Butcher and Bolt

by Will Belford

  They negotiated the broken fence and crept into the port, hiding in the shadows and sprinting across the open spaces when they had to.

  ‘It’s the fifth barge from the left, right there,’ whispered Claude, pointing. The Corsican went forward and scouted left and right, but there was no-one around. The river-front was empty and dark. They crept down an alley between two warehouses and came out directly across from the barge.

  ‘Wait here,’ said The Corsican, and disappeared around the corner.

  Joe’s ears were straining for the slightest noise, and his eyes were wide, trying to peer through the blackness along the pier. He heard a metallic clang, then a series of clicks and an engine started up, a deep diesel thrum, obscenely loud in the silence. He looked forward to see The Corsican casting off the front rope of the barge and waving them over.

  He and Claude broke cover and leapt across the pier to the barge. Claude took the wheel while The Corsican cast off the rear painter, and Joe pulled a boathook from the scuppers and fended the front off, pushing the nose into the stream.

  It wasn’t a huge barge, only about thirty feet from stem to stern, and as the bow cleared the barge in front, Claude lit up the engine and the boat surged forward.

  ‘Get your bearings!’ hissed The Corsican, gesturing at the rapidly receding shore. Joe looked hard at the dock. There were three barges to the left of the gap they had made, and four on the far side. Behind them he could see three warehouses and a crane that ran on tracks along the dock. The crane was at the far end of the line of boats. Joe blinked. Looked again. Took a mental photo of the scene, closed his eyes and visualised it, then opened them again. The dock had receded and they were entering the right-hand channel where an island of sand split the river as the loop began. Only the right-hand channel was navigable, something Claude had been most insistent upon reminding him.

  Joe expected lights to come on, and shots. But nothing happened. The dock remained silent and the barge slipped around the corner of the river and out of sight. They had done it. The easy part anyway.

  ~ ~ ~

  After two hours down in the hold, loading heavy boxes onto pallets to be lifted out by the crane mounted on the barge, Joe was exhausted. According to his watch it was nearly 4am, but the pile of crates didn’t seem to have shrunk appreciably to Joe’s tired eyes. They’d been hard at it from the moment the barge tied up. Only once had the crane winch jammed, delaying them for fifteen minutes while they unpacked the pallet to ease the pressure and unravel the crossed wire on the winch barrel.

  ‘What’s in these boxes anyway?’ asked Joe, as he and Claude waited in the hold for the hook to take up the next pallet-load.

  ‘I don’t ask so I don’t know,’ said Claude, ‘safer that way, but judging by the weight I’d say a lot of it’s small-arms ammunition. L’Hydre is planning on being overlord of Paris, and there are two other gangs we’ll have to take out. Not to mention the Germans, who are an annoyance.’

  ‘An annoyance?’ asked Joe incredulously.

  ‘Oui, they are far more zealous than your average French policeman’ said Claude. ‘We had to kill two of their investigators who got too nosey. They also breed informers like rats, so we have to be careful. That’s one reason why l’Hydre wanted you on this operation.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Joe.

  ‘Well, he can trust you, can’t he?’ said Claude, rolling his eyes. ‘You’re a British officer so you can’t possibly be an informant, and he can expose you at any time, plus he has your girlfriend as a hostage, you’re the perfect man – everything to lose, and nothing to gain by betraying him.’

  We’ll see about that, thought Joe to himself as the pallet came down and he started stacking boxes.

  Ten minutes later, Claude looked at his watch.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said, ‘go up and get familiar with the engine, I’ll join you in a minute.’

  ‘What about those boxes?’ asked Joe, pointing at a dozen crates that lay untouched towards the bow.

  ‘Don’t worry about those,’ said Claude, ‘there isn’t time.’

  On deck the stars had rotated and the moon was low in the sky. On the quay, Joe heard a truck engine start, then another, then Claude came out of the hold.

  ‘Now listen,’ said Claude, ‘when you take the barge back you have to moor it exactly the same way as it was before. This means you have go in a wide circle and swing in to the mooring position facing up-river. Take it slow and wide after you leave the channel, there’s not much room for error. Once you get the bow into the slot, cut the engine and run forward to throw the mooring rope. When you’ve got the rope over the bollard you’ll have to run secure the rear one before the stern starts to drift outwards. If you leave it too long you’ll drift out of range. Got it?’

  ‘What about the boat?’ asked Joe.

  ‘There,’ said Claude, pointing to a small rowing boat tied over the port side of the barge, ‘the oars are inside it. Good luck.’

  Claude started the engine and climbed over the gunwale onto the dock. That was when the first shot rang out.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Muzzle flashes sparked in the darkness and Joe crouched down out of sight behind the gunwale. He heard The Corsican shouting orders, then a fusillade of shots and the sound of truck engines revving madly.

  No-one seemed to be paying him any attention, so Joe concentrated on getting the barge into the centre of the river. He pushed the throttle forward and guided the barge out into the stream. He’d completed the circle and was heading back up-river when shots started coming at him from the bank.

  The first shot hit the hull with a thud, the second cracked past above his head. They sounded like pistol shots, certainly not sub-machine gun fire. Then a voice called out from the bank.

  ‘You in the boat, stop now and we will spare your life. We have a man on the bridge, he will shoot you like a dog as you go under.’

  Speaking French, not German? thought Joe. Was this the French police? No, they would have announced themselves. Then Claude’s words about the other gangs came back to him. He looked ahead and saw the bridge looming. There was no cover on the deck, the wheel was completely exposed. He had maybe thirty seconds before the man up there would have a clear shot.

  He took off his belt and looped it round the stanchion that held the wheel, then buckled it tight to keep the wheel steady. The bridge had two stone pylons, and the barge seemed to be heading right between them. Either way, he’d have to take his chances,

  Before he’d even registered the muzzle flash, the bullet smashed into the deck inches from his right foot. He leapt sideways and scrambled forward over piles of rope. Getting to his feet he staggered forward, tripped on a winch handle and fell headlong into the hatchway, half-in, half-out, teetering on his stomach.

  He scrabbled desperately at the lip of the hatchway but only succeeded in slowing his fall. With a savage wrench of his shoulder, he landed six feet below on the hard planks as three more bullets tore into the deck where he’d tripped.

  The barge motored on, the engine straining, and Joe lay on his back, moaning with pain. His left shoulder was on fire, and where he’d hit the deck his right hip sent waves of aching abomination up his spine. He moved his legs and arms: nothing seemed to be broken, but as he sat up a jolt of searing pain shot through his back.

  He lay down, took some deep breaths and tried rolling onto his side. That was better. After a few minutes he managed to pull himself onto his knees and came face-to-face with something Claude had left in the hold.

  ~ ~ ~

  Yvette stood with her back to the door and held the pistol in her right hand. She had never fired a gun in her life and, apart from the obvious things—point and pull the trigger—she had no idea how they worked. Joe had given her the gun that night before setting out on whatever expedition the gang had asked him to be involved in.

  ‘Claude gave me this,’ he said, ‘but I think you’ll n
eed it more than I will. It’s loaded and ready to fire, so keep it close. This switch here on the side is the safety catch. If it’s up, the gun won’t fire, so if you think you’ll need to use it, make sure you push the switch down. Is that clear?’

  ‘Oui, up safe, down to fire,’ Yvette had replied.

  Once Joe had gone she sat there and flicked the switch down, then up, then down, then up again. She wished this night were over. She flicked the switch back down once more for luck, then flicked it up and slid the gun under her pillow. All she had to do was lift her pillow, draw it, flick the safety and fire. On reflection, she flicked the switch back down. One less step before she could fire.

  At 2am, she was sitting in a hard wooden chair in the tiny room the girls had dubbed ‘The Nest’ above the main room of the club. She had a pair of opera glasses and a notepad, and was making sketches of the German officers in the room and their rank insignia. So far she hadn’t seen anyone she recognised and was questioning the value of her sketches, when an officer came in and handed his coat to the concierge. She recognised him immediately.

  Richter.

  ‘Got you, you bastard!’ she whispered fiercely, and began to draw.

  ~ ~ ~

  The bundle of dynamite was wedged between two open crates. Joe looked into them. More dynamite. The whole bloody barge was a bomb and he was the sucker being sent to deliver it, destroy the evidence, make it look like an accident. He looked at the dynamite bundle. On the far side a bunch of wires connected a timer that had fifteen minutes to go. Exactly how long it was expected to take him to get the barge back. It didn’t matter whether he got it exactly into position or not, close enough would be good enough. All that crap Claude had spun about how to moor it was just a snow-job to make sure he went up in the blast.

  At least no-one was firing at him now, but the barge was still ploughing along at full speed. Joe’s head ached and he struggled to remember what it was about the river here that was so important. Christ, the sand island.

  He forced himself to his feet and struggled up the ladder, his shoulder and hip screaming. Out on deck the island was looming on the starboard bow, and he stumbled to the wheel and pulled his belt free, spun the wheel and dragged the bows into the deep channel with only metres to spare. He didn’t want to think about what would happen to the dynamite if he ran aground at this speed. He throttled down and thought for a moment, dragging in deep breaths, his heart threatening to burst from his chest, blood hammering in his skull.

  Should he abandon ship or take the barge back as planned? If he didn’t take it back, they’d suspect something and God knew what they’d do to Yvette. If he took it back he risked being blown up, and they’d betrayed him anyway, but he had to get Yvette out of there, and if they suspected anything they’d kill her out of hand. Or worse. He thought about going down to the hold to check how much time he had left, then abandoned that idea as pointless and thrust the throttle forward. Up ahead, the river looped round to the left and he could make out the skeletal forms of the cranes in the moonlight, hanging like vultures above the river.

  He looked at his watch. He reckoned he had five minutes. He ran forward and untied the row boat, checked its painter was attached and pushed it overboard. It floated gallantly and he threw the oars in after it.

  Back at the wheel he looked at the shoreline and spotted the crane and the warehouses he’d identified earlier. He steered the barge straight at the gap where it had been moored, gunned the throttle, threw off the rowboat’s painter and climbed over the gunwale into it.

  Joe had never been much of a boating man. Where he’d grown up in South Australia there was precious little rain, let alone standing water, and the only rowing he’d done was in a few weeks of commando training in Scotland where they’d been instructed in using rubber boats. The level of skill they’d acquired hadn’t been adequate for getting them ashore at Cap Gris Nez in the rough Channel surf, and here on the Seine things weren’t much better.

  He almost capsized the boat getting in, but settled himself, row-locked the oars and heaved as hard as he could. His shoulder and hip were on fire, but he gritted his teeth and hauled. Above the silhouettes of the cranes he could see a faint greying in the east. The dawn was coming. By God, it must be later than he thought.

  He’d put fifty yards between himself and the dock, and was pulling around the far side of a barge moored in the channel, when his panting efforts were interrupted by a huge orange flash and the sound of a hundred artillery shells going off together. The shockwave blew him backwards like a paper doll, and the boat rocked violently as a four-foot wave raced out from the blast area, setting the little row boat pitching and rolling furiously. The water foamed over the sides and Joe clutched at the seat and clung on. As the maelstrom of water began to settle, pieces of flaming debris started to rain down, blown far into the sky by the force of the explosion.

  Joe covered his head and huddled in the bottom of the boat. A flaming plank landed beside him and he kicked at it, got a foot under it and flicked it over the side. Smaller pieces pattered on him and something massive and heavy, an anchor maybe, cannoned into the water only metres away, drenching him in spray. Eventually, the hard rain stopped, and Joe pulled himself up.

  In the dimness of the early dawn the devastation was revealed. Of the eight barges moored along the dock, only three were still afloat. There was a gaping hole in the dock where the wood had been shredded into toothpicks by the force of the dynamite, and flames raged in the shattered warehouse. The river was covered in debris, and in the background, the crane was listing to one side.

  My God, thought Joe, how much explosive had been in that bloody barge? More to the point, what am I going to do now?

  ~ ~ ~

  As Joe pulled steadily on the oars, the sun rose behind him, illuminating a different Paris from the parts he had seen so far. On both banks of the river, industrial buildings and warehouses stretched off up streets far narrower than the boulevards of the centre of town. There were few trees and the buildings seemed to be coated in a grey soot that gave them a uniformly drab appearance. He reached the quay to his left where the ambush had taken place only a few hours before, and, exhausted from rowing against the current, pulled into the quay and tied up the boat. Someone would be bound to have reported shots and he could expect a patrol at any time, so he took a quick and nervous look around. Apart from a few chipped pieces of masonry where bullets had struck the stone of the tunnel there was no indication that a minor gang war had erupted there that morning. He wondered whether Claude or The Corsican had been hit, then realised that he hoped they had been; that would mean two fewer of the bastards he would have to deal with.

  He walked up the Quai Aulagnier to the Boulevard Voltaire and jumped on a tram heading towards town, passing the conductor a handful of francs. People were giving him strange looks and when he caught his reflection in the window he understood why: his shirt was torn in several places, his hair was wild and a large red lump was rising on his forehead. He touched it and winced. Up until then he hadn’t noticed it—he must have hit something in the boat when the explosion knocked him over.

  He sat down, dazed, and realised that he hadn’t eaten or slept properly for some time. ‘Think man,’ he muttered to himself, without realising he was speaking English, ‘what now?’ The woman beside him looked over in some alarm. It had only been a few months since English was last spoken in Paris, but so much had changed so suddenly, and English was now a dangerous language to speak.

  She leant over and cupped her hand over her mouth.

  ‘You are English, non?’ she whispered conspiratorially, looking around her as she did so, ‘you must stop speaking English. Do you speak French?’

  ‘Oui,’ said Joe, suddenly conscious of what he’d been doing.

  ‘You have had some trouble, yes?’ she said, gesturing at his clothes and face.

  Joe really looked at her for the first time. She was in her mid-thirties he est
imated, wearing a blue dress and a simple hat. Her brown hair was tied up under the hat and she wore no make-up—who did in Paris anymore? She had a generous mouth and widely-spaced brown eyes that were looking at Joe with genuine concern.

  ‘This is my stop coming up,’ she said, ‘you should come with me, you can’t stay on the streets like this, the Germans will arrest you immediately.’

  Joe knew she was right, at the moment he blended into the Paris street scene about as well as a kangaroo.

  ‘Merci,’ he croaked, ‘you are very kind, but you’re taking a big risk.’

  ‘Come,’ she said, standing, ‘this is where we get off.’

  They stepped off the tram and she walked straight down a side street where grey apartment blocks seemed to Joe to lean out over the sidewalk. She turned into the entrance hall of number 24 and unlocked the door of a ground-floor apartment.

  The apartment was small and sparsely furnished with a table and chairs in the kitchen and a single lounge that took up half of a tiny living room.

  ‘Lie down,’ she said, ‘you need to rest.’

  Joe was too tired to argue, he lay down on the couch and kicked off his shoes. The adrenaline that had sustained him throughout the night had faded, leaving him drained and exhausted. His head, shoulder and hip were aching ferociously, and lying down was so much better than walking. He closed his eyes.

  ‘Drink this,’ said the woman, offering him a glass of red wine, ‘and eat this,’ handing him a plate of bread and cheese.

  When he had finished she said, ‘Now, rest. I will be back this afternoon at 5.30. I will bring you some new clothes. Don’t answer the door to anyone, you understand?’

  Joe nodded. Waves of grey were washing over his eyes, and the room was starting to dim. He heard the front door close, then nothing.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  He awoke when the setting sun shone through the window directly into his face. He sat up with a start and regretted it immediately as the blood drained from his head and the bump on his forehead throbbed painfully.