by Alan Evans
“The Oberst, that is the colonel, who commands in St. Jean lives in the old port. There’s a row of houses facing the harbour and he has the one at the end, right on the sea-wall.” The pencil blocked them in on the sketch. “The S.S. Headquarters is in the butcher’s house, that’s this one, second from the other end of the row. It belonged to a butcher at one time, a hundred years or more ago, then it became offices but the name stuck. Now the S.S. have requisitioned it for the headquarters. They will take Michel there.” And she knew what awaited him. The pencil shook slightly then, but was stilled as the long fingers tightened their grip.
“The Oberst has deployed most of his battalion as sentries on the coast or as patrols and left only a hundred men in the barracks. There are scattered patrols of two or four men in the town after the start of curfew, and sentries on the bridge over the river joining the new town to the old port.”
Brent pictured it in his mind as he remembered, watched the girl’s slim fingers move over the sketch, listened to her even voice: “The river runs down from the north then swings westward to pass under the bridge and so into the harbour. The railway — the same railway we were meant to cut tonight — comes up from the south, passes through the station in the new town then goes on past the bridge and the old port. It runs close by the river, and inland of it for a kilometre, then turns away to the east.”
Brent asked, “The river traffic, the barges, still goes on?” He looked up and saw the girl watching him, puzzled, curious.
She answered, “Yes. Every day except Sunday, and even then if the Germans want a cargo urgently.” She quickly turned her gaze to the map now and her pencil marched across it: “There are similar patrols out in the country. On the coast there are posts of seven or eight men housed in a shed or a hut. They send out sentries through the hours of darkness, two at a time: one patrolling north along the coast for a mile or so, one south. They can only cover about half of the battalion’s section of coast on any night, so they keep changing, operating from different posts. Sometimes a stretch of the shore is patrolled for a week, or not at all for nights on end.” The pencil paused: “There is a gun, an 88mm., on the headland overlooking the approaches to the port. A guardship is anchored at the harbour mouth, an old drifter with a 40mm. cannon mounted in the bow. Three E-boats are based in the port but they are at sea almost every night, except when the weather is bad.”
David Brent said wryly, “We know about them.”
Suzanne nodded. “They have maintenance crews who live in the barracks and go down to the port every morning to work on the boats. The Naval Headquarters is thirty kilometres north up the coast and there is another flotilla of E-boats based there.”
Brent asked, “Is the guardship moored there all the time, out in the harbour and near its mouth?”
“Nearly always. She goes to sea occasionally, out to the fishing fleet, or moves about the harbour, but most of the time she lies near the mouth.”
Brent nodded and Suzanne moved the pencil again, set its point down on the map. “I’ve told you of all the defences. I want to go ashore here, just north of this cape. It stretches out to sea for eight or nine hundred metres and stands high. It’s sheer rock and very prominent.” David silently agreed with that, at least; the cape stuck out from the coast like a pointing finger. Suzanne said, “There may be a sentry, maybe not.” She shrugged. “If a sentry is patrolling then there is a prepared plan for dealing with him. So will you do as I ask, please?”
Brent replied with questions of his own: “You said you had the timings of the train? And can I ask you about the old port? I remember St. Jean but I think you know the place inside out as it is now.”
Of course he would remember. Suzanne said, “I’ll tell you all I can.” She thought: We’re both so bloody formal as if it never happened. But what else can we do?
She answered his questions.
The wardroom was on the port side and flattered by its name. It was a cabin like half of a railway compartment, with a long seat down one side on which a man could sleep. A table was mounted on the opposite bulkhead and there was just room to edge between the two. The map and sketch were on the table, David Brent and Suzanne Leclerc standing either side of it, when Jimmy Nash, the three captains and Chris Tallon crowded into the wardroom. Tallon and little Dent were the last to enter and stood by the door. The others sat on the bench, hunched forward to see the map.
Brent said, “I expect you’re wondering why I’ve got you here. There are E-boats out there and the sooner you’re back aboard your own boats, the better. So I’ll make this short.” Then he told them all he knew, all Suzanne had told him — and laid out his plan.
He watched them, waited for their reactions. He was the only regular officer. Crozier was big, burly, weather-beaten and an artist in civil life, while Dent was an erstwhile bank clerk, short, thin and pink-cheeked. Tommy Vance, a solicitor, was little taller than Dent but looked twice as wide and was black-bearded. Under the oilskins, now hanging open, they wore a miscellany of old reefer jackets, sweaters, even a bridgecoat: that was little Dent’s and hung past his knees. They were only alike in their youth. Not one of them was over twenty-six.
The three captains looked at each other, then at Jimmy Nash. He saw he had been elected spokesman, cleared his throat and said diplomatically, “It’s an — unconventional plan, sir. A bit risky?”
Chris Tallon said baldly, “I think it’s bloody mad.” He stood in silence for a moment, returning Brent’s expressionless gaze, then he went on slowly, “I’ll say one thing for it: if the impression made on us is anything to go by it should have the advantage of surprise.”
The girl did not speak. Tallon and the captains were all aware of her, of course. She was out of place in that wardroom, anyway, and besides that she was an agent, a strange breed. It called for someone unusual to live day after day under the hand of the enemy, playing a part, your life always at risk. She was bedraggled now, the oilskin like a bulging sack tied about the middle, but she was pretty.
David Brent did not look at her. He had been in the front line since the summer of 1940, with the boats fighting to hold the narrow seas between Britain and the continent. He had been ready to land and take off the commandos, to face familiar dangers. And now? He saw the risks in his plan, the odds against success and they were daunting. But resolution was forming out of necessity. “Can you think of any other way?” He waited, but when no answer came, said flatly, “This is not a council of war. I’m not canvassing opinions. I’ve told you what we are going to do.”
They stared at him, their minds running parallel now, thinking that he was the senior officer and could give these orders to his captains, and to Tallon. But, by God! He would have to answer for them later.
He was ready now to answer the questions Chris Tallon put to him — and Tallon’s one suggestion: “We should go on foot before then.” Brent turned that down and Chris glared silently, then finally asked, “Assuming we get in, how do we get out again?” He stared unwinkingly at Brent and was remembering. He would never forget: he had commanded the rearguard of only five men spread thinly among the houses of the village. He had sent the rest of his command down to the shore to embark, but when the first two M.T.B.s were destroyed he believed he was going to die…
Brent held Tallon’s stare, guessed at the soldier’s thoughts, had his own pictures burnt into his mind. The petrol from the tanks of the burning boat had spread out over the sea to make a lake of flame that lit up the approach to the jetty as bright as day. Brent’s boat had to pass through that glare to reach the shore. They had gone in and come out with the soldiers. It had seemed like a miracle, though the Sub and the gunner were killed.
Now David Brent grinned stiffly at Tallon. The soldier had said “assuming we get in”. So he saw the risks, accepted them, would attempt this “bloody madness”. But his eyes had never left Brent’s and his question still hung in the air: “How do we get out again?”
Brent answered him, th
en carefully folded the map and sketch, pocketed them. He said, “Now it’s time for a little piracy. I told you we needed a drifter…”
*
Rudi Halder leaned in the corner of the bridge, cradling a steaming mug of coffee between his hands. Bruno Jacobi screwed the top on the thermos and stowed it away in a locker. The three E-boats lay side by side and rocked slowly to the Atlantic swell. The drifters of the fishing fleet, fifteen kilometres or so inshore, were hull-down over the horizon but their lights shed a glow like a faint, false dawn.
Rudi was well pleased with his night’s work — so far. And he was confident the Tommi boats would pass not far from his present position on their way home. He was proud of his Service, his profession, and that he was making a success of it.
He shifted restlessly now as an uncomfortable thought intruded: Oberst Erwin König, the tall, spare commander of the Wehrmacht battalion in St. Jean, had said of the Führer, “You can usually judge a man by his friends.”
Rudi had asked, “What do you mean by that?”
The Oberst’s bony face was contemptuous as he answered, “Himmler, Schleger, Ostmann. Those friends.”
And Rudi had his own doubts about the S.S. Only a day or two before, in the bar down by the harbour of St. Jean and close by where the E-boats lay, a semi-drunken Ostmann had boasted to the young E-boat captain of how he and his chief, Schleger, made their prisoners “sing”. He had gone into obscene detail. Rudi had turned away, sickened.
Later, when he was alone with Ilse König, the Oberst’s daughter, she had asked what they could do.
Rudi had had to answer bitterly, “Nothing. The S.S. is a law to itself.”
Now he shoved away from the bridge coaming and dug his hands into his pockets. Still no sound of engines, but there was time; the Tommis had to sort themselves out. His mind turned yearningly to Ilse. She was twenty-two, tall for a girl, with soft brown hair and eyes, a lovely body. She was in St. Jean as housekeeper to her widowed father. She was also, of course, Rudi’s lover…
Minutes later, Bruno Jacobi interrupted his dreaming: “Do you think we should call Gunther’s boats down to join the party?”
Gunther commanded three E-boats based in the port where the Naval H.Q. was established, some thirty kilometres north of St. Jean. Rudi preferred his own near-independent command, out of the way of H.Q. and its Staff, but Gunther needed such close supervision. He knew the other flotilla was at sea tonight, grimaced and shook his head. “Gunther is a thickhead and charges about without thinking. He’d do more harm than good. We’ll leave him up north out of the way.”
Then he looked at his watch and frowned. The Tommis had taken enough time. Had they gone home by a different route? He doubted that. And if they had diverted by two or three miles he would still have heard those big engines. So... “Let’s get back to business.” He would run quietly back inshore and hunt for the Tommis, starting around the fishing-fleet.
Chapter Six - “On fire!”
The man, who on his papers was described as Max Neumann, sat on the dirty wooden floor of the boxcar with his knees drawn up to his chin, his arms wrapped around them. He was fifty-three years old, unshaven and unwashed, shivering in the threadbare suit that was all he had left now.
The car was a bare box, unlit and pitch-black but for the slivers of grey that showed where there were cracks in the timber walls. Draughts sighed through the cracks but he knew the sighs would become a piercing, biting shriek when the train began to move.
The cracks had a use. By setting his eye to one of them he could see out over the dull silver gleam of the skein of steel tracks of the marshalling yard. This was a long train, he had seen that before the S.S. men kicked him aboard, and his wagon was near the end of it. There was one more boxcar waiting with its door open, empty. Then came the passenger coach in which the S.S. guards were to travel, and that was the last. He could see the guards standing outside their coach, smoking, laughing. And grumbling as they waited; he had heard them say the train’s departure had been delayed by three and a half hours. When had he heard that? He only knew it was a long time ago; they had taken his watch.
The other prisoners crammed into his wagon were quiet, only whispers scurrying in the darkness and soft sobbing that tore at his heart. He was sorry for them. They did not know where they were going, but he did. Not exactly, of course; even the guards did not know exactly. Their destination might be Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen or some other camp. It did not matter which because their fate would be the same.
As his. When he was caught at the house in Le Havre and accused of being a Jew with false papers, he admitted it. That saved him a beating. When they demanded his real identity he gave the name of his cousin Franz. They would check their records and find that Franz had disappeared a year ago — he had taken his family and fled. They would also find that neither Max nor Franz were Jews, but as bad or worse. They were Germans and Germany was their country but Hitler was not their leader. The lies had given Max a little time. Now he wondered why he had bothered.
They would uncover “Max Neumann’s” identity, no doubt of that. They would have been looking for him ever since he ran away from Heidelberg. It was not the agent who persuaded him to leave. Max knew he had no future in Heidelberg. His work was the reason they let him live like a human being and it frightened him. But he would have stayed and worked because his wife had been ill with tuberculosis and could not have survived an attempted escape. He would not have left without her. But she had died that summer, so when the agent came for him, he was ready.
There had been no sign of the agent at the house, but even if he was still free, he could not save Max now.
There were new sounds in the night outside, harsh, bawling, cursing voices and under them a softer pattering and whimpering. He squinted through the crack and saw more prisoners were coming. S.S. men herded them like sheep as they came slipping and stumbling over the steel rails, clutching pathetic bundles, and clawed their way up into the next wagon. The doors slammed shut and the men of the S.S. escort clambered aboard. The train jerked with a rattling of couplings and then began to roll forward.
This, he knew, was the beginning of the end. There would be the journey and then the identification. They might offer to let him take up his work again but he would not. It had gone much further than he had told them. He would not tell them for the sake of his immortal soul.
*
Ilse König and her father, the Oberst, talked over the dinner she cooked and served, but afterwards he apologised and grumbled, “I’m sorry, but as I’ve spent the day on a tour of inspection I now have to catch up on the paperwork. You must excuse me.”
Ilse smiled because she knew he hated to be tied to a desk. She watched him stalk across the hall. His tall, spare body carried the uniform well. The tunic, buttoned to the neck, fitted without a wrinkle and the grey trousers were pressed to a knife-edged crease. He entered his study and closed the door.
She was used to spending her evenings alone but did not like it, only bore with it as a soldier’s daughter. She read for a while, curled up in a big chair before the fire, then took the book upstairs to bed.
Her room looked out on the harbour and she stood at the window in the darkness for a minute before drawing the curtains. The house formed the bottom leg of an L, the long leg of which was the terrace of buildings — stores, chandlers, offices — stretched along the quay. That was thirty cobbled metres wide between the side of the harbour and the terrace.
The harbour was almost empty, the water still and black, the drifters of the fishing fleet at sea and the E-boats gone from their berths. There was only the old drifter, the guardship, moored to its buoys fore and aft at the harbour entrance. No one was on the quay because of the curfew, though Ilse knew there was a sentry on duty at the front door below where she stood. Three soldiers under the command of a Gefreiter were quartered at the back of the house and provided that sentry on the door twenty-four hours of the day.
She reached up to draw the curtains and then paused when she saw the hooded lights of a car sweep out of the main street of the new town and cross the bridge over the river to the old port. The car braked to a halt outside the last building but one at the far end of the terrace. That was the S.S. headquarters.
*
As they got out of the car, Schleger paused and said to Ostmann, “I have an appetite and I think a little celebratory dinner would be appropriate. I expect our new friend will be happy to wait for us.” He was talking of the captured agent. Ostmann guffawed and Louis joined in dutifully.
He had never visited the headquarters before because if he had been seen entering or leaving he would have been suspected of collaborating with the S.S. That did not matter now; his work here was done. But he had often come to St. Jean, telling Albert: “I’ll go crazy if I’m stuck out in the sticks all the time.” That was part of the truth, but latterly he also came to see the German girl.
He looked towards the house now, where it stood at the end of the quay on the sea-wall. He could make out the sentry, pacing like a shadow before the front door. Louis had first seen the girl one evening just before curfew when she stood on the sea-wall and watched the E-boats slip out of the harbour. The wind flattened the dress against her body and he wanted it to hurt and to spoil. So he had taken to hanging about the port to watch for her and use her in the pictures in his mind. Once their glances crossed but her eyes slid quickly away.
Inside, Louis had closed both the outer and the inner doors but they all heard the second car pull up outside. Schleger pointed to the door of a side room and told Louis, “Shut yourself in my office before they fetch him in. We don’t want him to see you. The less he knows, the better.” Louis obeyed, and Schleger ordered Ostmann, “Tell them downstairs to bring their party out when we bring down ours.”