The '44 Vintage

by Anthony Price

  So Audley was having trouble with time too, thought Butler. “Yes, sir?”

  Audley nodded. “He wasn’t just in the show from 1940 onwards. He was in the first lot, in 1918—did you know that?”

  Butler nodded back. “Yes, sir. I recognised the ribbons.”

  “Yes, of course—I hadn’t thought of that… . Well, he was a second lieutenant. Won the MC up beyond Ypres somewhere, right at the end of things. And he wanted to stay on afterwards and make a career of it, but they wouldn’t have him—that’s what he said. I can’t imagine why anyone in his right mind should want to do that, but I think he did—very much.”

  Butler opened his mouth to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out.

  “It’s pretty remarkable that he got back in at the sharp end in 1939. He’d been a schoolmaster or something like that—maybe he was a Territorial officer, I suppose. That might be it. But it’s still remarkable.”

  There was a lump in Butler’s throat. “If a man wants something enough, sir …”

  “But he wanted it enough in 1918—or 1919. Anyway he did get back in—France in ‘40, then the Middle East—Greece and Crete. North Africa and then Italy. And finally Jugoslavia as a weapons adviser to a big Partisan outfit—a DSO for that, so he must have been damn good. It seems incredible, doesn’t it?”

  “That he should go wrong on us?” Butler found himself staring at the trees. It did seem incredible. It even required an effort of will to recall the voice and the words he had heard spoken just above him on the island in the Loire, even though both were etched deep into his memory. “Yes, it does, sir.”

  “And yet it was there, the night before last.”

  It was there? “What was there, sir?”

  “Something wrong. He kept asking me what I was going to do after the war. Like, did I really want to go up to Cambridge.”

  “They asked me that too, sir. What I wanted to do after the war. The … Corporal Jones did. And Sergeant Purvis.”

  Somehow Sergeant Purvis’s treachery seemed the blackest of all. The major was an Olympian figure, a being from another world, to be admired or hated rather than understood—and it was difficult to hate what he didn’t understand. But Sergeant Purvis—and the sergeant-major too —had been men he knew and trusted as the backbone of the British Army. The major was like the general, his idol. But they were no different from Dad, and that made their treachery worse and killing too good for them, the buggers.

  “They did?” Audley gave him a knowing look: he could see that now and he’d have to watch his own face. “Yes … well, I suppose they were checking us both for the same thing. The other two chaps were from Intelligence—Colonel Clinton’s men. That’s why the major got rid of them. Maybe he hoped to recruit us into the plot—at least for the time being, anyway … I don’t know. But that’s the key to it, I think.” His mouth twisted. “In fact, when I think about it, he as good as said as much, by golly! Do you know that, Jack?” Jack. Equals.

  “No. What did he say?”

  They were equals. Mr. Audley and Corporal Butler were just for the time being. He would learn and he would catch up because he had learnt. And he would be a better officer than Audley because of that “He said things would be rough after the war.”

  “They said that too.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to say David. That would only come with friendship, if not equality.

  “Huh! He said the war was won, but we hadn’t won it—we’d just fought it. He said the Yanks and the Russians had won, we’d lost. At least, the British had lost. But there was still a chance for individual chaps to grab what was going and get something out of it—did they say that to you, Jack?”

  The lump was there again. “More or less.”

  Audley nodded. “I gave him the wrong answer too. I said everything I wanted was at Cambridge, waiting for me—“

  He was only one breath away from asking what was waiting for Corporal Butler to keep him on the straight and narrow road, thought Butler. And he had to be headed off from that question. “What did he say to that, sir?” he said hastily.

  “Oh, he sheered off. He said he was glad I’d got myself a cushy billet. And then he said something I thought was rather clever: he said that the difference between wise countries and wise men was that wise countries prepared for war in peacetime, whereas the wise man was the one who prepared for peace in wartime.” He gave Butler a twisted grin. “The laugh is—I thought he was talking about me. But actually he was referring to himself, I suppose: kill everyone who gets in the way, grab the loot, and keep going, that’s his formula.”

  “Keep going where?”

  Audley shrugged. “Switzerland, I guess. That’s where I’d go if I was him.”

  “But what about everyone else? They’d know, I mean.”

  “If there is any ‘they’ after he’s finished. With the sergeant-major and that sergeant of his, plus whoever else is in on the scheme—with the Germans retreating and the French settling their private scores, there should be enough chaos for him to remove the eyewitnesses. And even if he isn’t quite as cold-blooded as that—well, maybe most of the chaps don’t even know what he’s up to, so he can go missing and stand a good chance of being listed as a dead hero.”

  Put like that the risk the major was taking wasn’t really so risky as that, thought Butler. The only real hazard was the Germans, but now that they were retreating all the major had to do was to keep out of their road, and that was precisely where his special skill lay. Otherwise, a couple of jeeploads of British soldiers were more likely to be welcomed and helped on their way than questioned. France would be wide open to them.

  “That doesn’t answer the why, but it does spell out the how,” said Audley. “And maybe the two add up to the same thing, anyway: it was his last and best opportunity of getting rich—he simply couldn’t resist the opportunity.”

  There was more to it than that, Butler’s instinct told him. Audley might be right about the temptation—he probably was. But there was also the long bitterness of those civilian years which the major had endured. Audley would never understand that, even though he had half suspected it, because it didn’t make sense to him.

  But he, Jack Butler, could understand it very well indeed. He could almost sympathise with it.

  He could even guess at how it might rust a man’s soul, the thought of the might-have-been, the lost comradeship and wasted youth, the thwarted skills and ambitions. Not even the opportunities of this war would have made up for all that; they might even have made it worse when the major saw the luckier subalterns of 1918 now commanding brigades and divisions all around him, while he was only a superannuated major teaching guerrillas how to shoot, somewhere in the back-of-beyond of the Jugoslav mountains.

  And he knew he was right because he could still feel the ache in his own guts where his stomach had turned over with fear at the news that the war was ending quickly—too quickly, just as it had once done for the major. Indeed, the fear was still there, twisting inside him.

  Except that it wasn’t going to happen to him, the same thing. He wasn’t going to let it happen, one way or another. But he couldn’t tell Audley any of that.

  “You’re probably right, sir,” he began coolly. “He must—“

  “Sssh!” Audley held up his hand to cut him off, turning an ear towards the wood as he did so.

  Butler couldn’t hear a sound other than the swish of the stream. “Someone’s coming,” whispered Audley.

  The only noise Butler could hear was still that of the water, but the conviction in that whisper was enough for him. He twisted sideways and reached inside the doorway for his Sten.

  “On the path, down by the stream—there!” Audley hissed, pointing towards the fringe of trees to the left of them.

  “I’ve got him,” Butler whispered back, his eyes fixed on the flicker of movement in the stillness while his fingers closed on the cocking handle. There was something wonderfully comforting about the feel of the weapon a
nd the oily, metallic smell of it in his nostrils. He remembered having read somewhere, years back, how savage warriors caressed their spears and talked to them before battle—

  “It looks like just one,” murmured Audley. “I can’t see anyone else. Which means—keep your fingers crossed, Jack!”

  All Butler’s fingers were otherwise engaged, particularly one of them. But there was still a corner of his mind that wasn’t concentrating on the movement between the trees.

  “Sir?”

  Audley watched the trees intendy. “If it’s Boucard, then they’re not going to help us. But if it’s Dr. de Courcy …”

  That was the big “if,” of course, Butler remembered belatedly. M’sieur Boucard ran the safe house of the escape route on which they’d stumbled with such incredible beginner’s luck. But it was the local doctor who controlled the escapers’ transfer from one place to the next along that route—the doctor whose own journeys could always be explained by the requirements of his job.

  Suddenly he was aware of his own heart thumping within his chest Another dozen yards or so, and they would be able to see who it was—

  Boucard or the Doctor.

  Failure or success?

  Except that reaching Pont-Civray was itself no guarantee of success, only of somebody’s death. Maybe Jack Butler’s death even?

  Audley relaxed beside him. “Over here, Doctor!” he called out.

  Dr. de Courcy halted in the middle of the car-track just below them, took off his black Homburg hat, and methodically set about wiping the sweat-band with a clean handkerchief from his breast pocket. Only when he’d completed this task to his satisfaction and had returned the handkerchief to his pocket and the hat to his head, did he at last look up at them.

  “Eh bien, David Audley! Tu as éventé la mèche comme toujours. Mais cette fois tu as dépassé les bornes,” he said harshly.

  A rustle in the hayloft behind them distracted Butler’s attempt to disentangle the meaning from the French words.

  “So what’s that meant to mean?” Sergeant Winston stepped onto the platform, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “And who’s the funeral director?”

  “Dr. de Courcy”—Audley’s voice faltered—“Sergeant Winston, of the United States Army.”

  “Oh—yeah …” Winston nodded apologetically. “Sorry, Doc! Early morning—big mouth.” He looked at Audley questioningly. “Are we in trouble again, Lieutenant?”

  Audley stared at Dr. de Courcy uncertainly. “He says … we’ve let the cat out of the bag, somehow—?”

  The doctor shook his head. “Not the cat. Another animal, perhaps …”

  “Another animal?”

  “A tiger this time, David Audley. A man-eating tiger. And he has your scent in his nose, I fear.”

  CHAPTER 20

  How Dr. de Courcy made a bargain

  “THE GUYS in the wood, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Winston prompted Audley. He nodded thoughtfully at Butler, and Butler knew he was remembering the cold-blooded way they’d killed the wounded German soldiers in the Kiibel.

  “Yes,” said Audley, still staring at Dr. de Courcy. “But there has to be more to it than that, I’m thinking.”

  “Sure there is: we got away from them, and they don’t like it.”

  Audley shook his head. “More than that… What are we supposed to have done, Doctor?”

  De Courcy looked at him curiously. “You ask me that?”

  “That’s right, Doc.” Winston leaned forward. “We’re asking. So you tell us.”

  De Courcy frowned, glancing at each of them in turn. “Well … there are fifty dead in Sermigny, to the north of here … not counting the Germans. But that might be counted an accident of war, and not your fault… . But the four men you ambushed on the road—Communists, I admit, but men of the Resistance also. And the German prisoner you released”—he shrugged—“no doubt you had your reasons. But innocence is not the game to play.”

  “Innocence?” Winston exploded. “Innocence!”

  “Hold it, Sergeant!” Audley held up his hand. “We haven’t killed anyone, Doctor. Not Frenchmen, anyway. I give you my word of honour on that.”

  “Yeah. And my word too,” snapped Winston. “Not that I haven’t been goddamn tempted.”

  De Courcy’s eyes clouded. “And I, Sergeant—I have seen the bodies of the men you killed. And also … M’sieur Boucard tells me you have a German officer with you. So where does that leave your word of honour, Sergeant?”

  The American drew a deep breath, but then turned abruptly to Audley. “Lieutenant—are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he said slowly.

  Audley nodded. “I shouldn’t be at all surprised. I think you people have a word for it, too, don’t you?”

  “We do—several words. ‘Framed’ is one—and ‘suckers’ is another. And I guess that both apply to us, by God!” Winston swung back towards the Frenchman. “You saw the bodies, Doc—you actually saw them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you examine them?” said Audley.

  De Courcy frowned. “Why should I examine them? They were dead.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet they were,” said Winston. “The way they died they’d be very dead.”

  “The way they died?” For the first time there was doubt in De Courcy’s voice.

  “That’s right. They were hit by six point-five Brownings belonging to one trigger-happy P-51 pilot. And we didn’t have a thing to do with it, except to get the hell out of the way of the same thing.”

  Audley nodded. “That’s exactly the way it happened, Doctor. We were strafed on the road—we were in two captured German vehicles, and the Mustangs took us for the real thing. But we got off the road in time, and they didn’t.” He turned to Butler. ‘Would you ask Hauptmann Grafenberg to join us, Corporal, please.”

  Butler peered into the darkness of the hayloft, but before he could speak, he saw a movement in the aisle between the banks of hay on each side of the opening.

  “Sir—“

  “I have heard, Corporal.” The German stepped forward towards the doormat, pulling at his crumpled uniform with one hand in a hopeless attempt to straighten it and brushing with the other at the hay which festooned it.

  “Good morning, Hauptmann,” said Audley politely. “Doctor, I’d like you to meet Hauptmann Grafenberg of the German Army.”

  The young German blinked at the light and stiffened to attention. If anything he looked even worse than the day before, thought Butler, as though he had spent the night with things even nastier than the blood-bloated flies which plagued Audley’s dreams.

  “Hauptmann, I’d be very grateful if … you’d be so good as to tell the doctor what happened to us on the road yesterday afternoon,” said Audley.

  The German looked down at the Frenchman. “It is not necessary—I have heard what has been said … and it is the truth.” He swallowed awkwardly, as though the words were painful. “Except—it is not correct that I … that the Herr Lieutenant released me. It was to him that I surrendered.”

  Winston leaned forward again, stabbing a finger at De Courcy. “Which means that someone has been lying through his teeth about us, Doc—because the driver who was with us when the P-51s hit us, he ran like a jack rabbit. So they know what happened as well as we do.”

  Dr. de Courcy’s eyes narrowed. “But … why should they lie about you, Sergeant—if they knew so much?”

  “Hell, Doc—that doesn’t take much figuring. They knew we were coming and they were waiting for us. So they scooped us up, but then we gave them the slip. So now they want whoever’s got us to turn us in.” Winston straightened up. “like two plus two equals four—right, Lieutenant?”

  Butler followed the sergeant’s look to Audley, and was surprised to see how pale the subaltern’s face was; it was paler than it ought to be after the German’s testimony and the sergeant’s triumphant mathematical assertion—paler even than thirty-six hours of strain and danger had already made it when I’ve been really almost ha
ppy for the first time since I landed in Normandy.

  So there was something the sergeant had missed … something that made two plus two equals four the wrong answer.

  And then it hit him like a gut-punch: from the moment that the major had shouted ‘Hände hoch, Tommy’ out of the hedge at him two plus two had never equalled four.

  He studied the Frenchman’s face critically for the first time. Apart from that narrow look about the eyes it was entirely without expression —as empty as the woods had seemed where the French had ambushed the German vehicles. No fear, no anger, no belief, no disbelief, no surprise.

  Two plus two equals five.

  “Permission to speak to the doctor, sir,” he said.

  “What the hell?” Winston regarded him curiously. But the American Army had no discipline, of course.

  “Corporal?” Audley’s glance was hardly less curious. “All right—go ahead.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Butler dismissed them both from his mind and concentrated on the Frenchman. “M’sieur Boucard has explained the situation to you, sir, I expect?”

  Now the Frenchman was studying him for the first time also, and seeing him as a soldier with a gun in his hands—a dirty, dishevelled British Tommy with a bandaged head, a person of no account, Butler thought gleefully.

  But then, of course, he couldn’t know what Butler knew—

  All depended on MacDonald, and that officer, who by valour and conduct in war had won his way from the rank of a private soldier to the command of a brigade, was equal to the emergency—

  The Frenchman hadn’t answered yet, and that was a good sign.

  “Sir?” he enquired politely.

  “Yes.” The answer was accompanied by a frown.

  “So you do know our objective, sir?”

  The doctor’s lips tightened. “I know what I have been told,” he said curtly. “Yes.”

  “That’s fine, sir. Then you know our objective.” Butler nodded, listening in his inner ear to the sweet sound of the bugles at Omdurman.