by Alan Evans
Schleger smirked, then went on, “Anyway, if somebody down here checked on him in Paris then all they would find under his real name would be the charge of murder of a German soldier that we trumped up against him. But if he steps out of line then we tell the gendarmerie where they can find Labrosse.”
Ostmann asked, “So what was the offence?”
Schleger’s smirk was still there. “Rape.”
After the coffee and armagnac the two officers kicked off their boots and stretched out on couches by the fire, leaving instructions that they were to be called in two hours. At that time they rose, drank more coffee and washed, then set out to take up their duties once more.
The streets of the new town were dark and silent, the men’s boot-heels clicking loudly on the paving as they walked slow striding and in step. Their thoughts also marched in time. These hours in the dead of night were best for the work they were to do now, when a man in a cell was at his coldest, loneliest, weakest. They talked quietly, thoughtfully, of technique and approach. The walk gave them time to plan both. They were experienced, optimistic and confident.
They came to the bridge and were too absorbed in their conversation to notice that the sentries appeared quickly from the hut in which they had been sheltering from the night’s cold. Then there was a flash in the dark sky to the north and beyond the old port, and a distant thump like a gentle blow on a big drum. It was followed by a long drawn-out grinding and crashing that died out, then a staccato popping sound. Finally there was only the moaning of the wind from the sea funnelling under the bridge.
The sentries’ heads jerked around and Schleger said, “That was an explosion.”
Ostmann suggested, “A bomb?”
Schleger shook his head, “No aircraft, no raid. It sounded faint — a long way off.” He ordered the sentries, “You’d better phone in a report.”
“Ja, Herr SturmbannFührer.” One sentry ducked into the hut to the telephone there, thinking: That last lot sounded to me like grenades.
Schleger told Ostmann, “That’s the army’s business; we have our own.” As they strolled on across the bridge the engines of trucks muttered far behind them, but they took no notice. They could see their headquarters now and quickened their pace with a growing sense of anticipation. Schleger said with certainty, “They sent a boat from England to take him back.” He was talking of the man in the cell. “That’s why he was at that rendezvous tonight. He’s a king-pin, I know it. He’ll talk before morning and we’ll rake in the rest of his gang.”
Ostmann said, “Pity we didn’t get the girl, though.” They were his last words. The bridge exploded under their feet.
*
Albert lay close against the wall a hundred yards away with the corporal and the other commandos. He shuddered as debris rattled and rained down all around them.
The corporal thought: That’ll stir things up. Then he was dragging Albert to his feet and all of them were running.
Chapter Twelve - Assault!
Chris Tallon’s head turned as the blast-wave shook the ground, then the flare and bellow of the explosion cracked the silence of the night. The children cowered as if under a lash. They stood, body pressed to body, surrounded by the armed men and they stared fearfully at the two officers. They were familiar with the authority that held the power of life and death.
David Brent said, “We’ll take them.” The bridge had been blown and the old port severed from the new town and the troops in barracks. That had been vital and Brent had stressed it: “If the bridge doesn’t go those troops will pour over us and bury us!” Now they all had a chance.
Chris reasoned, “We only have to take one man, but at all costs. Those were our orders.” His eyes flicked to Max Neumann then back to Brent. “We can’t risk him for anything — anybody else.”
David answered reason with a statement of responsibility, simply: “We have to take them all, haven’t we?”
Or leave them here, to be sent on another train. Tallon looked at them, lit by the yellow light from the burning coach, then at the faces of his own men. They showed nothing, but he knew the thoughts behind those masks. The awful decision had been made.
Brent was gambling on Jimmy Nash taking them all off in the drifter.
Chris Tallon said, “Right.”
Brent led them all away, the children in a scurrying huddle inside the flanking guards of soldiers. They hurried down to the river then across by the foot-bridge on the lock-gates, treading in single file. Tallon’s demolition sapper jumped aboard the barge and disappeared below to emerge a minute later. As he stepped ashore Grundy and Cullen cast the barge loose. The sapper set a charge on the winding mechanism of the gate then the three of them crossed by the foot-bridge. Cullen wound on the wheel on that side, which also opened the gates, so the river raced through and the barge drifted downstream. The sapper set another charge on the wheel.
The corporal had come running up the path from the bridge he had blown, Albert half-loping, half-carried between two of the commandos. Tallon told them, “Well done.” He ordered the corporal and his men out as a screen on either side of the children, sent Albert to walk with Max Neumann, then stationed himself in the lead with a vanguard of his men. But Brent went ahead as they moved off again.
They hastened over the rough, wet grassland towards the wood that hid the old port. Almost immediately they heard the scuttling charge detonate aboard the barge lower down the river. The sound was muffled and distant but Tallon’s sapper muttered with satisfaction, “That’s the bottom blown out of her. Jerry won’t get her afloat again in a hurry.” Then behind them first one charge on the lock-gates, then the other, exploded with echoing cracks!
The men with the Thompson guns were widely spread, wary, eyes searching. The children scurrying at the heels of Max Neumann in a long, narrow crowd inside the screen, were too frightened to weep or make a sound. They were as fearful of these escorts as of those that herded them onto the train. At the rear were Grundy and Cullen, and Brent led them all. Cullen thought: Like the bloody Pied Piper. I hope to God he knows what he’s up to.
David Brent wondered and worried about Jimmy Nash. They had got the man they had come for but still had a long way to go. And in the end all would depend on Jimmy, whether he was able to carry out Brent’s orders. If he lay dead ten miles north where they had come ashore…
*
Suzanne had heard the crash of the train and then the flat popping like the bursting of balloons. She had glanced at McNab and the nine commandos. with him, lined along the wall of the alley, its doors closed, windows shuttered. She saw their heads turned, listening, the sideways slide of McNab’s eyes in his stone face. He said softly, “Grenades.”
They waited, Suzanne and the sergeant with watches held up before their eyes, seeing the long second hands ticking steadily around the dials.
Jacko whispered, “Somebody coming out — five or six o’ them.”
The eyes shifted, refocused on the house facing them at the end of the quay. The door had opened and then closed — Suzanne thought she had glimpsed a woman inside the house — but there was a group outside now. They started along the quay, the sentry coming with them.
The cobbles of the alley shivered under Suzanne’s feet and then there came the second-long flash and booming roar of the explosion as the bridge blew up. For a second they hesitated, blinded, and Jacko swore because he could not see the group on the quay. McNab had not anticipated that but now he bawled, “Move!” He led the way, running hard and bent over in a crouch, across the hundred yards of the open quay.
Suzanne tried to keep close behind him but some of the soldiers overtook her. She trailed McNab by a few strides when he took the steps in one leap and kicked open the door of the butcher’s house. He shoved through the black-out door inside and light wavered over the steps as the door swung. Two more commandos followed him, then Suzanne. The rest were panting at her back, Jacko and those at the rear pausing to set the Thompsons to their should
ers and send sweeping bursts along the quay.
*
König and Ritter had gone only twenty yards from the house when the explosion blinded them. They halted, and König said, “The bridge!” Then the Thompsons rattled and flamed, and bullets whined around them.
Ritter shouted, “Cover!” He broke left, ran bent almost double to the nearest building and into the low shelter of the steps leading up to its door. König and the soldiers crowded after him, down on one knee and close against the wall. The Oberst peered over Ritter’s shoulder, their heads lifted above the steps. There was light from an open door at the far end of the quay.
König said, “The Tommis have blown up the bridge and they are in the S.S. headquarters.” He could see the broken silhouette of the bridge and the trucks stopped on the other side. They were his reinforcements from the barracks and Ritter’s crack troops. He was cut off from them, could not even communicate. He knew that if he ran back to his house he would find the telephone dead because the lines were carried over the river on the bridge. He remembered his daughter, alone in the house, doubtless frightened and bewildered by the explosion and the firing. But he could not go to her. His duty lay here.
*
When the railway line was cut the sound of the crashing train was not heard inside S.S. headquarters because the corporal seated in the hall had the telephone clapped to his ear and was laughing. He asked, “Know any more?” His opposite number on duty twenty kilometres away always had a new repertoire of lewd stories. The corporal listened on, whiling away the boredom of the night shift, until he had heard them all.
He finally put down the telephone reluctantly and took a dog-eared book from a drawer in the desk. Reading bored him, but he had nothing to do but man this desk and run after that French pimp sitting in Schleger’s office as if he owned the place. But he had to be more than just an informer. He had come in with Ostmann and the chief as if the three of them were old pals.
The telephone rang and he recognised the voice of the operator at the barracks: “I’ve been trying to get through to you for the last ten minutes.”
“I was answering another call.”
“Give me the Sturmbannführer.”
The corporal said, “He’s at the hotel; him and Ostmann.”
“Well, listen: There’s been a report that a party of Tommis has landed. The Herr Oberst has ordered out the troops from here and he’s meeting them at the bridge. You’d better alert your detachment because he might call on them. Got that?”
But the line went dead before the corporal could answer. The explosion as the bridge blew up rattled the front door in its frame and shook the floor. The lights went out and windows shattered in a crash of falling glass. The corporal jumped up from his chair and groped for the switch on the wall behind him, threw it and the emergency lighting came on. It had been installed the previous winter on the order of Schleger, infuriated by a succession of power cuts. It was weak and yellow but it served. Now the Frenchman shouted from the room behind, “What the hell’s going on?”
The corporal went into the office. Louis was down on one knee picking up the tray and the empty plate that had fallen from the coffee table. In this kneeling position Louis could see his bottle and glass that had rolled under the armchair. He had dined well.
The corporal glanced at the window where the drawn curtains swayed on the breeze, the glass blasted from the frame lying in fragments on the floor. He snapped, “Some Tommis have landed. That’s all I know. Now shut up and don’t bother me!” Then he heard the front door burst open and he swung back into the hall, pulling at the pistol in its holster on his belt. The inner door was kicked wide against the wall and a tall man in khaki glared at him.
McNab did not hesitate. His finger was ready on the trigger and the burst from the Thompson threw the corporal back into the office. Louis grovelled behind the armchair, saw the soldiers in their khaki filling the hall — and Suzanne among them.
McNab jumped into the office and landed crouching with the Thompson gun sweeping in a swift arc. He saw Louis behind the chair and the gun twitched onto him. Louis screamed, “Français!”
Suzanne shouted, “No! He’s one of us!”
Louis, staring into the muzzle of the gun, saw it swing away. McNab ran back into the hall. Commandos were racing up the stairs, another through to the rear of the house. One lay bellied down at the front door looking out towards the bridge while Phil, with his rucksack, knelt by the desk. Two more stood at the head of the stairs leading to the cellar; they ran down beneath the flight lifting to the upper floors. McNab joined those two and nodded at the one holding a grenade. The clip sprang free as the pin was pulled and the grenade was lobbed down the stairs.
Other grenades burst first on the upper floors and firing racketed from there. Suzanne recognised the rattle of Thompsons now, like a stick drawn across railings. She went to Louis as the grenade boomed hollowly in the cellar below. He was curled up in a foetal position, knees drawn up to his chin. His face was contorted with fear — he had seen his death in the muzzle of the gun — but she took it to be pain. Her mind was asking questions already, but Louis was thinking with the speed of terror. His hands clutched his private parts and he moaned, “He kneed me. He said I was going to talk, shoved his gun in my face, then kneed me.”
Suzanne said, “I thought you were dead.”
“Back by the wood, when they jumped us?” Louis nodded, “I went down when the shooting started. I’d never been in anything like that before. No warning, no time to — to get ready. When I was down I just couldn’t move. I thought I’d wait and see if I got the chance of a shot, but it was too late and I — I couldn’t move.” He averted his eyes from Suzanne’s. “I’m sorry. I was supposed to be the escort and I was useless. I wanted to be some help but I just didn’t realise what I was getting into. I saw them take the other man away. Then they came for me.” He said again, “I’m sorry.”
Suzanne could not feel sympathy for him; she simply did not like him. But he had volunteered for a task he was unable to handle, though in fairness, no one in Louis’ position could have fought his way out of that ambush. She said, “It wasn’t your fault. They were waiting for us. Someone sold us out.”
Louis stared up at her. “Who?”
Suzanne shook her head. “I don’t know. Come on, get up.” She helped him, groaning, to his feet and he staggered to the door with her, though he was still bent over and holding himself.
McNab appeared in the hall and said tersely, “Two dead down there. Must have been the warders on duty. Grenade got them.”
Jacko called from the head of the stairs, “Bloody mess up here, but it’s clear.”
McNab asked, “How many?”
“I counted fourteen. We’re covering front and rear from up here now.”
Phil still waited, down on one knee by the desk in the hall. McNab jerked a thumb at him. “Up you go.” Phil rose and took the stairs at a run despite the weight of the rucksack on his back. McNab glanced back towards the cellar steps. “We found these two.”
Suzanne saw Michel, and behind him two commandos carrying the limp body of a man between them, his arms around their shoulders, his legs trailing. Suzanne stooped to peer into his face, for a moment did not recognise him, then whispered, “Paul!”
Michel said, “He knew we were meeting?” He spoke in French.
Suzanne replied in that tongue, “Yes.”
“He held out a long time.” He gestured at the battered body, “You can see that.”
Suzanne said, “You remember Louis?”
Michel did not. This hunched figure with the pain-wracked face was a stranger to him. Then Suzanne prompted, “Our escort.” Now he recalled the tall, cock-sure young man with a swagger, standing at the edge of the wood with his face half-hidden in shadow. Suzanne repeated Louis’ story and finished, “They’d just started on him when we got here.”
McNab had listened impatiently, not understanding a word. Now firing broke out
overhead and he shouted above its hammering, “Get down behind the desk!” He flicked at switches and the lights on the ground floor went out. The rest of the house was already in darkness. McNab pounded up the stairs while Michel and the others crawled into the meagre cover between desk and wall. There was some faint, diffused light from a single bulb that had somehow survived in the cellars. Suzanne sat with Paul’s head in her lap.
Louis had his back to the wall, knees drawn up as if still in pain but his hand was close to the pistol in his pocket. He did not want to use it, saw no way out of this place. These were the network of British agents Schleger had talked of, all of them here except Albert. Where was the old man? Louis could not ask, had earlier told Suzanne he had sent Albert back to his café.
Louis thought that his story had been accepted — or was that only because they believed the wireless operator had betrayed them under torture? He had seen suspicion on Suzanne’s face when she first saw him in Schleger’s office. That suspicion had been allayed, but did it still linger? He would have to be on his guard.
Michel sat opposite Louis, watched his face and said, “I didn’t hear you brought up from the cells.”
Louis stared at him blankly. “I don’t know anything about cells. They put me in that room, gave me a drink and a cigarette, even a meal. The one guarding me, he told me not to worry, that they knew I was nobody important. He said he thought they would ask a few questions and then let me off with a warning. After a bit I think I believed him. I started to relax, you know? And then —” He looked at Paul and then turned away quickly, shuddered. “I was next.”
