V for Vengeance

by Dennis Wheatley

  Suddenly they caught a faint rat-tat-tat high above their heads and, looking up, they saw something they had not noticed while listening to Gregory. Two squadrons of British fighter planes had suddenly come on the scene, diving from a great height at terrific speed right out of the sun on to the two German Messerschmitts. Gregory’s strong eyes had seen those squadrons first, and the sight of them had convinced him that the party was on.

  Air battles were nothing new to Major Schaub, and with hardly a glance above his head he ordered the launch back to the string of barges. Before they were half-way there the two Messerschmitts, caught napping, disintegrated under an absolute hail of cannon-shells from the swarm of British fighters, and the pieces came fluttering down into the sea. The two squadrons then divided; one turning south, and the other north, they curved away in opposite directions across the coast of France.

  The Germans in the launch cursed a little and shook their fists in impotent anger as they saw the wreckage of the Messerschmitts tumbling down from the sky. The Ack-Ack escort ship had come into action, as also had the anti-aircraft guns in the E-boats, but after a few moments they all ceased fire, as the British squadrons had passed out of range. As far as the Germans were concerned it was just an episode of the war, which was now over.

  The guns had hardly ceased firing when the launch reached the barge where Léon Baras and his friends were confined. Once more two sailors went aboard, then two S.S. men, then Major Schaub. The three prisoners remained seated in the stern of the launch, listening with all their ears and wondering what the devil was going to happen.

  Suddenly there was the sound of shots and shouting from the barge. The shots increased to a din as more and more rifles and automatics came into action. As Gregory had guessed, Baras and his companions, all of whom were armed, were not going to allow themselves to be taken without a struggle, and there were at least twenty Frenchmen to the five Germans. Gregory had led the Major into a pretty trap.

  One by one the Germans had disappeared down the companionway in the after-part of the barge. Now one of the S.S. men reappeared and dashed to its side. ‘Help! Help!’ he shouted. ‘The barge is full of these damned Frenchmen, and they’ve all got guns! Quick! Up you come, all of you, and lend a hand!’

  There were two more S.S. men in the launch, guarding the prisoners, one sailor up in the bows, and the young naval officer who was standing by the tiller. One of the S.S. men turned to the officer and with a wave towards the prisoners cried: ‘Here, you, look after these people!’ Then both of them hauled themselves up over the barge’s side; the sailor in the bow jumped after them.

  As Gregory and Kuporovitch had only just given themselves up they had not yet been searched or disarmed. No sooner were the S.S. men out of the way than they pulled their guns from their pockets. The young officer made a quick grab at his holster, but too late. As he turned to face Gregory, Kuporovitch hit him a mighty backhander, and he toppled overboard. Next minute the two friends had come into action with their guns, taking the S.S. men on the barge in the rear. They shot both of them in the back.

  Madeleine grabbed up a boat-hook and fixed it into the barge’s deck-rim so that the launch should not drift away from it, as she cried to the other two: ‘Up you go! I can manage to hang on. I’ll be all right here.’

  Stefan shook his head. ‘No, Baras and the rest are more than enough to tackle those Nazis. But there’ll be more of them arriving in the other boats in a minute. I’m staying here with you.’

  The sounds of firing had already attracted attention. The convoy had come down to slow, and the three E-boats were all racing towards them.

  Gregory was now desperately anxious. If he had been wrong about those two squadrons of fighter planes, and they had no special interest in the convoy, but had merely appeared above it by chance on one of their daily patrols, the fat was in the fire with a vengeance. The Germans in the E-boats and the Flak-ship were more numerous and better armed than Baras and his friends. It would be a frightful business if all of them were now killed or captured as a result of his clutching at a straw, and if, in the hope of saving his own party after all, he had wrecked everything by his premature disclosure that Baras was in the barge. The launch was on the landward side of the barge. With a quick glance at the oncoming E-boats he sprang on to her deck to stare wildly at the sea horizon.

  For a moment he believed the game was up. Then he thought he saw some faint smudges of smoke on the skyline. Shading his eyes with his hand he stared again. Yes, he was right—there were six of them. The Germans had seen them too; a hooter on the Ack-Ack ship began to wail.

  After that everything seemed to happen incredibly quickly. The planes were back again, circling overhead; the smudges of smoke increased and grew nearer with fantastic speed, turning into six long low destroyers. They were still several miles away when they opened fire with their biggest guns. Shells began to scream overhead and plunge into the water among the other strings of barges, sending up great fountains of foam. The German E-boats were within a few hundred yards of the launch, but all of them now changed their courses and swerved out to seaward of the line of barges. Below the barge’s deck fighting was still in progress. Revolvers cracked, and every moment there came the scream or curse of a wounded man.

  Fascinated by the sight of the action as he was, Gregory forced his eyes away from it and, turning, yelled to Madeleine: ‘Come on up! You’ll be all right here now.’ Stooping, he grasped her hands to drag her on board. Kuporovitch hauled himself up after her, and when he got to his feet Gregory saw that he was laughing.

  ‘Well done!’ exclaimed the Russian. ‘Well done, my friend! It was a stroke of genius on your part to get Schaub himself to take us off that cargo of dynamite and deliver us safely to this barge and our friends.’

  ‘It was more by luck than judgment.’ Gregory grinned.

  ‘If those planes of ours hadn’t turned up just at that moment I would never have dared to risk it, and as it was I gambled on their being in on this show. Come on! Let’s clear one of the hawsers. Even the Navy will want all the help we can give them in a party like this, where time is everything.’

  The two of them ran forward and with frantic fingers began to release the great wire cable which attached the barge to the one ahead.

  The R.A.F. fighters were now dealing with the balloons, sending streams of tracer and explosive bullets into them. One after the other the great blimps burst into flames and came gently sailing down, their cables coiling in loose curves as they dipped into the sea. The Sans Souci had already unhitched herself. The sailors were fighting the German balloon men on her deck, and her captain had turned her nose north-westwards to get behind the protective screen of the British destroyers.

  The Ack-Ack ship was in flames and sinking. One of the E-boats blew up with a terrific bang, as a shell exploded among its torpedoes. The other two had turned once more, and with every ounce of speed they had were racing for the shelter of Dieppe.

  Several coast batteries had now come into action. German shells were falling among the destroyers. One was hit and had the top part of its mast carried away. Amidst the crash of the explosions and the banging of the pom-poms, the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns and the individual crack of rifle-shots, the droning of the many planes made constant thunder in the sky. Several flights of the Luftwaffe came screaming out of the blue sky over the coast; some attempted to dive-bomb the warships, while others attacked the British squadrons.

  There were fifty dog-fights going on at once. The planes swooped and circled in an indescribable mêlée with such speed that it was impossible to follow their individual movements. The sky above the convoy was now a haze of curving vapour trails. Five aircraft burst into flames and fell within a few seconds of one another; from four the pilots had managed to bale out, and swaying from side to side under their graceful parachutes they gently floated down.

  When Gregory and Stefan had run forward to cast off the forward hawser they left Madeleine standing al
one amidships. She had her back turned to the companionway, and it was the sound of running feet which caused her suddenly to swing round. A single figure had emerged from the interior of the barge. Hatless, bleeding from a wound in the face, and his left arm hanging limp from his side, he ran towards her. It was Wolfram Schaub.

  With demoniacal fury in his face he raised his pistol to fire at her. She sprang back with a quick cry, but the pistol only clicked. Its magazine was empty.

  For an instant they stood glaring at each other, then with the courage of intense hatred she flung herself straight at him.

  It had never entered his head that a woman would go for him with her bare hands. Taken off his guard, he made one step back, but he was not quick enough. The violence of her onslaught carried him off his balance; clutching frantically at the air, he fell backwards into the sea with a wailing cry that was only cut short as the water closed over his head.

  For a moment Madeleine swayed wildly, very nearly taking a header after him. With a terrific effort she recovered her balance. Pale and shaking, she turned to see that one of the destroyers had left the others and in a graceful curve was now coming alongside.

  As the destroyer approached, Baras and his men came tumbling up on deck from the companionway. The sailors threw some ropes. Gregory caught one at the forward end of the barge and at the after end some of the Frenchmen near Baras caught another. The destroyer had reversed her engines, and, oblivious of the battle that was raging all round, a naval lieutenant sprang down on the the barge’s deck. Raising a megaphone which he held in one hand he shouted through it: ‘Is Mr. Sallust aboard?’ And with an answering shout Gregory ran along the deck to him.

  ‘I was asked to find you,’ said the N.O. quickly. ‘I gather you’re in charge here. Will you get all the people up from below as quickly as you can so that we can take them off?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to take the barge in tow?’ Gregory asked.’

  ‘Good God, no! Towing a thing like this would reduce our speed to about fifteen knots, and we’ve got to get out of here just as quickly as we can.’

  ‘Right-oh!’ said Gregory, and he began to shout orders in French.

  In a very few minutes the whole party, except those who had been killed in the recent fighting with Schaub and his men, were up on deck, and with willing hands the British sailors helped them on to the destroyer.

  Gregory left last with the Lieutenant, who said that the Captain commanding the flotilla wished to see him as soon as they were clear of the scrap. The destroyer’s lines had already been hauled in, and her engines were turning over once more at full speed, thrusting her out to sea.

  In a bare two minutes she had covered the best part of a mile. Then there was a colossal explosion. One after another, the barges of ammunition disintegrated in huge sheets of flame as they blew up. Turning into line ahead, the flotilla, with its anti-aircraft guns still belching fire and smoke at individual Nazi aircraft, raced away, its work accomplished.

  When the guns had ceased to thunder Gregory sought out the Captain on the bridge and thanked him on behalf of all concerned for the brilliant feat of rescue work that the Navy, with R.A.F. help, had carried out.

  ‘Oh, that’s quite all right,’ smiled the Captain. ‘It’s all in the day’s work, you know. We’re very happy to have been of service to you and got so many of these poor people out of the clutches of the Nazis. By the by, I don’t suppose you’ve heard the latest news: the war’s taken quite a new turn since this morning. Hitler’s decided to try to cut his old friend Stalin’s throat. The German Army attacked at dawn along the whole front of the Russian-held territories.’

  ‘Is it really war, do you think?’ asked Gregory anxiously. ‘Are the Russians fighting back?’

  ‘Oh Lord, yes!’ the Captain laughed. ‘They’ve announced that since Hitler’s double-crossed them they mean to fight to the death.’ And he went on to give the full story of that Sunday morning’s world-shaking news.

  With a little sigh of satisfaction Gregory went below to find Madeleine and Stefan, to tell them all about it. In a single hour the whole orientation of the Second World War had been fundamentally changed. He had never believed that in any possible circumstances Hitler could achieve complete and final victory. Now he knew that the Germans could not even hope for a stalemate and that this now aggression must shorten the war by years.

  When Madeleine heard the news she exclaimed: ‘But why should Hitler have attacked Russia? He really must be crazy.’

  Stefan smiled as he took her hands. ‘You didn’t tumble, then, to what we’ve been up to all these weeks?’

  ‘Surely,’ Gregory laughed, ‘the report of Hitler’s speech at the time he launched the attack, which I’ve just given you, must have provided you with the clue.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I still don’t get it. He said that Russia had been trying to stab Germany in the back while pretending to be her friend, didn’t he? And that therefore he must settle with her and render her impotent before he smashed Britain for good and all.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Gregory agreed. ‘But don’t you remember the bit about the great conspiracy, having its ramifications all over Europe, that he said the Gestapo had uncovered; how, although supposed to be his Allies, Stalin and Co. had been plotting all the time with the Freedom groups in the occupied territories, so that when he was up to the neck in a death-grapple with Britain they would be sufficiently well organised to rise up and rend him? Well, that was our party.’

  He paused a moment, then corrected himself. ‘No, I’m wrong—it was your party, Madeleine. You were the one who started it all, by laying down the law to Stefan and myself that the people in the occupied territories would just die of starvation in a year or two, unless somehow the whole war could be given an entirely new twist. We talked it over and we made a plan. I went back to London and got things moving there, while Stefan sat in Paris typing documents night and day.’

  ‘Of course,’ Madeleine interrupted. ‘All those hundreds of letters on the typewriter with a Russian set of characters, that he had such a job to obtain.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Gregory smiled. ‘They were supposed to be instructions from the Soviet Government to their secret agents in Occupied France. Meanwhile in London we forged countless letters in French, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Czech, Polish and German, with which we were able to build up huge correspondence files. The documents in those files were supposed to have been received by the Freedom fighters in all those different countries, and every one of them told the same story: they were being financed and instructed by Moscow in their work of sabotage and fermenting revolution. London made arrangements for the people in other countries: Stefan and I, with Lacroix’s consent, handled Occupied France. We planted the files with the most trusted members of our organisation, then at the beginning of this month we started to smuggle our friends out, and immediately they’d left split on them one by one. Their homes were raided, the files were discovered hidden in all sorts of cunning places. The Nazis put two and two together, then four and four, and finally added hundred to hundred when we blew up the whole works a fortnight ago.’

  Kuporovitch chuckled. ‘We must have given Himmler and all the Gestapo people the greatest headache that they’ve ever had.’

  ‘I’ll bet we did,’ Gregory grinned back. ‘And they couldn’t laugh off such a great accumulation of evidence from so many different quarters. We provided them with chapter and verse, which made them dead certain that a vast conspiracy existed in the whole of the German conquered lands, inspired by Moscow, to rise against them when the time was ripe. Mind you, we were taking a colossal gamble. I don’t wonder that Lacroix hesitated before he came in with us. We were simply betting on the fact that, although Russia would never attack Germany, she would fight if she were attacked; and it was our work to force the Nazis’ hand, so that they should be absolutely convinced that they’d lose the war unless they settled with Russia before attempting to tackle Britain.�
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  ‘Oh, it was marvellous!’ Madeleine whispered. ‘Absolutely marvellous! Perhaps now in a year or so France may be free again, and these filthy German brutes will get their just deserts.’

  Gregory nodded. ‘I hope so. You wanted vengeance, Madeleine, and now you’ve got it; not a little vengeance, like the killing of Schaub because he shot your Georges, or the sabotaging of a few trains containing German soldiers—but a real vengeance. At dawn today Hitler took on 200,000,000 new enemies, and before this job is through every living German will curse his name. Next winter they’ll be dying by the million in the biting winds and freezing snows of the Russian plains. You weren’t content to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But you needn’t worry—your will to break Hitler is going to destroy the flower of the whole German race.’

  They were silent for a little, then Gregory said: ‘You’ve never been to England, have you, Madeleine? I do hope you’ll like it.’

  ‘I’m sure I shall,’ she laughed, ‘as Stefan and I are going to get married there. Wherever we may go afterwards, we shall always think of England as our second home.’

  ‘Bless you both,’ Gregory smiled back. ‘I insist on being best man, and old Pellinore will dig out some champagne for the wedding. I hate weddings as a rule, but I’m going to love this one, because I’m so damn’ certain that both of you are going to be marvellously happy.’

  He left the two lovers then and went up on deck to get some air. At last he could allow himself the luxury of savouring the joy of a good job well done, and feel that he had earned the right to take a little time off to be once more with his beautiful Erika. That night, if he were lucky, or, at least, tomorrow, he would hold her in his arms.

  An hour or so later he was still leaning on the rail thinking of her and watching the white cliffs of Dover as they rose out of the sea, when the Lieutenant who had jumped down on to the barge came up to him, and said: ‘Pretty good business this—old Hitler going for the Ruskies, isn’t it? Might even keep him busy for a few weeks!’