Freefall

by Robert Radcliffe

‘Not at all.’ Wood shook his head. ‘It’s just, well, his last boat. One of our sister ships. Triumph. She was lost on a mission like this. Dropping off special ops bods. Or picking them up, I can’t remember. Anyway, Peter should have been aboard, but got appendicitis just before she sailed and had to be replaced. Nobody knows what happened, she just vanished, but the suspicion is she hit a mine nearing the enemy coast. She was lost with all hands. All his friends.’

  ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Not your fault. It’s the nature of the beast.’

  ‘I suppose so. What did you say she was called?’

  ‘HMS Triumph.’

  *

  The sea was rougher than expected, the night pitch-black. Waves sloshed over the deck as Tribune rolled sluggishly in the swell. He had some trouble extracting the Folboat through the forward hatch but was helped by sailors pushing from below. Once out, the assembly went smoothly and he spent several minutes securing his baggage in the rear compartment. Launching it by torchlight required him to slither down on to one of the ballast tanks, which was partly submerged, dragging the Folboat behind him, then scramble aboard and shove off with the paddle. When clear he secured himself into the seat, lacing its canvas cover tightly around his waist, and set off into the night.

  He heard the breaking surf before he saw it; a few minutes more paddling and a thin line of white was materializing in the distance. No other lights showed. He hoped he was still north of Barletta. Suddenly the Folboat was surging forward, its nose buried in foam. He dug in hard with the paddle, as on canoe expeditions of his youth; the Folboat surged again and then slewed sideways, spilling him into thigh-deep surf. Dragging it up the beach required him to unload it first, only on the second trip, hauling it behind him, did he notice the wire entanglements to his right, and the sign saying ‘Mina’. He pressed on, reached scrubby grass and began collapsing the boat. Scouting north and south using his flashlight, he noted cursory attempts at tank traps, two unmanned pillboxes and another area warning of mines. Of gun emplacements, Home Guard, searchlights or watchtowers he saw nothing. Thirty minutes later, wearing his civilian suit, coat and hat, and with the boat buried and camouflaged with driftwood, he gathered his bags and set off inland.

  By eight that morning he was entering Foggia and making for the station. The day was already warm and with his coat and baggage he felt hot and conspicuous. Foggia’s streets were busy with workers and shoppers; none, he noted, were young men in travelling clothes, and all seemed to be hurrying to their tasks with heads down. To his consternation he also saw long lines of military traffic, including open lorries loaded with German soldiers, streaming through town on the main road south. They paid him no heed, but two cruising Carabinieri saw him watching and crossed the street towards him. Before they could come near he ducked into an alleyway and fled.

  By the time he reached the station he knew everything was wrong. The change in attitude from his last visit was shocking and palpable. Then the war barely touched ordinary people; there was a shrugged laissez-faire attitude to it and little sense of urgency or danger. Now people scurried by without looking up; there was fear in their faces, and an atmosphere of impending disaster. Foggia had suffered bomb damage too, with areas of the town reduced to rubble by Allied bombers. He picked up a discarded newspaper but could make little sense of it: the cheap newsprint, the contradictory headlines, the paragraphs of uncertainty and speculation. Posters on walls and lamp-posts proclaimed a multitude of political factions and names, none of which he recognized, while other posters bearing the Nazi eagle listed stringent new regulations, and warned of harsh reprisals against thieves, looters and black marketeers. And warnings about deserters. On the train to Campobasso no one spoke to him, unusually, and one old couple even moved away when he sat near them. The guard punched his ticket with narrowed eyes and without acknowledging his polite buongiorno. He sat hunched in a corner watching the arid plains of Apulia gradually give way to the rolling hills of Campania, saw gaggles of Italian troops moving along dusty roads, saw mile upon mile of discarded weapons and equipment, and saw the smoking pyres of wrecked vehicles, and knew the Italy of old was dying. That it was broken and diseased and that worse was probably yet to come. And by the time he stepped off the train at Campobasso, he also knew he was being followed.

  He was arrested ten minutes later. No one had met him, as was promised, but waiting aimlessly about the concourse seemed unwise, so having checked the toilets and café he made for the door and walked out into hot sunshine. Barely had he gone ten paces when two large men wearing Sicurezza Civile armbands grabbed him from behind, seized his elbows and frog-marched him to the police station. Helplessly pinioned and with a suitcase in each hand, he could do nothing but comply.

  ‘Got another one,’ they told the desk sergeant.

  ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘Like the others. Lock him up and call the military. We’ll be back to collect the compensazione in the morning.’

  He was led to a cell and locked in. It had an iron bed with no mattress and a tin bucket for a latrine. An hour passed; the temperature climbed. No one came to check on him, or search him, or even question him. His papers were still in his pocket, his suitcases at his side. Craning his neck at the door, he saw the desk sergeant alone reading a newspaper, and noted that the building was old and dilapidated with crumbling brick walls and old-fashioned barred windows. Two of the bars were loose. His cell door was also of iron and secured by an ancient lock. A little later another youth was shown in and sat on the floor without a word; by mid-afternoon, after a meal of watery pasta soup and bread, there were half a dozen. Deserters, he learned from one, a wiry boy with dark beard and round spectacles. Sicurezza Civile was a front, he explained, an excuse for thugs to round up young men of army age and hand them in for the reward – whether they were deserters or not. All would end up in the army, most serving alongside the Germans, or Tedeschi as he called them, on the eastern front. Tens of thousands had been rounded up this way, he said, their families despaired of seeing them again.

  Theo said nothing and sat tight. Someone said they were unlikely to be collected before dawn next day; his plan was to wait for darkness, loosen the window bars and escape, as he had from Caposele two and a half years before. Failing that, a piece of wire spring from the bed should make short work of the door’s ancient lock. Failing that, in one suitcase were a selection of pencil fuses – small detonators ideal for blowing locks. Getting out should not be hard, he knew; quite what to do afterwards was less clear. He checked the time. Over thirty hours without sleep, nearly twenty since leaving Tribune. Sitting on his suitcases, he folded his arms and tried to doze.

  ‘Don’t make any sudden noise.’

  He stirred sleepily.

  ‘Horatio.’ A hissed whisper. ‘Horatio, it’s me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Me. Nightjar.’ The youth with the spectacles was crouching beside him, his face lost in shadow. ‘Don’t do anything rash, I’m getting you out.’

  ‘Nightjar?’ The baker’s boy, Armando, the one who drove the van on the Tolomei mission, who blew up the garages and threw grenades so bravely. ‘My God, I didn’t recognize you! That beard, and those glasses.’

  A white grin showed in the darkness. ‘The beard is temporary, the glasses sadly not.’ He’d been at Campobasso Station that morning, as arranged, he explained, in fact had waited there every morning for a fortnight – at some risk. When he’d finally spotted Theo that day, he was about to approach when he also saw the two militiamen following. ‘So I followed you here, waited a while, then got myself arrested too!’

  ‘But that’s insanity! Isn’t it?’

  ‘Not as long as we’re gone before morning. Anyway, I couldn’t leave you here alone, could I?’

  They wouldn’t need to pick the lock, he explained, or wrench out window bars or blow the place up. These days a well-placed bribe was generally all that was needed, that or a mild threat. ‘The po
lice sergeant’s a local man; he has a son in the army up north. He’s on our side.’

  Sure enough, about an hour later, they heard a tinkling sound and something metallic and glinting appeared on a string through the window. The key to the door. Five minutes more and the youths were tiptoeing past the deserted front desk and scattering into the moonlight.

  He and Nightjar walked out of town, past an ancient fort on a hill and on into open farmland. A strict curfew was in force, but by keeping to paths and tracks their progress went unnoticed. Towards dawn Nightjar began searching the track with a flashlight, then turned into an overgrown olive grove, ducking beneath thick bushes backing on to woodland. ‘In here.’ Rummaging through the undergrowth he unearthed a knapsack. ‘We stay here. Long day today.’

  ‘What of the Cellini cell?’ Theo asked as they bedded down. ‘And you, you’re a long way from home.’

  Nightjar produced cheese and wine. ‘The Cellinis broke up after you left. After the Tolomei operation. We were amateurs and knew it, and then we had no one to lead us. It was too risky anyway. The authorities made a big fuss about Tolomei, started searching house to house. I was sent south by my father for safety’s sake. Stayed in Naples for a while living with an uncle, fell in with some lads there, then moved out into the countryside when Mussolini got ousted.’

  ‘How many are you?’

  ‘Five or six. But more joining all the time.’

  Theo nodded. Not the hundreds he’d been led to expect.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Nightjar read his thoughts. ‘The people’s revolution is coming!’

  They munched in silence for a while.

  ‘What’s in the suitcases?’

  ‘Money, supplies, clothing, one Sten, fuses, a couple of handguns.’

  ‘No wonder they’re heavy.’

  ‘The second one has a radio.’

  ‘They’ll all have to be hidden. So will you.’

  ‘Why, what’s happening?’

  ‘Something huge. Tedeschi are everywhere, heading south like mad to take on the Allies when they come, and very jumpy, very trigger-happy. Italian army doesn’t care any more – everyone thinks they’ll throw in the towel. But not the Tedeschi: they’re fighting it out, and don’t care who they take with them. Nor should the Allies underestimate their intent.’

  ‘So why the hiding?’

  ‘Right now they’re searching, everywhere, for deserters, partisans, young men to pressgang, arms caches or anything that smells of resistance. And shooting anyone they suspect: ordinary folk, women and pensioners, peasants and villagers, anyone offering help or hiding. But the moment the Allies come their attention will be diverted. And that’s the moment we come out and strike.’

  ‘How long, do you think?’

  ‘We’re hoping you’d tell us!’

  Weeks at most, he’d been told, at his final briefing in Cairo. Sicily had taken longer to secure than anticipated. But now that it was, the main invasion could be expected in a matter of weeks. A month at most.

  ‘It could be a while.’

  *

  Nightjar said that moving in open daylight was too risky, so they lay low for most of the day. Throughout it the air grew hot and humid, heavy with pollen and buzzing insects. In the chestnut woods behind the grove a thin stream trickled and they were able to wash and replenish water bottles. No one came near but in the distance they heard the rumble of heavy traffic and twice in the afternoon German fighters passed overhead. At dusk they emerged and made ready. A sultry wind fretted, while to the north lightning flickered within soot-black clouds. Nightjar produced a pistol from the knapsack and tucked it into his wide leather belt. He wore black corduroys and a green collarless shirt with a neckerchief. ‘German army,’ he said, lacing his boots. ‘Took them off a corpse.’ He shouldered his knapsack. ‘Right, give me a suitcase, we’ve a long march.’

  Half an hour later the rain began.

  It went on all night, wind-thrashed downpours that churned roads to rivers, dusty tracks to sucking bog, and drenched them repeatedly as though flung from buckets. The good thing, Nightjar shouted above the din, was that nobody would see them, as nobody would be mad enough to come out searching. Theo nodded, wiped the sodden hair from his face and trudged doggedly on. Mostly upwards it seemed, ever higher and ever deeper into what he guessed were the Apennines’ Matese Mountains. As they ascended, the villages became scarcer, smaller and more humble; whenever they came to one Nightjar chose if they would walk straight through it or if they must circle round. He didn’t say why and Theo didn’t ask, he kept his head down and his legs moving, recalling rain-soaked training marches with 2nd Battalion down in Bulford. How they’d go all night, forty miles or more with full packs, fifty minutes’ marching and ten minutes’ rest, hour after hour, before arriving back at camp, singing lustily to annoy the other two battalions.

  Much later the rain eased and the clouds broke to reveal a thick canopy of stars swirling above steep craggy peaks. A little further and they came to another village, barely a ramshackle cluster of cottages and barns clinging to a hillside. This one they entered, following narrow cobbled alleyways to a tiny piazza with a stone water trough and whitewashed chapel bearing the legend ‘San Felice’. Sheep stirred in a pen; somewhere a dog started barking; he thought he glimpsed a curtain twitch.

  ‘Wait here,’ Nightjar whispered, and vanished into the shadows.

  Theo sat, filling his bottle from the trough and massaging his calves. His feet were sore and blistered, his arms ached from the suitcases, his clothes were sodden and he smelled of mud and sweat. Nearby a rooster crowed the coming dawn. A few minutes more and Nightjar was back. ‘Today we stay here, follow me.’

  He led them to a cottage in an alley. The door was opened by a middle-aged man in a nightshirt and bearing a candle. His wife, grey hair awry and similarly clothed for night, was already bustling about an iron range. ‘Vestiti bagnati,’ she muttered, snapping her fingers, and dutifully they shed their wet clothes. Blankets were found for their shoulders, milky chestnut coffee served, together with biscotti and tiny glasses of fiery liquor. Little was said. Theo thanked them politely; they nodded back, eyeing him curiously. Once breakfasted they were shown outside to a hayloft above a chicken pen. Hefting their bags up the rickety wooden ladder, they crawled inside, closed the door and fell into exhausted slumber.

  He was roused by the sound of voices outside. Nightjar was gone; sunlight through a chink in the door told him it was afternoon. He listened, breath held, as the talking rose and fell. It was some kind of discussion, or argument, in Italian; Nightjar’s voice was among them. Then someone laughed. Wrapping the blanket around his shoulders he descended to the ground.

  Five men stood in the yard: Nightjar, three youths and the older man from last night. Theo was introduced, and warmly greeted by the youths who clasped his hand in respectful awe. They were fellow partisans, he gathered, part of Nightjar’s cell and eager to meet the famous Horatio. All bore nicknames: Renzo, Lucien and the third boy who was called Guercio or ‘one-eyed’ after an accident with a carbine. The older man’s name was Salvatore. The discussion, it emerged, was about what to do with Horatio now that he was actually among them. Villages in the area were being systematically searched for deserters or partisans, and the hills themselves were regularly combed by patrols. The Carabinieri couldn’t be trusted, nor the municipal police; fearful local officials would gladly betray anyone, and even the Corpo Forestale or forest rangers were known to turn in fugitives for cash. Villagers, though sympathetic, were terrified of reprisal, and few anyway could be trusted not to gossip.

  ‘How long are we talking about, boys?’ Salvatore asked.

  ‘Just a week or two. Until the Allies come.’

  ‘Then what about the Poeli farm? It’s pretty quiet down there.’

  ‘Can’t trust old man Poeli, not since the British bombed his sister in Salerno.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I forgot.’

  Renzo scratched his chin. ‘We
could stick him in the caves up on Monte Miletto.’

  ‘And get spotted traipsing up and down with provisions every day?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Nightjar nodded. ‘The caves would do for a day or two, but no longer. We need something better.’

  ‘We could dig him a hole in the ground...’ Guercio offered.

  ‘Idiota.’

  Salvatore’s wife appeared, the woman who’d served them the previous night, and began folding stiff white sheets into a laundry basket. ‘What about Rosa?’ she said.

  A pause. ‘You mean Pazza Rosa?’

  ‘Didn’t she murder her husband?’

  ‘That’s just a story,’ she scoffed. ‘And she’s not pazza, just a little eccentric. And set in her ways.’

  ‘And old, and deaf!’

  ‘Maybe that’s an advantage.’

  ‘Yes, but what about the twins?’

  ‘The twins won’t talk.’ Salvatore spat in the dirt. ‘Rosa’s perfect.’

  They set off at dusk, the San Felice partisans, comprising Nightjar, Renzo, Lucien, one-eyed Guercio and their reluctant leader Horatio. ‘Pazza Rosa’, he learned as they ascended steep woodland paths, was a widow of unknown age who lived high above the village on a remote patch of scrubby farmland near dense forests. Few if any visitors ventured there, partly because it was so inaccessible, partly because Rosa was pazza and hostile to strangers, and partly because of a bull ox she kept called Bruno who was famously ferocious. She lived with her twin grown-up children, one of whom was a deaf mute called Francesca, the other her brother Vittorio, whose brain had been damaged during their birth.

  As the five ascended it grew noticeably colder, and soon began to rain again. Eventually the path levelled, opened on to a narrow plateau and became littered with farmyard jumble: rusting buckets, coils of wire, an ox plough. A painted sign appeared warning ‘Keep Away’ and then suddenly two hunting dogs on chains leaped up, furiously pulling at their tethers and snarling like wolves. At this point the three younger boys elected to wait, while Theo and Nightjar gingerly continued on. Gradually a cave-like dwelling emerged from the gloom, built of stone and set into the hillside, with tiny windows and a moss-covered roof of thatch. Twenty yards from the threshold the small wooden door flew open and a figure emerged bearing a lantern.