The traveler was free to take a walk and stretch his legs, and find himself a razor, a toothbrush, and a comb of French manufacture. He observed that the town was full of Allied soldiers. He got a bath, a shave, and a meal, and promptly at the hour specified, no standing around and attracting attention, he reported at the dock. The speedboat waiting there was about twenty feet long and had a one-inch gun in the bow, one that could be aimed either horizontally or vertically. Lanny was amused to see the two young “scientists” make their appearance; the three smiled knowingly, but talked only about the weather.
The little vessel pulled away from the dock, put on power, and shot out of the harbor. The weather had been delightful now for weeks, grand fighting weather for Georgie Patton’s tanks and the planes which covered them, and the same for all operations in the Midland Sea. There was a breeze, just enough to kick up green and white waves, which the speeding little boat lifted up by its bow and scattered in showers over the deck. The passengers went below, for it wouldn’t do for them to be wet when they came ashore. A member of the crew handed each of them a small can; he hoped they wouldn’t need it, but his smile belied his words.
And sure enough, the wind rose, and the craft began to leap and buck. The three civilians became violently sick, turned a pale green, and lost their interest in helping to win the war. Sucking fresh lemons from Corsica did them no good, and the best the crew could do was to give them hard sea biscuits and candy to keep in their pockets, so as to restore their strength when they got ashore. Sea biscuits of French baking and candy of French manufacture—Naval Intelligence overlooked no smallest detail.
XIV
It was a miserable five or six hours, shut up in a tiny box with barely room to move their elbows; Lanny thought that the human race had never appeared more disagreeable; he would lean back and doze, but then somebody would waken him with violent retching. No wonder that seamen looked down upon landlubbers! These were very new seamen, but the weaklings had been weeded out. They knew that the passengers were going in on dangerous errands, so they tried not to patronize them.
Time passed. The violent heaving of the little craft died down, and a young ensign touched Lanny on the shoulder. Lanny followed him up the companionway, and when his eyes got used to the dim light of the stars he perceived that there was a still smaller craft on board the motorboat, one of those tiny kayaks which had set Lanny ashore south of Rome. It was made of wood and canvas, shaped like a bathtub and no bigger. The engines of the motorboat had been running slowly and softly, and now they stopped, and the craft drifted and came gradually to rest. The city of Cannes was blacked out, and so was the harbor, and Lanny could see nothing; but he had been shown a map with the spot marked where he was to be put ashore, outside the harbor, west of the mole. Now he trusted to a well-trained navigation officer who had secret ways of knowing exactly where he was.
Everything was still but the lapping of the waves. Not a word was spoken, and the men on deck wore soft overshoes; the enemy had his own secret ways of protecting his coast, and at any moment searchlights might flash out and a torrent of fire be poured upon the tiny craft. The officer in command gave a signal, and the kayak was laid down upon the water; a seaman stepped carefully in, and a paddle was handed to him. The passenger was helped down and took his seat, with his legs bent up and his feet packed out of the way of the seaman’s. The kayak was pushed away by hand, and the paddler went to work. Lanny could tell by the sound of the surf that they were near to the shore.
When they reached it they did not touch the rocks. The seaman whispered to his passenger to lean to one side, to balance the craft while he got out on the other side. After he procured a footing on the slippery rocks, in water above his knees, he had Lanny stand up and take a piggyback ride, for Lanny must not be wet. After setting him ashore the seaman went back to the kayak, dragged it ashore, and dumped out the water which had splashed into it. He managed the feat in silence, then launched the kayak again and paddled away. Presently Lanny heard the engines of the motorboat start up, not too loud, and heard the sound fade into the distance.
Lanny was in France again, this time among the scenes of his childhood. He couldn’t see them, but fond recollection presented them to view, and he enjoyed the wonderful sensation of being on something that didn’t leap and buck and upset the tiny balancing apparatus in his ears and thus throw his whole nervous system out of order.
24
Tongue in the Thunder’s Mouth
I
The traveler restored his strength by eating French biscuits and candy. He was in no hurry, for he was sure that no alarm had been given; the searchlights would have been used if such had been the case. He relied upon the Navy enough to think that he knew where he was, and there was plenty of time to reach his destination before dawn. When he felt stronger he got up and tiptoed over the rocks, away from the sea.
There were buildings, looming large and dark. Presently there was a path, then a highway, and then a railroad track; Lanny realized that the Navy had slipped up and put him too far to the west; he was close to that Villa de l’Horizon which had belonged to Maxine Elliott, retired American stage star. The railroad passed so close to her house that when a train roared by everything shook; you could hardly keep from closing your eyes, as if you expected to be hit. On the side toward the sea there was a swimming pool, and by it Lanny had sat and listened to Winston Churchill, clad in a red dressing gown and a big floppy straw hat. He had been writing his memoirs of World War I, and had declared that his political career was over, his party had put him permanently on the shelf. How little the cleverest of men understands his world!
Lanny didn’t mind walking on the Route Nationale by starlight. He kept a careful watch ahead for flashlights, a sure sign of the enemy, for civilians could no longer get batteries. When he saw one he made a wide detour, and so came into the Old Town, with warehouses and small factories and whole blocks of tall tenements, ancient and ill cared for and packed with human beings. In times of peace, on warm summer nights like this, you would have seen people sleeping on doorsteps or with their backs against walls; but now they stayed indoors in spite of suffocating heat, and Lanny couldn’t be sure whether it was because of a curfew, or because the Gestapo and their hired French agents were roaming the streets, picking up men of all ages, shipping them off to labor in Germany or on fortifications along this coast. The P.A. realized that his pocketful of papers wouldn’t help him much, for the more he convinced them that he was Henri Jean Marie Girouard, the more certain they would be to give him a job. When he heard voices he crossed the street, and when he saw several people together he backed up and went along another street.
He knew the streets well. As a boy his Uncle Jesse had taken him into one of these dingy tenements and introduced him to a woman Syndicalist, his first contact with the labor movement. She had struck a spark in his soul, and he had grown up to become a young idealist, out of touch with the life of this Coast of Pleasure, the playground of all the wasters of Europe. He had met Raoul Palma, a clerk in a shoestore, and had helped him to start and keep going a workers’ school, where Socialists and Communists and Syndicalists and all shades and varieties of these could meet and argue their ideas. Lanny had been the friend of all, and he wondered what had become of them, and which, if any, he was going to meet now.
II
The address given him was a tobacco shop, and it was shut up tight at this unlikely hour. There was a narrow alley alongside it, and, knowing the ways of the underground, he guessed that this might be the reason for its being a place of rendezvous. He groped his way into the alley and found there was a side door; he tapped on it softly, and it was opened so promptly that it startled him—there must have been somebody sitting right by the door, waiting. He whispered, “Bienvenu,” and a woman’s voice said, “Entrez.” The door was shut and bolted behind him, and he followed down a dark passage; the woman struck a match and lighted a candle, revealing a small storeroom with a cot in it, an
d a man lying on the cot. The slight sound awakened him; he sat up, and Lanny saw his old friend Raoul Palma.
This Spaniard had been in his youth one of the loveliest human beings that Lanny had ever seen; a painter had chosen him for the young St. John the Evangelist. He had delicately chiseled features, rich dark coloring, and an expression mild yet ardent. His dream was of a happy world order, to be attained by the co-operative working classes, and he had clung to that dream through a quarter of a century of disappointments. He lacked a sense of humor, but had loyalty and a quiet determination which shrank from no danger. Now when Lanny saw him it was a shock, for the bones stood out in his face and his coloring was gone; he was younger than Lanny, but he looked like an old man and one who hadn’t had enough to eat for a long time.
That did not keep him from starting up with an exclamation of delight and two kisses delivered in French fashion. Lanny noticed that he didn’t call him by name, and Lanny took the hint. The last time they met Raoul had been Bruges, but he might be someone else now.
The woman had left the room without a word, closing the door, and these two friends sat on the cot and spoke in whispers. Raoul said, “I have been so worried about you. You must not go out on the streets. They are picking up every stranger, and they are out day and night.”
“How are you managing it?” Lanny asked.
“I am used to it and know the tricks.”
Lanny didn’t say how many tricks he himself had been forced to learn. He replied, “When I asked for your help I expected to take your advice. Have you been told what I’m to do?”
“I was told nothing except that ‘Bienvenu’ wanted me. I came from Toulon, and it was a difficult trip. Yesterday we got the code message over the radio that you would arrive tonight, so I was expecting you.”
“Good service, I must say! You have a group here?”
“A strong one, and on tiptoe for action.”
“You know that the Allies are about to invade?”
“We have known that for weeks; everybody knows. They say a hundred thousand people have left the Riviera in the past month; everybody who has the money, or any place to stay in the interior.”
“How did they know it, Raoul?”
“Oh, there are reports of shipping activities in near-by Mediterranean ports; the assembling of landing craft there; the bombing of Toulon and Toulouse and military objectives all along the coast. Your planes have bombed out the radio-finding stations, and when you did that in Normandy the invasion came only a few days off.”
“I see you are well informed, old man.”
“There’s the logic of the situation; everybody knows the defenses here are weak and that it’s a long way from Germany. You will land here and march up the Rhône valley, join with the northern armies, and cut France in two.”
“Just how weak are the defenses?”
“There’s a lot of stuff on the coast, but it’s a shell; there’s nothing much behind it. The moment we rebels get the signal, we’ll cut all the communications. What the Germans have here now is all they will ever have. If only you bring enough to get ashore and stay.”
“I’m sure we have no other idea. That too is the logic of the situation.”
III
Lanny knew that he could trust this friend, and, more important, he was authorized to do so. He told about the false papers he carried, his visit to Seine-et-Oise, and his meeting with Julie. Since her husband had not heard from her for several weeks, this was glad tidings. Lanny described the visit to the Château de Bruyne, the letter he had got there, and the use he planned to make of it.
The Spanish Socialist’s voice was grave as he answered. “I thought of this as something you might have in mind, but I turned it down as preposterous. I must warn you that the man you have in mind is one of the very worst of our enemies. He is Darnand’s righthand man, and Darnand is perhaps the most hated man in France, not even second to Laval. We know him from of old, because he operated here in Nice, where he was one of the leading Fascists. Now he’s the Gestapo’s French agent; his hands are stained with the blood of thousands of French patriots.”
“I know all that; but we are trying to win a war and to save the lives of Frenchmen as well as of British and Americans. Don’t forget that there are going to be French divisions among those which attempt a landing on this coast. If we can seduce Vichy Frenchmen away from opening fire on them, is not that what you call the logic of the situation?”
“I grant all that—if it can be done. But the idea sounds like madness to me.”
“You must leave that to me, old man. I have been thinking about it for a couple of years, ever since we were planning the landing in North Africa, and I met Denis fils there. You must understand, both these brothers are honest men who sincerely believe in what they are doing. I have known Charlot since he was a boy, and I have a special hold upon him.”
“You must realize that you’ll be taking your life into your hands when you go among that gang.”
“A lot of our men are taking their lives in their hands, and they’ll be doing it on the Côte d’Azur very soon. If I can manage to have some of the guns badly aimed against them, it’s surely worth the risk.”
“Then what do you expect to do, Lanny? Convince our crowd that young de Bruyne has come over to them?”
“I expect to tell them the truth, and I expect you to back me up. They don’t have to love Charlot—they can call him a timeserver and a double-crossing scoundrel—but they’ll have to let him alone, as they did Darlan and Lemaigre-Dubreuil and the rest in Algiers.”
“And let your Army put them in power over us as they did there!”
“That’s something for the future; that’s for the French people to decide, and you will be free to have your say and cast your vote. But you can’t do it unless we win the war.”
Raoul gave up. “Bien, you want to meet de Bruyne. How do you expect to do it?”
“That is something on which I seek your advice. I was told that he was living at Bienvenu. Is he still there?”
“So our people report.”
“I might just go there and ask for him. But that might embarrass him, whichever way he decides. He would have to account for me, and it might awaken suspicions. On the other hand, if I sent a note to him, the messenger might be questioned, or the note might be read by someone else. I’m inclined to think the best way would be to telephone; he would know my voice and would come wherever I told him to.”
“But if he came over to our side, the enemy would get busy on every clue. A telephone call can be traced.”
“It should be from a public booth. And where shall I tell him to come?”
They both knew the city and discussed various places. In the end Lanny decided upon a program of boldness; he would go to the fashionable Hotel Métropole and register as Henri J. M. Girouard, order a room, go upstairs, and telephone Charlot to come there. Under police regulations Lanny would not have to report himself for a full day, and meantime he would be through and gone. Raoul objected that it might be suspicious for a man to arrive in Cannes when everybody else was leaving; but Lanny said that suspicions took time to crystallize, and he wouldn’t stay long enough. Raoul said the maquis had friends among the hotel staff, and a guard could be set up to protect Lanny in case of trouble; but the P.A. vetoed that. He was relying upon persuasion and surely wouldn’t take the chance of telling a number of persons what he was doing. If there were spies in a palace hotel, there would also be spies among the Partisans.
IV
Dawn was approaching, and Raoul would not let his friend walk into the fashionable part of the city. He asked for an hour’s time and went away; when he came back, Lanny followed him out to the street, and there, dimly visible, was a small one-horse cart such as French market gardeners use. A woman was driving, and Raoul whispered, “Cover yourself up, and if anyone lifts the cover she will say that you are ill.” Lanny could guess that he looked it, for the few bites of food he had had were a poor
substitute for what he had lost.
“I will telephone the hotel tonight,” Raoul said; and the P.A. climbed in and drew the canvas cover over him. The cart rumbled away at a walk as French farm horses go unless violently disturbed. After half an hour of bumping the cart stopped, and the woman’s voice said, “Ici, M’sieu’.” He got out and saw that he was at the side entrance of the hotel. He said, “Merci de tout mon coeur.” She deserved it, for she had risked the death penalty for him. He did not offer to pay, for it was not that kind of service.
He brushed himself off and walked into the hotel. There was no one in the lobby at that hour, and he was to discover later that there were few at any hour. The patrons of palace hotels had read accounts of what had happened to Cherbourg, Caen, and other places on or near the Channel, and they wanted none of it in their lives. Better to pack up a couple of valises and go and sleep in a wood hut in a forest, with only the hedgehogs for company.
Lanny registered and explained that his bagages had gone astray. Being a rather seedy-looking customer, he put the price down on the desk, and that made him respectable. He was escorted to the room, gave the bellboy the proper tip, and then locked himself in. His first step was to search the room for wiring and for peepholes; he even moved the bureau and crawled under the bed to make sure there was no listening hole into the next room. Then he took a bath, as well as a man could do with cold water and no soap; he shaved, under the same handicap, and then lay on the bed to rest and think and wait for daylight to make a telephone call less of an intrusion and an anomaly.
The number was that which he knew best of all numbers: the villa where he had spent his childhood, on the road which runs through the village of Juan-les-Pins and southward along the rocky shore of the Cap d’Antibes. As Lanny waited, he imagined the phones ringing—one in the drawing-room and the other in the long hall near the pantry. He assumed that several officers would be quartered in the house, and they would have orderlies to wait on them.
One Clear Call I Page 68
