by Colin Forbes
'Barnes, there's wire here - there's even some phosphorus. This goddamned truck is one huge potential bomb ...'
'Well, we shan't be needing any bombs,' Barnes replied, his voice edged with irritation.
'Can't understand the bastards leaving this lot unguarded.'
'They haven't got enough men to guard their own stuff according to Jacques.'
'This I could really do something with, Barnes. I haven't had my hands on such a hoard since I joined the RAF. If I'd bumped into this outfit instead of your own mob I could really have earned my daily bread. And say, look you here...'
Barnes wasn't too interested in Colburn's enthusiasms and the Canadian's burst of energy seemed to underline his own state of desperate fatigue to an extent which made him feel more irritable than ever.~ He spoke quickly.
'I'm off with Jacques now. Reynolds is staying with Bert next door so you'll have someone to chat to.'
Tm quite happy here. You're going to Jacques' father's place?,'
'I doubt if we'll get that far.'
'The old boy might know what's what. And watch yourself - we don't want any nasty accidents now we're at the end of the line.'
'That's right. So for Pete's sake, Colburn, don't drop one of those detonators.'
Barnes checked his watch, Penn's watch. 2.25 am. Ninety minutes to dawn. The recce was. completed and they were almost home, if you could call 'home' three outbuildings they had never known before, one of them stuffed with high-explosive. He looked back along the silent street and saw Jacques a long way behind him - Jacques who was still a problem because the village of Lemont was abandoned, all the inhabitants either evacuated or driven away by the Germans when the tide of war had rolled this way. The lad waved a hand and pointed ahead, an unnecessary precaution because Barnes was already trying to locate the German sentry they had skirted on their way in. He had been standing on guard outside a small single-storey house where light had shown round the edges of drawn blinds. On the outskirts of Lemont all the houses were single storey and this was the only house which had shown any sign of life in the deserted tree-lined street. Who was hidden behind those drawn blinds? And where was that damned sentry now? .The empty motor-cycle and side-car was still parked in front of the house.
He took several cautious steps forward again and halted. He could still see the light round the blinds but the sentry had vanished. It worried Barnes and he glanced back again to make sure that the lad was still behind him. Jacques opened his hands to express puzzlement and Barnes knew that he also had spotted the sentry's absence. The only thing to do was to go round the back way as they had before, but cautiously. He held up a warning hand to indicate to Jacques that he should stay well back and then he crept forward, turning down a path which led between the houses.
His nerves were keyed up tautly, his mind oscillating between two impulses - the need for caution on the last lap and the need to move quickly because they were running out of time just when he had found his supreme objective. The path was bordered with shoulder-high stone walls and he knew that when the path turned at the bottom the walls continued along the backs of the houses. Keeping his head down, his revolver in bis hand, he crept past a closed gate let into the wall. He was concentrating on placing his feet carefully because he remembered that there was a deep ditch on the left. Perhaps he heard something at the last moment. He might even have started to turn his head, but he could never remember the details afterwards. A rifle butt struck his head with such vicious force that he lost consciousness immediately...
When he woke up he knew that he was going to be sick, but he forced it down into the churning pit of his stomach. His wound ached abominably but now the pounding hammer was at work inside his head, and because it felt hollow he seemed to receive each blow twice as the blows echoed. Get a grip on yourself, man. With an immense effort he forced open eyelids which felt to be made of lead. A blinding light hit him, so he closed them quickly. A voice spoke gutturally. In English.
'So pleased you are recovering, Sergeant Barnes.'
Barnes jerked his eyes open a fraction and peered through slitted lids. From behind the lamp a uniformed arm appeared and lowered the light cone so that it shone on to the desk. The arm belonged to a thin-faced man of about thirty who wore the uniform of a German officer. Glancing round the darkened room Barnes could see no sign of Jacques; the French lad must have escaped into the village during the ambush.
'Tell me when you are ready to speak,' the German suggested.
Barnes swore inwardly. He was seated in a high-backed wooden chair and his wrists were bound with wire to the arms. When he tried to shift his body surreptitiously he felt a broad band strapped round his waist; only his legs were still free. They had sewed him up nicely. Another uniformed officer appeared from behind his chair and like his colleague behind the desk he was wearing bis peaked cap. He spread pine needles along the desk under the cone of light, arranging them carefully in varying lengths, apparently taking no notice of Barnes while he completed his little display. Barnes gritted his teeth, wondering whether the prelude to torture was a bluff to sap his nerves. The officer behind the desk spoke.
'I am Major Berg. You, of course, are Sergeant Barnes.' He lifted a British Army pay-book off the desk and waved it. 'And if you are wondering why I speak such good English it is since I was military attache in London before the war.' His voice changed and he spoke rapidly, his manner bleak. 'Barnes, where is your unit and from where will the British be attacking us in the rear?'
Barnes said it. Name, rank, serial number. Then he shut his mouth. He opened it a moment later when the officer who had been bending over the desk swung the stiffened side of his hand savagely across Barnes' lips. He felt something give inside his mouth, felt around with his tongue, tasted blood, and spat out a broken tooth. Through half-closed eyes he saw Berg shake his head as though cautioning his fellow officer.
'I should have introduced you,' Berg went on. 'This is Captain Dahlheim. Normally our method is to ask questions politely first and then exert pressure later, but we are short of hours. I should warn you that Captain Dahlheim becomes annoyed when people do not answer my questions properly.'
Barnes said it again. Name, rank, serial number, adding that under the Geneva Convention this was all the information he was obliged to give. Dahlheim was fiddling with the pine needles now and while his body temporarily masked him from Berg, Barnes lifted his wrists hard against the wire. It was quite impossible to get his hands loose.
'But you are a spy,' went on the unseen Berg. 'Show him the clothes he was wearing when we found him.'
Dahlheim picked up a bundle from a chair and showed the clothes. For a horrible moment Barnes wondered whether they belonged to Jacques but he saw that they were a jacket and a pair of trousers of blue denim, common apparel for French workers in the fields. Jacques had worn a lounge suit. He must have escaped.
'I've never worn those in my life and you know it.
'Captain Dahlheim can confirm that we took those clothes off you while you were still unconscious. We can say you wore them to hide your uniform. And you had no means of identification. No pay-book.' He dropped the pay-book into a drawer and closed it. 'So you are a spy and can be treated in any way we like.'
Was Berg bluffing? Barnes could see his white face now and as he became accustomed to the single desk light he thought the German was older than he had thought at first. He felt sick with fury. He had been on the last lap, had completed the most difficult reconnaissance he had ever undertaken, had been within a five-minute walk of Bert's refuge, and because of a momentary lack of alertness he had been captured. And as the realization dawned on him, the realization of how unlikely it was that he would ever escape, he found one thought torturing his mind. He had come to Lemont because the battle plan they had taken from the German staff car showed beyond doubt that here was the point of maximum peril for the BEF. And now he believed that he had found a way of striking a blow against the 14th Panzer Division, the sp
earhead of the attack on Dunkirk, only to find himself a prisoner. What was it Berg was saying?
'We have not a great deal of time, Sergeant Barnes.'
'None of us have that here.'
'For various reasons it is a matter of urgency that you answer my questions quickly. Where is your unit? What is the British plan?' He paused. 'Dahlheim! Barnes is not going to reply again.'
Dahlheim straightened up and turned round. The needles were arranged in a neat row, their sharp points turned towards Barnes under the cone of light. Beneath the peaked cap Dahlheim's face was round, his eyes seeming half asleep, and for the first time Barnes saw that he wore a black and silver collar-patch bearing a curious runic sign. Captain Dahlheim was a member of the SS.
By now Barnes found that his eyes were growing accustomed to the semi-darkness beyond the cone of light and behind the seated Berg he could see a window. The curtain was drawn across it but at one side there was a gap, and because of the deep shadow beyond the desk light he could see a wedge of moonlit night. Dahlheim was reaching his hand to his side and Barnes expected him to draw the pistol from his leather hip holster, but instead he took a length of cord from his pocket and wrapped it round both hands, He took his time over this little exercise, watching Barnes carefully, then without speaking he went past the chair and disappeared behind it. Guessing what was coming, Barnes tensed himself.
Reynolds could see the sentry standing outside the small house and he also saw the stationary motor-cycle and "side-car close by. It was the first sign of life he had seen since entering the village. He took several quiet paces away from the road down a pathway between stone walls. Now he was well under cover, two houses away from where the sentry mounted guard. For a minute he stood there, undecided what to do. It was probably the first time in his Army career that he had performed these two actions and both of them worried him - he had disobeyed an order and he had taken an initiative without reference to any superior. He kept wondering whether he ought not to go back.
Barnes had specifically told him to stay with the tank and now Bert was a good five minutes' walk away. Only an overwhelming feeling that something had happened to Barnes had prompted his action and he had firmly refused Colburn's offer to come instead. A pilot's place was in the air - they weren't much good on the ground, Reynolds had reasoned to himself. Now his great dread was that he had missed Barnes and Jacques coming back and that already his sergeant was asking Colburn where the devil Reynolds was. He'd better go back, he decided, but not along the road - that was far too dangerous. There must be another way back along the rear of these houses. Yes, he'd go back immediately. Barnes was able to look after himself.
He reached the end of the wall and lifted his head cautiously. Light from a window two houses away spilled out into the night. It must be some sort of German HQ, a good place to keep away from. He started retreating along the footpath which ran behind the back garden wall and then looked over his shoulder. The light puzzled him. Perhaps he'd better check: Barnes might want to know who was there. In for a penny, in for a pound, as his father was fond of saying. Keeping his head well down, he crept along the back wall, counting gates. This must be the right one. The gate wasn't quite closed and when he pushed it gently it swung back inwards without making a sound. The vague outline of the lighted window was broken up by the branches of fruit trees which stood in the garden. He listened carefully and peered round the end wall to look along another pathway which led back to the road. If the sentry decided to walk up there while he was inside the garden he would be nicely trapped. In for a penny...
Creeping down a garden path he reached the back of the house close to the window and saw that there was a gap in the curtain. Ten-to-one the people inside would be staring straight at the window when he looked in, but he felt he must see what was going on, so he pressed one hand against the wall, eased himself forward, caught a quick glimpse and stepped back. He had glanced inside at the moment when Dahlheim had walked behind Barnes' chair. He had seen his sergeant helpless, the only time he had ever seen Barnes in this state, and for a few seconds he was stunned, but his mood swiftly changed to one of fury.
He went back up the garden, out of the gateway, down the pathway between the houses, his hand extracting the knife from its sheath, a knife which he had carefully honed to a razor's edge, the point like a needle, the condition in which an ex-fishmonger was prone to keep his knives. At the end of the path he waited behind the wall and listened to the sentry's footsteps. The German must have become bored with standing and now he paced a steady sentry-go - ten paces away, ten paces back again. While he listened Reynolds remembered a certain guard duty he had mounted late one night at a remote camp outside Hull. Alone in the dark, he had particularly disliked the moment when he had stopped to turn, still keeping step as he revolved through one hundred and eighty degrees, and this was the moment he was waiting for now.
The sentry was coming his way again. Eight, nine, ten ... Leaving the safety of the wall Reynolds moved with a terrible determination, seeing the back of the German only six feet away. His hand rose above shoulder level and with the same movement he crept forward three quiet paces, driving the knife savagely down into the uniformed back. He felt it shearing through cloth, driving down deeper, jerking briefly as it grazed bone and then sank deeper still. The back fell away from him and the sentry let out one howling shriek. Reynolds was sure half the street had heard the sound as he bent over to grab the rifle and fixed bayonet, tearing the strap loose from the limp arm.
His reactions now were an echo of his early basic training -taking up the rifle, one hand gripping the stock, the other stretched well along the barrel as he grasped it close to the bayonet. He was running full pelt for the front door when it opened in his face, revealing a uniformed figure. Dahlheim held a Luger pistol in his hand but before he could press the trigger Reynolds was on him, his headlong rush carrying the bayonet deep into Dahlheim's stomach. He groaned and went over backwards, carried to the floor by the still-moving impetus of Reynolds' violent charge. Automatically, the driver stood a foot on the sprawled body and used it as leverage to withdraw the bayonet with one quick hard pull, his eyes searching the room beyond.
When they heard the sentry's awful cry Dahlheim had just gripped Barnes round the neck. At Berg's instant command he had taken out his Luger and rushed to the front door, opening it as Berg came round the side of the desk, his own gun already in his hand. Barnes heard Dahlheim's horrible groan while Berg was passing him. Shooting out his left leg, he caught the German between his own legs and tripped him. Berg was on the floor when Barnes flung his whole weight sideways, carrying himself and the chair over on top of Berg, the fall smashing the left chair arm so that his wrist was immediately released still encircled with wire. He was half on top of Berg, still tied inside the chair as he raised his left fist and clubbed him viciously in the face. Then the chair slipped and took him over farther sideways so that now he was lying on the floor" trapped by the chair behind him. He saw Berg blink, spit blood from his mouth where the fist had broken teeth, and then he raised the revolver which he still held and aimed it point-blank in Barnes' face. Anchored to the floor by the heavy chair, just too far away to get at Berg, even in that moment of terror Barnes was aware of movement above him and then the rifle butt in Reynolds' grip smashed down on Berg's head with a terrible impact. The hand fell back with a thud to the floor and the Luger slipped from the hand as it went slack.
'Good work, Reynolds.' Barnes gasped out the trite phrase automatically and just as automatically thought of Dahlheim. 'Make sure of that other bastard.'
'He's finished. Keep still while I get your hand free.'
'Smash the support off under the chair arm with your rifle butt and then I can slip my wrist off. Go on, man, we're hellishly short of time.'
They could hear Dahlheim groaning continually behind them as Reynolds aimed the rifle butt carefully, destroying the wooden support under the chair arm so that Barnes could slip his wrist
off the end. Then he pressed the wire bracelets down over his hands while Reynolds unfastened the leather belt which bound him to the chair. Barnes had his back to Dahlheim but he could still hear the agonized moans of the SS officer, the clumping of his shoes on the floor. The moment he was released he swung round and instantly shouted a warning. Dahlheim was turned over on one side, clutching his left hand to his stomach, a hand covered with blood, his face twisted almost out of recognition with the pain, but his right hand had found the pistol. At 'the moment when Barnes shouted the gun went off.