by Alan Evans
König moved aside from the fire and reached out to touch her hand. “Are you cold, my dear?”
Ilse was about to say that she was sorry for the agent, but thought that while her father might understand, the Major would not. Instead she said, “Only a draught of cold air, I think.” What kind of man could this enemy be?
*
David Brent stood by Grundy, who had the helm, one arm embracing the long tiller. They both watched the river ahead, black and glittering in the night, but David could see the girl out of the corner of his eye. She and Tallon stood by the rail only a pace away. The rain had stopped and she had taken the sodden scarf from her hair which now blew out behind her.
Albert, on the far side of Grundy, shifted from one foot to the other and chewed his lip nervously. He glanced around at Brent, appealing, and David saw that look but shook his head, as he had answered Albert’s spoken plea some minutes ago. Suzanne had said, “He wants you to reduce speed. He says we are getting close to the town. If we have to stop —”
“We don’t stop until you show us the place. Then we’ll run her into the bank if we have to.” He had to make up the time lost at the lock.
Now he told the coxswain, “Steady as you go.”
Grundy thought: Steady? Christ! The barge was foaming along under the twin pressures of engine and current, the trees spaced on the bank flicking past one by one. “Aye, aye, sir.”
The girl watched David Brent and recalled that one day he had hired a little boat, sailed it all the way down the river to St. Jean and had complained that the rented dinghy handled like a cow. A barge leaving St. Jean in the late afternoon had towed them back against the stream. They had sat in the sternsheets of the dinghy, eaten the bread and cheese they’d bought in the town and taken it in turns to drink from the litre of red wine, rough and dry, until the bottle was empty. It had been dark when they got back to the cottage and he had carried her to bed.
That night she had wept as she always did, because she was counting the days, but he did not know about that. She had always stolen from the bed and gone to sit at the window so as not to waken him. Only that one time he had chanced to wake and gone to her at the window, taken her back to bed, and that had been the last time.
Now she realised Chris Tallon had muttered a question and was staring at her. She answered it, her voice low but clear, “We have sixteen minutes before the train is due.”
*
The Feldwebel in the village stood at the telephone and listened to his orders from the officer at the barracks in St. Jean. Then he sent out almost every man to patrol, keeping only two in the guardroom to act as runners. One file of four splashed through the puddles on the track leading to the river. The rain had stopped but the sky hung low and heavy with more. They marched in silence, fed-up because they had looked forward to a few hours’ sleep before going out on patrol again. The weary cursing had ceased before they left the village and now there was only the rasp of their breathing and the irregular thud and slither of their boots in the mud.
Then Pohl, the senior soldier trudging in the lead, halted and the others crowded behind him. He whispered, “Listen!”
They stood, breath held, peering at the track ahead that became a tunnel of shadow under overhanging trees. Now they all heard the low moaning and the slow dragging. The hair lifted on the neck of one young soldier and he said huskily, “My God!”
Pohl, nerves on edge, snarled, “Shut up!” Then: “Stay back and cover me.”
The other three spread across the track as he went forward cautiously with rifle trained ahead. They watched his hunched figure blend into the shadow beneath the trees and listened to the moaning and scraping that still came out of the darkness. Then he called urgently, “Quick! Give me a hand here!”
They ran to join him and found him stooped over the kneeling body that was still trying to crawl but edging forward only inches at a time, legs dragging through the sucking mud. Pohl ordered, “Let’s get him out of here.” So they lifted the man between them and he squealed with pain but they carried him into the open and laid him down again, now on his back with face turned to the sky. His eyes were closed behind the round lenses and he was silent now.
One of them said, “It’s Meissner!”
Pohl, crouched over Otto Meissner, straightened. “He was with Solz.”
Another knelt with his face close to that of Otto and said, “He’s fainted — out cold.” He looked around and up. “What d’you think happened?”
“How the hell should I know?” Pohl snapped. He thought quickly, staring down at the body, then said, “He’s hurt in the legs. You two put dressings on them then take him back.” He jerked a thumb at the fourth man of the patrol. “You come with me. I’m going to look for Solz.”
*
The Feldwebel jerked to his feet and swore when the two kicked open the door of the guardroom and staggered in. They carried Meissner between them on a stretcher made from the greatcoat of one of them, buttoned around their two rifles as shafts. It only supported his trunk so his legs and arms dangled loosely.
“Put him on a bunk!” The Feldwebel shoved at the two men he had kept with him and they helped the others lay Meissner on one of the camp beds set up against the rear wall. The Feldwebel quickly examined Otto while the men who had brought him in told their story, then he pointed at one of his runners. “Raise the barracks on the phone. Tell ‘em we’ve a badly wounded man here. Gun-shot wounds in both legs and he’ll need blood.”
He patted Meissner’s white face but without result except that the head rolled on the shoulders. So he reached for a bottle on the table and dribbled a thin stream of schnapps into the open mouth. Otto coughed and gagged but did not waken. The Feldwebel cursed softly, crossed to the tap above the sink and began to fill a basin with cold water.
The runner turned back from the telephone and reported, “The medics are on their way.” He looked at the basin and protested cautiously, “Maybe we should leave him alone till they get here.”
The Feldwebel answered tersely, “Balls to that. I want him talking. I want to know who shot him.” He turned with the basin. The runner was now talking to the barracks.
The door opened and this time Pohl, the senior soldier of the patrol, entered with the fourth man. The latter’s face was yellow in the light. Pohl said, “I found Solz and his other two men at the lock. Shot dead. Shoved under the trees.”
The Feldwebel stared at him, then down at Otto Meissner. “He’s a gutsy little bugger to have crawled all that way with his legs shot to bits. But still —” He turned the basin over and the icy douche hit the unconscious man full in the face. He spluttered, coughed and his lips curled back from his teeth in pain — but his eyes opened. They squinted and would not focus, but he was aware and able to pass the message he had crawled a half-kilometre to deliver.
*
When Erwin König answered the telephone this time he listened to the voice of the officer at the barracks for a second or two with his usual studied calm. Then it cracked: “What!”
Ilse stood up quickly, startled, a hand to her throat and eyes on her father. Kurt Ritter put his glass on the mantelpiece and watched the Oberst.
König snapped into the telephone, “Cancel my earlier orders. Searches will not be necessary. Issue orders now for all patrols to close on the river. Inform them that an enemy force is on a barge last seen four kilometres north of the town and headed towards it. There may be a dozen men or more than fifty. Then turn out every man in the barracks and bring them down to the bridge —”
König paused as he saw Kurt Ritter lift a hand. The Major said, “My men, too, Herr Oberst.”
König added, “— also the company of Panzer Grenadiers. They will join Major Ritter at the bridge, where I will be waiting for you. We’ll patrol in strength from there on both sides of the river. Now move!”
*
The gently sloping, grassy and reed-patched banks of the river had given way to stone retaining walls. T
he wash from the barge rolled out from it to slap and break on the walls. There were no trees marching by the side of the river now but on the left and a hundred yards or so inland a line of telegraph poles stood like sentries. David Brent, standing by Grundy at the tiller and looking ahead over the length of the barge, saw the last lock before St. Jean. Its nearer gates were open but the further ones were closed, making a narrow footbridge over the river. The retaining walls narrowed in to the bottleneck of the lock.
Suzanne said, “The railway track runs there, by the telegraph poles. We’re just outside the old port. It lies behind the wood.” Her pointing finger swept from the telegraph poles, across the river to the right bank. “You might just make that out.”
David Brent thought he could see the ragged black outline of the trees against the night sky a quarter-mile away — or was he just remembering? He looked at his watch as the lock slid towards them, then nodded to its left-hand wall and told Grundy, “Lay her alongside.” He called down into the tiny engine-room, “Stop her... slow astern... stop her!”
He turned to Chris Tallon as the throb of the engine died and the helm went over, “Get ‘em out. Go as soon as we touch.” He spoke in a conversational tone but it carried in the sudden near-silence. There was only the sigh of the wind and the wash of the river at the bow of the barge as she ran in towards the bank with the last of the way on her. So the commandos heard him, threw back the tarpaulin and crawled out of their nests in the cargo. They waited, poised along the side, their eyes on Tallon.
He asked, low-voiced, “Have we time?”
Brent saw the girl watching him, but nodded, “Just.”
“But we wouldn’t have done if we’d tried to cover the last mile on foot, as I wanted to.” Tallon grimaced: “So I touches me cap and stands corrected.”
Brent shrugged, “We might have been stopped on the river or run aground. Luck of the game. We had to gamble.”
Tallon wondered, “What’s so bloody important about this man we’re here to get?”
David Brent could not tell, wished he knew, but as the barge closed the wall of the lock he called softly, “Good luck, Chris!”
Tallon looked over his shoulder seriously, then grinned and for a moment looked only his twenty-five years. “And you!”
The barge ground against the wall, Tallon leapt ashore and his men followed him over the side in a wave. Half of them went with him as he ran off into the darkness, headed for the railway track, but a party of nine under Sergeant McNab, one carrying a rucksack, waited on the bank and watched Suzanne. Another group, two only carrying Thompson guns but the other five laden with big rucksacks, trotted over the foot-bridge of the closed lock gates with Albert puffing stiffly at their head. On the far side they turned onto the tow-path running along the side of the river and making for the old port.
Cullen and the other seaman had secured the barge. David Brent and Suzanne stood on the bank and now the engineer and his stoker stumbled up out of the confines of the little engine-room. They came ashore with Grundy, and Brent led them all away at a fast walk through long, tufted grass that brushed wetly at their legs. Suzanne followed a pace behind him and trailing her were Grundy and the rest of Brent’s crew. McNab and the commandos fanned out on either side.
In a hundred yards they came to the railway track and a crouching figure that turned and waved a signalling hand: “Down”. Brent crouched beside Tallon and the others followed suit. They were only a few feet from the dull-gleaming steel lines that ran away parallel to the river to vanish into the darkness to left and right. David Brent asked softly, “Ready?”
Tallon shook his head, “I sent him off less than a minute ago.” He spoke of the last demolition engineer with his rucksack. “If our information is correct and there are twenty box-cars in the train then he needs to set his charge about three hundred yards further along the line. It’s still too soon.” He spoke quietly, barely a whisper. He breathed quickly and that was not because of the short sprint from the barge. David Brent could sense the tension all around him. He looked for the other commandos in Tallon’s group, head turning, but failed to see them.
Chris noticed that movement: “They’re spread along both sides of the track, ten or fifteen yards apart, so we cover about a hundred yards. Two or three of us should be opposite the last cars when they stop, if I’ve got my sums right.”
If…
On the far side of the track lay more rough grassland and then a wood lifted bare branches, waving black against the sky. There was neither moon nor stars, just the low, leaden clouds and the whisper of the wind that brought a spit of rain to fall on their faces.
If the train came. If the plan worked. If any of them lived through this night…
*
Michel stood at the door of the cell and chafed his wrists that were numb and raw from the straps biting into them. When the S. S. troopers first caught him they had searched inside his mouth with thick, probing fingers for any poison capsule. Michel had never carried one. But when they threw him into the cell they left him his shoes. It had taken him some time to worry the heel from one shoe, breaking his finger-nails, but he had got the razor-blade hidden in there. Cutting through the straps with the blade gripped only between the tips of two fingers had taken him weary, frustrating, painful hours. The blade had slipped in numb fingers that could barely feel it and though he was hardly conscious of the cuts the stickiness told him he was bleeding.
There was blood on his hands now but they were free. He was not. All the while he had carved laboriously at the strap he had listened for his gaolers, and one of them had come tramping along the stone floor of the passage every ten minutes or so. He had looked in through the small grating set high in the door at the man lying on the floor under the light. Michel had lain still, watching the grating, and the trooper had gone away.
Michel heard the clack of boot-heels now, turned and lay down again, hands behind him, eyes on the door. He was not ready but there was an important decision to be made soon. If he tried to escape and failed then he would talk. He had no doubt of that. He might hold out against the pain for a day but then the body would overrule the will and he would talk. Men and women would die as horribly as he. So if he could not be absolutely certain of getting out and away he must make the razor-blade serve the purpose of the capsule he had not carried.
He had to be absolutely certain.
He stared blankly up at the face behind the grating. And prayed.
Chapter Eleven - “That’ll stir things up!”
David Brent stood close by the silver rails. His head was turned towards St. Jean, watching for the train that would come through the town but there was neither sight nor sound of it. He wondered if it had passed, or was not coming at all. How long could he and his men wait?
How could he tell them that the boats lost and the men killed had all been for nothing?
He turned from the town and saw Chris Tallon a few yards away, but the girl was nearer. The soldier was looking up the track and waiting for word that the man he had sent there was ready. Suzanne had been watching the track from St. Jean and so her eyes met those of David Brent now. Her hands were hidden in the pockets of the trenchcoat she wore and its collar was turned up to frame her face. Her blonde hair was ruffled by the wind coming in off the sea. He could have reached out and touched her.
They had stood as close that last time in Paris but he had leant from the window of the train while she had stood below with her face turned up to him. She had been pale then, her eyes wide, dark and shadowed, miserable. But she had spoken up: “It’s over, David. I haven’t been fair and I’m sorry, but I would do it again. Go with my love, but it’s finished.”
The words came without warning, shattering his plans and dreams, a blow to the heart. He could only stare dumbly as the train began to move, knowing there was no use in arguing, no going back. He could see that in her face though her mouth trembled, hear it in her voice though it caught. So he only asked the one question
and she gave him no answer.
He asked it again now, as they stood in the cold night, about to put their lives at risk: “Why? You told me it was all over. Why?”
And now she answered, “Because of my husband.”
“You’re married?” He did not raise his voice but his tone laid the emphasis on the word. He had never thought of her as bound to another man. But why not? She was desirable so would have been desired by others. Yet he had never imagined her with another man. He wondered: Was that unconscious arrogance? And admitted: Maybe. But that was the fact.
She said, “You never saw my ring. I was wearing gloves when I met you and the ring came off when they did. I got you out of Paris the next day so you wouldn’t meet anyone who could tell you.”
Now he remembered when they had left the party at which they met, a voice had called, “Goodnight, Madame.” He had thought they were speaking to someone else.
She said, “I did it because —” She broke off, then started again, “I’d been married a year. He was young, French, handsome. His family had money and he worked for the family firm. We had a whirlwind courtship. I think ‘swept me off my feet’ is the expression.” One corner of her mouth went up, self-mocking. “It sounds romantic and I believed he loved me. I think he did, in his way. But I soon realised he’d married me because that was the only way he could get me into bed.”
She could see the glitter of David’s eyes, the tight line of his mouth. Her fists were clenched in her pockets and she went on with it: “He travelled a lot in his work. A few weeks after the wedding he was involved in a terrible accident when driving his car. The girl with him was killed instantly. She was half-naked. Then I found out she wasn’t the only one by a long way. Lyons, Bordeaux, Nice — wherever his business took him, there was a girl.
“He was very badly injured and became a permanent inmate in a hospital where most of the patients had been since the war with Germany twenty years before. They were all human wrecks. It is possible that devotion can keep such a man alive; the doctors said so and I proved it, visiting him every week, writing every day. So I would not abandon him when I met you. And I had made my vows.”