by Robert Rigby
Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
To Reynard
PROLOGUE
South-west France, autumn 1940
Gaston Rouzard was in a foul temper. He had drunk far too much cheap red wine the previous evening and fallen into a troubled sleep in a lumpy armchair.
Soon after dawn he was roughly shaken awake by his grinning, unsympathetic friend, Raymond Martel, and without breakfast or even his usual cup of strong black coffee, he hurried to Chalabre station to catch the first train to Lavelanet, where he lived and worked as a gendarme, and where he was due to go on duty.
When Gaston bustled, panting and sweating, into the gendarmerie, the phone was ringing. He flinched as the sound clanged in his thudding head, then picked up the receiver and barked into the mouthpiece: “Yes, what is it?”
In a few urgent words the caller explained the situation. An explosive device had been detonated beneath a railway bridge on an isolated stretch of track between Lavelanet and Foix. Part of the bridge was down and the track was blocked; trains could not pass. It was chaos, and it needed sorting.
“Who is this?” Gaston growled.
“Look, it’s dangerous there; I have to get back. And you’d better come quick,” the caller replied before hanging up.
The call did not improve Gaston’s temper. “More trouble,” he moaned, walking out of the gendarmerie. “So many troublemakers, and always me who has to sort them out.”
Gaston had never learned to drive, so he ignored the Citroën in the police yard and went to the motorized bicycle resting against one wall.
He hated riding the thing: he was too big for it and he felt stupid when the people of Lavelanet saw him chugging slowly through the streets. But he had no option; he was alone on duty so there was no one else to go to the incident.
He mounted the bicycle, pushed the small motor into position against the front wheel and pedalled away. The two-stroke engine coughed into life.
Gaston felt as grubby as he looked – and, he realized, smelled. He was unwashed and unshaven, alcohol seemed to be oozing from every pore in his body, there was a sour, bitter taste in his mouth and he still hadn’t had the cup of strong coffee he craved.
Fortunately, the scene of the incident wasn’t too far out of town, and soon he was turning off the main road onto what was little more than a farm track with wide fields on either side.
The bicycle bounced over dried mud and deep ruts, and Gaston’s mood darkened with each bump and shudder. He couldn’t afford to be away from Lavelanet this morning. He needed to know about last night’s mission. Had it been as successful as he anticipated? If all had gone to plan, it meant success for him and not for his enemies.
“I hope they got everything they deserve,” he grunted, smiling for the first time that day.
There were no houses or farm buildings on the narrow track, just the occasional stand of wind-bent trees and clump of scrubby bush. After five minutes of bumping along in a slow curve, there was a sudden, hard right turn where the road met the railway line and ran alongside it as the ground sloped sharply downwards.
The damaged bridge was less than a mile ahead. Gaston knew the spot; he’d passed beneath the bridge many times on train journeys. It went under another small road used mainly by farm vehicles and carts.
“Why do they do it?” Gaston said aloud, his temper rising again. “Kids. I’ll bet it was kids – some pathetic gesture over the war. But the war has nothing to do with us any more. We’re out of it.”
He pulled the bicycle to a standstill at a place where a rusted metal water trough blocked the way, marking the end of the road. Gaston would have to walk the last hundred metres or so.
Easing himself off the saddle, he wearily rested the machine against the trough and was suddenly chilled by the stiff breeze sweeping down from the Pyrenees. He glanced up towards the towering peaks and wondered again about the mission that had taken place last night. He would hear the news soon enough.
Gaston shivered and then blinked in the bright daylight, still groggy from the session of heavy drinking. Reaching down, he dipped the fingers of one hand into the murky water in the trough. It was icy. Winter was coming.
He ran two wet fingers across his aching brow, flinched, then trudged forward, pushing aside thin, straggling branches as the track narrowed to a footpath.
“Hello!” he called, glimpsing the bridge through the bushes and overhanging branches. “I’m here! Gaston Rouzard! Gendarme! Where are you?”
There was no answer. The only sound was the distant cawing of crows.
“Bloody typical,” Gaston said, pushing on. “They call me to sort things out and then leave me to it. How am I supposed to repair a bridge? I’m a policeman, not a bloody railway engineer.”
The bridge sat in a clearing, and as Gaston nudged aside the last branch blocking his view, his eyes widened and he stopped walking. There was no sign of any damage. No fallen bricks or stone, no rubble of any description on the track.
“What the…? What’s going on here?”
Warily, he stepped over the closest rail and on to the track, his boots crunching on the ballast bed and tarred wooden sleepers as he got closer to the bridge. “Must be on the other side,” he muttered.
He walked under the single arch into shadow and gloom. The bricks above his head were damp and mossy, but none had fallen onto the track. It looked perfectly clear in both directions.
Gaston sighed angrily as he moved back into the light. “It’s a bloody joke,” he snarled. “Someone’s got me out here on a wild goose chase!”
“No, Gaston,” a voice behind him said. “It’s not a joke.”
Gaston spun around and then stared. “You! What are you doing here?”
The man facing him didn’t reply.
“Look,” Gaston snapped, “I don’t have time for playing games. You of all people should know that.”
“It’s no game, Gaston.”
“Then what’s going on? Why here? We could have met in town.”
“No. Not this time.”
“What are you talking about?” The anger in Gaston’s eyes changed to a look of concern. “Last night,” he said quickly. “Did something go wrong last night?”
“Oh, yes, something went wrong. Something went very wrong. They found out about Yvette Bigou.”
“Yvette? But how – how could they?”
“Because she failed the one task she was given. So I dealt with her before they could get to her.”
“Dealt with her? I don’t…”
Gaston fell silent as he watched the man pull a snub-nosed pis
tol from the right pocket of his jacket.
“And now, Gaston, I have to deal with you. You’re too much of a liability.”
“No. No, wait,” Gaston gasped. “No, that’s impossible. You can’t shoot me, not you… I’m taking over … me…”
His trembling hands snatched at the holster on his belt, fingers fumbling desperately at the flap covering his police issue handgun.
But it was already too late. The pistol spat out a round. Gaston heard the sound just as the bullet punched into his chest and sent him sprawling to the ground beside the track.
He lay there, terrified and bewildered, his face in the dirt. There was a roaring in his ears, tears in his eyes and a sudden sweet taste in his mouth. He so desperately needed that cup of coffee to wash away the sweet taste in his mouth.
He heard footsteps and the pistol sounded again.
And then Gaston knew no more.
ONE
April 1941. Day One.
Paul Hansen stared moodily at the flickering flames in the wood-burning stove; its double-hinged doors were wide open for maximum heat.
The steady ticking of the slate clock invaded Paul’s thoughts and he glanced across at it; why did clocks always tick more loudly when you were waiting for something to happen? It was almost time for the BBC news bulletin from London. Listening to BBC broadcasts was illegal in France, even in the Free Zone. But those who wanted to know about the progress of the war took the risk and listened anyway. And Paul Hansen had an almost obsessive need to know about the progress of the war.
It had been a long and bone-achingly cold winter. Paul could scarcely believe that the sun-drenched south-west France, which he’d first encountered at the end of the previous summer, could turn so bitingly cold in wintertime. Growing up in England and Belgium, he had never experienced such cold. There had been frosty days, ice and occasionally thick snow, of course, but nothing remotely like the winter that had just ended. On some days, with smoke from the stoves in every home in Lavelanet climbing into low grey cloud, the temperature had plummeted to minus 19 or 20 degrees.
And throughout those hard months, each time Paul gazed towards the snow-topped peaks of the Pyrenees, he was reminded of his failed attempt to cross those mountains into Spain, and of the brutal deaths that marked that failure. The memory was always with him, like so many other memories of the past months.
But at last spring was arriving. Heavy rains were washing away the snow from the lower slopes, swelling the rivers; trees were putting on new leaves and the ground was warming. Most nights were still bitterly cold though, and tonight was no exception.
Paul felt restless and unsettled. He turned to his friend Didier Brunet, who was sitting, equally thoughtful, in a second chair facing the stove.
“Time for the news,” Paul said.
Didier got up and went to the radio set perched on a cupboard. He switched it on and the dull yellow light illuminating the dial grew brighter as the valve warmed. The set was never left tuned to London; it was wise to be careful, even in the Free Zone.
The radio whined and whistled as Didier turned the dial; fragments of French and German came through fleetingly before the familiar chimes of Big Ben sounded. Didier settled back into his chair as the newsreader began to speak.
The news was not good. The Germans’ blitz of London and other major cities was continuing. There had been air raids on Portsmouth, Plymouth and Bristol, and in Scotland, the Luftwaffe had bombed Glasgow and the shipping area along the River Clyde. Fighting between German and British troops in Africa was intensifying and, reading between the lines, it appeared that the enemy was gaining the upper hand. And in the Atlantic, German U-boats had struck again at merchant shipping, inflicting heavy losses.
Paul spoke English as well as he spoke French, but Didier understood only the words and phrases he had picked up from his friend and the BBC, so as the broadcast continued, he frequently asked Paul to translate.
When the bulletin was over and the set switched off, they lapsed into a gloomy silence, with Paul’s mood darkening even more. He had recently turned seventeen, but the events of the previous seven or eight months had forced him to grow up quickly. He picked out a log from the wicker basket and tossed it into the open stove. Sparks hissed and crackled, and burning ashes spat onto the wooden floorboards.
“Sorry,” Paul said quickly, jumping to his feet and stamping on the smouldering embers.
Didier smiled. “I know the news is bad, but there’s no need to burn the house down; my mother wouldn’t be pleased.”
Paul forced a smile and sank down onto his chair. “I feel useless, Didier. The war gets worse by the day and we sit here doing nothing.”
“All we can do is wait,” Didier said.
“It’s not as though I’m meant to be here, anyway,” Paul continued, as though not hearing Didier’s words. “I should have been in England long before now. I could have joined the army and been out there fighting somewhere.”
“I doubt it,” Didier said. He was a year and a half older than his friend, and more patient by nature. “You’re not actually old enough to join the army.”
“I’ll lie about my age. I wouldn’t be the first.”
“Last year you said you wanted to stay here to continue the fight. Remember?”
“Of course I remember, but it’s been six months and we haven’t fought anyone. We haven’t done a thing. I thought we’d at least get Gaston Rouzard, but someone even beat us to that.”
“To keep him quiet,” Didier said. “And that means whoever killed Gaston is still around. Biding his time. Listen, it’s like Henri says, it’s difficult to be an effective resistance group when there are no Germans here to fight.”
Didier was right. France, along with Belgium and the Netherlands, had surrendered to Germany in June of the previous year. Since then, the northern part of the country and the whole Atlantic coast had been occupied by the Germans, while the southern Free Zone was officially out of the war and being governed by a hastily organized French administration based in the town of Vichy.
But few were fooled. The Germans held southern France in an iron grip: even though they were not actually present, their spies, informers and collaborators certainly were.
“I don’t think I can wait any longer,” said Paul in response to Didier’s earlier words.
“What do you mean?”
“If the Germans won’t come to us, then I’ll have to go to them.”
“And how do you intend to do that?”
“Spain first, and then England and the army. The weather’s improving, I’ll ask Henri if I can make another attempt to get across the mountains into Spain. Just because the guides turned out to be murderers and thieves last time doesn’t mean we can’t find others to do the job.”
“Yes,” Didier said nodding, “there are plenty of true patriots who will take you across. So you’ve changed your mind – you do want to leave after all?”
Paul hesitated. “Look, Didier, you’ve all been so good to me; I feel at home here. And I don’t have any other home now, not since…”
Didier knew what his friend had been about to say. “I can understand you hating the Germans, Paul, after what they did to your parents. And I can understand you wanting your revenge.”
“But it’s not just about revenge, and I don’t hate all Germans. There are good and bad Germans.”
“And good and bad French and good and bad English,” Didier said, smiling.
Paul nodded. “It’s the Nazis and everything they stand for that I hate. And in one way I admire the Germans.”
“Really?” Didier asked, raising his eyebrows. “In what way, exactly?”
“They’re ruthless. And if we want to win this war we have to be ruthless too. I want to part of it.”
“Our chance will come, Paul. Be patient for a little longer.”
“I can’t,” Paul said, shaking his head. “My mind’s made up, I’m going to speak to Henri.”
“And
what about Josette?”
The burning wood crackled and spat, and the flames from the stove cast flickering shadows on the walls of the small sitting room.
“Yes,” Paul said, looking into the flames. “What about Josette?”
TWO
They came in the night like phantoms, dropping noiselessly from a starlit sky, and landed soft as shadows on the frosty grassland.
And as the six silent men began gathering in the billowing material that trailed behind them, a seventh parachute floated down, the steel container suspended beneath it thudding more heavily onto the ground.
High above, a Junkers Ju-52 was circling, turning northwards, the steady drone of its engines already getting fainter.
The parachutists had landed in an area covering no more than 600 metres, following a single narrow beam of light that had guided the aircraft to the drop zone. The beam continued to shine as two of the men collected the chutes and followed their leader towards the light source.
The three others hurried to the container. One took responsibility for the parachute while the others disconnected the steel cylinder and picked it up, one at each end. Then all three followed the others towards the light.
Since the landing, not a single word had been spoken by any of the six men. They all knew exactly what to do. They were dressed in paratrooper jumpsuits, but were members of the Brandenburg Regiment, a German army Special Forces unit specializing in commando-type covert operations behind enemy lines.
The regiment was made up mainly of Germans who had lived abroad and were fluent in other languages. All six of these men could speak French, and the officer in charge spoke English too.
Aside from their ability with languages, they were elite soldiers: experts in fighting with small arms and in unarmed combat, and highly skilled in demolition and sabotage.
As they approached, a middle-aged Frenchman switched off the powerful torch, and the silhouette of a heavy lorry with a canvas covered back became visible to the soldiers.
The German officer wasted no time with introductions. “I’ll ride in the cab with you,” he said in perfect French to the waiting man. “The others will go in the back.”
