickled foods, and lines of open trays of apples and pears, piled five or six high.
The cellar was a vast larder.
Didier knew that after the shortages and rationing of the First World War, many older French people had begun to hoard food in case another war came along.
And it had.
He’d never met Alain’s parents, but knew they’d been relatively old when their only son was born.
They’d both died years before the Second World War started, and it looked as though their food hoard had remained undisturbed since then, although, as Didier heard scrabbling and squeaking in one corner, he realized that rats and mice were taking a share of what was on offer.
He moved cautiously along one wall and bumped his head against a long, dry bone hanging from a rope. A few shreds of shrivelled meat clung to the bone; Didier realized that this was all that remained of a cured ham.
Moving on, he almost stumbled as one foot encountered the bottom step of a stone staircase set into the side of the wall. He climbed it and came to a heavy old door. He flicked the latch and pushed, but the door was locked.
“Over here!” Didier yelled. “There’s a door. See if you can find the key.”
He listened as two sets of footsteps crossed the floor above.
“We’re here!” Max called from the other side of the door. “Julia found some candles so we can see, but there’s no key in the lock.”
“Look around,” Didier told him. “It has to be somewhere.”
Even as he spoke Didier knew that there was no certainty at all that the key was nearby. It could be anywhere: in the house, in Alain’s pocket or lost.
He heard Max and Julia rummaging around the room and feared they might well search all night and still not find the elusive key.
Then a thought struck him. “Is there a ceiling beam near the door?” he shouted.
Max’s voice came back. “Yes, just above, a big heavy beam.”
“Check at the end, near the wall.”
After a few seconds Max shouted excitedly. “You’re right, there’s a key hanging on a nail in the wood!”
Didier heard the key pushed into the lock. It turned.
The door swung open and Didier was face to face with his rescuers.
“How did you know?” Julia asked.
Didier smiled. “My dad always kept the key to our cellar hanging above the door.”
Paul had lost track of time.
By starlight, at the sinkhole, he’d tried to check his watch and found the glass smashed and the hands stopped at precisely 9.25. But he had no idea at what point during his battle with Alain the watch had stopped.
Since then he seemed to have been walking for a long time; it took an age just find the road. When he finally did, he turned in the direction of Espezel, and after a further ten minutes or more came upon the blue van.
For a few fleeting moments he thought he might find Alain hiding in the wreckage. He stopped and circled the vehicle warily, his feet crunching over fragments of glass from the shattered windscreen and headlights. Fuel had leaked from the ruptured tank and Paul realized how lucky they had been that the vehicle had not erupted in a ball of flame when it went over. There was no sign of Alain; his luck had not lasted for very much longer.
Paul walked on; no one passed him on the road. He was incredibly weary, his body ached and he was desperate for sleep. The previous night he’d done no more than doze fitfully. Now last night seemed a lifetime ago.
He knew he had to stay alert. He thought about Josette and Didier and then his thoughts drifted to the operation to take him from France that night, the operation codenamed Eagle.
In his confused and exhausted state he wondered if perhaps the Lysander plane due to pick him up had already come and gone from Puivert. But surely it couldn’t be that late – could it? Whatever the time, Paul knew without doubt that there would be no chance now of returning to Lavelanet to say his farewells to Josette. He would have to break his promise.
He felt in his inside jacket pocket for the letter he’d written the previous evening. Thankfully it was still there. He kept walking, his mind and body aching, his leg throbbing with a nagging pain from the buried splinter.
Reaching the junction with the main road, he stopped and rested for a moment. As he turned towards Espezel he saw, to his joy, the headlights of an approaching car.
It was Henri’s car, with Didier at the wheel. And as it slowed to stop, Paul saw Max and Julia in the back seat.
Didier jumped from the car, the engine still running. “Are you all right?”
Almost too weary to answe
r, Paul nodded.
“And Alain?”
“Out there somewhere,” Paul said, pointing back towards the plateau. “He crashed the van and ran off. I tried to stop him but … I think he drowned in one of the pools.”
There was no time to stand and talk.
“Get in the car, Paul, we have to get you to Puivert.”
Paul pulled open the passenger door and sank into the seat as Didier got behind the wheel.
“The van went over on its side,” Paul said. “You’ll see it as we cross the plateau.”
“We can’t go that way.”
“Why not?”
“Because at some time tonight – could be any time now – the Germans will be on the plateau to meet their own plane. We can’t risk running into them with Max and Julia in the car.”
“So where do we go?”
“We take the back route,” Didier said, pulling away. “Then cross the plateau on the far side and go down into Puivert. It’ll be tight, but if we’re fast we might just make it.”
FORTY-FIVE
The road was long and winding, much slower than the route across the plateau, especially in darkness. The descent was steep at times, with plunging drops into deep valleys on either side as the road twisted and turned.
Didier was as tired as Paul and was using all his powers of concentration to stay awake and focus on the driving. But more than once he found his eyes closing.
“Tell us what happened with Alain,” he said to Max and Julia, blinking and rubbing his eyes after almost swerving off the road on a hairpin bend. “Just keep talking.”
Julia went first, explaining how Alain had drawn the pistol as they left the forest track and then driven them at gunpoint to the house in Espezel.
Then Max told the shocked Paul and Didier how their captor had admitted his involvement with the murderous gang that had robbed and slaughtered escapees in the Pyrenees the previous year.
“Alain,” Didier said, fully awake now. “I can’t believe it!”
“Believe it,” Max continued, “because he also told us that when you and Henri got close to discovering exactly what was going on, he killed two other people in the gang to stop them from talking.”