Nikki led them along a high blank brick wall - this was the back of the enclave of buildings, of course - until they came to a small postern door which opened instantly to her knock. Yellow light flooded out over her, throwing her shadow onto the field behind.
‘ Entrez, entrez - vite, vite.’
Mitchell hurried after them, stopping to avoid the low lintel and blinking in the glare of the naked light on the wall just above him which illuminated an empty barn. No sooner was he through than the door was slammed shut behind him by a black-uniformed policeman helmeted and armed like those who had interrogated him the previous day.
‘My David - Captain -‘ Ted Ollivier acknowledged them brusquely ‘ - we have been waiting for you.’
‘The hell you have!’ Audley snapped back. ‘And we’ve been tramping halfway across France in pitch darkness because of your crazy order.’
Ollivier brushed aside Audley’s anger.
‘Your message indicated an emergency. What is the emergency?’
‘There’s no emergency.’
‘No - ?’ Ollivier frowned at Nikki. ‘What is this?’
‘No emergency - ‘ Audley was his old cool self again ‘ - so long as you hold your summit somewhere else, that is.’
For a moment Ollivier’s frown embraced them all, then his face became expressionless.
‘We have a deal, David, you and I - and this is not the time for little jokes.’ He paused. ‘You have something?’
Audley nodded slowly.
‘We surely have, Ted. It’s to do with that jampot of yours, the one with the lid screwed down so tight.’
‘Go on.’
‘Screwing the lid down isn’t much use when there’s a hole in the pot -‘ Audley held Ollivier’s gaze for an instant before turning to Mitchell. ‘I think it ought to come from you, Paul. You found the hole.’
The Frenchman’s grey eyes switched to Mitchell with an intensity which took him aback: the reflection of the bulb at his back was caught in the centre of each pupil as a pinpoint of light which seemed to bore into him. For a second he was a rabbit transfixed by the murderous stare of a weasel, incapable of action.
‘Put him out of his misery, man - tell him about the chalk and the cheese.’
Audley’s voice broke the spell.
‘The chalk?’ Ollivier’s eyes clouded. ‘The cheese?’
‘This whole ridge is rotten with tunnels,’ said Mitchell. ‘Like a piece of cheese.’
‘Tunnels?’ Ollivier whispered the word. ‘ Tunnels?
‘It’s a chalk ridge - all this land is chalk. It’s perfect for tunnelling, dry and clean, very little timbering needed. Not like the clay at Ypres. When they were mining and counter-mining each other here they had trouble with noise - they could hear each other digging in chalk much easier - and they had to get rid of the spoil so it didn’t give the game away … But when it came to straight tunnelling behind the lines, it was easy.’
Fought like lions and dug like moles -. General Leigh-Wood-house’s voice echoed in his memory. And his own words too: But the Germans used to dig deep … They had two years to dig into the Somme …
God! How could we have been so dim, so slow to see what the Audleys and the Olliviers could never see because there was nothing to see - what ought to have been all the more obvious to him because they couldn’t be expected to see it: all the other deep and secret paths of the Somme.
Ollivier was looking at him, grey-faced.
‘There are twenty miles of tunnels at Vimy - there’s a whole ammunition train still down there in the chalk, no one dares touch it. They found dugouts full of Germans when they put the motorway through the Hindenburg Line just north of here -they were still down there in the chalk. It’s all still down there -tunnels, men, supplies, equipment. The galleries in the chalk don’t fall in, they’ll still be there in a thousand years.’
For a moment nobody spoke, then Audley gave a low apologetic sound, half grunt, half sigh.
‘Galleries under Hameau Ridge, Ted - if there are, then the seismic equipment you’ve had plugged into the ground won’t have registered a whisper, because they were all there readymade.’
‘If there are?’ Ollivier grasped fiercely at the straw of uncertainty. ‘You mean you don’t know that there are these tunnels?’
‘My God - Ted everybody who could have told us has conveniently had his mouth shut, don’t you see?’ rasped Audley.
‘Then how do you know?’ Ollivier persisted obstinately. ‘You haven’t a shred of proof, that is what I can see. You have a theory - not a suspicion, only a theory. So I must go to the President and say “M’sieur Ie President, there are twenty miles of tunnels in the chalk outside Arras, and Hameau Ridge is made of chalk too, so you must pick up the hot phone and say “I’m sorry, my friends, but tomorrow is not convenient” - is that what I must tell him?’
‘You can tell him that, sure. And while you’re about it you can tell him why Charles Emerson had to die - and George Davis and Etienne Jarras - and I’ll give you odds on that peasant of yours in the ravine, too, the picker-up of unconsidered trifles who maybe picked up one thing too many.’
‘All right.’ Ollivier held up his hand. ‘So why did they have to die?’
‘Probably all for the same reason. But Emerson’s the one who matters, because he - ‘ Audley stopped, turning again to Mitchell. ‘I’m sorry, Paul, I keep on stealing your thunder. You tell him how the Poachers took the Prussian Redoubt.’
Mitchell drew a breath. It was decent of Audley to want him to have his moment. Except that it wasn’t his moment, it was Emerson’s … Except that it wasn’t Emerson’s moment either: it belonged to men who had been dead and lost for half a century under the edge.
‘They got into the German tunnels - ‘
He no longer saw the Frenchman, another image in his brain was momentarily stronger than present reality, so strong that it dried up all other words and thoughts.
‘They must have come round the north of the wood, where the ravine starts. In fact they must have run right into the British barrage as they came into the ravine - that’s where the entrances to the German tunnels must have been. And there were quite a few miners in “D” Company - ‘A miner’s never afraid of the dark…
‘- even only a handful of determined men in those tunnels could have caused chaos underground - ‘
And by God, they had been determined, those volunteers of the Somme, making up in sheer courage what they lacked in military skill - remember the Tyneside Irish who had broken through in Sausage Valley on the first day of the battle and had disappeared just like ‘D’ Company, fighting to the last far behind the German lines.
‘ - they would have been enough to block the tunnels, anyway. And that would have stopped the Germans getting their reserves up to the redoubt during the bombardment. Instead they probably had to start blowing up their own dugout entrances there. That’s why their gunners started shelling their own people, maybe - they wouldn’t have known what the hell was happening - ‘
The Germans had been brave, too. Their enemies in the rear and underneath them, shelled indiscriminately by both sides and then attacked by the Poachers from Bouillet Wood, they had fought it out to the last man.
And in dying had kept their secret for half a century.
‘Captain! Ollivier’s voice cut through Mitchell’s dream. ‘How do you know this? How do you know it?’
Mitchell stared at him stupidly. How was it possible to know something with certainty yet without certain proof; it was dead against his whole training.
‘Man - didn’t you see the look on his face?’ snapped Audley. ‘Look at him now - that’s the look I’ve been waiting for, and I’ll bet that was the look on Emerson’s face too.’
But it was the look on Ollivier’s face - doubt and puzzlement struggling with acceptance - which roused Mitchell out of 1916.
‘It was the shotgun.’
‘The shotgun?’ Ollivier frowned. ‘What about the sho
tgun?’
‘You said it was slightly damaged in the car explosion - you said the gunsmith almost wept because of it.’
‘That’s right.’
‘So it was undamaged before the explosion - that’s why Jarras didn’t buy it when it was offered to him: he couldn’t afford it.’
Ollivier looked at him intently.
‘It wasn’t damaged much, that’s true …’
‘The weapons they dig up out here are almost always rotted and rusted to hell, though.’
‘So - ?’
‘Almost always. But there is one way a weapon can survive and not rot: if it’s in a deep dugout or a tunnel. We saw one less than an hour ago, a British trench rifle. Etienne Jarras bought it off the foreman of a motorway construction gang - and he’d found it in a German dugout they broke into on the Hindenburg Line, a deep one. The entrance must have been blown in when we broke through in 1918. There wasn’t a mark on it, it was as good as new.’
As he stared into Ollivier’s face he felt their roles had been reversed: the rabbit had become the weasel.
‘Jarras asked the foreman if there was anything else down there. The man said “What do you want? We can let you have a complete German if you like, we found seventy of the poor sods intact”. It was all there - weapons, equipment, men - everything.’
‘And in our case one man in particular,’ murmured Audley, ‘Second Lieutenant Harry Bellamy of the Rifle Brigade - your ‘H.J.V.B.’ and our Harry - I saw young Harry, with his beaver on, His misses on his thighs, bravely arm ‘d - and that’s how someone found our Harry, armed with a Charles Lancaster shotgun.’
Ollivier shook his head in wonderment, looking from one to the other of them.
‘And you’ve deduced this from a single weapon - a single weapon? It could have come from a hundred different places - from anywhere in France.’
‘Oh no it couldn’t, Ted old buddy,’ Audley shook his head. ‘That gun meant something to Emerson, and I wouldn’t mind betting it wasn’t the only thing he was shown - identity tags, personal belongings enough to tie the gun to the owner and tip him off where the owner might be. Enough to make him think of tunnels under Hameau Ridge, anyway. Tunnels someone else had found again. He didn’t have time to check his theory out here, but he started checking it as soon as he got back to England … By which time the killers were already after him.’
‘But still there is no proof-‘
‘Proof? Are you crazy?’ Now Audley was puzzled. ‘Man, I don’t know what your special rules for neutral houses are, but I know damn well that one strong suspicion of insecurity is enough to put Bouillet Wood or anywhere else in quarantine - and you know it too. And if you won’t act on it, then the only thing left for me is to put a call through to Gensoul in Paris and I’m going to tell him Bouillet Wood’s at risk and Ted Ollivier has gone round the twist.’
He shook his head sorrowfully.
‘I haven’t got any choice - and nor have you, old buddy. No choice at all.’
Ollivier looked at them, then half turned away, his shoulders drooping.
‘No choice …’
He echoed the two words softly.
‘No choice at all… Sorel!’
There was a quick, dry rasp of leather against PVC, punctuated by a sharp click, and the policeman’s machine-pistol was suddenly covering them all.
‘Easy now,’ said Ollivier, looking directly at Mitchell as though he was the unknown quantity among them. ‘Just stand quite still. Captain.’
Mitchell glanced at Audley.
‘I said “quite still”, Captain. Just look at me, not at anyone else.’ Ollivier began to circle to the left, the policeman moving with him.
‘I never carry a gun, you know that,’ said Audley in a flat voice. ‘Neither does Lefevre.’
‘I - know…’ Ollivier patted Audley’s coat gently. ‘But - never … is a big word … Now you. Captain - fortunately - your uniform fits - very snugly … Good enough … Now, mademoiselle, your bag if you please - thank you … Just the one little pistol, I think - yes … So now you can all relax.’
He retraced his route, to stand beside the policeman.
‘No choice. I’m glad you said that, my David, because I want you to believe me when I say that what I am doing fills me with sorrow. I want you to understand that although I have no choice I shall never cease to regret this necessity.’
‘ “Never” is a big word,’ murmured Audley. ‘But in this case I think you may be right.’
‘You thought I was “round the twist”? My poor David - c’est une grande habilete que de savoir cacher son habilete - La Rochefoucauld should have warned you, eh?’ Ollivier nodded. ‘Let’s say your mind was on other things, as I intended it should be. I didn’t think it could be done, but I had to be sure.’
‘And if it could be done I could do it?’
Audley paused.
‘No, that’s not quite right, is it? If it could be done it had to be done through me because you could rely on me to bring the answer straight back to you.’
The big man pivotted towards Mitchell, admonishing him with a finger.
‘Now there’s a lesson for you, Paul: in this business you must never let anything make you behave predictably, least of all friendship.’
‘Friendship?’
Ollivier’s lips twisted in a half-smile.
‘Say rather I knew you never could resist a problem, David. Particularly one that didn’t concern you.’
‘We all make mistakes. Even you.’
‘Vraiment. I have made two serious ones.’
‘You let Bellamy’s shotgun slip through your hand - I take it that was the first one?’
‘I employed canaille with itchy fingers, you might put it like that. It never occurred to me that Turco would explore the galleries and find something of value.’
‘Turco?’
Nikki spoke for the first time, so huskily that the name was hardly more than a whisper.
Ollivier nodded.
‘Yes, mademoiselle. Turco was mine. And it was Turco who offered the gun to Jarras - the gun, a gold cigarette case and a gold hip flask, among other things.’
He glanced at Audley.
‘You were quite right. All conveniently inscribed with the same initials. There was even a letter in the cigarette case the young officer had written the day before he died. Chapter and verse, one might say. Unfortunately Turco did not understand what it all meant, only what it might be worth -and Jarras could not afford his price.’
‘And so he offered it to Emerson?’
‘Jarras knew Emerson was here. He thought at least he would find it interesting, so he led Turco to believe the rich Englishman might buy it.’
Audley nodded. ‘But in fact he was only interested in where it came from, eh?’
Provenance.
Ollivier looked at him in silence for a moment.
‘He offered one hundred francs for the letter - and a thousand francs for a mark on his map to show where it had been found. That was when Turco started to worry about what he had done. So he took the map - he had enough wit to say that he did not know exactly where it had come from, but he would try to find out.’
‘But instead he tried to sell the gun somewhere else?’
‘He was taking it to a dealer in Amiens when the Surveillance du Territoire spotted him. He lost the gun and the map - he was carrying the other objects in his pockets.’
Audley grunted.
‘And then the cat was out of the bag, because they reported straight to Gensoul, I take it … And your second error?’
Ollivier pointed at Mitchell.
‘You found another military expert who knew Emerson well. Our information was that there was only one, the young man Mitchell.’
‘Whom you had killed.’
‘With regret. But in war there are always casualties, civilians as well as soldiers.’
‘But whose war, Ted?’ Audley’s voice roughened. ‘Whose war?’
‘France’s, of course - ‘
‘Liar!’ Nikki’s eyes blazed. ‘Traitor!’
‘You are a child - ‘
‘But not a traitor. You - ‘
‘ - A child in a very old world. A very old, very wicked world.’ Ollivier’s voice deepened. ‘You can be forgiven for not understanding it.’
‘It is a neutral house. We have given our word - we have a solemn undertaking, I understand that.’
‘Save your breath, mademoiselle,’ said Audley. ‘This has nothing to do with France and nothing to do with honour. France doesn’t need to use characters like Turco - the late Turco, I presume, since he seems to have moved into the past tense. Another war casualty?’
He considered Ollivier silently for a moment.
‘In fact I’d guess Turco was that farm labourer of Paul’s, the one who got himself blown up so conveniently in Rattlesnake Ravine yesterday. Two birds with one stone again.’
Nikki frowned at him.
‘Two birds?’
‘Yes… Turco couldn’t be trusted any more. But they couldn’t just kill him and leave him lying around in case his body was identified, and if he was established as a farm worker he couldn’t just disappear off the ridge without questions being asked. By blowing him up they solved both those problems -and they flushed us out into the open too, come to that. Three birds.’
He nodded at Nikki.
‘He always was a shrewd operator, your boss. Ex-boss.’
Ollivier gave Audley a cold little smile.
‘And you were always a good guesser, my David.’
‘One of the best, old buddy. Give me a start and I’ll guess you right the way back to Moscow … or Peking … or one or two other less well-known places, depending on who’s meeting at Bouillet Wood tomorrow afternoon. And depending on what you’ve set up for them.’
The bogus policeman stirred uneasily.
‘Patron, il se fait tard -‘
Ollivier raised his hand.
Other Paths to Glory Page 22