The Girl in the Baker's Van

by Richard Savin

  It was eerily quiet after the others had gone, just the crackle of the fire and the sound of Kasha’s laboured breathing. Outside, the wind had abated and there was an air of calm. José had been right; almost on the hour after they had first seen the movement in the bottom of the valley he heard the sound of horses snorting and the clatter of hooves striking loose rocks. He picked up the rifle that José had taken from the dead man in the garage and went to the door of the hut. He could hear them coming along the track but they were still hidden by the rising ground. It could only be minutes before they would come into view and they would see the hut. If he stayed in the hut the stone walls would protect him but he would be pinned down. Eventually he would run out of ammunition and then he would be like a rat in a hole and the terriers would be sent in to get him. He had no choice; he had to get out to the cover of the rocks where he could manoeuvre. It was his best chance; it was his only chance. He quickly went back to check on Kasha; he was still breathing but only very feebly now.

  As he got to the door he saw them – six men on horseback, four of them in the uniform of gendarmes, two in civilian clothing. It was too late to get out; he had delayed too long. The riders dismounted and the gendarmes took up defensive positions. The other two horsemen began walking slowly towards the hut. Grainger stepped out into their view, the rifle held to his shoulder. Behind the two men advancing on him he could see the heads of the gendarmes. Then, without warning, one of them stood up; there was the hard crack of a gunshot and the simultaneous smack of a bullet hitting the stone wall. Instinctively Grainger fired back at the standing figure. It was a grabbed shot but it had found its mark. The gendarme fell backwards with a jerk, hit squarely in the chest.

  Grainger jumped back into the shelter of the hut; it was a reflex action and one that saved his life. Random and chaotic shooting broke out and in the hail of fire that followed, the two men who had been coming towards him flung themselves to the ground. ‘Now there are five,’ Grainger mentally noted. One of the men on the ground got up and shouted at the three gendarmes to cease firing, yelling in frustration, ‘I want them alive, you IDIOTS!’ The second man then scrambled to his feet and in that instant Grainger recognised him. It was the priest – Father Guillaume.

  Grainger pulled open the door, moving further back into the darkness of the hut as he did so. From this position he could see them but to their eyes he was invisible. He waited to see what would happen next. The man with Father Guillaume came a few steps closer, then stopped. ‘Put your gun down and come out,’ he shouted in broken English; the accent was clearly German. ‘It is futile for you to resist. Give up – better to be a prisoner than a dead man.’ The German moved forward another step; Grainger recognised him – it was the Gestapo man, Schreiber.

  ‘No further,’ Grainger called out and loosed a shot which smacked the ground beneath Schreiber’s feet, showering his ankles with small pebbles as it ricocheted harmlessly into the distance. Schreiber stopped.

  ‘Another step and the next shot will kill you. Put your hands where I can see them – up above your head,’ he shouted, this time in German. ‘I know who are you – what do you want?’

  ‘Excellent German,’ came the reply. ‘They have trained you very well, your spymasters. I am Otto Schreiber of the Gestapo and I am here to arrest you and the other spy who calls himself Kasha. You, I know, are a British agent – Alpha Six. So you see you may as well give yourself up.’

  Grainger knew if he gave up now he would be a dead man as soon as they had their hands on Kasha – it wasn’t a difficult choice. Curiously, a picture of Jo, his sister, and then his friend Dennis flashed across his mind and it occurred that these might be pre-death visions. ‘If I surrender to you I’ll be shot – sooner or later because that’s what you do with foreign agents – so I might as well go down fighting. You sure as hell won’t survive.’

  Schreiber held up his hands, suggesting a truce. ‘We could do a deal.’

  ‘What deal?’

  ‘I am not so much interested in you. I want the Pole and the information he is carrying.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Schreiber did not reply. There was a noise of voices behind him and, still holding his hands in the air, he turned. Then the priest raised his hands. Grainger moved forward cautiously. A group of men came into view, men wearing peasant clothes and cloth caps. They had rounded up the gendarmes and were now advancing on Schreiber and the priest. Grainger moved slowly into the doorway, not sure of what was happening and expecting any minute to be shot at. Then he saw a face he recognised. ‘Mathieu! My God, Mathieu!’ The boy stepped forward, smiling, and grasped Grainger in a tight hug, kissing him on both cheeks.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘We had a message from Pau in Narbonne. He thought you might need help so we decided we should come up here and look for you. Just before we got here we heard the shooting – it was easy after that. These are my comrades.’ He indicated the rag-tag group all armed with an assortment of weapons, smiling proudly and sticking his chest out. ‘So what have we here?’ He stared hard into the face of the German.

  One of the gendarmes, a captain, had hustled his way forward, protesting about the interference. He waved a warrant that had been issued by a magistrate in Lézignan. ‘We are here to arrest this spy and it is treason for you to try to prevent it. The punishment will be severe.’

  A man from the group belly-laughed and called out to the captain, ‘You have no rights to do anything.’

  ‘I have the law of France!’ The captain ground the words out through his teeth belligerently.

  The man, who was not big but was armed with a revolver and a bayonet, grabbed the captain and turned him round roughly, pointing his face in the direction of the track. ‘You see that big rock over there,’ he hissed with anger, shoving his face up at the captain, ‘the one with the white cross. That is France on the other side. This …,’ and he stamped down hard on the foot of the gendarme, ‘…this is Spain – and you are on the wrong side of the border. So you can fucking well shove the law of France up your arse – or maybe I’ll do it for you.’ The captain snarled back at him but the man replied by dealing him a blow with the butt of the revolver he was holding. It struck the captain on the temple and he fell to the ground. ‘Actually,’ the man added with a triumphant shout, ‘this isn’t even Spain – it’s fucking Catalonia!’ A cheer went up from the group and the man took a theatrical bow.

  Mathieu looked at Schreiber, then at the priest. ‘What are you doing here, Father? You are in bad company.’ The priest didn’t bother to answer.

  ‘He’s the informer,’ Grainger said flatly. ‘He’s the one who’s been betraying your friends while all the time passing himself off as a patriot.’

  Father Guillaume’s face darkened. ‘I did what I did for France. Germany will win this war so why do the bidding of the British? To get more innocent French men and women killed? Is that it?’

  Mathieu looked puzzled. ‘So why did he help Kasha? He could have just turned him in.’

  ‘For money – or gold to be precise – stolen French gold. It had been hidden away in a village for more than a century. Somehow Kasha found out about it and got his hands on a map and some drawings and a key; and all the time British Intelligence were conned into believing he had some valuable secret for the Americans. The good Father needed him, but as soon as he knew where the loot was he let the dogs loose on him.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s what was in the package,’ Schreiber looked disdainfully at Father Guillaume. ‘So you were hoping I would take your two accomplices and leave you to pick up your stolen gold?’ He paused for a moment then added, ‘So - not spies – just some common criminals after all.’ Grainger smirked tauntingly at the priest, then turned to Mathieu. ‘What do you want to do with these two?’

  ‘The priest will have to be tried. We can shoot the other one, he is a spy.’

  ‘There is one other thing,’ Grainger said slowly, looking directly at th
e priest. ‘You killed Paul, didn’t you?’ Father Guillaume looked stone-faced and said nothing.

  ‘Father?’ Mathieu’s face had gone pale. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Why don’t you tell him, Father? It wasn’t Kasha; he told me and so did Cigale and I believe them. The story about them running out on us was a blind made up by you to cover your tracks. Go on admit it – you killed him. I don’t know why you did it – but you did it.’

  Mathieu was speechless for a moment then, with a deep sadness in his voice, he put the question. ‘Confess if it is so,’ he said. ‘You will be shot as a traitor anyway. Don’t go to God with a lie on your conscience. Purgatory will be hard enough as it is.’

  Father Guillaume took a rosary out of his pocket and began to mumble an almost inaudible prayer. When he came to the end of it he looked directly into Mathieu’s face and confessed. ‘I had no choice,’ he said in a voice that was without repentance. ‘When he came to me to return the package he told me he knew that I was a collaborator and unless I stopped he would expose me to the other members of the cell. It was my duty to stop him. I am truly sorry, Mathieu. I hope you can believe that.’

  ‘He was my brother,’ was all he said to the priest. There was a tear in his eye as he called to the others. ‘Gilles, David, Thibault,’ he shouted. ‘I need a firing squad for a confessed traitor and the murderer of my brother.’

  They marched the priest away and another of the group took Schreiber and corralled him with the gendarmes. Grainger watched the priest disappear over the ridge, then went back into the hut to check on Kasha. A short while later he heard the orchestrated crash of gunfire and knew the priest was dead.

  When Mathieu came back his tears had gone and he was restored. ‘Now I have to do something with this lot.’ He pointed to the gendarmes. ‘We’ll keep their horses. We can trade them for guns and ammunition in La Vajol; they can walk back. Trouble is one of them is badly wounded but if I give them a horse I know the others will use it and ride to get help. I need time to get you out of here and then get our cell moved on to a new location.’

  ‘I may be able to help,’ Grainger said after a moment’s thought. ‘There’s a donkey wandering around here somewhere – you could give them that. It’s an awkward customer; it’ll take them a while to get back but the wounded one can ride.’ They both sat and laughed for a moment, but the conversation turned to a sombre note when one of the firing squad reported that they were ready to execute Schreiber.

  For the past hour Grainger had been forming a plan, an idea that had come to him when Schreiber had been about to offer him some kind of deal. Now the prospect that they were about to summarily execute him loomed ominously over the idea. ‘I have a proposal I would like to make concerning the German,’ he said to Mathieu. ‘I don’t want you to shoot him.’

  Mathieu half scowled at the idea. ‘Go on, I’ll listen.’

  ‘He’s come halfway across Europe pursuing Kasha. I want to do a trade – Kasha for something he’s got that I want.’

  ‘What about Kasha, where is he now?’ Grainger nodded in the direction of the hut. ‘In there.’

  ‘It could be difficult with the others. They won’t like the idea of handing over an ally to the Gestapo.’

  ‘I’ve thought about that. How about I swop you the location of the gold for Schreiber? You can send your lads off to collect it. You could buy a lot of guns with a crate of gold Napoleons. It’s in newly minted twenty franc pieces – nice and shiny.’

  ‘It is tempting – but Kasha?’ Mathieu looked troubled.

  ‘He won’t mind.’

  Mathieu looked unconvinced by the answer. ‘Why?’

  ‘He died, about an hour ago. He got wounded a couple of days back; I think it was blood poisoning. Schreiber doesn’t know that, of course, and I’d have to keep it from him.’

  *

  ‘I have an offer for you. I think you will like it,’ Grainger said curtly. Schreiber sat impassively on the ground, his hands clasped behind his neck. ‘If you accept it we will not shoot you. Instead you will be released.’ Grainger saw a look of hope spark in Schreiber’s eyes and knew he was going to cooperate.

  ‘And what must I do to earn this reward?’

  ‘It is simple. I want you to send a message to your colleagues in Berlin. We have a radio and I will tell you what to say. As you know I speak German so I shall be watching you. Be clever and this will end well for everyone.’

  *

  The picture of Hitler that had watched unblinkingly over Helmut Kandler now cast its eye at a slightly wonky angle. Instead of looking deep into the far horizon the Führer’s gaze was directed downwards toward the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. Becker had noticed that with every bombing raid it had a proclivity to slip sideways. He was standing on a chair to straighten it when the door to the office opened and a colonel of the Abwehr walked in. ‘I have a mission for you,’ he said. ‘Do you have a warm coat because you are going somewhere cold?’

  Sitting in the back of a Mercedes on the way to the airstrip at Templehof he read his instructions. In the office of the flight kommandant they issued him with a leather helmet and a fleece-lined flying suit; he would need it because the plane they led him to was a Feisler Storch. The rear-facing gun position had been stripped out and two tight seats had been fitted into the narrow space. It was a flimsy lightweight with a low stall speed and no heating. However, it was perfect for dropping into tight places where there was no runway.

  When he climbed into the cockpit and sat next to the pilot he turned to see a man with a pale and weedy appearance, handcuffed to his seat. His face showed traces of recent bruising and there was a partially healed scar under one eye. Becker found himself wondering what mentality had ordered him to be chained; he was hardly likely to escape at nearly five thousand feet, and anyway why would he want to? But nobody had told him he was about to be set free; they had just chained him up and for all he knew he might now be heading for an execution.

  The Storch shook like a leaf in a storm as it battered its way south, revving at the limit of its uprated engine. In the early evening, just before the light went, it circled the ridge. The pilot made a low pass to inspect the patch in front of the hut that Mathieu’s group had hastily cleared, but there were no flares – just a fire burning at one end, the remnant embers that Grainger had scooped up from the floor of the hut and rekindled. The pilot made a second pass and, as he did so, Becker clearly saw Schreiber below him waving his arms. The plane seemed to hang motionless for a split second, head up to a slight breeze, then dropped lightly onto the landing strip, as elegantly as a seagull finding its perch on the spindle of a weather vane.

  As the engine sputtered to a halt and the prop made its final jerky rotations Becker turned the handle on the paper-thin aluminium door of the Storch and jumped down. Mathieu and another of his group checked him to make sure he was not armed, then let him come forward. He saluted Schreiber and both men shook hands enthusiastically. The pilot pulled forward the man who had been huddled in the rear seat; he took off the chain, then helped lower him to the ground. The man stood there confused, not knowing what was to happen next. Neither Becker, nor the pilot, nor the faceless jailers who had chained him had bothered to inform him of his fate, and he had long ago learned not to ask questions – only to answer them.

  Schreiber turned to face Grainger. ‘This is my half of the bargain. Where is yours?’

  ‘In there.’ Grainger pointed to the hut and for a moment Schreiber looked at him as if he didn’t believe it, that he had been so close to his quarry all this time and it rankled with him that had not known it.

  ‘Bring him out,’ Grainger called over to Mathieu, who was standing with some of his comrades close to the hut. Two of them went in, shortly reappearing with Kasha. They carried him, his great frame propped up with their shoulders under his arm pits, his head hung forward, his knees bent and the toecaps of his boots dragging along the ground. Schreiber looked at Becker, then at the pilot.
When they reached the three Germans they let go of Kasha’s body. The knees bent and it slumped towards the ground, but as it folded it came to rest in a bizarre kneeling position, arms hanging limp and its head tilted forward. There Kasha’s lifeless form balanced on its knees, like a man making his confession at the altar rail, waiting for absolution.

  Seconds ticked by as Schreiber just stood and looked, not sure what to make of what knelt in front of him. He stepped forward to touch Kasha, but as he reached out the corpse keeled over and fell sideways onto one shoulder. Schreiber hesitated, then bent down and put his hand on the face of what had once been Kasha. It was cold like a slab of pork on a butcher’s block. He peeled back one eyelid and stared into a vacant, visionless orb. Slowly he stood upright, but the anger Grainger had anticipated for this moment of discovery did not materialise. The policeman in Schreiber would not permit an exhibition of emotion. He considered his position then made a simple statement, ‘This man is dead.’ The tone of his voice was measured and calm – that of a person stating a fact.

  ‘It rather looks that way.’

  ‘That was not the deal.’

  ‘Yes it was.’

  Schreiber was shaking his head. Inside it his mind was trying to salvage something from the position, but nothing came to him. ‘No, this is a corpse.’

  ‘You said you wanted Kasha. This is Kasha.’

  ‘But he is dead!’

  Grainger raised his eyebrows and gave a sardonic grin. ‘True – but I didn’t say he would be alive, and you didn’t make that a condition. You’ve got what you came for.’ Schreiber pursed his lips and a look of resignation spread across his face. He had been outmanoeuvred and he knew it.

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ Grainger said cheerfully, ‘you have your prisoner. True, you won’t be able to interrogate him but on the other side of the coin nor will the Americans. Whatever secrets he was carrying, if indeed there were any, he will take with him to his grave.’ He beamed a much broader smile, and with the levity of which he was so often accused could not resist one last stab at his victim. ‘Anyway, you would have shot him once you got him back to Berlin. This way you saved the cost of the bullet. Everyone’s a winner. I should go if I were you – you’re standing in somebody else’s back garden and I don’t know for how long this lot will put up with it.’