The '44 Vintage

by Anthony Price

  “Very simply, Sergeant. I have established that you do not know where it is hidden—you have said as much, and I believe you. Your colonel … Clinton knows, but he is in no condition to tell anyone, even if he lives—not for the time being en tout cas. Which only leaves your major—yes?” De Courcy lifted an eyebrow at Audley. “Whom you intend to … execute as a traitor?”

  “You’re damn right!” exclaimed Sergeant Winston. Except that he was damn wrong, thought Butler. Because there was also the colonel’s driver—had Winston forgotten him? Or had he mentioned the driver?

  He couldn’t remember. They had been driving down off the embankment—he had been telling them what had happened… . He must have told them about the driver—He’s the key to the treasure house, sergeant-major. He’s our walking map!

  He must have told them!

  But he couldn’t remember—and Audley’s face was as innocent as a baby’s—

  Too innocent?

  Then Audley nodded abruptly. “All right, sir. If those are your terms, then we accept them. You want Major O’Conor dead—“

  Too innocent!

  “You’ll take us to Pont-Civray.” Audley’s jaw tightened. ‘We’ll kill him.”

  “How are you going to get us there, Doc?” asked Winston.

  De Courcy smiled. “How should a doctor move his patients in an emergency?”

  They followed him down the path.

  Once again, it wasn’t how he had ever imagined going to war: a Frenchman taking two Englishmen and an American and a German … to kill an Englishman.

  Winston grinned at him. “You did okay back there, Jack. But how the hell did you know he’d crack—the doc?”

  How the hell had he known? He lifted the Sten. “I had the gun, Sergeant. He didn’t.”

  That was what Rifleman Callaghan always said: The man with the gun always wins the argument.

  CHAPTER 21

  How the Germans spoilt a good plan

  “WHEN YOU think about it, it’s rather appropriate,” said Audley reflectively, to no one in particular.

  Butler had been thinking about it, but: that hadn’t been his conclusion. He had thought, more simply, that it was a pity they couldn’t see where they were being taken; but also that with the way his toes were already acting up it was a bloody sight better than foot-slogging. If the pigs really were being transported to market, at least their last journey was being made in comfort.

  Sergeant Winston surfaced from out of his own thoughts. “What is?” he inquired.

  “This.” Audley waved his hand around vaguely.

  Winston looked towards the doctor. “Yeah, I guess it is at that.” He grinned suddenly. “We should be glad you aren’t a garbage collector, Doc—“

  “No.” Audley shook his head. “I mean … this is how it all started —in an ambulance. This is how they brought the loot out of Paris in 1940—in an ambulance. And now us.”

  “Uh-huh?” Winston shrugged. “Well, just so we get there in one piece is all I care about first. But it’s what the hell we do when we get there that worries me, Lieutenant. You planning to gun the major down just like that—just wait for him to show up and let him have it? Is that it?”

  Audley ran his finger nervously between his neck and his collar. The light coming through the frosted window beside him caught the sheen of sweat on his forehead. Happen he didn’t like being cooped up blind in the enclosed space of the ambulance, thought Butler, and that sweat was a memory of old terrors. But much more likely it was fear of what was to come, which had been all airy-fairy talk until now, with the odds against it ever being put to the test of reality.

  Trouble was, he could never see through the skin for sure, not until it was too late. All he knew was that Second Lieutenant Audley was a great talker, and clever with it—no doubt about that. But what he was when the words were all said and there was no more room for cleverness, that still remained to be seen.

  “Is that it?” Winston repeated the question brutally, as though he sensed the same uncertainty in the subaltern.

  And yet for all that maybe they weren’t being fair, thought Butler. Because it was one thing to follow and obey, and another and quite different thing to decide and to lead, knowing that the burden of responsibility was on one’s own shoulders, no matter whose finger was on the trigger.

  He cleared his throat. “We could call on him to surrender first, sir,” he said.

  Winston gave an angry grunt. “Oh sure—we do that and we throw away the only chance we’ve got, which is catching the bastard by surprise.”

  Audley’s jaw tightened. “We can still do that—if we can get into the chateau first.” He turned towards Dr. de Courcy questioningly.

  De Courcy nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said.

  “Uh-huh?” Winston paused. “And just how are you planning to do that, Doc?”

  “It need not worry you, Sergeant. It can be done.”

  “So it can be done—so it still worries me.” Winston paused again. “So you tell me how, huh?”

  De Courcy shrugged. “Very well … the Germans will not leave until midday. In the meantime they will be on the alert—it is a time of danger for them, the moment of withdrawal—“

  Winston raised his hand. “I don’t want to care about the Germans, Doc. They don’t worry me. It’s the major—he worries me. Because by midday he’ll be sitting on the goddamn doorstep just waiting for the krauts to move out. That is, if he isn’t there already—which he probably is. And the moment they do move … he’s not the sort of guy to wait until the dust settles, Doc. They move out—he’ll move in.”

  The Frenchman half-smiled. “And that is what I am relying on, Sergeant.”

  Winston frowned. “I don’t get you.”

  “That is because you do not know the Chateau of Pont-Civray.”

  “You mean—there’s a secret way in?”

  “No, not a secret way.” De Courcy shook his head. “But another way, simply.”

  “Then the major may be watching it—simply.”

  “But there is no reason why he should.” De Courcy leant forward to emphasise his point “To the west of the chateau, in the woods beside the river, there is a path. Once it was a carriageway to the West Lodge, but it had not been used for many years even before the Germans came. It is … how do you say?—couvert—grown over.”

  “Overgrown—I get you. But if you’re banking on the major not having cased the chateau—“ Winston shook his head back at the Frenchman. “What sort of perimeter defences has it got?”

  “Barbed wire, two fences. With mines in between.”

  “That won’t stop him. It didn’t stop us on Easy Red at Omaha, Doc —and the krauts were throwing all kinds of shit at us. So it sure as hell won’t stop him breaking in.”

  “But he has no need to. He waits only for the Germans to leave, Sergeant. You worry about him, but he does not worry about you—he thinks you are dead, is that not so?”

  “Okay. So we’re dead—?”

  “Therefore he waits for the Germans to leave, and they can only leave by the main entrance—it is the only way open to vehicles. So it is there that he will be watching, to see them go, so that he may bring his own vehicles in at the same point. De Courcy nodded in agreement with himself. “But we—we will be watching at the West Lodge. Because the Germans have a guard-post there—it is from there that they watch the river and patrol the perimeter wire through the wood. That will be our point of entry.”

  The frown was becoming a fixture on the American’s face. “Now you’re really losing me, Doc. If the krauts weren’t on the alert I might just get us through the wire and the mines—I got enough practice for that on Omaha. But if there’s a guard-post there how’s that going to get us to the chateau ahead of the major?”

  “But very simply, Sergeant!” De Courcy sat back on the bunk. “The last thing the Germans will do before they leave—the very last thing—will be to withdraw their guards from the perimeter. That will be our
signal to enter.” He lifted his hands expressively. “Then as they leave by the front entrance, we will move in behind them before the major enters.”

  There was still doubt in Winston’s eyes as he shifted their attention to Audley. “What d’you think, Lieutenant?”

  “It sounds … logical,” said Audley. “If they really are evacuating the chateau completely.”

  “There is no doubt about that,” cut in De Courcy confidently. “It is not simply that they have said as much. For two days now they have been burning their documents—that is the surest sign of all.”

  “Just so long as they don’t leave a rear guard,” said Winston, looking round the ambulance. “We don’t have the muscle to fight the real war.”

  De Courcy shook his head. “They will use all their men for the escort—with things as they are, they are too nervous to do anything else, believe me. They are not looking for trouble any more.”

  That was an echo from the past, Butler recalled bitterly—an echo of what the major himself had said on the evening he had joined Chandos Force. And in that at least the major had spoken the complete truth: it had never been the Germans who had threatened the success of the operation; they had made all their own trouble, one way or another.

  “Okay. So what then?” Sergeant Winston conceded the point grudgingly. “We get to the chateau maybe a couple of minutes ahead of the major—like firstest with the fewest. So what then?”

  De Courcy looked at Audley quickly. “Then … it is the major you want. One clear shot tout simplement.”

  Audley swallowed tout simplement like a spoonful of liquid paraffin. “Yes.”

  “Then this way you will have your best chance of it. He will come up the driveway from the main gate—an avenue of trees of perhaps six hundred metres … then there is the old donjon—how d’you say?” De Courcy searched for the translation.

  “The keep,” said Audley. “You mean a tower, like at Chenonceaux?”

  “A tower—yes. It was the original fortification beside the bridge over the river. But now it is a ruin, an emptiness. Merely the walls stand.”

  “It was all a ruin in the old days, pretty much, wasn’t it?” said Audley.

  “Until the Englishman came, yes. He rebuilt the chateau, and they were working on the bridge—they completed that just in time for the Germans. But the donjon is still unrepaired … But no matter! Beside it is the bridge, and beyond the bridge on the other side of the river lies the chateau.” De Courcy lifted a finger. “So … the major must cross the bridge—and the open space in front of the chateau too. And on the bridge there is no cover.” He paused. “And all you want is one clear shot.”

  For a second no one spoke, then Winston turned to Audley. “Lieutenant—?”

  Tout simplement, thought Butler. It seemed too good—and too simple —to be true. It even had the priceless advantage of giving them a chance of escape afterwards, since one man with a gun could cover the bridge after the shot had been fired, discouraging pursuit.

  “He’ll send in a patrol first to check out the place,” said Winston. “To make sure all the krauts have gone.”

  Audley nodded. “So he will. But we can lie low … or rather, we can lie high, up in the chateau …” He frowned with concentration. “He’ll send in a patrol. But if they report it’s all clear, then he’ll come in alone … with just the ones who are in on the plan.”

  “That smiling sonofabitch sergeant, you mean?” Winston growled.

  It would be two clear shots if the American was holding the gun. And maybe not just if he was, thought Butler vengefully.

  “And the sergeant-major,” said Audley. “I suppose there could be others too, but I can’t think he’s planning to split the loot too many ways.”

  “Yeah. And the fewer there are in on the deal, the less chance there is of anyone ever realising what he’s done, I guess,” Winston agreed. He grinned at Butler suddenly. “What d’you think, Jack? You reckon you’re good enough with that thing?” He pointed to the Sten on Butler’s lap.

  Butler drew a sharp breath. It hadn’t occurred to him that he would be given the assassin’s job, but he realised instantly that it made sense, however unwelcome the task. Whatever the defects of the Sten for the role, its rate of fire made it better than Audley’s revolver and the Luger the American had picked up from the road after the ambush. Only experts could hit anything with handguns at more than point-blank range.

  All the same he looked at Audley doubtfully. “A Lee-Enfield would be better, sir. Over fifty yards you can’t be dead sure with a Sten, sir. We’ll just have to let them get right up close, that’s all.”

  Dr. de Courcy smiled suddenly, and bent forward to reach under the bunk. “Then perhaps I can help you there, too. Not with a Lee-Enfield”—with an effort he slid a battered tin box out from beneath him—“but with something just as good.”

  The lid of the box carried a large red cross, and the box itself was full of bandages and rags. De Courcy plunged his hand into them and lifted a rifle into view.

  “With the compliments of the French Army, Corporal—a Lebel from the ‘14-‘18. It will shoot Englishmen just as accurately as Germans, I think.”

  Butler reached down towards the rifle, but Audley’s hand snaked past his to grasp it first.

  “Sir?” Butler looked at him questioningly.

  “Mine, I think, Corporal,” said the subaltern. “You’ll need the Sten to cover the bridge afterwards.”

  Butler frowned. “But, sir—“

  “My job, too.” Audley sounded almost relieved. “Don’t worry, Corporal. Even second lieutenants can fire rifles—they do teach us some useful skills.” He turned to the American. “All right with you, Sergeant?”

  Winston looked at the subaltern curiously. It wasn’t exactly an expression of approval, Butler decided, but it was as close to that sentiment as he had come since he had first climbed into the driving seat of the jeep on the road beside the Loire. “Hell, Lieutenant—I wouldn’t dream of cramping your style. If you British got a rule that only officers can shoot officers, that’s okay by me. Just so you hold it nice and steady when the time comes …” He shrugged, and then grinned. “Maybe we’re due for a good break at that, I guess.”

  The American’s good humour reassured Butler’s own doubts. If it was suddenly too easy—too good to be true—then perhaps that was only what they deserved after so much bad luck. Not so much the bad luck that had enabled them to get so far against all the odds; that might qualify as good luck. But the bad luck which had taken all three of them away from the safety of the real war, where a man knew what he was supposed to be doing.

  He stared at Hauptmann Grafenberg, sitting quiet and withdrawn on the floor in the corner, almost unnoticed. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined he would travel across France with a German prisoner in his baggage. And yet, when he thought about it, it was only the German who had derived the good luck from their misfortunes: without them he might have been dead by now, or on his way to death. Winston followed his gaze. “Yeah … So what do we do with him, eh?” He threw the question at Audley.

  As he spoke the ambulance slowed suddenly, with a squeak of ancient brakes, and then lurched to a halt. De Courcy twisted on his bunk and slid back a panel in the partition which divided them from the driver’s compartment.

  “Qu’est-ce qui se passe, Gaston?” he hissed urgently. The mutter of French was lost to Butler in the sound of a bicycle wheel skidding on gravel and a breathless treble voice, not one word of which he could catch through the narrow gap in the partition.

  At length De Courcy turned back to them. “There are German vehicles on the main road ahead of us—the Civray road. We must wait until they have passed.”

  “Are we far from the chateau?” asked Audley.

  “Very close,” De Courcy shook his head. “We cross over here, onto the Marigny road. There is a bridge over the river, two kilometres perhaps, then the turning to the West Lodge is just over the bridge. D
o not worry—Jean-Pierre will tell us when the way is clear.”

  “That’s … the kid that we heard just now?” Winston’s nose wrinkled at the idea of depending on a child’s judgment. “A kid?”

  The doctor regarded him equably. “Jean-Pierre is small for his age, but he would not thank you for the description. This morning he is a Frenchman, Sergeant.”

  “How old a Frenchman?”

  “Eleven years. And before you decide eleven years are too few I should tell you that his younger brother Louis-Marie is watching the main gate of the chateau just up the road.”

  “Jee-sus!” The American’s eyes widened. “Haven’t you got any men, Doc? I thought your side was going to take over here after the krauts lit out—you going to use the kindergarten to keep the Commies in line?”

  The doctor’s expression hardened. “In two weeks from now General de Lattre de Tassign’s army will be here, Sergeant—the French army which is landing in southern France at this moment.”

  Sergeant Winston scratched the end of his nose. “Great. Except so far as we’re concerned that’s going to be just about two weeks too late, don’t you think, Doc?”

  Before the Frenchman could react to the jibe, Second Lieutenant Audley intervened. “I can see that children do make good road-watchers, Doctor. In fact, I remember my father and the other chaps in the Home Guard in 1940 planning to use them if the Germans landed … but… but where are your people? I mean, not the escape-route people, like old M’sieur Boucard—but the proper Maquis types? If we had a few of them we wouldn’t need—this.” He lifted the old Lebel rifle.

  The hard look on the Frenchman’s face creased up like a celluloid mask on the Guy’s face writhing in the flames of a November Fifth bonfire. He spread his hands in a gesture of despair—Frenchmen could say more with their hands than some Englishmen could say with their mouths, thought Butler.

  But the gesture was lost on Sergeant Winston. “I guess it suits them better if we take the risks, Lieutenant,” he murmured.

  The hard mask returned instantly. “It does not suit me at all—it suits me very badly,” De Courcy snapped. “A week ago we had men in this area, both sabotage teams working with British and American officers, and our own combat units. But since then we have been moving them every night to the southwest, to the German supply routes, to support the invasion of the South. When Boucard’s messenger reached me during the night …” The hands rose again. “You are not far from the truth, Sergeant. Children and greybeards—they are the best men I have at short notice. Children and greybeards!”