Night Of The Fox

by Jack Higgins

  She came round the counter and called to one of the customers, "Heh, Marcel, look after the bar for me."

  She approached her husband who had stopped playing and was lighting a cigarette. "What was that all about?"

  "Let's go in the back and find out."

  She pulled his wheelchair from the piano, turned and pushed him along the bar to the sitting room at the rear. Gerard Cresson sat at the table and read Gallagher's letter, then pushed it across to her, face grave.

  She read it quickly, then got a bottle of red wine and filled two glasses. "He's in a real mess this time, our friend the General."

  "And then some."

  Between them they had controlled the Resistance movement from Granville to Avranches and St. Malo for three years now. Gerard provided the organizing ability and Sophie was his good right arm. They were a very successful team. Had to be to have survived so long.

  "You'll radio London?"

  "Of course."

  "What do you think?" she said. "Maybe they'll ask us to try to get this Yank out of Jersey."

  "Difficult at the best of times," he said. "Not possible with the state he's in." He held out his glass for more wine. "Of course, there is a rather obvious solution. Much better for everyone in the circumstances, I should have thought."

  "And what's that?"

  "Send someone across to cut his throat."

  There was silence between them. She said, "It's been a long war."

  "Too long," he said. "Now take me to the storeroom and I'll radio London."

  Major Speer turned from the sink, toweling his hands. Sister Bernadette was already mixing the plaster of Paris, and he crossed to the operating table and looked down at Kelso who was still unconscious.

  "An excellent piece of work," George Hamilton said.

  "Yes, I must say I'm rather pleased with it myself." Speer reached for his greatcoat. "I'm sure you can handle the rest. I'm already late for dinner at the officers' club. Don't forget to let me know how he progresses, Herr Professor. General." He saluted and went out.

  Hamilton stood, looked down at Kelso, suddenly drained as he stripped off his gloves and gown. Kelso moaned a little as he started to come round and said softly, "Janet, I love you."

  The American accent was unmistakable. Sister Bernadette appeared not to have noticed, but the older woman glanced sharply at Hamilton and then at Gallagher.

  "He seems to be coming around," Hamilton said lamely.

  "So it would appear," she said. "Why don't you and General Gallagher go to my office. One of the nuns will get you some coffee. We have some of the real stuff thanks to Major Speer. Sister Bernadette and I will put the cast on for you."

  "That's very kind of you, Sister."

  The two men went out and along the corridor, past the kitchen where two nuns worked, to the office at the end. Hamilton sat behind the desk and Gallagher gave him one of his Gitanes and sat in the window seat.

  "The moment he came through that door will stay with me forever," the Irishman said.

  "As I told you, he's not a bad sort," Hamilton commented. "And a damn fine doctor."

  "You think Kelso will be all right?"

  "I don't see why not. We should be able to move him in an hour or so. We'll have to watch him closely for the next few days. The possibility of infection mustn't be discounted, but there were some ampules of this new wonder drug, penicillin, in that emergency kit from his life raft. I'll start him on that if he gets the wrong sort of reaction."

  "Sister Maria Teresa—she knows things aren't what they seem."

  "Yes, I feel rather bad about that," George Hamilton said. "As if I've used her. She won't tell, of course. It would be contrary to every belief she holds dear."

  "She reminds me of my old aunt in Dublin when I was a lad," Gallagher said. "Incense, candles and the Holy Water."

  "Do you still believe, Sean?" Hamilton asked.

  "Not since the first of July, nineteen sixteen, on the Somme," Gallagher said. "I was attached to a Yorkshire Regiment, the Leeds Pals. The idiots at headquarters sent those lads over the top, packs on their backs, into heavy machine-gun fire. By noon, there were around forty or so survivors out of eight hundred. I decided then that if God existed, he was having a bad joke at my expense."

  "I take your point," Hamilton said gravely.

  Gallagher stood up. "I think I'll sample the night air for a while," and he opened the door and went out.

  George Hamilton rested his head on his arms on the desk and yawned. It had been a long day. He closed his eyes and was asleep within a couple of minutes.

  It was just after ten and Dougal Munro was still working away at his desk in his office at Baker Street

  when the door opened and Jack Carter limped in, his face grim. He placed a signal flimsy on the brigadier's desk. "Brace yourself, sir."

  "What is this?" Munro demanded.

  "Message just in from our Resistance contact in Granville. That's in Normandy."

  "I know where it is, for God's sake." Munro started to read and suddenly sat up straight. "I don't believe it."

  Munro read the signal through again. "It couldn't be worse. There isn't a resistance movement in Jersey. No one to call on. I mean, this de Ville woman and the Gallagher man, how long can they manage, especially if he's ill? And how long can he get by on a small island like that? It doesn't bear thinking of, Jack."

  For the first time since Carter had known him he sounded close to despair, uncertain which way to go. "You'll think of something, sir, you always do," Carter said gently.

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence." Munro stood up and reached for his coat. "Now you'd better phone through to Hayes Lodge and get me an immediate appointment with General Eisenhower. Tell them I'm on my way."

  Helen de Ville had been waiting anxiously for the sound of the van returning, and when it drove into the courtyard, at the side of de Ville Place

  , she ran out. As Gallagher and Hamilton got out of the van, she cried, "Is he all right?"

  "Still doped up, but the leg's doing fine," Gallagher told her.

  "There's no one in at the moment. They're either in Granville or at sea or at the officers' club, so let's get him upstairs."

  Gallagher and Hamilton got Kelso out of the van, joined hands and lifted him between them. They followed Helen through the front door, across the wide paneled hall and up the great staircase. She opened the door of the master bedroom and led the way in. The furniture was seventeenth-century Breton, including the four-poster bed. There was a bathroom through a door on the right side of the bed, on the left, carved library shelving from wall to ceiling crammed with books. Her fingers found a hidden spring and a section swung back to disclose a stairway. She led the way up and Gallagher and Hamilton followed with some difficulty, but finally made it to a room under the roof. The walls were paneled in oak, and there was a single window in the gable end. It was comfortable enough with carpet on the floor and a single bed.

  They got Kelso onto the bed and Helen said, "There's everything you need, and the only entrance is from my room, so you should be quite safe. An ancestor of mine hid here from Cromwell's people for years. I'm afraid the convenience hasn't improved since his day. It's that oak commode over there."

  "Thanks, but all I want to do is sleep," Kelso said, his face tired and strained.

  She nodded to Gallagher and the old doctor and they went out and downstairs. Hamilton said, "I'll get off myself. Tell Helen I'll look in tomorrow."

  Sean Gallagher took his hand for a moment. "George, you're quite a man."

  "All in a doctor's day, Sean." Hamilton smiled. "See you tomorrow." And he went out.

  Gallagher went through the hall and along the rear passage to the kitchen. He put the kettle on the stove, and was pushing a few pieces of wood in among the dying embers when Helen came in.

  "Is he all right?" he asked.

  "Fast asleep already." She sat on the edge of the table. "Now what do we do?"

  "Nothing we
can do until Savary gets back from Granville with some sort of message."

  "And what if there isn't any message?"

  "Oh, I'll think of something. Now sit down and have a nice cup of tea."

  She shook her head. "We've got a choice of either bramble or beet tea and, tonight, I just can't face either."

  "Oh, ye of little faith." Gallagher produced the packet of China tea which Chevalier had given him that morning at the market.

  She started to laugh helplessly and put her arms around his neck. "Sean Gallagher, what would I do without you?"

  Eisenhower was in full uniform for he'd been attending a dinner party with the prime minister when he'd received Munro's message. He paced up and down the library at Hayes Lodge, extremely agitated. "Is there no way we can put someone in?"

  "If you mean a commando unit, I don't think so, sir. The most heavily defended coast in Europe."

  Eisenhower nodded. "What you're really saying is that it's impossible to get him out."

  "No, sir, but very, very difficult. It's a small island, General. It's not like hiding someone on the back of a truck and driving three hundred miles overnight to the Pyrenees or arranging for one of our Lysanders to fly in to pick him up."

  "Right, then get him across to France where you can fix those things."

  "Our information is that he's not capable of traveling."

  "For God's sake, Munro, everything could hang on this. The whole invasion. Months of planning."

  Munro cleared his throat and nervously for him. "If worse came to worst, General, would you be willing to consider Colonel Kelso as expendable?"

  Eisenhower stopped pacing. "You mean have him executed?"

  "Something like that."

  "God help me, but if there's nothing else for it, then so be it." Eisenhower walked up to the huge wall map of western Europe. "Six thousand ships, thousands of planes, two million men and the war in balance. If they find out our exact points of landing, they'll mass everything they've got." He turned. "Intelligence reported a Rommel speech of a few weeks ago in which he said just that. That the war would be won or lost on those beaches."

  "I know, General."

  "And you ask is Kelso expendable?" Eisenhower sighed heavily. "If you can save him, do. If you can't…" He shrugged. "In any case, considering what you've already said about the Jersey situation, how would you go about getting an agent in? I should think a new face would stick out like a sore thumb."

  "That's true, General. We'll have to think about it."

  Jack Carter, standing respectfully quiet by the fire, coughed. "There is one way, General."

  "What's that, Captain?" Eisenhower inquired.

  "The best place to hide a tree is in a wood. It seems to me the people who are most free to come and go are the Germans themselves. I mean, new personnel must be posted there all the time."

  Eisenhower turned sharply to Munro. "He's got a point. Have you got any people capable of that kind of work?"

  Munro nodded. "Here and there, sir. It's a rare skill. Not just a question of speaking fluent German, but thinking like a German and that isn't easy."

  Eisenhower said, 'I'll give you a week, Brigadier. One week and I expect you to have this matter resolved."

  "My word on it, sir."

  Munro walked out briskly, Carter limping along behind. "Radio Cresson in Granville to relay a message to Gallagher in Jersey saying someone will be with him by Thursday."

  "Are you sure, sir?"

  "Of course I am," Munro said cheerfully. "That was a masterly suggestion of yours in there, Jack. Best place to hide a tree is in a wood. I like that."

  "Thank you very much, sir."

  "German personnel moving in and out all the time. What would one new arrival be among many, especially if provided with the right kind of credentials?"

  "It would take a very special man, sir."

  "Come off it, Jack," Munro said as they reached the street and the car. "There's only one man for this job. You know it and I know it. Only one man capable of playing a Nazi to the hilt and ruthless enough to put a bullet between Kelso's eyes if necessary. Harry Martineau."

  "I must remind you, sir, that Colonel Martineau was given a definite promise after that business in Lyons that his services wouldn't be required again. His health alone should make it impossible."

  "Nonsense, Jack. Harry could never resist a challenge. Find him. And another thing, Jack. Check SOE flies. See if we've got anyone with a Jersey background."

  "Men only, sir?"

  "Good God, Jack, of course not. Since when have we been interested in men only in our business."

  He tapped on the partition and the driver took them away from the curb.

  SIX

  THE COTTAGE IN Dorset, not far from Lulworth Cove, had been loaned to Martineau by an old friend from Oxford days. It stood in a tiny valley above the cliffs, and the way to the beach was blocked by rusting barbed wire. There had once been a notice warning of mines, not that there were any. That had been the first thing the landlord at the village pub had told Martineau when he'd moved into the area, which explained why he was walking along the shoreline, occasionally throwing stones into the incoming waves, the morning after Dougal Munro's meeting with Eisenhower at Hayes Lodge.

  Harry Martineau was forty-four, of medium height, with good shoulders under the old paratrooper's camouflaged jump jacket which he wore against the cold. His face was very pale, with the kind of skin that never seemed to tan, and wedge-shaped, the eyes so dark that it was impossible to say what their true color was. The mouth was mobile, with a slight ironic smile permanently in place. The look of a man who had found life more disappointing than he had hoped.

  He'd been out of hospital for three months now and things were better than they'd been for a while. He didn't get the chest pain anymore, except when he overdid things, but the insomnia pattern was terrible. He could seldom sleep at night. The moment he went to bed, his brain seemed to become hyperactive. Still, that was only to be expected. Too many years on the run, of living by night, danger constantly at hand.

  He was no use to Munro anymore, the doctors had made that clear. He could have returned to Oxford, but that was no answer. Neither was trying to pick up the threads of the book he'd been working on in 1939. The war had taught him that if nothing else. So, he'd dropped out as thoroughly as a man could. The cottage in Dorset by the sea, books to read, space to find himself in.

  "And where the hell have you gone, Harry?" he asked morosely as he started up the cliff path. "Because I'm damned if I can find you."

  The living room of the old cottage was comfortable enough. A Persian carpet on the flagged floor, a dining table and several rush-backed chairs and books everywhere, not only on the shelves but piled in the corner. None of them were his. Nothing in this place was his except for a few clothes.

  There was a sofa on each side of the stone fireplace. He put a couple of logs on the embers, poured himself a scotch, drank it quickly and poured another. Then he sat down and picked up the notepad he'd left on the coffee table. There were several lines of poetry written on it and he read them aloud.

  The station is ominous at midnight. Hope is a dead letter. He dropped the notepad back on the table with a wry smile. "Admit it, Harry," he said softly. "You're a lousy poet."

  Suddenly, he was tired, the feeling coming in a kind of rush, the lack of sleep catching up with him. His chest began to ache a little, the left lung, and that took him back to Lyons, of course, on that final and fatal day. If he'd been a little bit more on the ball it wouldn't have happened. A case of taking the pitcher to the well too often or perhaps, quite simply, his luck had run out. As he drifted into sleep, it all came back so clearly.

  Standartenführer Jurgen Kaufmann, the head of the Gestapo in Lyons, was in civilian clothes that day as he came down the steps of the Town Hall and got into the back of the black Citroen. His driver was also in civilian clothes, for on Thursday afternoons Kaufmann visited his mistress and liked
to be discreet about it.

  "Take your time, Karl," he said to his driver, an SS sergeant who'd served with him for two years now. "We're a little early. I said I wouldn't be there till three and you know how she hates surprises."

  "As you say, Standartenführer." Karl smiled as he drove away.

  Kaufmann opened a copy of a Berlin newspaper which he had received in the post that morning and settled back to enjoy it. They moved through the outskirts of town into the country. It was really quite beautiful, orchards of apples on either side of the road, and the air was heavy with the smell of them. For some time Karl had noticed a motorcycle behind them, and when they turned into the side road leading to the village of Chaumont, it followed.

  He said, "There's a motorcyclist been on our tail for quite some time, Standartenführer." He took a Luger from his pocket and laid it on the seat beside him.

  Kaufmann turned to look through the rear window and laughed. "You're losing your touch, Karl. He's one of ours."

  The motorcyclist drew alongside and waved. He was SS Feldgendarmerie in helmet, heavy uniform raincoat, a Schmeisser machine pistol slung across his chest just below the SS Field Police metal gorget that was only worn when officially on duty. The face was anonymous behind the goggles. He waved a gloved hand again.

  "He must have a message for me," Kaufmann said. "Pull up."

  Karl turned in at the side of the road and braked to a halt and the motorcyclist pulled up in front. He shoved his machine up on the stand and Karl got out. "What can we do for you?"

  A hand came out of the raincoat pocket holding a Mauser semiautomatic pistol. He shot Karl once in the heart, hurling him back against the Citroen. He slid down into the road. The SS man turned him over with his boot and shot him again very deliberately between the eyes. Then he opened the rear door.

  Kaufmann always went armed, but he'd taken off his overcoat and folded it neatly in the corner. As he got his hand to the Luger in the right pocket and turned, the SS man shot him in the arm. Kaufmann clutched at his sleeve, blood oozing between his fingers.