by Alan Evans
But Paco’s head turned in the opposite direction, towards the wooded cape beyond which lay the men from Brandenburg. Smith interpreted that glance and said, “They won’t have seen the light there, nor heard the machine over the noise of the storm.” The rain hissed and hammered still harder on the road.
Paco grunted agreement and said, “Good. Get rid of that.”
Manolo climbed off the Moto Guzzi then shoved it to the edge of the road and over to crash down through the scrub. He pushed his goggles up onto the brim of his cap and said with regret, “A pity. That is a good machine.”
Emilio ran across the road and called a question at Felipe, setting the charges on the hillside, returned and reported, “Felipe is ready.”
Smith looked up and just made out the one-time shot-firer squatting some twenty feet above him on the other side of the road, saw the lift of his hand. Smith worked the torch out of the pocket of his wet coat, flashed a signal out to sea and saw an answering flicker. Emilio and Manolo both patted his shoulder as he joined them and Paco in the cover of the scrub by the road. Like a blessing, he thought, wishing me luck. And he reached out a hand to them, but stayed apart. These men were devoted to him but he did not know why.
They saw the lights of the car coming up from Malaga before they heard it. Under the beat of the rain it slid in silence around the bend then the beams of the lights steadied, splitting the darkness on the road, spilling on the wooded cape.
The two explosions came only a heartbeat apart, one vivid flash and thump! following the other. The hillside overhanging the wooded cape broke away and slid down onto the road in a cloud of dust that hid the car. And the hillside behind the car was also moving, a torrent of mud and rock under an umbrella of dirt spilling across the road. The car was trapped between the two.
Smith and the others were all up and running. He could see Paco a yard ahead of him, Manolo and Emilio on either side, Felipe plunging down from the hillside to the road. The car had swerved sideways at the last. Smith could not see it, hidden in the dust-cloud, but that was obvious because the headlights shone across the road towards the sea like the beam of a lighthouse.
They ran into the cloud and there was the car, sideways and banged up against the wall of rubble blasted from the hillside. Manolo yanked open the front door, Paco that at the rear. Smith saw an interior light was burning now and thought that the driver of the car had probably switched it on; he was moving.
Emilio shot the driver.
Smith cursed Emilio but blamed himself. He knew the man was a casual killer and should have — what? Told him to hold his fire? When his own life might hang on shooting first? He heard Paco cursing Emilio now, because Paco knew this naval captain hated killing and respected his wishes, though not understanding them.
But the shot had frozen the tableau inside the car. There was another Guardia in the front, next to the driver who was sliding out of his seat into the road. That one shrank down in his seat, wide eyed and still. The two Guardias in the back had been thrown across the car by the impact and also lay still, but the whites of their eyes showed in the dim light. Smith reached in and dragged out the nearer and there, shoved down on the floor and sandwiched between the two Guardias, was the woman.
He grabbed her under her arms, pulled her out of the car and propped her against it with his hands on her shoulders to hold her steady. He demanded, “Do you hear me, Miss Fitzsimmons? Do you understand me?”
The woman pushed at the hair hanging about her face. Her mouth was open and gasping for breath, her eyes staring at him, this thin-faced, slight man whose strength startled her. “I can — sure — I — what the hell …” She coughed on dust.
Smith said, “I’m getting you out of this.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and ran her across to the scrub. He saw the others break away from the car and run away down the road. Then he was into the scrub and half-shoving, half-carrying the woman down to the shore.
*
Kurt Larsen and his party saw the lights of the car then heard the twin trip-hammer explosions and saw the lights swing madly across the road before they steadied, pointing out to sea. Dust lifted in a huge cloud above the trees clothing the cape. Kurt shouted, “Follow me!” And he ran for the bend in the road.
They rounded the curve in a loose group, pounding boots kicking up spray from the torrent that sluiced across the road. Kurt and Fritsch were in the lead as they stumbled over the first heap of rubble and came on the car. Kurt’s men shouted as they saw the running figures disappearing into the darkness further down the road, and Fritsch bawled, “After them!”
Kurt swore at him but let the men charge off in pursuit. He snatched at Fritsch’s sleeve and slowed to a walk to peer in at the men inside the car. Fritsch bawled, “Someone else has taken the prisoner!”
Kurt had suspected as much when the blasts brought down the hillside. Only now did he boggle at the coincidence, when it was proved fact. He was trying to marshal his meagre Spanish to pose a question but it was answered before he asked it. One of the Guardias in the back of the car pointed and Kurt ran across the road, hauling Fritsch along with him and down the scrub-clad slope towards the shore.
Hannah Fitzsimmons limped along in the ruins of her silk stockings, one shoe left in the car and the other on the road. Her long legs were shaky under her but the man at her side carried her along until she saw the pale stretch of the beach ahead. Then he halted, put a hand on her back, shoved her forward and told her, “Run to the boat.’ Now she saw the launch riding into the white line of the surf and she trotted towards it, wavering and stumbling.
Smith watched her start and then turned back to the slope, drew the Colt .45 and thumbed off the safety. He lifted it two-handed.
Kurt and Fritsch were side by side as they approached the foot of the slope. Smith appeared suddenly before them, lit by the beams of the headlights washing down from the road above and behind them. The muzzle-flash of the Colt blinded them and the report was deafening. Fritsch cried out as something slammed into his side. He fell, tangling with Kurt’s legs and bringing him down in a sprawling heap.
Kurt Larsen swore at Fritsch again and struggled out from under his groaning weight. He lifted to his knees to peer over the body of the SS officer and saw the man climbing in over the bow of the boat that nudged the shore as the sea thrust it. The man turned and his hand reached out to point the Colt at Larsen.
Kurt ducked as the pistol flamed again, the reports crashed and something snarled over his head. Then the firing ceased and after some seconds he cautiously raised his head. The launch had backed away from the beach and turned, now slid away to be lost in the rain-filled darkness.
But he remembered the face. He had only glimpsed it in the light from the headlamps still burning up on the road and through a curtain of rain and shadows, but eyes and pistol had the same cold, deadly look. He would never forget that face.
He looked to Fritsch and found his wound was no more than a bruise where the bullet had struck his holstered pistol. The rest of the party came crashing down through the scrub from the road and the petty officer in the lead reported to Larsen, “They had horses waiting for them. They just rode away from us.” Fritsch started on a string of obscenities.
Kurt turned his back on him and ordered, “We’ll return to the ship.”
*
Hannah Fitzsimmons sat in the tiny, cramped cabin of the launch, huddled in the blanket a sailor had snugged down around her. The door of the cabin was hooked open and she could see the man who had brought her off sitting in the sternsheets of the launch. Darkness and the shadowing brim of his hat hid most of his face but not the glitter of his eyes and the closed trap of his mouth.
He had come out of nowhere and had run her down to the shore with his arm around her and his hand on her breast. She thought she could feel it still.
She was still shaking in shock and trying to think.
She was alive.
He was a lonely figure. Was there a wife
? A child?
Chapter Two – The Orphans
Sarah stood at the side of the bed. She was blonde and blue-eyed, a slight, slender girl but the cotton nightdress she held before her could not hide her body. She knew that body was the cause of the trouble. She put her fists to her mouth as the door handle turned and then she heard the hoarse whisper: “Sarah!” That broke the spell and she walked slowly, reluctantly to the door and stood with her ear to a panel.
The whisper came again: “Sarah!”
The girl recognised the voice now and could hear his breathing on the other side of the door. Werner, her stepfather’s cousin, was fifty years old and gross, the black tunic of his uniform padded at the chest so that his belly was less pronounced. It still bulged over and above his belt. He was a frequent guest in the house when he visited Berlin in the course of his duties, not welcomed but politely tolerated by Sarah’s stepfather and mother, because he was family. He had been a Nazi Party member for fifteen years and was now senior in the SS, the Geheime staatspolizei, that was usually shortened to Gestapo.
Sarah answered him, “Go away!” And immediately cursed herself for doing so. She should have held her tongue and let him whisper himself into silence.
Now he threatened, “I’m coming in!”
Sarah shivered, cold in her nakedness. Werner would be staring at the door, looking through it as he looked through her clothes at her young body whenever they met, whenever she could not avoid it. He would be doing that now, mentally fondling her …
The voice was less of a whisper now, more a thick, low guttural: “A young girl like you, I could teach you a few things.”
Sarah hissed, “Go to hell!” But then she heard the grate of a key in the lock. Her hand scrabbled on the chest of drawers close by and found her key. Werner had another, must have stolen hers at some time and made a copy.
She pulled on the nightdress and took a pace back from the door as it opened. Werner showed, gross, in the gap, reaching out a hand to her. She kicked out, her foot swinging up between his legs and Werner yelped, fell back. Sarah snatched his key from the outside of the door, slammed it shut and locked it again. She heard groaning and mumbled threats from the passage but ran back to her bed, climbed in and pulled the covers over her head. Hatred and anger possessed her, but there was also fear.
*
Jake Tyler stood six feet five, fit and strong with thick black hair and brows over dark eyes. He’d had enough of college and did not look forward with enthusiasm to the hardware business. When the twin-engined Dakota burst out of cloud and ripped the starboard wingtip off the Stearman trainer he was flying Jake held it together, in the air and right way up, by prayer and know-how; he had been flying solo for a year now. He set the biplane down in a field and after he’d stopped shaking he got the farmer to put the Stearman in a barn until it could be collected.
The farmer also let him phone the airfield where he had hired the Stearman and then gave him a lift to the railroad station. In the train on the way to Boston Jake reflected that he had almost died back there. Tomorrow he might. Or he could live to be a hundred. The one certain thing was that he would only live once. His experience of a couple of hours ago had concentrated his mind. He did not want to spend that life in the hardware business as his parents expected. He did not know what he wanted to do with it.
He decided he needed time to think. He was easy-going and did not look forward to the arguments when he said he wanted to drop out of college and opt out of the hardware business. So when he got home to Boston and found the house empty he packed a bag, wrote a letter to his bank and another of explanation to his parents but left no forwarding address. That night he was on a British tramp steamer bound for Montevideo.
*
Véronique Duclos was tall for a girl, with dark hair and eyes. Now grimy and smoke-blackened, she had blood on her hands and her clothes. Those clothes, like the big spectacles she wore, were chosen as ‘sensible’ for economy and to create the impression that here was a young woman of a serious turn of mind. She sat on the top of the embankment south of Paris looking down at the twisted wreckage of the two trains. The express in which she had been a passenger had run into the back of the freight train and both telescoped and spilled off the rails.
Véronique had worked with other survivors to fetch out the dead and aid the injured. She was good at that and took charge as she worked. The men toiling around her recognised her ability and deferred to her. Until one came to stand at her side where she knelt to tie a makeshift dressing round an old woman’s leg.
He said, “There’s a girl—” He stopped there.
Véronique looked up at him and asked, “Yes? Which girl? What about her?”
He was old enough to be her father but he had come to her for orders. He had soot on his face and smelt of the fire. He said, “She is giving birth and she’s trapped. In there.” He pointed further along the track to the heaped and tip-tilted wagons of the freight train. One of them, a gasoline tanker, had ruptured, spilled and caught fire. The flames were eating their way down the rest of the two tangled trains. The man’s dirty finger with its torn and bleeding nail indicated a place close to the advancing flames as he said again, “In there.”
Véronique tied a knot and stood up. “I’ll come.” She followed him to the tunnel he and others had dug into the debris with their bare hands to reach the girl. It was too low to crawl and she had to lie flat and work her way in using her elbows. She found the girl in the gloom, weeping in shock, and in labour, with one arm caught immovably under a steel frame. The only favourable circumstance was that the diggers had excavated a small cave in their unsuccessful attempts to free the girl, so Véronique was able at least to kneel and crawl about and gave thanks for that.
She was dimly aware of outside events as she worked, comforted and waited: that help was arriving in the way of fire-engines and ambulances and there was a constant buzz of voices as more men now swarmed about the scene of the disaster; that the flames were still closing on her in her cave with the girl; that it was now dusk and she was able to see to work because of the red dancing light of the fire. The men outside shouted to her to come out before it was too late but she refused. She felt the heat of the fire as she delivered the child.
Now the doctor came over to her where she sat on the embankment. The ambulance with the girl and her baby was on its way to hospital. The fire was out and now the men worked on the wreckage in the light of arc lamps. They lit the crane that had lifted the steel frame off the girl.
The doctor was elderly and bearded. He wore an old-fashioned frock coat and made a little bow to Véronique as he said, “You helped the girl with her delivery. Excellent work. You are a midwife?”
Véronique used her thumb to push the big spectacles up on her nose. “No. I am a medical student. I hope to graduate this summer.”
“A doctor?” The old man was not so sure of her now. Véronique had seen that change of look before, from acceptance to uneasiness, when she was trying to get into medical school and later when she was a student. He went on, “And after you graduate?”
“I have not decided yet, M’sieur. One thing at a time. After the summer I will spend Christmas with my parents. I have not seen them for three years. My father is in the diplomatic service.”
The doctor guessed vaguely, “In Indo-China, perhaps?”
Véronique shook her head, “Montevideo.”
*
Able Seaman Robert Hurst was twenty-one years old, not tall but compact and wiry. His ship was the cruiser Ajax but this night he was ashore in Valparaiso. He was alone but he was used to that. He was happy, relaxed, his cap pushed to the back of his head so the neatly parted, straw-coloured hair showed. He whistled softly.
He walked along one busy street and saw an alley on his right that led to another. The alley was a dark tunnel with a glimpse of light and traffic at the far end. He took the alley as a short cut. He was halfway along its fifty-yard length when he heard the soft
footfalls closing behind him.
He turned quickly just in time to see the white flicker of the knife and to lean away from that first thrust. He saw now that there were three knives, three men, boxing him in, closing in. He backed away, desperately seeking a weapon, found a heap of rubbish behind him and saw the knife lick out at him again. He jumped back over the rubbish, slipped and fell, grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it at the man now following him over the pile. That gained him a second and in that time he found his weapon.
It was a length of wood like a fence-post, three to four feet long and as thick as his wrist. He held it as he bounced to his feet but the men were almost too close now. He swatted one knife aside but a second laid open his left forearm. He heard his attackers snarl as the blood spurted and he growled deep in his chest. The bastards were ready to kill him for the few pounds in his pocket.
He gripped the post two-handed as if it were a rifle with bayonet fixed, blocked another thrust then lunged. The end of the timber slammed into the face of the nearest man and he fell back lifting his hands to the hurt. Hurst parried thrusts from the other two then stepped forward and ‘gave the butt’ to one of them, whipping the heel of the post up into the man’s groin. He fell away, clutching himself.
The third hesitated now, suddenly left alone. Hurst seized on that hesitation, lunged again and this time found the belt-line. The last man doubled over the post then wheeled away and ran. Hurst glanced around him quickly and saw no further threat. The other two were also running back along the alley.
Hurst staggered off in the other direction. He had to do something about the wound in his arm that dripped blood but that would wait until he was out in the light. He still carried the chunk of wood.