‘A war?’ Max sat down at the table and began selecting his pieces. ‘What war are you talking about?’ He glanced up, then allowed his eyes to widen sarcastically. ‘Oh, I see. You mean this war? This ersatz war we’re fighting against a few dozen losers hiding up in the hills, while we sit here, hundreds of kilometres from the front, waiting for our lords and masters to decide where and when they think the Allies are going to invade? Is that the war you are talking about?’
Meyer shrugged.
‘Well, I can tell you about this war of yours, Paul. We’re winning it. It’s amazing how effective fighter aircraft, tanks, artillery and crack troops can be against a bunch of poorly armed, poorly trained civilians.’ He shuffled his pieces into phalanxes, as though he were about to open up a second front right there on the game board. ‘You’re not talking about the conduct of a war, Paul. You know damn well what you are talking about.’
‘So what am I talking about?’
Max slapped down the double nine. ‘Me and the girl. You’re just having trouble getting to the point. As usual.’
Meyer raised his eyes to heaven. He picked up a domino in his heavy fingers and placed it fastidiously on the table. He knew Max well enough to know when it was time to talk, and when to remain silent. This was a moment to remain silent.
The fire crackled in the grate. There was the gentle click of the counters. Occasionally one or other of the two men would raise his glass and drink, light a cigarette, suck on his pipe. From outside the Bastide, the church clock struck ten in its usual hesitant way.
‘Come on then. Spit it out.’ Max refused to raise his eyes from the game. ‘Spit out whatever it is you have to say to me from behind the bush you’re so reluctant to beat.’
Meyer was briefly tempted to answer ‘Spit what out?’ and ‘From behind what bush?’ but he thought better of it. In his present mood, Max would probably overset the table. Instead he fished his handkerchief out of his pocket and made an extended song and dance out of blowing his nose. ‘The girl already has a fiancé,’ he mumbled. ‘Did she tell you that, perhaps?’
Max realigned his pieces for the third time, his brow furrowed in concentration. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t hear a word you said from behind that green half-shelter of yours.’
Meyer pocketed the handkerchief. He raised his voice. ‘The girl already has a fiancé. Did she tell you that?’
Max shuffled one of his pieces forward. For a moment it looked as if he would not respond to Meyer’s comment. Then, still without glancing up, he said, ‘Where do you get your information from? Afternoon tea with the village spinsters? Don’t tell me you’ve got the old dears making you Apfelstrudel already?’ Max flashed a baleful glance at Meyer, then returned his concentration to the table.
Meyer blew out his cheeks. This was going to be even more difficult than he had suspected. He would have to marshal his resources with extra-special care if he didn’t wish to bolt his quarry. ‘I get my information from Fombert. The landlord at the Bar des Amis. He more or less runs the black market here, as you well know. It’s from him I get the coffee.’
‘And why should this Fombert slug confide in you?’
‘Because the man’s a fool. He thinks he’s playing both sides against the middle. And because he’s an inveterate gossip. With a few drinks inside him and once I get him talking about the village, he can hardly keep his trap shut. He’s scared the inhabitants will turn on him when we are gone. He wants us to protect him.’
‘And you’ve told him, “yes, of course we shall”?’
‘Something along those lines.’
‘Bravo.’ Max clapped his hands silently. ‘And this is the man you trust for your information?’
‘He’s got no reason to lie to me. The information he gave me about Mademoiselle Léré simply came inside a whole mass of other useless stuff. The fellow has a terminal case of verbal diarrhoea.’
Max gave Meyer an old-fashioned look.
Meyer let the insult slide off him. He knew that when Max was in one of his moods, any pretext at rational conversation went straight out of the window. He would just have to get his information across despite the major’s obstinacy. ‘You’ve probably noticed the man. Hervé Najac. The one with the scarred face. A phosphorous bomb exploded near him when we shelled Tours in 1940. He has a permanent exemption from the Relève on account of his injuries. My impression is that Lucie and his marriage is a foregone conclusion. At least between their families.’
‘Lucie doesn’t want to marry anyone.’
Meyer looked up triumphantly. ‘Ah. Now the whole thing is perfectly clear. The girl doesn’t want to marry. And why doesn’t she want to marry? Could it have anything to do with you, by any chance?’
Max clacked his last tile down on the table. ‘There. You’ve lost again. You are the worst domino player I have ever had the misfortune to play against. It is impossible to lose as consistently as you do without meaning to. It’s like playing against a sieve.’
Meyer straightened up in his chair. ‘I can assure you that I don’t lose intentionally… ‘
Max waved away Meyer’s objections. ‘All right. All right. Forget the dominoes. I am completely uninterested in the dominoes.’ He stared at the table as if he expected it to move, like an Ouija board, and transmit him some sort of message.
Meyer sucked on his pipe, waiting. He sensed that the moment of truth had finally arrived – the moment he had been building up to all evening.
Max slapped the table. The dominoes jogged in place like performing fleas. ‘I have decided to take Lucie to the coast with me. Tomorrow, as it happens. In honour of her nineteenth birthday.’
The pipe fell out of Meyer’s mouth. His eyes opened wide and his face went slack, as if someone had shot him.
‘She has never in her life seen the sea, and I intend to rectify this. I am going to smuggle her out in the back of the Kubelwagen and drive her down to the coast. To somewhere between Biarritz and Arcachon, if time permits. If we leave early enough in the morning, we should be able to make it comfortably back here before nightfall, with no one the wiser. She will tell her mother that she is spending the day with her grandmother at the farm, as I shall be away for lunch, and there will be no necessity on this occasion to cook for me. Then she will explain to her grandmother that her mother needs her all day on account of some larger than usual party at the restaurant. That she will be arriving back home later than usual. Or even, perhaps, be staying over with her mother in town. Lucie tells me the two women aren’t on speaking terms with each other. So no one will ever suspect where she’s really gone to.’
Meyer brushed the last of the smouldering tobacco from the folds of his trousers. ‘Max, listen to me. Do you hear what you are saying? Have you gone completely insane?’
Max sat back in his chair. ‘Part of me, perhaps. The other part is resolutely sane. I want to do something special for this girl, Paul. She’s given me more than I have any right to ask of her. She’s given me her good name. And she expects nothing whatsoever in return. She’s taking all the risks, and I am taking none. It’s a small enough thing to want to see the sea.’
Meyer fought hard not to let his incredulousness at Max’s folly show in his voice. ‘What if you make her pregnant? The village mob will tear her to bits.’
‘We aren’t even sleeping together, for pity’s sake. She’s a decent girl. I respect her. And I respect the fact that she has had the honesty and the courage to go against her own people and consort with someone who should, by rights, be her enemy. To follow her heart and not her head, in other words. It may be difficult for you to believe, Paul, but I have never remotely felt for any other woman what I am feeling now for Lucie. She’s of an entirely different species from the people that surround her.’
Meyer leaned forward, an almost evangelical light shining from his face. ‘Of course it’s not difficult to believe. Just the opposite, in fact. I’ve got eyes in my head. But forgive me for saying this, Max, but you’ve been fighting pretty much n
on-stop for the past five years, and you’ve had more to do with body lice during that time than you’ve had to do with women. As a result, my friend, you are romantically susceptible. In fact, you are a disaster waiting to happen.’ Max made as if to intervene, but Meyer held up his hand. ‘No. Wait. Let me have my say. You’ve got to take hold of yourself, man. If this thing ever gets out it may destroy you. You have the men to think of. What if the terrorists attack while you are away? The Sicherheitsdienst will assume that you have allowed yourself to be duped by the girl, and will probably have her shot. Or even worse, they will assume that you yourself were in some way responsible, and have you shot. And while they’re about it, they will probably have me shot, too, for not talking you out of this lunacy.’ Meyer threw up his hands and fell back in his chair.
‘So you’ll cover for me, then?’
Meyer dropped his chin onto his chest. He shook his head from side to side, then slowly raised his eyes. ‘No, Major. I’d happily take a bullet for you, as I know you would for me – but that’s friendship, and in the heat of battle. This is warfare, and in the ice-cold light of day. I can’t do this thing you ask of me. I won’t be a party to a good man destroying himself. You listened to me in Belgrade, remember? When you’d gone against orders and crossed the bridge? Well, listen to me now.’
‘I’m listening, Paul. I owe you that much. But I can’t promise anything.’
Meyer hesitated, briefly tempted to relent. Then ten years of training and command in the field sheared through his doubts. Von Aschau was his responsibility. It was up to him to avert disaster. To represent the interests of the men. It was to no one’s advantage to have a commanding officer, however eminent and for whatever reason, behaving like an unexploded mortar shell. ‘Half of you is in love with risk, Max. With the thrill of it. Look at your medals. If read as a story, they reflect the career of a madman. By every law known to nature you should be dead by now. But you’re not. And then, out of the blue, your superiors take away the one thing you’re any good at. As the result of some idiot’s whim, they turn a brilliant fighting soldier into what amounts to a rear-echelon staff officer. And it’s killing something inside you.’
‘Go on. Finish what you have to say. Let’s get it all out into the open.’
Meyer swallowed. ‘It’s not complicated. What you’ve lost you obviously feel the need to replace. Just like the dog I told you about in Krambambuli. So you’ve gone out and chosen the one thing that can most effectively destroy you. If I didn’t know you so well, I’d say you were ailing for something. But it goes deeper than that, doesn’t it? It’s as if you’ve decided to engage in a game of Russian roulette. Only this time it’s with five rounds in the barrel. So, although it breaks my heart to say it, I must tell you here and now, Major, that I refuse to be a party to your suicide.’
Erste Licht
Someone was banging at the door. Max looked up from the letter he was writing. The church clock chose that moment to strike five for the second and final time, its tocsin seemingly dampened by the darkness.
Ah. Berger. On the dot, as usual. An hour before his customary time, just as Max had requested. Max folded up his unfinished letter to Bettina and locked it inside his desk, alongside his other unsent and unsendable words. ‘Come in.’
Berger concealed his surprise at finding Max already up and fully clothed, and set about laying the breakfast table with his usual clatter. Fresh farm eggs, salted bacon and Komissbrot, made by the unit cook to an old German recipe.
From his position near the writing table, Max could make out the first faint signs of the dawn breaking through from the east. It was going to be a beautiful day.
‘I shan’t be needing you anymore, Berger. I have a staff meeting to attend. In Montauban. I shall be driving myself.’
Berger stared across at Max, his mouth agape. For a split second he almost lost sight of his subordinate position. ‘Driving yourself, Herr Sturmbannführer? But that’s impossible. What about the terrorists? I shall fetch Hohner for you. It will only take me five minutes to wake him up. And you can detach one of the guards from the house to accompany you.’
‘I don’t need you to wet-nurse me, Berger. I said I shall be driving myself and I mean it. We have had absolutely no terrorist activity in our sector to date, and to be frank I don’t expect any until the Tommies invade. And as far as I am aware, they have not invaded this morning.’
‘No, Herr Sturmbannführer.’ Berger had regained some measure of self-control. He straightened up from arranging the breakfast things. ‘I mean yes, Herr Sturmbannführer.’
‘Yes, they’ve invaded?’
‘No, Herr Sturmbannführer. They have not invaded. But when they do, we shall repulse them.’
‘Yes. Yes. We certainly shall. In the meantime, you’d better make me up a packed lunch in case I am delayed en route. Some leberwurst sandwiches and a thermos of coffee should be more than sufficient. Real coffee, Berger, and not that ersatz nonsense you’re so keen on.’
‘Jawhol, Herr Sturmbannführer.’
Max watched Berger hurrying through to the kitchen. There was no earthly way to avoid the man suspecting something, of course. Best just to let him think that his commanding officer was a suicidal fool – at least that would tie in with the reputation he apparently enjoyed with the new intake. It didn’t seem to have occurred to any of them that the only way a man could earn himself a chest full of medals and survive to enjoy the glory was to be either resolutely non suicidal, or an arse-licking sycophant on the General Staff – and that the second course wasn’t exactly a viable option for normal human beings – just as Meyer, the freshly-minted martinet, had implied a few hours before.
Max finished his breakfast standing up, then busied himself checking the loads in his pistol. As an afterthought, he packed an M24 stick grenade into his empty attaché case. Didn’t pay to take more risks than was absolutely necessary, even if he was insisting on acting like a lovesick fool.
He hovered over the table, draining the last of his tea. Strange how things went. Barely six weeks before, when he had met Lucie for the first time, she had shied away from him as if he were carrying TB – and now she had such total confidence in him that she was allowing him to take her farther away from her home and her family than she had ever been in her life. The thought reassured him, like the final belt of Schnapps before a night patrol. He glanced at his watch again. Very well. He’d better be on his way.
He hesitated by the front door, one hand poised to pluck his greatcoat off the hook. What was he in the process of becoming? The thought surprised him with its unplanned appearance in his head. Here he was, a veteran officer of the SS, acting out the part of a petty crook. For years he had despised the sort of officer who put his own interests before those of his men. But wasn’t he doing exactly the same thing, now, himself? Driving out unprotected and at unnecessary risk, when the entire country was on an invasion footing?
Max was aware that his moral parameters were changing – the borders of what he considered acceptable behaviour, broadening like the banks of an in-spate river. He could almost feel himself detaching from his old self and becoming something other. But the process was not a healthy, instinctive one, as it should have been. No. This process was a colder, more considered procedure altogether. More along the lines of a surgical intervention.
* * *
Lucie stroked her hair into place, then covered it with a headscarf. She squinted briefly into the mirror, wondering if the frenzy that she felt in the pit of her stomach would be reflected on her face. A sheet-white mask stared back at her.
What was she doing, dawdling in the house? Did some part of her want to be found out? She could already hear her brothers stirring restlessly in the dark.
She blew out the oil lamp and tiptoed hastily to the front door. She knew exactly when it would creak, and stopped her movement just in time, slipping through the narrow crack and out into the courtyard with nothing more than a rustle of her clothes. For one
heart-stopping moment she was almost able to conjure the soft sound of her grandmother’s footsteps padding down the stairwell behind her.
She pulled the door to her, then hurried across the basse-cour, murmuring to the pigs so that they would not squeal in alarm. It was scarcely cold out, but still she gathered her coat about her shoulders in a vain effort to damp down her shivering. She permitted herself one final, backwards glance towards the house – dark shadows seemed to leach out towards her from its abandoned sanctuary, as though its familiar contours were in the process of spontaneous transformation.
A scarlet glow flared in the eastern sky. Lucie sharpened her pace a little, fearful that she had left it too late and that Max would arrive at the shrine, find her missing, and assume that she had lost her nerve and decided not to come. For a moment she allowed the horror of the thought to wash over her – almost enjoying it – as if fate, or destiny, were somehow more important than free will.
She glanced briefly in the direction of the Najac farm. She had hardly given a thought to Hervé these last few days. She knew he had been looking for her, because Lise had told her that her mother had caught him, on two separate occasions, loitering around the restaurant, and had sent him off with a flea in his ear. Village gossip had it that he was spending far too much of his time at the Bar Des Amis, drowning his sorrows in marc and Pastis when he should have been out working his farm. Lucie felt a pang of guilt when she thought about him, but it was almost immediately swamped by the excitement of what she was about to do.
As she stumbled along the rutted farm track she began to devise a comforting fantasy image of herself, as the nineteen-year-old Michèle Morgan in her favourite movie, Quai Des Brumes, hurrying through the early morning fog to meet her lover, Jean Gabin. Now she was doing almost exactly the same thing. And her lover was an officer. An aristocrat. With medals, and scars from where he had been wounded. He played music and she sang to his accompaniment. And best of all, best of everything – he had told her that he loved her. It was simply – and Lucie could already feel the warm glow of anticipation in her stomach – perfect.
The Occupation Secret Page 20
