“Damn it, Percy, are you trying—”
Michel stopped. He realized the old man was in a bad way. His face was bright red and he was covered in sweat. He gasped a mix of short and long breaths. Michel took a second to compose himself.
“Percy, we must be more careful, and we must go slower. It is dangerous to push yourself like this.”
Percy got to his feet. “You just worry about that Englishman. I was climbing before you were born.”
Percy untied the rope from his waist and threw it down to Henry. Henry secured himself, then stood looking skyward, a small man looking up to his temporary gods.
“Just follow the same way we came, Henry. Keep your foot in the crack, and you’ll be ok,” yelled Michel.
Henry did not whine. His will was utterly broken, and he followed orders. This time Michel kept tension on from the beginning. By taking about fifty pounds of pressure—no easy feat—Henry had less than one hundred pounds of his own weight to pull up the cliff.
He started up the fissure and, with constant instruction and reassurance yelled down from Michel, he slowly progressed up the rock wall. Unlike Percy, Henry was very careful. Each foot tested its placement, each hand felt for a firm grip. Slowly but surely, he made it to the vertical section of the fissure without so much as slipping—but that was the easy part.
Henry tried copying the technique Michel and Percy had used. Two hands and one foot in the crack, one foot spread across the rock face, push up.
He did not move. He simply did not have the strength. Three times, four times, five times Henry tried, but he was stuck. He started to panic, his head twisting left and right, as if he might find another way out, perhaps a convenient stairway down.
“It’s all right Henry, just wait. It’s all right. We’re going to pull you up. Percy, I need your help. Percy!”
Michel turned his head to where Percy had been resting. He was not there. He could not crane his neck while holding onto Henry, but Michel knew that if he looked to the skies he would see Percy, already making his way up the next cliff. Michel was furious.
“Hold on and climb when you can, Henry! I’m pulling you up!”
Michel gritted his teeth and panted like a beast as, one hand after another, he dragged Henry up the cliff. It took everything he had left, to the point that his head was shaking with the strain by the time two small hands grabbed at the ledge. Henry pulled himself to safety.
Both men were spent, Michel physically and Henry physically and mentally. But there was still another section of cliff and a bluff to negotiate. Michel looked up. He did not see Percy. Could he have made the top already?
He scanned the cliff. Forty yards to the right, twenty yards up the cliff, he saw Percy clinging to the rock face. He did not move laterally. He did not move up or down. Percy was stuck, frozen to the spot.
Michel scanned higher and perceived a slight overhang, a layer of rock that had eroded fractionally slower than the layer beneath it. For the most part, it was only a couple of degrees beyond vertical, yet enough to be a major problem. Percy had traversed laterally, no doubt looking for a fissure with decent holds or a section where the cliff had no overhang. Now he could go no further and the longer he hung there, the weaker he became.
Yet the proud old bastard still would not call for help. Michel figured it was an act of unmatched stupidity, though at the same time he found something admirable in Percy’s grit and pride.
Michel examined the possible routes then took off, his arms on fire, moving swiftly while not taking unnecessary risks. He would be no help to Percy crumpled in a broken heap at the foot of the rock face. He proceeded straight up, traversed two yards, then straight up, traversed three yards, then straight up. As he neared the overhang, he started moving laterally toward Percy. He stopped a few yards from him and gulped air. Percy—gripped to the rock like a gecko—looked at him and said nothing, the shame all too apparent.
Michel could have said many cruel or sanctimonious things, but when he had his breath he chose to offer an olive branch. “I think I am stuck, Percy. Where do I try to get up?”
Percy looked at Michel hard, then grinned and nodded.
“Yes. Yes, I have looked at the entire overhang. The section ten, fifteen yards back, there are two good handgrips beyond the lip. Maybe we can take it there,” said Percy.
“Let’s do it,” said Michel.
When they reached the section Percy had selected, each man took one hand from their precarious perch of rock and together they tied the rope into a harness around Percy’s waist. The rest of the rope was still slung around Michel’s chest; a length of slack hung between them.
Michel reached up and out, his right hand sliding along the overhang until his fingers curled the top and bunted up against a nub of rock. It was jagged and without smoothed edges—hard on the hands—but it would be a firm hold. He wrapped fingers and palm around it, then with his left hand repeated the action, sliding across the overhang then blindly feeling for the second hold they had seen earlier. He felt out a slight depression in the rock, but it was no hold. Michel kept searching. Nothing. He looked to Percy.
“Where is it?”
Percy had a firm footing and his right hand was wedged in an uneven crack. He leant his body out as far as he could and looked up. He scanned left and right. He shook his head.
“That chip. The shadow on it made it look bigger from over there. That is your hold.”
Michel felt it out again. His fingers pressed into the cut that offered less than an inch of horizontal surface to grip. A miniscule and precarious fingerhold.
“This?” said Michel, incredulous.
“The same.”
“Horse fucker!” bellowed Michel, his voice echoing from the rock to spread east and west. He grunted. “Not you, Percy. Not you. Jesus, this is what you climbed those years ago?”
“Who knows? I was drunk. I might have flown up on a pig with wings. Can you do it?”
Michel pushed his jaw forward as he ground his teeth. He shook his head.
“Can you do it?” repeated Percy.
Michel looked him square in the eyes. He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. “I suppose we shall see.”
Michel dug in, found a foothold higher on the wall and pushed up so that his body began to leave the vertical and tilt backward. He thrust his left foot up and kicked the wall. The toe of his boot found a nib; he pressed down and it slipped. He brought it up again and it slipped, so he scraped left and found a better perch. He rose higher and tilted further beyond the vertical.
It was not complicated now. Lunge, and either he made the next hold or he did not. He either lived or died.
Michel thrust with his legs and at the same time launched his left hand higher, reaching for a crack that was a yard beyond his precarious hold. He had to fling his body outwards to do so, a slingshotting motion with no room for error. His left hand slapped onto the rock. A single finger, his pinky, slipped into a crack. He dropped and he held—by his pinky. He did not readjust. He knew now where the crack was.
Again blind, he pushed out beyond the overhang and flung his right hand at the crack like a drowning man swimming overarm. It stabbed into the cold fissure of shadow and his grip instantly caught. Michel dangled by his arms as his feet kicked and slid and then found a hold, kicked and slid and found another hold. Then he was up, past the overhang.
Twenty more yards and he had solid ground. After a few more minutes and the help of the belay, Percy sat beside him. Another hour and with a lot of swearing and threats, a scared witless Henry clung to the rock beside him.
With all three past the worst of it and nothing but pedestrian obstacles left to tackle, a wave of jubilation struck Michel. He had come as close to death as a climber might ever, and survived. He had free-climbed an almost impossible cliff.
Just one more bluff remained. Now walking on firm ground, Michel was the first to notice the black line running through the rock. As they drew closer, the visual il
lusion revealed itself as a rift where the rock plate had split in two. It was uniformly about three yards wide. Michel looked to Percy and said, “You think …”
“I think we jump it,” said Percy.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Michel had no doubt he could make the distance. He was less sure about Percy and Henry, but he considered it a risk worth taking given the time it would take to find an alternative route. Michel backed up, readying to launch himself across the gap. Henry held a hand out and stopped him.
“What are you doing? We’re not jumping that.”
“Henry, it’s nothing. I can spit to the other side. Your courage has not let you down so far. We jump this, and the worst is over.”
“Worst is over … How many times am I going to hear that? Worst won’t be over till I’m back on the front!”
Michel pushed off, hit top speed in six paces and glided across. He made it look so easy. Percy took a longer run up and needed it to hit his stride. He cleared the gorge with a foot to spare and rolled to a stop.
Michel threw one end of the rope across the gap. Henry tied it to his waist as a precaution. With Michel’s urging, Henry took off. He was three feet from the edge when his knees buckled and his upper body flung backward, his hands instinctively groping for the ground as he slid toward the edge, closer and closer and then almost gently he slipped over the precipice.
Henry screamed as he fell. Michel and Percy put tension on the rope and Henry swung down and across, careening into the opposite wall of rock. It did not take much to drag his flailing body up and over the lip of the fissure. His face was a mess, his gashed top lip already red and engorged. Blood streamed from his mouth.
Michel loped over to Henry and put a comforting hand on his shoulder as he bent low to get a good look. Henry swatted Michel’s arm away and tried to tell him exactly what he thought of him, but it came out as a shower of blood and indecipherable syllables. Michel took a few steps back.
Henry’s hand went to his face. He carefully felt the tender massiveness of his lip. He prodded his tongue along the raw underside and grimaced. He wore a confused look, and then cried out, “Oh no. No no no. My tooth!”
31
When they reached the final rock face, Michel took a few strides that launched into a rapid scrambling up the bluff on all fours. He gained the top and let the rope down. In a handful of minutes, all three crested. From that point the saddle of rock slowly graded into soil, pushed up by the motion of an ancient glacier that had torn though the valley, grinding away parts of the haggard cliffs and bluffs and depositing them inches, feet and miles away. It meant that their descent would be immeasurably easier, mostly just walking, with only a few dashes of rock scrambling.
Having crossed the threshold of the range, the dam came into view. A broad body of water lapped beaches and moraines and snaked its way along the contours of the valley for what must have been three miles. To Percy, it was this very scale that made the dam an inexcusable travesty. Another monument to the way the values of old—tradition, simplicity, virtue, beauty—were being lost to modern society’s lust for change.
But to Michel, the scale of the hydro-electric project was awe-inspiring: a testament to human industry and even genius. And though the risen waters had swallowed the beauty of the ancient glacial valley, they replaced it with a different kind of grandeur. For a moment, Michel felt like a younger man who had climbed mountains for no better reason than to see if he could and to see what was there on the other side. He forgot that he was gazing upon an artificial lake because a squad of Germans were intent upon sending every last drop of it rushing down the valley in a flood that would obliterate Oraon.
They had just began the descent when Henry said, “Look, there,” and pointed to the dam wall.
A distant figure could clearly be seen moving along the concrete walkway. Percy unslung his rifle and raised it to his shoulder. They were almost half a mile away, but Percy was one to take his chances. Michel put his hand over Percy’s rifle, forcing the old man to lower his aim.
“Look how they are walking. And only one. It can’t be the Germans. An important dam like this, maybe there is a garrison of reservists down there. More men for our ‘army’.”
The three of them hurried down the slopes. The closer they came to the shore of the lake, the thicker the tree cover. They stopped at a trail.
“Ok. We proceed slow, just to be safe,” said Michel in English then French. “And Percy, ask questions first, shoot second, yes?”
“If there is a Kraut, I shoot him. No questions asked,” said Percy.
It was as close to agreement as Michel was going to get. As they moved, Michel took in the terrain and cover. It occurred to him that when darkness hit in an hour or two they would have no chance of seeing Germans who did not wish to be seen.
They closed on the wall, each step bringing an increase in the volume of the low whine that filled the air—the sound of the hydro-electric turbines. It was matched by the sound of water rushing from the gates in the dam wall. The path branched, one route heading straight to the wall where a steel ladder was fastened to the concrete, the other meandering up and around the foundations, eventually becoming a road that continued along the wall’s crest. Michel went straight for the ladder. He put a hand on a rung.
“Stop!”
A woman jumped into view at the top of the wall, a revolver leveled at Michel’s head. Percy snapped the rifle to his shoulder, but in that same moment two other figures dashed from behind the higher rock embankment, rifles raised. One of them—short and fat, face squinted into a ball of rage—screamed in French, “Don’t even think about it!”
For a second Michel did not do anything. His hand stayed on the ladder rung and he looked up at the woman. He saw long legs, thin hips, a full bosom and a face framed by a coppice of wild brunette hair, plus a revolver pointed at his face. Michel met the woman’s hard gaze and smiled.
The woman did not smile back. She glanced across to Henry and Percy. Her gaze lingered on Percy, and she gasped.
“Mr Rabinaud? It is. Girls, girls, it’s all right. Lower your rifle, Damia,” she said, directing the last comment to the young woman with the maniacal look on her face, then turned back to Percy. “Mr Rabinaud, I’m Ariane Herôn, Jean Colbert’s daughter. You remember me, don’t you?”
32
Maudette Robert, Damia Winoc and Ariane Herôn. Rotating with a group of six other women, they spent every third week manning a 75mm artillery cannon in readiness for the unlikely event of an attack. The powers that be refused to garrison an infantry or artillery unit at the dam. A single big gun, three untrained women—that was considered security enough.
Once Michel gave them a basic brief of what he knew, they offered up their own telling article of information. Each morning it was standard procedure to report to the garrison in Oraon over a telephonic wire that followed the same route as the power cables beside the River Meuse. That morning the phone was dead.
Almost as an afterthought, Ariane told Michel that there was in fact a fourth as yet unseen person who helped man the structure. They eventually found Noam Becquerel, an aging engineer who spent most of his time in the bowels of the concrete arch. His main tasks were to maintain the right level of peak energy output and to determine the rate of water outflow through the seasons.
Michel looked over the technician with his hunched shoulders, swollen red nose and sad eyes. He seemed, paradoxically, both shrunken and fat, like an anemic with a sweet tooth. He was certainly no killer—when all they needed were killers, cold and committed, to match like for like. But every extra body was better than nothing.
Becquerel showed Michel the internal workings of the dam. The structure contained three levels, plus innumerable shafts built into the concrete that allowed access to a matrix of stress-points. The topmost level housed the control room. An abutting chamber, with barely room enough for a dozen brooms, had been converted into Becquerel’s quarters. The
engineer had ceded the master’s hut to the women.
The level below contained secondary generators, along with a bank of batteries that stored power when production exceeded demand. The third level contained the turbines and was unbelievably loud, a testament to the effectiveness of concrete as a sound insulator given the relative quiet above.
Seeing the internal structure of the arch convinced Michel of one thing: if the Germans were intent on blowing the wall, they would do so from inside. If they achieved that, there was only one possible outcome. A huge hole would be ripped in the outer membrane and the entire structure had to fail.
On the surface, the women gathered together their arsenal: three 8mm rifles, two cases of 8mm bullets, three cases of 75mm artillery shells and one 11mm revolver. The six-shooter, its silvers polished to a high sheen, was tucked into Ariane’s pants.
The 75mm artillery cannon was an early model of the big guns the French army had rolled out across the front. It could fire up to fifteen shells every minute, with a special recoil mechanism that meant the targeter did not need to reset aim. Ariane explained that all three women were proficient on the 75mm, pointing to the crater halfway up a wall of low cliffs about two hundred yards away—target practice.
To the northern side of the arch stood a watchtower with a powerful spotlight. One thing they did not have to worry about was power. Cabled wiring hooked up to the generators ran along the base of the guide rail that stretched the length of the wall. Seeing it, Michel had an idea.
He crossed to the edge where the ladder was attached, examined it quickly, then made his way back to the master’s hut where everyone but Percy was gathered.
“Noam, what would happen if we connected a live cable to the railing?”
Michel And Henry Go To War (The French Bastard Book 1) Page 15