The '44 Vintage

by Anthony Price

  “What you may have to do?” Madame had no such difficulty: for her the years and inches and the King’s Commission had clearly changed nothing. “And what is it that you may have to do which requires the attendance of a German officer?”

  “It doesn’t exactly … require a German,” said Audley hastily. “It just happens he’ll make a damn good witness, is what I mean.”

  “There’s no need to swear.”

  “No, maman—I beg your pardon.” The unbruised cheek reddened in the lamplight. Audley swayed from side to side for a moment, and then suddenly seemed to notice the German again. “Oh, do sit down, for God’s sake, there’s a g-g-good chap.”

  Hauptmann Grafenberg brushed at his hair again, but remained standing. “Herr Leutnant—“

  Madame Boucard gave a small cough. “Please be so good as to sit, Captain.”

  Hauptmann Grafenberg sat down.

  “Now, David—?” She turned back to Audley.

  But all Audley’s courage seemed to have deserted him, together with his wits and the power of speech. Instead he began to straighten the place mat in front of him, and then the plate on the place mat, and after that the knife on the plate.

  The trouble was that silence didn’t make matters better, it made them worse by answering the question in Butler’s mind with a terrifying certainty.

  What we may have to do.

  “Hell!” said Sergeant Winston. “I beg your pardon, ma’am—but hell all the same. Because we got ourselves into one hell of a mess, so hell is right. But it isn’t the lieutenant’s fault, he’s just doing his duty the way he sees it.” He paused defiantly. “And the way I see it too, come to that, so I guess you can freeze me too.”

  Butler felt ashamed that he had left it to a foreigner to defend his officer, which was what he should have done without a second thought.

  “And me too, madame,” he said.

  Madame Boucard smiled at him, and then at the sergeant “I never doubted that for one moment.”

  “No, ma’am?” Sergeant Winston tested the statement to destruction. “That’s good, ma’am.”

  “I agree, Sergeant.” She took the verdict like a lady—and an equal. “Very well, then, David—so you are going to assassinate someone.”

  Audley’s mouth opened, then closed again.

  She nodded at him. “Very well—kill, if you prefer the word.”

  Audley swallowed. “Yes—I prefer the word.”

  “Of course. Killing is what soldiers do.”

  “We’re soldiers, maman.”

  Madame Boucard inclined her head fractionally, as though to concede what could hardly be denied but not one jot more.

  Sergeant Winston stirred restlessly. “Seems to me, ma’am, you know a lot more than you’re telling.” He gave Audley a thoughtful glance. “But then you’re not the first person we met today like that.”

  “No.” Audley shook his head. “My godmother’s just a very good guesser. She always was.”

  “Uh-huh? So she still is.” Sergeant Winston regarded Madame Boucard speculatively. “But I’d still be obliged to know how you guess so good, godmother.”

  The expressive eyebrow lifted again. “Is it of so much importance to you, Sergeant—to know how an old woman guesses?”

  Winston shook his head. “Normally, ma’am—no. I had a grandma could see clear through me and a brick wall both, so it’s no surprise you can figure us. But then it was just my … backside was at risk. This time it’s my skin. And the way things have been happening to us today —I guess I’m more suspicious than I was yesterday, even of godmothers.”

  Both eyebrows came down into a frown. “The way things have been happening to you?”

  “Uh-uh.” The American grinned and shook his head. “I got my question in first, ma’am. So I get my answer first.”

  For an instant she looked at him severely, but then the corner of her mouth lifted. “Vraiment… I can see why your grandmother kept her eye on you, Sergeant. But—very well. When a man says there is something he may have to do, then it is usually something he doesn’t want to do. And when the man wears a uniform and protests that he is also only doing his duty, then that is even more certainly the case—for then he is about to do something either very brave or very wicked. Or perhaps both … or perhaps he doesn’t know which, even.”

  She paused to look for a moment at Audley. “Now … my godson there—your lieutenant—if he was here to blow up a bridge or destroy a railway line … if there are still such things left in France that have not already been destroyed … he would not need to explain that it was his duty. It would not even occur to him to explain it … nor would he need a witness to it.

  “Nor, I think, if he was merely engaged in killing Germans”—she gave Hauptmann Grafenberg a grave little bow—“would he need to justify such an action, any more than our guest would need to explain why he was forced by his duty to kill Englishmen and Americans… .

  “And also my godson is not so insensitive that he would invite a German officer to witness such … duty. Which really leaves us with only one possibility.” She looked for the first time towards her husband.

  “Which we have already foreseen, my husband and I—a sad but necessary duty, which we will not hinder.”

  Butler frowned at Audley, suddenly mystified.

  Audley’s face was a picture—a mirror image of his own mystification. And then suddenly it was transformed by understanding and relief.

  “My God, maman! Is that what you think we’re here for?”

  Boucard shook his head. “Not the British, my boy—or not the British by themselves. But we realise that General de Gaulle and the Allies are not going to let the Communists take over, and ever since they have started to move Popular Front units into this area we’ve been expecting a countermove of some sort from the Free French and the Allies—particularly after today’s news from the south.”

  “You know about the landing?” Audley said quickly.

  Boucard smiled. “The Americans captured St. Tropez this afternoon, and their paras are already closing in on Draguignan … yes, we know. But what matters to us now is what happens here.”

  “Jee-sus Christ!” Winston exploded.

  “Sergeant!”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am—but”—Winston appealed to Audley—“what the hell are they on about? Communists?”

  Audley grinned wryly at him. “Welcome to Europe, Sergeant. They think we’re here to kill Frenchmen—and French Communists for choice.”

  Butler found himself staring at Hauptmann Grafenberg—he didn’t know why, but perhaps it was because of all the faces at the table the young German officer’s was the most completely bewildered.

  Except that the German was also staring at him.

  A few minutes before he had felt sorry for his enemy, because he had seen in his painful confusion the bitter truth that there was more to losing a war than just being beaten in fair fight by the stronger side.

  But now he himself was discovering that winning a war was more complicated than beating the enemy—that when one enemy was beaten there were suddenly more enemies and new enemies. Enemies stretching away into infinity—Germans killing Germans.

  Frenchmen killing Frenchmen.

  “Hell, ma’am—for once you really guessed wrong,” said the American. “We’re not here to kill Frenchmen. We’re here to kill the goddamn British.”

  It was perfectly logical, thought Butler.

  Or, if not perfectly logical, it had five years’ blessing, all but a couple of weeks, behind it. And that was how Dad would have argued it, first with the other union officials round the kitchen table, then with the bosses—

  Custom and practice.

  “We have the custom and practice of the shop floor behind us. There’s no getting away from that, lads.”

  And the only difference was that then it was peacetime, and you struck—or they locked you out—and the one that broke first was the loser.

  But since
September 3, 1939, it had been war, and the custom and practice of war was killing, and the one that dies first was the loser.

  “Traitors, you mean,” said Boucard.

  “Not… traitors, exactly,” Audley shook his head. “More like criminals, sir—thieves, certainly.”

  “And murderers,” cut in Winston, looking at Audley. “What happened in that village—to those other guys—that was murder, by God. Even though they got the krauts to pull the trigger.”

  And Mr. Wilson and Sergeant Scott, the dead interpreters whose shoes they were wearing, thought Butler fiercely. That had been murder plain and simple.

  “Aye—murderers,” he echoed the American, the anger within him edging the words. When he thought about it, the trail of death Major O’Conor had left behind him had all been plain murder, not war at all: not just the two interpreters and the men in the jeep behind them at Sermigny, but the dead men at the river ambush, and those who must have died in the limejuice strike on Sermigny—Germans and French civilians alike, and even the Resistance men strafed by the Mustangs. They had all been the victims of the major’s greed.

  Even Corporal Jones—it had been the major’s hand on the bayonet in Taffy’s guts, not his own.

  None of that had been war, just murder.

  “I see.” Boucard stared at each of them in turn. “So you have been sent to … execute them, is that it?”

  Audley blinked. “It isn’t quite as simple as that. We have to stop their doing … what they’re planning to do.”

  “And killing them is the only way?” Madame Boucard paused. “Is that it, David?”

  Audley blinked again, shifting nervously in his chair.

  “Is it, David?” she repeated softly.

  “It’s the only way I can think of.” Audley looked directly at her. “Maman—if I was a general or a colonel … if we had a squadron of Cromwells parked in your drive, ready to go … maybe I could come up with something clever.” He shook his head. “But I’m not, and there aren’t. There are just three of us, and we have to do the job somehow.”

  “Huh!” Sergeant Winston grunted. “Always supposing we can even find the bastards.”

  Audley glanced at him sidelong. “Oh, we can find them now, I think,” he said.

  “So you do know where they’re heading?” Winston made the question sound like an accusation.

  “No.” Audley looked at Winston for a second, then turned to Boucard. “But I think you’ll know, sir. In fact I’m betting on it.”

  “Me?” Boucard frowned. “Then I’m afraid you have lost your bet, my boy. Because I know of only two Englishmen in Touraine at this moment, and both of them are guests under my roof—they are sitting at this table.”

  “Yes, sir. But you’ll know where the men we’re after are heading all the same, I think.”

  Boucard shook his head. “No, David. We are an escape route, not a resistance group. Unless they are escaping—“

  “They’re sure as hell not doing that,” said Winston.

  “Then I simply do not have the sort of information you need.” Boucard shrugged. “I might try to get it for you, it is true … there are ways, there are people … but it would take time. And I would guess that it is time that you lack?”

  “Yes, sir …” Audley turned suddenly towards Madame. “Maman, you remember we once went on a picnic to that chateau built right across a river—you had a special place just downstream on the south bank, on the towpath, where we had a terrific view of it?” Madame looked at him in surprise. “Just north of here, maman?”

  “Yes … I remember. Chenonceaux.” She nodded. “You made the occasion memorable by falling in the river.”

  “So I did … though actually Madeleine pushed me.” Audley’s lips twitched. “The river Cher?”

  “The Cher—yes.” She nodded again. “Is that the place you are seeking?”

  “No, I don’t think so. We’ve come too far south already for that, unless”—Audley looked to Boucard—“have the Germans occupied the chateau there?”

  “No.” Boucard shook his head. “On the contrary, we’ve used the place to get people across the river—in the days when the demarcation line between the zones was there.”

  “What demarcation line?” asked Winston.

  “Between German-occupied France and Vichy France,” said Audley triumphantly. “I thought it was there—I read it was there years ago— and I wondered what would happen to the chateau. I remember wondering”—he took in both Winston and Butler with a sweeping glance— “you see, the chateau’s built over the river, from one side to the other, like a bridge. Like old London Bridge was, and Ponte Vecchio in Florence—“

  “So what?” snapped Winston. “If that isn’t where the major’s heading, what the hell does it matter?”

  “It’s the whole point.” Audley pounded his fist into his open palm.

  “As soon as the major told us we were going south of the river—and with what little he told us about what we were doing—I knew exactly the sort of place we were heading for. Not the place itself, but the sort of place.”

  “I don’t get you,” said Winston.

  “Because it was in the unoccupied zone—in Vichy France, not in the German territory,” said Audley.

  “But—hell, Lieutenant, the krauts are everywhere.”

  “But they weren’t in 1940.”

  “In 1940?” Boucard sat up straight. “What has 1940 to do with all this?”

  “Everything, sir.” Audley’s voice had the same mixture of arrogance and eagerness that Butler remembered from his collision with Colonel Clinton back in the barn: this was exactly what his own CO had meant by “having too many brains for his own good” and not the wit to hide them.

  “Look, sir—maman”—only the eagerness to prove how clever he was made the subaltern’s arrogance endurable—“there’s a story to this. I can’t tell it all to you, but I can tell some of it.”

  “You were always very kind, David,” said Madeleine. “So do tell us.” Butler did a double-take on her, suddenly aware that the future Mrs. Butler had sharp claws.

  “Eh?” Audley looked at the girl vaguely, and Butler decided to be grateful that he had no problem of childhood sweethearts to overcome; that push into the river Cher all those years ago had been deliberate, not accidental.

  “Madeleine!” Madame said sharply. “Go on, David.”

  “Yes …” Audley grimaced at Madeleine. “Yes—well, in 1940 we took something out of Paris—“

  “We?” interrupted Madame.

  “The British, maman. When everything was cracking up, we got this thing out—“

  “This thing?”

  “I don’t know what it was—honestly. But it was very valuable—and we got it out in an ambulance. … It was something worth stealing, it has to be—otherwise the major wouldn’t”—Audley spread his hands— “honestly, I don’t know, maman. But it was British, and it was valuable—“

  “You’ve been told it was British, and it was valuable—?”

  “Hush!” snapped Boucard. “Let the boy tell his story, au nom de Dieu!”

  Audley gave Boucard a grateful glance. “They got this far, somewhere. And then the ambulance broke down—“

  “Ran out of gas,” murmured Winston.

  “Maybe. But this far, anyway. And they hid it in a chateau somewhere.”

  “In the country of chateaux?” said Boucard incredulously. “David— in all France—here of all places … Chambord and Chenonceaux, Blois and Amboise—Villandry and Azay—Usse and Loches … there are fifty chateaux within a morning’s drive of here where I could hide anything you wish. Big chateaux and little chateaux—Cinq-Mars-la-Pile, perhaps. Or Montpoueon, down in the wash-house by the stream there. You have to be joking, my dear boy.”

  “No, sir.”

  “No? Well, if you are not joking then what are you saying?”

  Audley leaned forward. “Sir—I’m saying—if you hid something in— say Montpoucon … or Vare
nne, in 1940 … could you get it out again in 1941—or ‘42, or ‘43? With half a dozen good men on a dark night? Could you get it out? Christ! Of course you could! But what I’m looking for, don’t you see, is a chateau you couldn’t get it out of—until now.”

  He looked around the table. “All along—ever since the major ditched us—half of me has been telling me that we didn’t stand a chance of getting him unless we could either catch up with him or at least pick up his trail. But the other half of me kept telling me that we didn’t need to do either of those things, not if we could get to where he was going ahead of him.

  “But then the first half of me reminded me that we didn’t damn well know where he was going.

  “But the second half wouldn’t take that for an answer—“

  The American tapped the table. “But you don’t know—you said so yourself, Lieutenant.”

  “I don’t know the name, Sergeant. But I know the—the specification. A chateau south of the Loire—available in 1940—“

  The light dawned on Butler. “Occupied by the Germans, sir. The major said so when we were in the jeep together.”

  “Exactly. That’s the whole point—occupied by the Germans, although it was in the Vichy zone of unoccupied France. Or if it wasn’t occupied by the Germans straight off it must have still been closed up tight as the Bank of England by 1941, otherwise we could have lifted the stuff out of there before now. But occupied by the Germans now, anyway—“

  Madame Boucard sat bolt upright. “Pont-Civray.”

  “Pont—?” Audley swung towards her.

  “Civray.” Madame Boucard nodded. “Le Chateau de Pont-Civray. About fifteen kilometres from here. You may even have heard us speak of it, David—in the old days.”

  “No, maman—I don’t think so.”

  “Then it was our … delicacy. It was—acquired, shall we say?— acquired by an Englishman from an old family here, the De Lissacs. They said that Etienne de Lissac couldn’t see the cards he had in his hand, and the Englishman could see both sides of the cards in both hands … but that may have been mere scandal-mongering.” She inclined her head very slightly. “En tout cas … the Englishman moved in—that was in 1938—and had the house gutted. The builders were still there in 1940 when the Germans came.”