by John Harris
‘Open it,’ Dannhüber said.
Klemens inserted the key. The great lock slid back silently, and Klemens lifted the latch.
‘Light, Major.’
Klein-Wuttig stepped forward with the hurricane lamp. In its light they could see the nineteen crates stacked against the wall.
‘Made a nice job of those too, Klemens,’ Dannhüber observed. He peered into the darkness. ‘And the wine casks?’
‘Beyond, monsieur,’ Reinach shouted from the back of the group. ‘Further in the cellar.’
‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’
The general advanced deeper into the cellar with Klein-Wuttig followed closely by Kaspar; by Klemens who was determined to hang on to everything he could; and by Schaffer who was determined to get what he’d been promised. Behind them. Major Doench and Major Rieckhoff grinned at each other and followed with Fregattenkapitain von Hassbach. Tarnera stood in the entrance, holding the vase. He was just about to follow when something screamed out in his mind.
The cows that needed milking! The empty shops! The locked-up bar! The absence of women and children! This!
He knew at once what was happening and he was just whirling round when he heard the sentry behind him give a yelp of pain. Then the pick haft, wielded by Reinach, clanged on the back of his helmet, throwing him forward into the cellar.
With his last second of consciousness, he heard the heavy oak door thud to behind him.
7
As Reinach turned the key, they heard a muffled shot and something thump against the other side of the heavy door. Reinach grinned.
‘ “Moves like a dream, monsieur,”‘ he said.’ “You can’t even hear it shut.” They can shout till the cows come home. Dréo’s locks would stop a cannon ball.’
As he moved to the outer door, he saw Klemens’ orderly and the lorry driver in the yard go down beneath a pile of men in blue smocks and berets. Immediately, several more Frenchmen appeared and Reinach gestured.
‘The sentry’s in there! Out like a light!’
As the Germans were stripped of their weapons and locked in the stables, the lorry was driven to the front of the house where the staff cars were waiting. Reinach went back to the cellar. There was only the faint sound of voices beyond the door.
‘They couldn’t shift that with a Tiger tank,’ he said.
In the street, Captain Witkus of the Afrika Korps was growing worried. The gap which had been left for the staff cars between his men and the front half of the column was widening and he knew better than anyone that it was dangerous.
‘Where the hell are they?’ he snapped.
Glancing at his watch, he climbed from his car just as von Hoelcke appeared. He was as angry as Witkus.
‘It’s ten-thirty,’ he said. ‘Where are those fat bastards?’
When another quarter of an hour passed and still no one had appeared, von Hoelcke walked across to the wooden gates of the chateau and hammered on them. There was no sound from the other side and he was suddenly suspicious.
‘Up to the house!’ he snapped, and, scrambling into Witkus’ scout car, they roared up the street and turned into the drive leading to the front of the chateau. The Baronne, Euphrasie, the cook, Joseph and Reinach were standing on the steps staring across the park.
‘Out of the way,’ von Hoelcke said.
Stamping into the house, he stormed through the downstairs rooms with Witkus. There was nothing but scattered papers and dirty plates left from breakfast.
Euphrasie watched him from the doorway. ‘If you’re looking for the others,’ she said, ‘they’ve gone. Half an hour ago.’
‘Where?’
‘Across the park.’
The two Germans clattered to the steps. Quite clearly they could see tyre tracks across the soft turf disappearing from sight among the distant trees.
‘Where do they lead to?’ Witkus demanded. ‘There’s a gate over there,’ Reinach said. ‘It opens on to the Cheuny road. From there, you can get to Langres and up to Belfort. They loaded up the lorry ages ago. There were a lot of crates.’
‘Flat crates,’ Euphrasie said. ‘There were also some packages wrapped in blankets.’ She glanced at the Baronne, her face suddenly shocked. ‘Oh, mon dieu, madame! The paintings!’
The Baronne stared at her. Then she screamed and began to hobble into the house. The Germans stared after her, then Witkus shoved his Luger into Reinach’s face and slammed him back against the door jamb. ‘What’s this about paintings?’ he snarled.
‘The Baronne had some paintings hidden upstairs!’ Reinach stammered. ‘Everybody knew about them.’
Witkus flung him aside and dashed into the house followed by von Hoelcke. At the bottom of the stairs, the Baronne was weeping in Euphrasie’s arms. Up on the third floor Joseph was standing in an open doorway, gaping.
They’ve gone,’ he was saying.
‘What have gone, you old fool?’ Witkus demanded.
‘The paintings! They were in here.’
Reinach had followed them up the stairs. That’s what they wanted me to make those crates for, madame,’ he called down the stairs in a hollow voice. He turned to von Hoelcke. ‘Nineteen there were. We even cut trees down.’
‘The porcelain’s gone too,’ Joseph said.
‘What porcelain?’ Witkus demanded.
‘Sevres porcelain.’ Reinach turned to shout down the stairs again. That’s what they were stuffing in the cars, madame.’
The two Germans hurtled down the stairs again and stood on the steps staring into the distance.
‘The bastards have ditched us,’ von Hoelcke said. ‘For loot!’
‘They wouldn’t do that!’ Witkus said.
‘Wouldn’t they?’ von Hoelcke snarled. ‘You must have heard what they caught them with at Falaise. Fur coats. Paintings. Jewellery. The British radio was full of it.’
‘Do you listen to the British radio?’
‘Of course I do! It’s a damned sight more reliable than that he-goat Goebbels’ effusions in the Volkischer Beobachter. They were getting away with half Normandy. It wasn’t in the tanks or on the guns, though. It was all in the damned staff cars!’ Von Hoelcke’s arm shot out as he pointed. ‘Look at the tracks, man! They speak for themselves! Come on, if we hang on here anymore, the Amis’ll be on our tails. Let’s get that column moving.’
‘Stop firing that damned gun,’ Dannhüber shouted. ‘It isn’t doing a scrap of good.’
‘I’m trying to smash the lock, Herr General.’ Klein-Wuttig fired again and the bullet whanged against the metal of the lock, and whined round the cellar.
‘Stop it, you idiot! You’ll kill us all.’
Klein-Wuttig stood back and Kaspar inspected the lock. ‘Quarter-inch iron,’ he observed. ‘It looks as though it was made in the eighteenth century, and it’s heavy enough to stop any small-calibre bullet.’
His head still spinning, Tamera sat on one of the wine gantries and listened to them with a strange feeling of satisfaction. The French had planned the whole thing, he realized, and he was aware of a joyous sense of relief that he’d not misjudged them.
Dannhüber turned on Klemens. ‘A damned nice mess you’ve got us into,’ he snarled.
Klemens stiffened. ‘I seem to remember, General, that it was your idea to come down here.’
Dannhüber glared. ‘You could be court-martialled for this. In fact, I’m damned sure you will be.’
‘If we get out, Herr General.’ Tarnera said quietly. ‘It strikes me, in fact, that the only trial we shall face will be a war crimes trial set up by the Americans. They’re great on war crimes.’
It stopped the argument dead. Dannhüber jerked at his jacket and turned to Klemens. ‘You might as well have built a prison,’ he snapped. ‘In fact, you have built a prison. And, in the meantime, your column’s heading for Germany without half its officers. God knows what’ll happen to it.’
Urquhart and Neville waited. The noise of the grasshoppers in the dry grass
seemed deafening. Behind them, not speaking, Sergeant Dréo crouched behind his mitrailleuse.
The trees were full of men, because more had arrived during the night, even from places on the other side of the Vangouillain-Mary-les-Rivieres road. Alerted by the women from Néry, they’d pushed across the road with the weapons that everybody seemed to have in quantity these days, eager to kill a few Germans.
I know these men, Urquhart thought with surprise. I know them like the back of my own hand. They’re no different from the men of the fells in Cumberland where I come from, from the moors of North Yorkshire and the lowlands of Scotland. They were like his own father and his four stubborn brothers, slow to take offence but quick to defend their land, their own soil, willing to quarrel to the death with a neighbour or even their own family where the rights to a strip of meadow were concerned.
He glanced at Neville alongside him. Neville had worked hard but he was no more part of these surroundings than a university professor would be. He belonged in the hothouse atmosphere of wealth, museums and great houses, not part of the countryside like himself and the men taking their places around him in a rumble of unexcited conversation.
Reinach came stumbling through the grass. He was grinning broadly. ‘Toujours le sang-froid?’ he panted. ‘We got them! We got every one of them!’ He snatched at a Sten gun that was handed to him. ‘Every single one!’ he crowed. ‘All we have to do now is destroy their columns.’
Neville stared at him unhappily. ‘You’ve got everybody who matters,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that enough?’
Reinach’s head turned. ‘If we had Hitler himself, it wouldn’t be enough,’ he growled. ‘Not after what happened to those boys last night. I want a life for a life - and more!’
He stared down the valley, his eyes glinting. Then the old silly grin came back. ‘I should think that about now there’s the most unholy tangle brewing up in the Rue des Roches.’
There was.
The German column, commanded now in the absence of Colonel Klemens by Sturmbannführer Frobinius, had come to a stop on a corner half-way up the hill. Two miles from the village a motor-cyclist outrider had run up against a vast rock slide that had blocked the road with a tangle of soil, stone and young trees from the steep side of the hill, and within a minute he was back with his report The column waited, its tail still in the village, while a scout car went up to investigate. Then von Hoelcke edged a tank up the slope, too, and when Frobinius arrived, it was waiting hull-down behind the curve of the hill, the ugly snout of its gun pointing at the fallen rocks.
Frobinius stared at the barrier. ‘What do you make of it?’ he asked.
‘Brought down by explosives,’ von Hoelcke growled.
Witkus’s little scout car arrived in a rush.
‘What’s the hold-up?’
Von Hoelcke jerked his head and Witkus stood up in his seat and stared,
‘Can we get infantrymen up there?’ Frobinius asked. ‘The Afrika Korps, for instance.’
Witkus looked down his nose. ‘We don’t know how tough that barrier is,’ he said. ‘And we can’t spare half an hour to find out. We’d have every damned Frenchman from here to the frontier joining in if we did.’
Von Hoelcke nodded agreement. ‘My orders are to report to 14th Armoured at Belfort,’ he said. ‘Not fight a battle. We’d lose half our vehicles and a hell of a lot of men.’ He waved an arm at the column behind him. ‘Most of these people are headquarters staff and cypher clerks. They’re inexperienced. They’re unfit. They’re old. They’re useless. We need the Afrika Korps to support my tanks, and there are two other routes out of Néry.’ He eyed the barrier. ‘Well try just one shell,’ he said. ‘And see what happens.’
The crack of the gun set the echoes clattering in the valley. The missile struck the base of the pile of young trees. There was a huge cloud of smoke and dust, and clods of earth and splinters of stone and wood flew into the air. When it settled down, the tangle of trees, soil and rock was still there, a few flames licking at branches where the shell had exploded.
Over the drum of engines behind them they could hear the grasshoppers and the hum of bees and a skylark high in the heavens. A man coughed somewhere and it sounded like a small explosion.
‘Nobody there,’ von Hoelcke said.
But as he spoke, over the aching stillness there was the distinct click of a gun being cocked. As they ducked, a light machine-gun in the trees beyond the rocks started playing on the head of the column. The bullets struck the tank and whined away into the fields. The turret lid clanged as von Hoelcke disappeared, while Frobinius cowered with Witkus alongside and all the heads in the column on the corner behind them vanished from sight.
‘The bastards are just waiting for us to try to get past,’ Witkus said.
Frobinius’ eyes narrowed. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We turn back. I wish to God those sewer rats of the staff could see what’s happening.’
The ‘sewer rats of the staff’ were far too occupied with their own problems to be concerned with Frobinius. They were still struggling with Reinach’s heavy door and rapidly coming to the conclusion that there was no way through it, round it, over it or under it.
They stood back and stared at it furiously. Tarnera still sat on the gantry. His head was feeling better now and he was almost enjoying himself.
’How valuable are these paintings. Klemens?’ Dannhüber asked suddenly. ‘I don’t suppose you checked?’
Klemens stiffened. ‘I imagined they were priceless, Herr General.’
Dannhüber scowled. They were indeed! Well, by God, Klemens, if we can’t have them, the French shan’t! Open those crates!’
They got the lid off the first crate and pulled the painting out. It took a lot of doing because there was only one small jemmy. Reinach had made sure there would be.
Klemens fished into his pocket and brought out the list. ‘“Greuze, Jean-Bapiste,”‘ he read. ‘ “Woman combing her hair”. One metre by one and a half. Circa 1780. Signed.’ You see the woman there, of course, Herr General.’
Dannhüber approached the painting and bent closer to it. Then he took out a pair of glasses from his breast pocket and stuck them on his nose. ‘Hold the light up, Kaspar,’ he said.
Kaspar did so and Dannhüber pointed at the canvas and said something to him that no one else heard.
‘Let’s have a look at the others,’ Kaspar said.
Schaffer set about the second crate. The nails came out after a struggle and they lifted out the picture and stood it alongside the first one.
‘Vigée Lebrun,’ Klemens said. ‘1830. The date’s in the corner. Two metres by one and a half. “Graf von Hodossy.” The description says, “This painting testifies to Madame Lebrun’s triumphal progress through the courts of Europe. She had visited Vienna, Prague - “‘
‘I know what she did,’ Dannhüber snapped. ‘Let’s see the next.’
By this time Schaffer was beginning to wonder what was going on and even Klemens was becoming uneasy.
That’s the Daubigny,’ he was saying. ‘Charles-Francois. “Cross-roads near Barbizon”. Painted 1864-5. Signed. Oils. Ninety-one by sixty-nine centimetres. The painter’s best period’.’
Dannhüber studied the painting carefully, whispered to Kaspar, who also studied it, then he jerked his hand. ‘Get the lot out,’ he said.
It took them a long time to get the rest of the paintings out. Reinach had done a very thorough job.
‘Go on!’ Dannhüber sounded bored. ‘Tell me.’
Klemens didn’t like the sound of his voice. ‘Jean-Bapiste Greuze,’ he said. Those four. The next one’s the Kucharski. Then there’s the Fragonard, the Lancret, and the Nattier - ‘
Kaspar interrupted him. ‘Let me see your catalogue,’ he said.
Klemens handed over the folder. ‘Printed in 1938,’ he pointed out. ‘Written by Professor Phillippe Gautier of the Faculty of Arts, Dijon University. He ought to know his business.’
‘He did,’ Dannh
über said. ‘A pity you didn’t.’ Klemens stiffened. ‘What do you mean, Heir General?’ Dannhüber gestured. ‘I mean - and Colonel Kaspar agrees with me - that not only have you built yourself - and me and these other gentlemen - a prison no one can get out of, but you did it for no good reason. These are copies.’
Then Tarnera remembered the Baronne and her lover who had spent half his life copying the Baron’s paintings as an excuse to climb into bed with his wife. Balmaceda’s attic, he had heard, had once been full of the work of years, effective and creditable, but worthless because they were only copies - Balmaceda’s payment for all his years of illicit love - and Tarnera began to laugh softly to himself.
Klemens was staring at the paintings. ‘Copies, Herr General ?’ he gasped.
‘Copies, Klemens,’ Dannhüber said. ‘Every last one of them.’
8
It took a long time to turn the column round.
Standing in the shelter of von Hoelcke’s leading tank, Frobinius sent his instructions back along the line of vehicles and the shouts went echoing down the valley.
‘Turn round! Turn round! Back to Néry!’
There were yells of disgust and anger as sweating men jumped from the lorries, while the drivers wrenched at the steering wheels and cranked their gear levers. There was a gap half-way down the hill where a scout car managed to pull out, and behind it a lorry also turned, swinging with difficulty in the road and backing and filling to reverse direction.
Frobinius appeared, his face furious, and pointed at the wide slope of the field at the side of the road.
‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ he roared. ‘Use the field! Pull the fence down!’
A group of soldiers began to work on the fence and dragged it flat. Then lorries swung off the road and turned in the field, before returning to the road further down, facing the other way. Despite the speed of the operation, it wasn’t designed to avoid confusion: seeing what had happened, other groups of men began to break down more of the fence and the lorry crews, many of them from non-combatant units and nervous as the uneasiness spread through the column, swung out without waiting for orders.
