Savarin lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply. He blew out smoke in a long stream, glanced at Caine. ‘I appreciate that you pushed the boat out to liberate the countess and your comrades, Captain Caine,’ he said. ‘What you don’t understand is that, whenever something like this happens, there are repercussions: the Krauts execute civilians, or they launch another comb-out for partisans. That’s why we have a policy that all actions against them in this area are coordinated through us.’
Caine squinted at him. ‘I’ll bear it in mind next time.’
Wallace tittered: Savarin ignored them both, took another long draw on his cigarette. ‘Your assault on the villa, for instance, was so reckless as to be virtually suicidal. From what the countess has told me, you only got away by the skin of your teeth. We could have helped you. Why did you run away from my people at the ambush?’
Caine felt a sudden tightness in his throat. ‘I was in the crossfire. I only had a split second, and I decided not to chance it. I had a mission to carry out – a mission given to me in Jesi, by Major Butterfield here.’ He peeked at Butterfield. ‘Isn’t that correct, Major?’
Butterfield looked up as if startled: his dewlaps quivered. ‘Er yes, I suppose it is.’ He shot a shifty glance at Savarin. ‘I asked Captain Caine to complete the mission my crew and I had failed to carry out. As I’ve told you, the idea was to snatch the countess from the Villa Montefalcone and locate the Codex Aesinias. I didn’t ask Caine to liberate these other two men, but I imagine that was a spontaneous act –’
‘– that might easily have brought the Krauts down on us,’ Savarin grated.
‘Brought the Krauts down on us?’ Wallace repeated venomously. He leaned forward, blinked with righteous anger. ‘That’s a good one, that is. If you’d of sent us a warning, we wouldn’t of been prisoners in the first place, would we? We’d ’ave known to steer clear of the camp, wouldn’t we?’
‘That’s right,’ Trubman weighed in. ‘And why did you send us to the far ends of the earth to get water? We could have got it much nearer, see.’
‘Yeah, an’ if yer knew Jerry were comin’,’ Wallace boomed, ‘why did yer ditch the major? Your boys boost ’im from Fritz one day, you drop ’im the next? It don’t make sense.’
Savarin’s face was owlish, flushed red ochre in the firelight: he stubbed his cigarette out unfinished. ‘I had no time to send you a warning,’ he said. ‘We only got the tip-off minutes ahead of the Krauts. I didn’t send you to the nearer place because it wasn’t secure, that’s all. It’s close to the road and the first place the Krauts would look for tracks.’ He paused, turned back to Butterfield. ‘As for you, Major, I must apologize. You were barely conscious, and we had to split up quickly. I thought someone else had taken care of you, and they thought I had. I’m sorry: it was an oversight.’
Butterfield licked his bruised lips. ‘A rather serious oversight, Captain: it could have proved fatal for me.’ He waved his hand feebly at Wallace and Trubman. ‘For these men too. You’re aware that the Hun are in the habit of executing captured SAS personnel?’
Savarin made a sound in his throat. ‘Come now, Major, surely you’re not persisting with that claim? Granted, they may have used it as a ruse to put pressure on you, but it’s against the Geneva Convention to execute prisoners of war.’
‘You wanna go take a shufti in the forest about twelve klicks due east of ’ere,’ Wallace told him scathingly. ‘Five shaller graves, marked with the letter “B”, carved in a tree. You know, five? Like the number of men in the major’s team, who was carted off with us from Jesi?’
‘We was there, see,’ Trubman added. ‘I saw the Krauts slaughter Howard and the others with my own eyes. I told you: you didn’t believe it.’
‘Where’d you think we come from, then?’ Wallace chortled. ‘Fell off a flamin’ moonbeam?’
Savarin glanced at Emilia. ‘Is this true, Countess? About the graves, I mean. Did you see them?’
She nodded. ‘Five graves, just like the man said. We didn’t have time to look at them all – the Cabbage-Heads were after us – but these guys identified one corpse as a man who’d been with them in the Jesi camp – a Sergeant Cameron, wasn’t it?’
‘It was Bob Cameron all right,’ Wallace said.
‘Poor Bob,’ Butterfield moaned. ‘A very good man.’
Savarin retained his composure. ‘I’ll have it checked,’ he said, ‘but there must be some other explanation. The Krauts don’t just bump off POWs.’
‘Like hell they don’t,’ Wallace swore.
‘All right!’ Savarin stuck his lip out: he sounded slightly rattled now. ‘This doesn’t excuse the fact that Caine was wearing Nazi uniform when he ran away from the ambush.’ He fixed Butterfield with an accusing glare, his eyes were hot needles. ‘Didn’t you call Caine a traitor, Major? Didn’t you tell me he’d gone over to the Krauts? Even swore an oath to the Führer, you said . . .’
‘Well, maybe I . . . was a little hasty, old boy,’ Butterfield stammered. ‘I was half delirious, you see: didn’t quite click what was going on. Being escorted to your own execution can do that to you. I mean, yes, Caine was wearing Nazi get-up, and he was acting as a trustee, like that swine Amray. When I first saw him in Waffen-SS togs, I’ll admit I was horrified: even at the ford, there, I was too shaken to click that he’d just liberated me by killing half-a-dozen Krauts. No, I’m sure he was faking it. I’d asked him to liberate the countess if he managed to escape. I assume it was the only ploy he could think of to get out of the place. He knew or guessed that the Hun intended to take me off somewhere, and saw his opportunity. He was only doing what I’d asked him to do: and, after all, it worked.’
Savarin narrowed his eyes at Caine. ‘Is that the case, Captain? You pretended to desert to the Krauts in order to free the major and carry out your mission?’
Once again, Caine tried to remember how he’d come to put on that uniform. He couldn’t recall having agreed to do so, not even as a ruse. He wasn’t certain, though: the easiest course was to agree with Savarin. ‘That’s about the size of it,’ he said.
Savarin heard his hesitation. ‘The point is that we’ll never know, will we?’ Maybe it was a deliberate ploy to escape. Or maybe it was a convenience, and when you found yourself on the receiving end of a successful partisan attack, you decided it would be more convenient to change sides again.’
‘This is dumb, Savarin,’ Emilia chirped up. ‘Captain Caine put his life on the line for me. He also rescued the major and these two guys. How are those the actions of a traitor?’
‘Yeah,’ Wallace stormed in. ‘Tom Caine ’ere ’as been decorated for bravery: DCM and DSO. Promoted from the ranks twice. You think a bloke . . . I mean, an officer . . . like that, would betray his country?’
‘I don’t know why we’re even wasting time on it,’ Emilia said. ‘Ettore is being transferred from Orsini to Jesi tomorrow. It’s our only chance to get him out. Otherwise Stengel will have him shot.’
‘We need the boy to find the Codex,’ Butterfield added. ‘That’s a major priority. Don’t forget, five of our men have already died for it.’ For almost the first time, Butterfield seemed animated. ‘It would be an insult to their memory not to carry out the mission.’
‘That’s right, Major,’ Caine agreed. ‘We need to plan an ambush on that convoy. Do we know what time they’re leaving Orsini?’
‘Stengel said in the morning,’ Emilia replied.
‘That doesn’t give us much time to get things organized. How many partisans can you spare us, Captain?’
Savarin shook his head. ‘I can’t help you.’
‘What?’ Emilia sounded incredulous. ‘But it’s not just Ettore. There may be other partisans on that convoy. Your men. Are you telling us that you won’t lift a finger to save them? They’re going to be executed, for God’s sake.’
Savarin tilted his head to one side. ‘My sources say that all the others have been taken away, probably executed. As for Ettore, I regret it very much, but
the Krauts are already stirred up by the escape of you SAS-men and the attack on the convoy the other day. Next time, they’ll shoot the entire male population of Orsini. In any case, can you imagine how well guarded that convoy will be, after what happened on Thursday? We don’t have the capacity to take on a target like that. Thirdly, I can’t commit the partisans to assist an operation at the behest of an officer whose loyalty is suspect. Whatever you say, Caine, we can’t be certain of your motives, or what you would have done, for instance, if the ambush had failed. On your own admission, you put on SS uniform, agreed to join the Krauts, swore an oath of allegience to Hitler. Those are acts of treason, and you know it. If this were a conventional unit, you’d be court-martialled.’
‘But the Codex?’ Butterfield complained. ‘How are we going to find it without the boy?’
‘That’s not my responsibility. I agreed only to coordinate your drop and –’
‘Which somebody bubbled to the Krauts,’ Wallace chimed in.
‘We don’t know how they knew,’ Savarin said: a note of protest had crept into his voice. ‘The Germans have excellent signals counter-intelligence: they may have picked it up in a transmission.’ He stood up suddenly, slung his rifle over his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry about your brother, Countess, I really am. But we have to weigh his life against our chances of success, and against the lives of dozens of civilians. In war, you have to make hard decisions, and this is mine. I’m not going to take disciplinary action against you, Captain Caine, but I advise Major Butterfield to report the matter to your command when you get back.’
Caine rose to his feet, faced him. ‘I’m going to snatch Ettore and find the Codex. If you’re not with us, we’ll do it without you.’
Wallace stood, drew himself up to full height beside Caine, an enormous, bear-shaped block of mahogany shadow. ‘We’re SAS, mate,’ he said. Who needs you, anyway?
Chapter Thirty-Six
Caine awoke, knew at once that his inbuilt alarm had kicked in: stealthy footsteps were approaching from the outside. He put his right hand on the Schmeisser under his blanket: with his left he eased Cesare’s knife out of his waistband. Two sets of footsteps, he thought: light – women? Emilia? Wallace and Trubman were snoring peacefully: Caine wondered if he should wake them, decided to wait. He got up silently, glad he still had his boots on. He slung the SMG, swapped the knife into his right hand, positioned himself next to the tent flap just as a thin figure pushed through. He seized the intruder’s neck in the crook of his elbow, lodged the tip of his blade against the scrawny spine, heard a suppressed squawk, felt a wiry, strong hand clutch at him, felt nails dig into his skin. ‘Tom,’ a woman’s voice whispered. ‘Lay off him, for God’s sake.’ Emilia stood poised in the entrance, bleached teeth and eyeballs in a dark-swathed face. ‘It’s Furetto. He wants to talk to you.’
Caine let go, dekkoed the almost girlishly slender form of the young partisan he’d shaken hands with when Savarin had first confronted them – the boy who’d told him he needed to talk. He hadn’t given it much thought at the time: in fact, he’d forgotten about it. The lad hovered in front of him, panting slightly, clutching his shotgun under his arm: his apologetic face was faintly illuminated by the starlight through the open flap. He put a finger to his lips, bent forward, almost touching Caine’s head with his own. ‘Savarin plan to take you prisoner. You and your men must go.’
This is a trap, Caine thought. He shot a questioning glance at Emilia. ‘Trust him, Tom,’ she said. ‘We have to get out while there’s still time.’
‘’Ere, what’s this?’ Wallace was already on his knees with an SMG in his hands: Trubman surfaced bleary-eyed from under his blanket, dug for his glasses.
Caine scanned Furetto’s face again, came to a decision.
‘We’re moving out,’ he whispered: he glanced around at Emilia. ‘What about Butterfield?’
‘He’s not coming,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t feel up to it.’
Furetto covered them with his shotgun as they filtered out, crouched outside the tent, watched for prowler-guards. A minute later they were following him through the woods behind the camp, trawling through dense underbrush at a snail’s pace, placing their feet carefully to avoid rustling branches and snapping twigs. The night-clouds had passed: the moon was up like a white hole in the cosmos, spilling deep-blue milk-light through the trees, dressing the tangled foliage in silver draperies. Furetto led them to an animal-track, a narrow piste that wove through the trees, meandered around dense groves and deep thickets.
The track led them to a small clearing where jagged rocks pressed like dark teeth out of a lawn of moss and ankle-high grass. Furetto called a halt: Caine signalled Wallace and Trubman to clear the area. They split up, circled the woods, gave the all-clear. They sat together around the mossy stones. Furetto laid his shotgun in the grass, folded his insect limbs: his face was a dim indigo glow in the darkness. ‘Savarin don’t want you to ambush that convoy,’ he said. ‘He want to stop you, take you prisoner.’
Caine squinted at him in the darkness: when they’d first met, Furetto had seemed like an adolescent boy: now Caine had the impression of a maturity and a decisiveness that belied his youthful appearance.
‘You mean Savarin’s a Jerry stool pigeon?’ he said.
Furetto wagged his slender head. ‘He play his own game: he don’t like parachutists: he think you cause trouble for Giappisti – partisans.’
‘Then why did he order an ambush on Butterfield’s convoy?’ Caine objected.
‘He don’t order it. Is me.’
‘You? But . . . who are you?’
‘My name is Bruno Abruzzi: I am nineteen years old. I am not youngest in the band, like Savarin say. Ettore is much younger than me. Is me who bring news of your convoy to Giappisti. Savarin refuse to attack: he say it is troppo pericoloso . . . how you say in Inglezi . . .?’
‘Too dangerous,’ Emilia said.
‘Yes, too dangerous. So we set up ambush without him. After, when we bring the fat major back, Savarin say is all right, but the next day the Krauts come for our camp. How they know where it is, huh? Savarin leave fat major for Cabbage-Heads to find: he make sure these men –’ he nodded at Wallace and Trubman – ‘are far away from camp so, when they get back, the tedeschi take them. This way, he is finish with parachutists. He don’t expect you, Captain. He don’t expect you to rescue them: he don’t expect la contessa. Now he afraid you cause more trouble if you attack convoy from Orsini.’
‘But the convoy’s carrying Ettore,’ Emilia argued. ‘If we don’t stop that convoy, he’ll be killed.’
Furetto sighed. ‘That’s what we say, but he say, no, is too dangerous. Convoy is too heavy guarded. We be killed or captured.’
‘All right,’ Caine said, ‘but why stop us? We’ve plenty of experience with this kind of stunt.’
‘Savarin say it bring Krauts down on civilians. He say that even if attack don’t work, they shoot many people in Orsini.’
He paused, regarded Caine with his soft doe eyes. ‘He say you cannot be trusted, Captain. You run from our attack in uniform of Krauts: you betray your own side. I say, no, you are pretend to join them, so you find chance to escape: you make yourself a trustee, like Lucia –’
‘Lucia?’ Caine gasped. ‘I met a girl called Lucia in Jesi – a trustee.’
‘My sister,’ the boy told him: he puffed out his sparrow chest and Caine heard pride in his voice. ‘I know what they do to her in Jesi, but she is brave. She pretend to help them, and find out the informazione for us. She pass it to me by a man who bring meat to the camp. I say you are no more traitor than mia sorella: you are pretend, like her.’
Caine started to speak: the memory of Lucia’s naked body in bed in Amray’s room stopped him. You can do what you like with her, old man. But he hadn’t, had he? He thought of Cesare, who had helped him: that man must be Furetto’s father. There wasn’t time to go into it, though: the boy’s revelations about Savarin opened up a whole new Pandora’s
box . . . if they were true, of course. But he’d nursed suspicions about Savarin from the time Emilia had told him that only she and the ‘A’ Force man had known about Butterfield’s drop. That drop had been compromised, had resulted ultimately in the killing of five SAS-men. If Savarin had informed the Jerries, it meant he was responsible for those deaths. That could explain why he’d professed not to believe that Wallace and Trubman had escaped from an execution, or even that there was such a thing as special handling.
‘I knew it,’ Wallace grumped. ‘That sod’s as bent as a bucket of frogs.’
‘What about Butterfield?’ Trubman asked. ‘If Savarin tried to get rid of him once, he’ll try it again.’
‘I say we march right back there,’ Wallace declared, ‘snatch Butterfield and scrag that slimy, two-faced bastard.’
‘The major, he safe for now,’ Furetto said. ‘Ho paura . . . I am afraid . . . solamente that the Krauts find out you attack Orsini convoy.’
‘You mean Savarin’ll dob us in to the enemy?’ Wallace demanded.
‘Chi sa?’ Furetto brought his watch up to his eyes. ‘Is almost five thirty. The convoy leave Orsini at eight thirty. It give us only three hours.’
‘Forget it, boys.’ Trubman sniggered. ‘We can’t march it in that time. We may be SAS, but we aren’t supermen.’
‘You don’t march,’ Furetto said. ‘Is car hidden in forest. Very good car – Alfa Romeo. I have keys. We take her.’
‘Good,’ Caine nodded. ‘You’re coming with us then?’
Code of Combat Page 22
