While his wound was being attended to, he told his story. When he had finished, the faces of both Barbut and Auguste were grim.
‘This is grave news,’ Auguste said. ‘We thought that something was afoot when the Germans suddenly threw up road blocks all around this area. So they are waiting for reinforcements before launching an offensive against us, are they?’
‘Yes, monsieur. But the English will try to stop them getting here.’
Auguste nodded. ‘Good. And you say the English plan to attack the airfield tomorrow night?’
‘That is so, monsieur.’
‘In that case we must be ready to assist them,’ Auguste said decisively. ‘But first we must contact London to make arrangements. It was planned that a fast motor launch of the Royal Navy would land at a point west of the Rhône estuary to take the English commandos to safety once their mission had been carried out. Now we must change the timing, and hope that the Navy will have a craft to spare at such short notice. Louis, do you know at what hour the English commandos will make their attack on the enemy troop train tonight?’
‘All I know, Monsieur, is that it will be sometime after eight o’clock,’ the youth informed him.
‘Very well. Then we must start moving down from the hills as soon as it is dark. It may be that the Germans will muster sufficient troops from elsewhere to attack us here; we must be gone before daybreak tomorrow. We will move into our positions closer to Istres and be ready to carry out our diversionary raids tomorrow night. But first, let us return to our headquarters; there are things we must see to.’
With two Resistance men supporting Louis, they made their way through the hills to the mainly deserted village of Les Baux. Even in broad daylight it was a ghostly place, perched on its spur in the hills. On a crag above the village a ruined castle stood; it had once been the home of a despot whose main amusement had been to kidnap local peasants and force them to leap to their deaths from the clifftop. Its advantage as a Resistance base was that the approaches to it could be held against an army.
After conferring for a few moments with Auguste, Etienne Barbut went into the deserted cottage which was used as an HQ building and wrote something on a scrap of paper. Emerging, he went round to a shed at the back of the building and selected a grey and white pigeon from among the dozen or so that roosted inside. He rolled up the scrap of paper and placed it carefully in a tiny canister, which he attached to the bird’s leg. Then he raised the pigeon to his lips and kissed it fondly on the head before raising it high in his cupped hands.
‘Fly straight and true, my little one,’ he murmured. ‘Fly to Raoul!’
He released the bird, which soared skywards in a whirr of wings and circled once before setting its course towards the west, speeding low over the scrub-covered valleys towards the Camargue.
*
In the woods beyond Carry-le-Rouet, Douglas and his team waited for nightfall. Douglas was reassured by the fact that, after considerable delay and difficulty, Mitchell had at last established contact with London. His signal had produced a brief acknowledgement, and nothing more, but in the War Office the wheels would be turning to set the revised plan in motion.
From their vantage-point, Douglas could see across the bay to Marseille and, while the light lasted, studied it through his binoculars, making sketches of the strong points he could see and noting the types of vessel that lay in and around the port. Almost directly opposite, high on a cliff and surmounted by a lighthouse, was the Château d’If, the setting of one of his favourite boyhood stories.
Darkness brought the cold with it; not the crisp coldness of an English winter, but an insidious, numbing chill that crept into the bones. The mistral whined soulfully among the tree-tops, the only sound in the night.
‘Do you think they’ll be on time, sir?’ It was Stan Brough who asked the question.
‘They will be, if I know anything of the Germans,’ Douglas answered. It was a few minutes before eight o’clock. They were all listening to catch the first sound of the train, but the continual moan of the wind made it hard to hear anything else.
Nevertheless, it was not long before his theory about Teutonic punctuality was borne out. After a few more minutes, they all heard the unmistakable chug of a locomotive approaching up the line. The sound was muted for a while as the train entered the first tunnel, then grew suddenly louder. A warning blast on the whistle signalled that it was about to enter the second tunnel.
‘Any second now,’ Sansom muttered, looking at the luminous dial of his wrist watch. Douglas found that he was holding his breath. The steady rumble of the train came to him as an echo through the tunnel mouth.
A succession of heavy thuds shook the ground, followed immediately by a muffled roaring. An immense blast of hot air burst from the tunnel, bearing with it clouds of powdered stone and smoke. The roaring continued for a few seconds, then ceased. A great slab of stone crumbled from the hillside above the tunnel mouth and rolled downhill, bringing an avalanche with it. Seconds later, it was as though the tunnel had never existed.
Douglas had been expecting a big bang, but nothing like this; ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed. ‘What did you put in there?’
‘It’s some new stuff,’ Willings told him. ‘First time it’s been used for real. Quite effective, don’t you think?’
‘Quite,’ Douglas agreed. ‘Well, that train isn’t going anywhere, and I don’t think anyone is going to use that tunnel for quite a while. Let’s get out of here before the fun starts.’
‘What now, boss?’ Conolly asked as he shouldered his kit.
‘We’re going back to Fos-sur-Mer,’ Douglas told him. ‘That’s probably the last place anyone will think of looking for us. Besides, I want to be within easy striking distance of Istres for tomorrow night’s show. I still haven’t got a clue how we’re going to get into the place,’ he admitted. ‘Somebody’s going to have to take a good look at it.’
‘I’ll go,’ Colette volunteered.
‘No you won’t,’ Conolly told her firmly, and apologized immediately to Douglas for jumping the gun.
‘Sorry, boss, but she’s done enough. Besides, she won’t really know what to look for. I speak passable French; all I need is a disguise. Let me do it.’
‘We’ll talk about it later,’ Douglas said. ‘First things first: let’s establish a secure base where we can lie up tomorrow.’ As they began to move away through the trees, Douglas glanced back once at the ruined tunnel. He wondered if any of the troops on the train had survived. Over-gifted with imagination, he visualized the nightmarish horror that would now be gripping any who still lived, entombed in the reeking darkness. Suddenly, the night did not seem so cold.
CHAPTER TEN
Outside the windows of the War Office in London snow was swirling. It drifted down into the streets and formed a blackened carpet of slush in which people and vehicles squelched as they went about their business.
The depressing scene outside exactly matched the mood of Sir Richard Westerfield. He stood at the window of the conference room and stared out over Whitehall, marshalling his thoughts as he watched the eddying snowflakes. He rather wished that it were dark and the heavy blackout curtains drawn, to bring at least an illusion of cosiness to the room.
Brigadier Masters was sitting at the table, together with a number of other senior British officers, all of them members of the Directorate of Operations. The other officer was an American one-star general, who wore the shoulder flashes of the US Rangers. His deep suntan suggested that he was a new arrival in the wintry climate of England. He doodled on a note pad with his pencil, then looked up at Westerfield.
‘What is the present position of the convoy, Admiral?’ he asked.
Westerfield turned from the window to face him; ‘It’s west of Tangier, off Cape Spartel,’ he said. ‘The plan was to lie off Tangier for forty-eight hours to allow more escort vessels to make rendezvous with it, but now we can’t afford that kind of delay. The orders have gone out for it t
o make all possible speed through the Strait of Gibraltar during the hours of darkness, and afterwards to hug the North African coastline before turning north off Sicily. We’re just going to have to lose the extra two days in passage through the Mediterranean so that we don’t interfere with the schedule for the landings. We can arrange some fighter cover from the airstrips in North Africa, but not much; most of our first-line fighter squadrons are in Italy, and will not be able to provide cover until the ships come within range.’
‘So everything depends on this guy — what’s his name? — and the French Resistance,’ the American said flatly. Westerfield nodded.
‘That’s correct. But at least we know that Douglas is still in circulation. We can only hope that he and his men are still in a position to deal a heavy blow against the Luftwaffe unit at Istres. If they fail to do so, then the convoy must inevitably suffer severe casualties. We know to our cost what those rockets can do.’
‘Well, I hope he pulls it off,’ the American said grimly. ‘Those are our guys in that convoy. I’d hate for them to have come all this way and be wiped out before they have a chance to fire a shot at the enemy.’
‘Not only that, General,’ Masters chipped in. ‘If anything happens to the convoy, it will prove impossible to mount the landings at all. You know perfectly well what that would mean; this whole operation is designed to outflank the German Gustav Line, and in particular its central defensive position at Monte Cassino. If we fail to do that, the consequences could be disastrous — not only with regard to the progress of the war in Italy, but also in the context of future operations in western Europe. We need both men and equipment from the Italian front before we can mount an invasion of enemy-occupied France, General, and that invasion has got to take place this year. Quite apart from the pressure being exerted upon us by our Russian allies, there are strong Intelligence indications that the Germans are developing a whole new range of devastating weapons that could conceivably alter the course of the war in their favour.’
‘I can well believe that,’ the general said, ‘if what you say about these anti-ship missiles is true. But I don’t understand – ’
He was interrupted by a knock at the door. An aide came into the room and handed a typed sheet of paper to Westerfield, who scanned it and then smiled before addressing the assembled officers.
‘Good news from Italy, gentlemen. As you know, the British Fifth Army opened an offensive against the Gustav Line four days ago, on the twelfth of January. The French Corps had an early success, making a ten-mile advance on the northern flank. I am now pleased to be able to tell you that the American Second Corps has occupied Monte Trocchio and advanced as far as the River Liri. Air reconnaissance indicates that the Germans are withdrawing several divisions from the seaward end of the Gustav Line in order to meet the threat.’
He moved away from the window and laid the sheet of paper on the table, placing his hands on either side of it and leaning forward slightly as he spoke.
‘Gentlemen, the enemy appear to be taking the bait. They have left their seaward flank exposed at its most vulnerable point. This means that, with luck, our landings will be carried out virtually unopposed. If the reinforcement convoy gets through safely — and I have every confidence that it will — then in just a few days’ time, the name Anzio will go down in history.’
*
Twelve hundred miles south-west of London, an elderly, rusting freighter churned its way through the Atlantic. The ship had sailed from Cork in neutral Ireland several days earlier and now, after one short stop at Lisbon to unload butter, had rounded Cape St Vincent and was on its way to Casablanca with a cargo of spare parts.
The vessel’s elderly skipper leaned on the bridge rail, took his pipe out of his mouth and spoke to his mate, who now bore a livid scar on his brow.
‘Bloody hell, lad, just look at yon lot. Like a flock o’ sheep.’
Some miles distant, the sea was crammed with merchantmen — American-built Liberty ships for the most part — with their rakish escorts scurrying in attendance like sheepdogs.
The mate looked. ‘Safety in numbers,’ he commented. The skipper looked sideways at him. ‘Like hell! Look what happened to us, the last time we were in a convoy.’
‘That’s right enough,’ the mate agreed. ‘I still think they might have given us a bit more leave after that lark.’
The skipper was unsympathetic. ‘You had Christmas and the New Year at home, didn’t you? What more do you want? If you thought that scratch on your head was going to earn you a few months off, you must be bloody daft. You’d have had to have a leg off, at least, with this outfit. Anyway, there’s a war on.’
‘I’d noticed,’ the mate said laconically. ‘It looks as though somebody’s taking notice of us, too,’ he added, pointing.
A destroyer had detached herself from the convoy and was heading towards the freighter at full speed. She turned, the water creaming white below her bow, and after a few minutes of manoeuvring came up on a parallel course, within hailing distance. The elderly skipper looked at her three smoke stacks and her blue-grey splinter camouflage and snorted.
‘Bloody Yank,’ he said contemptuously. ‘All starched uniforms and orange juice. You won’t get a drink on one of those, lad. Dry as a bone, they are.’
An amplified American voice rang tinnily across the narrow stretch of water that separated the two ships.
‘What ship is that?’
The old skipper leaned over the rail of the bridge and pointed towards the bow, where his ship’s name was painted.
‘Can’t you bloody well read?’ he yelled. There was a pained silence from the bridge of the American warship, then the amplified voice said curtly, ‘You are to hold your position until further notice. Stop your engines and drop anchor immediately, sir. This is an order.’
The tone in the American’s voice brooked no argument. The merchantman’s skipper sighed and then gave the necessary orders to the engine-room. The ship lost way and then the anchor went down, trailing a cloud of rust from its chain. There was no more word from the American destroyer, which increased speed and went away to rejoin the convoy.
‘Wonder where they’re off to?’ the mate remarked.
‘Couldn’t say, lad. Could be Italy; could be the Far East, through the Canal. I expect we’ll read all about it in the papers. Well, we’ve nowt to do for a while but enjoy the view. See if you can organize some cocoa, will you?’
Unknown to the old skipper, someone else was also observing the convoy as it steamed past Tangier into the Strait of Gibraltar. Perched high on a rock near Tarifa, at the southernmost tip of Spain, a man watched the progress of the ships through powerful binoculars. He looked rather like a peacetime tourist, with his tweed jacket and plus fours — the kind of clothing a gentleman might wear on a stroll in the country.
In fact he was a gentleman: Rittmeister Freiherr Siegfried von Seydlitz was a son of one of Prussia’s oldest aristocratic families, and possessed inherent sound taste and manners that had stood him in good stead during his career in the German diplomatic service. It was something the Spaniards appreciated, too, which was why he had many friends in high places — friends who saw to it that his movements around southern Spain, especially in the vicinity of Gibraltar, were never restricted or hindered in any way.
Now, from his vantage point, von Seydlitz was making an accurate tally of the ships as they came into view over the horizon. He counted the merchantmen and then the escorting warships, dividing the latter into the various classes — cruisers, destroyers and so on. With this completed, he set about making as accurate as possible a sketch of the formation in which the convoy was sailing. The Luftwaffe boys would need to know that so that they could plan their attack approach. Air reconnaissance would have been simpler, but it was out of the question; a lone recce aircraft venturing within spitting distance of Gibraltar these days could not expect to last long.
Von Seydlitz worked quickly, for he was conscious that there wa
s not much time. The convoy was passing through the Strait of Gibraltar unexpectedly early — some three days early, in fact — and he knew that the Luftwaffe had only a limited time in which to attack it with their new weapons before it drew out of range or came under the Allied fighter umbrella, or both.
At last, he folded up his notes and put them in an inside pocket of his jacket. He pushed his binoculars back into their case, which he slung over his shoulder, and then strode off purposefully towards the cottage he had rented in a nearby village. He had spent the last two weeks there, watching and waiting, and now his patience had been rewarded.
At the cottage, he started up a petrol-driven generator which provided electricity for his radio transmitter. The necessary preliminaries took only a minute or two, for the transmitter was already set up on a table and its aerial erected on a patch of clear ground at the back of the building. The Spanish authorities knew exactly what von Seydlitz was up to, but they made no attempt to interfere with him. They may not have condoned his activities, but at least they left him alone, which probably amounted to the same thing.
Rapidly, under his expert touch, the Morse key chattered out the message that was to spell the death of the convoy.
*
So far, things had gone well for Liam Conolly. With the others, he had returned to Fos-sur-Mer in the early hours of the morning and, together with Douglas, had crept forward to make a reconnaissance of the small village. All traces of the previous night’s battle had been removed, and so, it seemed, had the inhabitants, presumably rounded up and taken away for questioning. While the others took cover nearby, Douglas and Conolly searched each house in turn and came up with several articles of clothing which would make an effective disguise for the Irishman: a pair of baggy corduroy trousers, a tattered fisherman’s jersey and a black beret that looked as if it had been used to shine boots. They also discovered a rusting bicycle which Conolly pronounced serviceable enough for the job in hand.
Attack at Night Page 13