The '44 Vintage dda-8

by Anthony Price

  De Courcy frowned, glancing at each of them in turn. “Well . . . there are fifty dead in Sermigny, to the north of here . . . not counting the Germans. But that might be counted an accident of war, and not your fault. . . . But the four men you ambushed on the road—Communists, I admit, but men of the Resistance Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

  also. And the German prisoner you released"—he shrugged—"no doubt you had your reasons. But innocence is not the game to play."

  "Innocence?" Winston exploded. " Innocence!"

  "Hold it, Sergeant!" Audley held up his hand. "We haven't killed anyone, Doctor. Not Frenchmen, anyway. I give you my word of honour on that."

  "Yeah. And my word too," snapped Winston. "Not that I haven't been goddamn tempted."

  De Courcy's eyes clouded. "And I, Sergeant—I have seen the bodies of the men you killed. And also . . .

  M'sieur Boucard tells me you have a German officer with you. So where does that leave your word of honour, Sergeant?"

  The American drew a deep breath, but then turned abruptly to Audley. "Lieutenant—are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he said slowly.

  Audley nodded. "I shouldn't be at all surprised. I think you people have a word for it, too, don't you?"

  "We do—several words. 'Framed' is one—and 'suckers' is another. And I guess that both apply to us, by God!" Winston swung back towards the Frenchman. "You saw the bodies, Doc—you actually saw them?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you examine them?" said Audley.

  De Courcy frowned. "Why should I examine them? They were dead."

  "Yeah, I'll bet they were," said Winston. "The way they died they'd be very dead."

  "The way they died?" For the first time there was doubt in De Courcy's voice.

  "That's right. They were hit by six point-five Brownings belonging to one trigger-happy P-51 pilot. And we didn't have a thing to do with it, except to get the hell out of the way of the same thing."

  Audley nodded. "That's exactly the way it happened, Doctor. We were strafed on the road—we were in two captured German vehicles, and the Mustangs took us for the real thing. But we got off the road in time, and they didn't." He turned to Butler. 'Would you ask Hauptmann Grafenberg to join us, Corporal, please."

  Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

  Butler peered into the darkness of the hayloft, but before he could speak, he saw a movement in the aisle between the banks of hay on each side of the opening.

  "Sir—"

  "I have heard, Corporal." The German stepped forward towards the doormat, pulling at his crumpled uniform with one hand in a hopeless attempt to straighten it and brushing with the other at the hay which festooned it.

  "Good morning, Hauptmann," said Audley politely. "Doctor, I'd like you to meet Hauptmann Grafenberg of the German Army."

  The young German blinked at the light and stiffened to attention. If anything he looked even worse than the day before, thought Butler, as though he had spent the night with things even nastier than the blood-bloated flies which plagued Audley's dreams.

  "Hauptmann, I'd be very grateful if ... you'd be so good as to tell the doctor what happened to us on the road yesterday afternoon," said Audley.

  The German looked down at the Frenchman. "It is not necessary—I have heard what has been said . . .

  and it is the truth." He swallowed awkwardly, as though the words were painful. "Except—it is not correct that I ... that the Herr Lieutenant released me. It was to him that I surrendered."

  Winston leaned forward again, stabbing a finger at De Courcy. "Which means that someone has been lying through his teeth about us, Doc—because the driver who was with us when the P-51s hit us, he ran like a jack rabbit. So they know what happened as well as we do."

  Dr. de Courcy's eyes narrowed. "But . . . why should they lie about you, Sergeant—if they knew so much?"

  "Hell, Doc—that doesn't take much figuring. They knew we were coming and they were waiting for us.

  So they scooped us up, but then we gave them the slip. So now they want whoever's got us to turn us in."

  Winston straightened up. "like two plus two equals four—right, Lieutenant?"

  Butler followed the sergeant's look to Audley, and was surprised to see how pale the subaltern's face was; it was paler than it ought to be after the German's testimony and the sergeant's triumphant mathematical assertion—paler even than thirty-six hours of strain and danger had already made it when I've been really almost happy for the first time since I landed in Normandy.

  So there was something the sergeant had missed . . . something that made two plus two equals four the wrong answer.

  Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

  And then it hit him like a gut-punch: from the moment that the major had shouted 'Hände hoch, Tommy'

  out of the hedge at him two plus two had never equalled four.

  He studied the Frenchman's face critically for the first time. Apart from that narrow look about the eyes it was entirely without expression —as empty as the woods had seemed where the French had ambushed the German vehicles. No fear, no anger, no belief, no disbelief, no surprise.

  Two plus two equals five.

  "Permission to speak to the doctor, sir," he said.

  "What the hell?" Winston regarded him curiously. But the American Army had no discipline, of course.

  "Corporal?" Audley's glance was hardly less curious. "All right—go ahead."

  "Thank you, sir." Butler dismissed them both from his mind and concentrated on the Frenchman.

  "M'sieur Boucard has explained the situation to you, sir, I expect?"

  Now the Frenchman was studying him for the first time also, and seeing him as a soldier with a gun in his hands—a dirty, dishevelled British Tommy with a bandaged head, a person of no account, Butler thought gleefully.

  But then, of course, he couldn't know what Butler knew—

  All depended on MacDonald, and that officer, who by valour and conduct in war had won his way from the rank of a private soldier to the command of a brigade, was equal to the emergency—

  The Frenchman hadn't answered yet, and that was a good sign.

  "Sir?" he enquired politely.

  "Yes." The answer was accompanied by a frown.

  "So you do know our objective, sir?"

  The doctor's lips tightened. "I know what I have been told," he said curtly. "Yes."

  "That's fine, sir. Then you know our objective." Butler nodded, listening in his inner ear to the sweet sound of the bugles at Omdurman.

  "So the only question is—how quickly can you get us to Pont-Civray? Because the way things are, we Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

  probably don't have much time."

  Now there was an emotion in De Courcy's face: he looked at Butler incredulously. "You think it is easy to get to Pont-Civray?"

  "Hey, Jack—" Winston began.

  "No!" snapped Butler, without looking at the American. 'We've been buggered around enough—now there's going to be no more buggering around . . . and the answer to that is—yes, sir. You've been running an escape route in these parts for three or four years. If you can move men around under the noses of the Germans and the French police, then you can move us to Pont-Civray, which is only just down the road from here, somewhere. So the answer is yes, sir—for you it is easy. All you have to do is to state your terms."

  "My—terms?"

  "Yes, sir. You said yourself that innocence isn't the game to play. So —with respect—I suggest you practise what you preach."

  "My terms . . ." De Courcy left the question mark off the words this time. "What makes you think I have . . . terms?"

  Butler turned to Audley. "Do you want to take over, sir?"

  Audley was smiling at him, really smiling, as he shook his head. "You've got the ball, Jack—you make the touchdown."

  "Very good, sir." Butler tightened his grip on the Sten as he turned back
to the Frenchman. Like MacDonald wheeling his battalions and batteries, he knew that it could only be done if it was done right.

  And it wasn't a small thing that Audley was doing himself, trusting him to do it.

  He looked down over the stubby barrel at the Frenchman.

  "You didn't never believe"—he stumbled over the grammar—"you never did believe we killed those men, sir. If you had believed it then you wouldn't be here—you'd have turned us in, as the sergeant said.

  Or if you didn't want to turn Mr. Audley in, for old times' sake, then you still wouldn't have wanted to help us—and you certainly wouldn't have come down here by yourself to tell us to our faces that we were murderers, and we could stew in our own juice. You'd have sent M'sieur Boucard maybe, but you wouldn't have come yourself."

  "What makes you so sure of that?"

  Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

  Butler lifted the Sten. "This does, sir. Because if I'd killed four Frenchmen then a fifth one wouldn't worry me—because if Mr. Audley says 'shoot' then I shoot." He shook his head. "But you came—sir—"

  "That at least is true."

  Butler felt a small knot of anger tie itself inside him. "Aye, and there's not much bloody truth round here, either."

  "Steady, Jack," said Audley.

  "Yes, sir." Butler stepped back from his anger. "But instead of being straight with us you've been playing your own little game."

  "And what game is that?" asked De Courcy.

  The question sounded casual—almost insultingly casual, and certainly condescending. A day or two back a question like that would have thrown him, thought Butler. Even a few minutes ago it might have put him off his stroke, because he hadn't understood the rules of the game. But now it was different.

  "Why—sir—you've told us that yourself." He gave the Frenchman back a common corporal's surprise in return for the condescension. It wasn't a game, of course, and they both knew it. But the trick was to behave as though it was—it was as simple and easy as that. He had taken a long time to learn that rule, but he had learnt it in the end.

  " Pardon?" De Courcy's English accent slipped. "I told you?"

  "Oh yes, sir." It wasn't difficult to insult a man if you knew how. "Your man-eating tigers—the men who are after us—they didn't really want to know why we were here, and what we were doing. So happens they knew that." He grinned innocently. "What they wanted to know is where we were going—that was what they didn't know."

  "Bravo!" encouraged Audley softly.

  "But you, sir—you know where we're going, because M'sieur Boucard's told you. And you know what we're going to do as well—because he'll have told you that too. What you don't know is the why—and that's your game, sir."

  "Man—but Boucard will have told him that too," said Winston. "No, Sergeant," said Audley quickly.

  "Not the real why. Not—well, not the tiger's why. They couldn't possibly know what we are planning to do, and it wouldn't worry them if they did know—Englishmen hunting Englishmen—what do they care about that? What they're after is what the major is after, don't you see!" He swung towards Butler, Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

  "Right, Corporal?"

  Butler swelled with pride. "That's it, sir—right bang on the nose." He nodded to the American. “We're the pig in the middle, Sarge. But there's more than one on each side of us, that's what we haven't realised." Suddenly the pride dipped as it occurred to him that he wasn't sure what sides there were among the French.

  "The Communists versus the Free French—General de Gaulle's people," Audley supplied the answer.

  "Good for you, Corporal!"

  "Yes, sir." Butler adjusted his expression to one of knowing approval. One thing his own general had been dead wrong about was that a soldier didn't need to know much about politics.

  Winston stared from one to the other of them. "But . . . but we don't—" he bit the end of the sentence off. " Shit!" he said feelingly.

  Audley laughed—a little too shrilly for Butler's peace of mind. "That's exactly right, Sergeant: we don't—

  and shit is the appropriate reaction." The laugh caught in his throat and he stifled a cough. "I'm sorry—

  but it would be really rather funny if it wasn't happening to us, of all people!" He shook his head helplessly.

  "Funny?" The American growled, looking to Butler for support. "You think it's rah-ther funny, Jack— really rah-ther funny?" He stared at Butler menacingly. "Does it seem funny to you?"

  Butler didn't think it was in the least funny. The remembrance of what had happened on the banks of the Loire was still a raw wound in his mind, and the murderously efficient Frenchmen in the wood—the men who were hunting for him now—were all frightening, not funny. He didn't wish to be disloyal to Audley, but there was certainly nothing there which could conceivably be regarded as even faintly amusing. Even the game he'd just learnt to play was no joke, for all that the winning of it was intensely satisfying.

  But Audley was still giggling—

  And now, what was worse—much worse, was that the American sergeant's face was breaking up too: even as he stared at Butler he was losing control of it—he was smiling foolishly—he was beginning to laugh.

  He was laughing, now.

  "Shit!" The American suddenly draped his arm on Audley's shoulder familiarly. “We don't know—but they think we do! But we don't—"

  Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

  He broke down feebly, shaking his head.

  Butler looked around desperately, catching first the blank look on Hauptmann Grafenberg's face, and then the equally questioning expression on the doctor's.

  "I'm sorry—I really am—" Audley began.

  "Re-ally," echoed Sergeant Winston. "Doc—it's just that you're a horse trader—"

  "A horse trader?" De Courcy frowned. "What is—a horse trader?"

  "Aw—they come in all shapes and sizes. But mostly crooked."

  Winston finally managed to control himself. "You want me to tell him, Lieutenant?"

  "Be my guest." Audley gestured towards the doctor.

  "Okay." Winston bowed to Audley, then to the doctor. "It's just . . . we don't have anything to trade. No horses, no mules—not even a goddamn donkey! All we've got is our boots—and Corporal Butler's gun."

  De Courcy stared at them. "What do you mean?"

  "He means"—Audley's voice was at last serious—"that we haven't the faintest idea what the loot is. If the Communists got us—or the Gestapo got us—even if the Spanish Inquisition got us—it wouldn't do them one damn bit of good. Because we don't know."

  De Courcy continued to stare at them, though now there was a hint of something else in his face; perhaps the beginning of either puzzlement or disbelief, Butler couldn't decide which.

  Winston shook his head at Audley. "I don't think we're getting through . . . and maybe that's not surprising when you think about it, Lieutenant. Because we have to be crazy to want to go to Pont-Civray, seems to me. Which means . . . unless he's crazy too there's no way we're going to convince him we're on the level. No way at all."

  It hadn't been real laughter, Butler realised belatedly as Audley's eyes shifted from the American to him: it had been something much closer to hysteria. However much the subaltern pretended that all this was more to his taste than tank warfare in the bocage— he might even believe that it was—he was near to the end of his resources.

  And, what was more, the American was right: it was crazy, what he had been leading and driving them to do, this mad compulsion to catch up with the major. What would they do if they did catch up with Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

  him, the three of them? The odds would still be hugely against them.

  But then perhaps that was what he wanted.

  Perhaps it wasn't so much a case of But now I want to know why, don't you see? as If they think they're going to get me back inside a tank, they're going to have to ca
rry me kicking and screaming.

  It wasn't fair—to be caught up in something like this.

  It never had been fair—to be taken away from his battalion and his company, and from his platoon and his section—just because he spoke a few words of German.

  With a Lancashire-Polish accent.

  It wasn't bloody well fair.

  Audley was looking at him as though he expected a clever answer to a question which had no answer at all. And although he was sorry for Audley . . . although he was sorry for Audley in the same way that he was sorry for Hauptmann Grafenberg ... he knew that he wouldn't have given him an answer even if he could think of one.

  And then Audley wasn't looking at him any more; or, rather, not at him, as much as at his battle-dress sleeve, with its corporal's stripes.

  He looked down at the stripes himself. The stout thread he had used to sew them on had come loose, so that one end was lifting away from the sleeve. He must have snagged them on something, probably a tree branch during their panic flight through the wood near Sermigny—

  "Two reasons," said Audley, turning suddenly back towards Dr. de Courcy. "There are two reasons why you should believe us."

  "Two reasons?"

  "Or six, if you like." Audley glanced quickly at the American sergeant, then back once again to De Courcy. And he was smiling now. "Or a dozen, even—take your pick, Doctor."

  Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

  "One would be enough, David." Curiously, the doctor sounded almost relieved.

  "One then." The smile was gone from Audley's face as he reached across his chest to touch the pip on his left epaulette with his index finger. "This one will do well enough."

  De Courcy frowned. "That is—a reason?"

  "Oh yes, it's a reason. It's a good reason—in fact it's the best damn reason in the world!" Audley's voice was bitter. "I said we didn't know what the major was after, but that's not strictly true. We know the damn thing's valuable—we know it's top secret. And you know what we are?" The finger tapped the pip.

  "Second lieutenant." The finger left the single pip and pointed towards Butler's stripes. "And a corporal"— and then at Winston—"and a sergeant." He paused just long enough to take a fresh breath.