‘Oui… And for you, my David, too late.’
Audley regarded him coolly.
‘Getting rid of us is going to cramp your style, Ted.’
‘You think so?’
‘I surely do.’ Audley shook his head slowly. ‘If we’re not out and about bright and early tomorrow morning there are sure to be questions asked, and you won’t have the right answers. And if .you’ve another tragic accident - another three tragic accidents - in mind, I don’t honestly think anyone would swallow that, do you?’
Ollivier studied Audley intently. For one congealing instant of time they were like two men turned to stone by the same Gorgon image of failure. Then the big Englishman gestured so abruptly that the bogus policeman’s machine-pistol jerked towards him by reflex action.
‘Christ, Ted - it won’t work any more, whatever you’ve cooked up, don’t you see? There are too many things that can go wrong now.’
Audley’s thumb jabbed vaguely over his shoulder.
‘Jack Butler’s out there, so is Hugh Roskill - they’re not fools - ‘
Oh God! thought Mitchell despairingly. Hugh Roskill was in Paris and Colonel Butler was on his way back to England. All this coolness, this confidence, was nothing but the purest bluff, the last bid for time in a game already lost.
‘You say you’re sorry, and I believe you, Ted,’ Audley’s voice changed gear to a matching regret. ‘I can’t think you ever wanted to do what you’re doing - 1 think you’ve got a death-wish. That’s why you called me in: not because you wanted to succeed, but because you wanted to fail. But it doesn’t have to be fatal - for either of us. There’s still time to get out.’
‘Time?’ Ollivier’s face relaxed slowly. ‘A good try - but you’re wrong, David: I shall succeed. And with just a very little luck I shall survive too.’
‘But what will you have achieved? A bit more chaos in the world - is that what you want?’
The bitterness in Audley’s words smelt of defeat.
‘When we’ve both spent half our lives trying to prevent it?’
Ollivier’s smile returned.
‘That’s exactly right: half our lives and a little more chaos. Only this time perhaps more than a little.’
‘Why? For Christ’s sake, why?’
The Frenchman shrugged.
‘Because our way is wrong.’
‘And their way is right?’
‘Who is “they”?’
Ollivier cocked his head on one side.
‘When we were young there was “us” and “them” but now we are all the same - all “them” and all wrong … When I realised that, I knew I had spent my life trying to repair something not worth repairing. So I have stopped being a repair man: now I am in the business of demolition. I am putting a match to the fire from which the phoenix may rise.’
Audley stared at Ollivier in blank disbelief.
‘It looks more like a vulture from where I’m standing.’
Ollivier accepted the jibe tolerantly.
‘It’s all in the mind, my David - a little adjustment, no more. But unfortunately I don’t have time to adjust you to reality.’
‘Not in a million years, old buddy,’
Audley’s moment of bitterness had passed very quickly, to be replaced by what Mitchell guessed was a false unconcern.
‘But in the meantime do we get to know how you plan to demolish a summit meeting? Or do we go straight on to the casualty list?’
‘My dear David!’
Ollivier raised his hands in a gesture of surprise.
‘That I should be so so crude, so barbarous … when it is quite unnecessary. It is enough that you are taken out of circulation for a few hours.’
‘I’m most relieved to hear it.’
‘And I am most disappointed that you should need to be reassured. If you -‘ Ollivier glanced at Mitchell and Nikki in turn ‘ - if you are all sensible, you have nothing to fear. A little inconvenience for a little while, no more than that, I promise you.’
He smiled at Mitchell.
‘And you, Captain, will be more interested than inconvenienced.’
‘I will be?’
Mitchell attempted to sound as casual as Audley had done.
‘Undoubtedly. You’ve been so very clever already, after all to deduce the existence of my tunnel from so little. Would it not interest you to learn that you are standing five metres from its entrance?’
10
WOULD IT SURPRISE YOU?
Mitchell looked around the barn slowly. It didn’t surprise him, now he knew it, that there was a tunnel entrance somewhere in Bouilletcourt Farm; if there were tunnels running the length of the ridge, from Bouillet village to the wood, from the wood to the Prussian Redoubt, and from the redoubt back to the ravine, then there would certainly have been shafts down to them from the strongpoint in the farm.
That was not surprising, it was obvious; and equally it was obvious that any surviving entrance could not be in the open, where it would be too well-known if time and weather hadn’t called it in. Only under cover could such an entrance survive and remain secret, and the farm buildings provided the only cover within a mile of the house in the wood.
But it was not obvious here in the barn, because the barn was completely empty; around him were four blank walls, windowless and broken only by the postern at his back and a pair of heavy double-doors at the opposite end. Thick ropes of ancient cobwebs sagged across the rough brickwork and the plank floor beneath him was scuffed and scarred with years of hard usage. Cobwebs and dirt were the barn’s only visible contents.
‘In the corner, Captain.’ Ollivier pointed past Mitchell’s right shoulder. ‘On the floor in the corner you will find a trapdoor - go and see for yourself.’
From where he had been standing the furthest corner had been in shadow, seeming no different from the rest of the barn except for a rusty iron hook hanging from a staple in the wall at waist-height. But as he moved towards it he could make out the outline of a large trapdoor; it was flush with the floor, but the gap around it was a fraction wider than the gaps between the floorboards. The accumulation of dirt on it was no less than elsewhere, helping to mask it and suggesting that it had not been opened for weeks, but the spread of such camouflage could be achieved in seconds with a few sweeps of a broom.
‘It looks promising, does it not?’ Ollivier prompted him. ‘Then open it.’
Mitchell hesitated. There was a recessed grip at one end, like the hand-hold in a manhole cover, but the size of the thing and its position close to the angle of the corner meant that it would have to be lifted not from the back, but from the side or the front.
‘Go on. Captain. It isn’t too heavy, and there is a hook on the wall to hold it.’
Mitchell had just come to the same conclusion about the hook. He braced his legs and thrust his fingers into the handhold.
In fact the door was by no means light: it was made of the same inch-thick planking as the floor. But it came up all the same, revealing the first treads of a substantial stairway, broad and wide, which fell away into the darkness. The sharp smell of artificial fertiliser rose out of the hole.
‘A cellar,’ said Ollivier. ‘A large cellar, too, with almost the floor area of this barn. You could hide a lot in such a cellar - the Gestapo were pleased when they found that trapdoor back in ‘43. They knew there was a Resistance Group operating in this area and they even suspected its headquarters might be on Hameau Ridge. They had great hopes of finding something down there. They knew they were - how do you say - “hot”? ‘But they didn’t find anything - not a smell, not a trace, although they were very good at finding things … And do you know why they didn’t find anything, Captain?’
Mitchell looked up at him.
‘Because there was nothing to find.’ Ollivier’s smile broadened. ‘When they found that trapdoor they were so hot - they were so close - we were in the palm of their hand, six of us. And yet they could not find us because - because they did e
xactly what you have done. Captain: they opened the trapdoor. And when they did that they covered up the entrance to our hiding place.’
Mitchell stared at the heavy door which he had hooked on to the wall a minute or two before.
‘They were always so ill-mannered, the Gestapo - close the trapdoor, if you please, Captain - they never thought to close the doors they opened … Good! Now you will see what they obscured in their eagerness to examine the cellar.’
Between the strip of wood on to which the trapdoor’s hinges were screwed and the wall lay a narrow continuation of the wooden floor, four boards wide.
‘It looks as if it’s nailed down, but it isn’t really. Count off the nails from the left,’ Ollivier ordered. ‘The fifth one - when old Jacques Billot came back to his farm in October 1918 there wasn’t one brick standing on another - that’s the one. Pull it up, it’s not firm - ‘
With his finger nail Mitchell scraped the dirt from around the head of the nail, gingerly at first and then, as he felt it move, with a growing sense of excitement.
‘Billot and his son rebuilt their farm all by themselves, you see - that is, his surviving son; the other two had been killed at Verdun. He got round to this barn in 1924 - go on, pull it, Captain - and he came on this shaft when he was digging the foundations for the outer wall - ‘
It was a large nail with a wide flattened head, the sort of thing the local blacksmith might have made. The first inch or so of it came out easily, but then it stopped and as it did so the whole section of floor between the trap and the wall shivered.
‘He was a prudent man, old Billot, his son Pierre was fond of recalling. He remembered the past and he didn’t trust the future - “Les Sales Baches were here in ‘70 and again in ‘14. They’ll be back a third time, you’ll see.” So he decided to make a place for his money and his valuables and his family, a place no one else would know about - lift. Captain. It won’t bite you.’
Mitchell took hold of the protruding nail firmly between his thumb and forefinger.
The four short lengths of floorboard came up together to reveal a cavity, a black hole just big enough for a man to squeeze through. At first sight it seemed quite shallow; then, as he levered the boards to one side he saw that a deep shaft slanted away under the wall of the barn, which was supported below ground level on a length of steel girder.
‘Et voila! Old Billot’s handiwork. It beat the Gestapo in ‘43 and it beat our experts in ‘69 just as easily when they checked out this place - I watched them do it. Just like the Germans, they couldn’t resist the cellar … Nothing like a peasant to out-think the clever ones, eh? Not even the farmer who lives here now knows about it, and he’s been in this barn a thousand times.’
‘The farmer who lives here now?’ Audley repeated slowly. ‘So what happened to the Billots?’
‘The old man died in his feather bed in ‘35, and the son - ‘
‘Don’t tell me,’ cut in Audley. ‘Let me guess again … Before a Gestapo firing squad?’
Ollivier smiled.
‘Very good. He was the leader of our Resistance Group, Billot fils - we kept our arms and equipment down there in his father’s strongroom. And ourselves too on occasion … in fact I was down there alone the last time, when the Germans raided the farm. For three days I was there, waiting for them to go away, with just a torch and a packet of candles … And that was when I found out where the tunnel went, my David - I was looking for a way out, but I didn’t find one. It was not… very pleasant.’
‘But better than being above ground,’ said Audley drily.
The only survivor of his group … And here also was the answer to the question they had brushed aside as being irrelevant back at the Jarras museum: of all the empty houses in France which filled the requirements of a neutral house, security had chosen one with a fatal defect. They had dismissed it as the purest bad luck, but luck hadn’t come into it. It had been Ollivier.
‘And where is the present owner now?’ Audley looked around him. ‘Is he conveniently deaf as well as blind?’
The bogus policeman stirred.
‘Patron - ‘ the anger was plain now ‘ - il gagne du temps seulement.’
‘Of course,’ Ollivier nodded. ‘Sorel thinks you are playing for time.’
‘He underrates my insatiable curiosity.’
‘But naturally … The farmer is visiting a young woman in Arras. A most attractive young woman who has taken a surprising liking to him - for the time being.’
‘A fortunate coincidence. You seem to have thought of almost everything, Ted. I give you that.’
‘Not “almost”, my David. Everything.’ Ollivier was unsmiling. ‘You were the only risk, but a calculated one.’
‘You’d never know how lucky you’ve been, as a matter of fact. But being in charge of an operation’s security does give you an unfair opportunity to lay on its insecurity.’
Audley gave a small yawn.
‘So let’s get on with the calculated risk, eh?’
‘I was almost about to suggest as much. As I said, I was looking for another way out in ‘43. But I didn’t find one - I found something very different.’
Audley waited very politely for a moment.
‘Am I expected to ask what it was?’
‘On the contrary. I propose to show it to you, my David.’
Mitchell watched Ollivier squeeze himself into the hole. It was a fairly tight fit, but unfortunately not too tight, and when he had almost disappeared the Frenchman twisted round to look back up at them, his face at floor level.
‘There now! You see that you will not find it too difficult, just a little dusty. I will prepare the way for you.’
Ollivier’s eyes met Mitchell’s steadily.
‘And don’t get any ideas about jumping Sorel, Captain. Don’t even talk to him, he won’t understand you and it will make him nervous. Then he might shoot you, and that would be a great pity, eh?’
As Mitchell watched the Frenchman disappear he sensed within himself a curious feeling of unreality. His eyes had been watching, his ears had been hearing; their information was still being relayed to his brain to be analysed. But somehow he couldn’t believe that he was really part of what was happening. It was the man Lefevre who was here, not the man Mitchell; what would happen, would happen to Lefevre, not Mitchell - Mitchell would get up tomorrow morning and pick up the threads of his life, regardless of what happened to Lefevre.
Because Lefevre would be dead, he was very sure - because that promise of safety and survival was a lie and an afterthought betrayed by the whole line of Ollivier’s earlier questions. They had been directed towards one answer and one answer only: the nature of the clue which had led to the knowledge of the tunnel.
But of course there was no clue. Or, at least, Harry Bellamy’s beautiful shotgun was by itself an insufficient clue until added to his own special knowledge of the war and Charles Emerson -and the odds against anyone else being able to duplicate that were infinite. Indeed, that had been the Frenchman’s twin objective in involving Audley: to find out if such a clue existed and then to destroy it.
Mitchell shivered involuntarily as he realised he was staring into the black hole of the shaft. His death was down there. He had spoken his own sentence and authorised his own execution. He was the clue which had to be destroyed.
His death and Audley’s and Nikki’s: that had been the mad glitter in Ollivier’s eye, not the reflection of the naked bulb: they would all be casualties in Ollivier’s war, their innocence or guilt irrelevant because they were the necessary price of secrecy and survival.
No one had seen them come; by morning the pink car would be far away. Once they were underground -
‘I owe you an apology, Paul,’ said Audley conversationally.
‘Ferme ta gueule,’ snapped Sorel.
‘Screw you, friend.’
Audley inclined his head towards Nikki, ignoring the man.
‘And I must apologise to you also, mademoiselle. I h
ave been unpardonably stupid.’
Mitchell saw that the expression on the big man’s face belied the gentleness of his voice.
‘Nevertheless … while there is life …’ Audley turned slowly towards Sorel as though calculating exactly how many words would be too many, ‘… there is hope.’
The muzzle of the machine-pistol was now pointing at Audley’s chest. For an instant Mitchell waited for the man to fire, then the muzzle swung slowly back to cover them all again.
He breathed out gratefully. Audley had gone to the limit, to the very last syllable, to risk passing on his message that their lives depended on their taking the first chance that presented itself. But now there could be no more words.
‘Sorel - je suis pret.’
The voice from the shaft took him by surprise as he was measuring the impossible distance between himself and Sorel.
‘You first, Captain Lefevre.’
If there had ever been a chance above ground, there was none now.
The shaft was wider than it had seemed from above. Twisting as he remembered Ollivier had done, Mitchell found regular ledges for his toes - a miniature stairway in brick - which prevented him from sliding. At first he could sense rather than see the roof close to his head, but when he looked upwards after having descended ten or twelve feet he could see that it had been arched for greater strength in the same brickwork that was beneath his fingers and toes.
This wasn’t German work. But of course this upper part of the entrance had certainly been blown up by the British assault troops in 1916, like every other bolt-hole along the ridge - except presumably the dugout and tunnel entrances in the Prussian Redoubt and Rattlesnake Ravine which the Germans themselves had probably blown in to isolate the Poachers underground.
So this must be about where the old farmer had rediscovered the shaft while digging out the foundations for his wall or his cellar…
Suddenly his foot hit an obstruction which quivered at the blow. There was a dim light coming from below and in it he could just make out the topmost rung of a ladder lashed to the twisted metal rods protruding from a shattered section of reinforced concrete. The shaft beneath was steeper and timbered; it was nothing like any photograph he had ever seen of German underground work, but then he knew he had never particularly remarked such pictures anyway. Down the timbers to his right ran a collection of wires, two thick old electric cables and a number of what must be telephone wires.
Other Paths to Glory Page 23