The more they thought about their situation the less they liked it. The five barges were strung together with twenty-fathom lengths of steel cable, and there was no way at all in which they could cross those yawning gulfs to reach Léon Baras’ party, which occupied the second barge in the string.
‘We’ll have to wait till daylight,’ Kuporovitch said. ‘The captain and the crew of the Sans Souci are in the secret. If we signal them they’ll slow down so that we can get back into Boucheron’s boat and row along to join our friends.’
‘I’m afraid there’s not much hope of that,’ Gregory sighed. ‘You seem to have forgotten, Stefan, that this string of barges now forms part of a convoy with a German escort. What the escort consists of we shan’t discover until daylight, but I expect there’ll be at least one Ack-Ack ship and probably several E-boats. Directly we stand up to start signalling the Germans will wonder who we are and come on board to investigate. There’s another thing. We’ll have to cast off the boat before morning. Otherwise the Nazis will spot it and guess that some unauthorised persons came out to this barge in it under cover of darkness.’.
‘Wait a moment, though,’ said Madeleine. ‘If the British Navy is going to capture Baras’ barge and tow it to England why shouldn’t they capture the whole string? This great cargo of explosives would be as useful to the British as to the Germans, and surely the Navy will have thought of that. You must be wrong in thinking they mean to sink all the other barges.’
Gregory laughed. ‘I’m afraid you don’t understand the difficulties of such an operation. The Germans aren’t going to take this little party lying down. We shall be hugging the French coast the whole time, and once the balloon goes up scores of German aircraft will take off to bomb the British ships. They’ll probably despatch to the spot any other fast E-boats they may have within thirty miles and a submarine or so into the bargain.
‘To capture a whole string of barges and tow them back to an English port with the British ships being attacked both by sea and air while they’re on the job would be one hell of an undertaking. Speed is their best defence against such an attack, so there wouldn’t even be time for them to send boarding-parties on to the barges to undo the hawsers and attach each one to a separate ship. They’ll simply come alongside Baras’ barge and throw him a rope. Directly it’s made fast, and he’s cast off from the barges ahead and astern, they’ll pull him out of the string as quickly as they possibly can. When they’ve got his barge to a safe distance they’ll blow up the other four barges by gunfire in order to create confusion among the Germans and destroy this big cargo of enemy war material.’
‘I see,’ said Madeleine softly. ‘Of course, one always thinks of the British Navy as all-powerful, and that there’s simply nothing that it cannot do.’
‘I’m afraid that even the Royal Navy has its limits,’ Gregory smiled, ‘but it’s nice that people should think of it in the way that you say, and actually far too little appreciation is given to the amazing things it has accomplished. The fact of the matter is that the English are not given to talking very much. They’re not very good at bringing home to other people the real basic fact that without them Hitler would have won his war and had the whole of Europe in the bag long ago.’
‘That’s entirely on account of your incredibly ill-managed propaganda in the first two years of the war,’ Kuporovitch remarked. ‘Nine-tenths of the people outside Britain still believe that the English are decadent and that their fighting is being done for them by the troops of the Dominions and a few gallant Scottish regiments. But where would all the others be without them? No portion of the Empire could continue to exist without the homeland, unless they allowed themselves to be taken over by the United States. And where would the United States be if Britain fell? If Hitler had every shipyard in the whole of Europe, including Britain, to build the greatest Navy that the world has ever seen for his assault on the Americas, they couldn’t possibly compete in such a building race. Within five years the Stars and Stripes would be swept from the seas.’
Gregory nodded. ‘You’re right, Stefan. And it’s a rotten shame that this idea that everyone else is doing the fighting should still persist. When I was last in London a great husky Australian stuck a finger in my chest and said: “If you don’t soon get down to business in this war I’ll be meeting you in New York one day with Free English written on your shoulder. How would you like that?”’
‘Of course, it’s quite true that we’re terribly slow in the uptake, and we’re not fighting all out yet. We need, and we’re thundering glad to have, all the help that we can get in this titanic struggle, both from the peoples of our own Empire and the Free Forces of all the peoples who are fighting with us, but that does not affect the fact that the people of the homeland are the rock upon which Hitler will break.’
He paused a moment, then went on: ‘In no other country in the world is there quite the same solidity and strength of purpose as in the little island where the three ancient races are now merged into one; and that brings us back to the Royal Navy. Every other people on earth that is fighting for, or even prepared to fight for, its freedom, is now dependent on Britain keeping free the seas; and, although not many people realise it, over eighty-five per cent of the officers and men who man our fighting ships are drawn from the Southern Counties of England.’
There was another short silence, then he gave a cynical little laugh and added: ‘Of course, the men of Devon and Hampshire and Kent don’t get much credit for the fact that Hitler isn’t occupying Buckingham Palace, or that Britain is still far and away the best fed and most comfortable country among the warring Powers in which to live. Neither do the people of all the other towns and counties between John o’ Groats and Land’s End, who provide much the biggest proportion of the Imperial Armies and Air Forces; yet it is their blood, and their tradition, which permeates all the other Anglo-Saxon peoples of the world. That indomitable spirit, which has made the Empire, lives in it still today, and without it all else which sustains our Commonwealth of Nations must perish.’
‘You’re right, Gregory, absolutely right,’ Kuporovitch agreed, ‘and we’ll see the Navy doing its stuff tomorrow—if all goes well. Perhaps, though, if we slept for a bit we’d be able to think up some way of getting rid of our ringside seats. It’s quite clear now that they’re going to be far too near the performance to be comfortable.’
Getting up from the deck, Gregory set Boucheron’s boat adrift, then they went down into the small cabin in the stern of the barge, which was occupied by a watchman when it was in port. There were two bunks in it, and on one a couple of coarse blankets had been left neatly folded. Madeleine lay down on one bunk, while Gregory and Stefan tossed up for the other. Gregory won, so the Russian found some old sacking and made himself as comfortable as his makeshift bedding permitted, on the floor. Although they had slept for three hours that afternoon they were still terribly fatigued from their long journey and desperate exertions, so within a few moments they were all asleep.
When Kuporovitch awoke it was daylight. He roused Gregory, and the two of them went cautiously up the short companionway to take a look round and find out the composition of the convoy. They soon saw that none of the ships was within several hundred yards of them, so they were in little danger of being spotted, provided that they did not let more than the top of their heads appear above the hatch.
To their right they could see the coast of France very clearly. They were not more than a mile from shore and were heading up-channel. They were just passing a town that Gregory could not definitely identify but thought was probably Fecamp, and they found that their string of barges formed the second in the convoy, which consisted of six strings altogether. On their seaward side there was a small grey-painted motor yacht, which had doubtless been commandeered from some French port and converted into a Flak-ship. There were also three E-boats, spaced out at intervals along the line. In addition, they also saw that each of the six tugs towing the strings of barges was n
ow flying a balloon as a precaution against aerial attack.
‘The balloon puts paid to any chance of our making our presence known to the people in our tug,’ said Gregory. ‘There must be German Air Arm men on board to fly it, and I expect they rigged up their winches while we were at Boucheron’s yesterday afternoon.’
‘No, we can’t expect any help from that quarter,’ Kuporovitch agreed. ‘Even if there weren’t Germans on board her their friends in the escort ships would see our signals. You were quite right last night in your prediction of the fix in which we’d find ourselves. As far as I can see, the only thing for us to do, when the party starts, is to jump overboard and trust to luck that the British will pick us up.’
‘But you can’t swim,’ Gregory objected.
‘I know; but I can make some sort of raft, or, anyhow, lash together all the spare bits of wood that I can find as something to which to cling.’
When they went below again they found that Madeleine was awake and rummaging in the lockers of the little cabin in the hope of finding some odds and ends of food; but she was disappointed. They had to go breakfastless, and instead employed themselves on making three good-sized floats from cupboard doors which they wrenched off, broom-handles and other wooden gear. There was plenty of twine in one of the lockers, and by the time they had finished, although each of the floats looked like a large bundle of junk, they felt certain that they were large enough and sufficiently strongly tied together, to support the weight of a body in the water for several hours.
From time to time one or other of them went up the companionway so as to be informed at once if any unusual activity was going on. They saw several German planes, and about nine o’clock one that Gregory believed to be British, flying very high. He wondered if its pilot was even then examining the convoy through his observation glasses with special interest.
They thanked God that the weather was fine, as if the plane that Gregory had seen had not identified the Sans Souci and her tow it was a virtual certainty that some other British plane would report the big barge convoy during the course of the morning.
But in any case several hours must elapse before the attack could be expected, as the Admiralty would certainly not be holding a force in perpetual readiness for this minor operation, and even in wartime instructions could not be issued and ships sent to sea at a bare few minutes’ warning. There was also the question of air co-operation and the fact that the British flotilla would have to cross the Channel before it could attack the enemy’s escort.
Aircraft continued to come and go in the sky above, and on two occasions they saw a brief air battle in which Nazi planes came spiralling down into the sea, leaving a long black smoky trail behind them.
Soon after eleven o’clock, as they were beating up towards a large town which Gregory felt certain was Dieppe, Kuporovitch noticed a motor launch leave the pier and come racing out towards the convoy. The launch feathered through the water until it reached the leading tug. Soon afterwards a signal was hoisted, and the convoy came down to half speed, while the various escort vessels closed in upon it.
The Russian had already called the others up, and with some perturbation they began to wonder what was happening. All too soon they knew. Each of the escort vessels picked a barge, and German sailors from the E-boats began to scramble on board them.
‘Hell!’ exclaimed Gregory. ‘What cursed luck! The Nazis have tumbled to something at the eleventh hour. They must have got wind of it somehow that one of the barges contains Baras and the rest of our friends, so the men in the E-boats have been ordered to search them.’
‘Oh, poor wretches!’ Madeleine sighed. ‘It’s too terrible to think of their being caught and hauled back to suffer God knows what horrors when they’ve been cooped up in that barge for a fortnight and are so very near being rescued.’
‘If they search every barge they’ll find us too,’ remarked Kuporovitch grimly.
‘I think that depends on if they stumble on us first,’ Gregory replied. ‘If they find the others they probably won’t bother to search any further. Thank goodness none of the E-boats picked Baras’ barge to start off with, as it’ll probably work the other way too, and if they find us first they’ll be satisfied.’
Madeleine nodded. ‘It’s really a question as to what information they have. If they’re looking for sixty or seventy people they won’t be content with us three, but, if they’ve just been tipped off that there are some stowaways on one of the barges, finding us would put them off the track of the others altogether.’
Gregory and Kuporovitch remained silent, but looked quickly at each other. They both knew what was in Madeleine’s mind; if they showed themselves at once, and gave themselves up, that might be the means of saving some sixty other people from death and torture.
It was a terrible decision to have to make. The Gestapo would show them no mercy, and once they had given themselves up, with all three of them as prisoners, and no one outside to give them aid, they knew that there was very little chance of their being able to escape again. Yet, in the past weeks they had suffered so much already, and were now so very near freedom. Even though they were standing above a great mass of high explosive the odds would have been about even on their being picked up by the British after they had taken to the water, if only they could swim far enough from the barge before it was blown sky-high. It was Madeleine who decided their terrible problem for them by saying:
‘I think we ought to, don’t you?’
The others both knew what she meant, and they nodded slowly. Then she walked up the few remaining steps of the companionway on to the open deck, and that tough man Stefan Kuporovitch felt that it could have been no braver sight to have witnessed Marie Antoinette walking up the steps of the guillotine.
The men followed her out from their hiding-place and waved to the Germans in the nearest E-boat. The boat cast off from the barge ahead of them, which it had just been examining. An officer in it spoke to one of the sailors, who stood up in its prow and began to semaphore the other boats. Immediately the men in them gave up their search, and together with the launch which had put out from Dieppe they all headed for the barge on which Madeleine and her friends were standing.
The nearest E-boat pulled up alongside, but none of its crew attempted to come aboard. Two of them covered the stowaways with automatic rifles and waited until the launch arrived, A black-uniformed figure was standing in its stern, and with grim forebodings the little party on the barge recognised him as their old enemy, Major Wolfram Schaub.
Two sailors scrambled on to the barge, then two S.S. men, then the Major. As he came forward his strong nobbly face was wreathed in smiles.
‘So!’ he said. ‘I’ve got you after all. It was a near thing, after that idiot policeman messed things up last night.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Gregory cynically, ‘On your marvellous staff work. We’ve been up against every Gestapo man in France for the past fortnight and made our way through the German lines of the forbidden coastal area; yet you owe it to pure chance, and a dumb-headed French Quisling having recognised us, that you got on our track before we could get clean away.’
‘Enough!’ snapped Schaub. ‘I will teach you manners and to cringe at the name of the Gestapo before you’re very much older. Get down in the boat, all of you.’
There was nothing to do but to obey, so they lowered themselves over the side into the stern of the launch. All took as long as possible, as it seemed to them now that every second counted, and they were still hoping against hope that the British Navy might come on the scene before Schaub actually get them into Dieppe.
With eager, desperate gaze they searched the sea and sky; but there was not a sign of any shipping except that in the convoy, and above them only two patrolling Messerschmitts circled lazily.
When they were in the boat Schaub ordered the young naval officer in it to return to Dieppe. Their speed increased and the launch shot forward. They had not more than two miles at the o
utside to cover, and as they sped away they now kept their eyes fixed sadly on the string of barges that for so many days they had struggled so desperately to catch, and which, as it proceeded slowly up-channel, carried away their last hopes of life and freedom.
They were half-way to the shore when Gregory suddenly spoke: ‘You haven’t got Léon Baras yet, have you?’
Schaub looked at him quickly. ‘No, why do you ask?’
‘Because I don’t like Baras. He once did me a dirty trick, and sooner or later I always get even with my enemies. Would you make it any easier for us if I told you where you could lay your hands on Baras?’
‘Yes, I’d do a deal,’ the Major replied. ‘The Communist Deputies have been giving us a lot of trouble, and I’d like to make an example of one of them. Naturally, you’ll understand that all three of you will face a firing-squad, but I can arrange matters so that you face it standing up, instead of lying on the ground already beaten to a pulp.’
‘All right, then,’ Gregory nodded. ‘I’ve only got your word, and I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t want to get even with Baras, but I’m going to trust you about seeing to it that we’re not tortured before we’re shot. Baras was in our party, but we disliked each other so much that he decided to travel in a different barge. If you like to turn back you’ll find him in the second barge of the second string.’
Madeleine and Stefan had been listening to Gregory and wondering what on earth he was trying to do. Now they both stared at him in open amazement. Either of them would have given a great deal to escape torture and flogging before they died, but having decided to give themselves up in order to save all those other people, it seemed a poor cowardly businness not to go through with it right to the end, as if Baras was discovered all the others must be too.
V for Vengeance Page 41