Assignment in Brittany

by Helen Macinnes

  “What about me, Louis the Great?” Yves was challenging Basdevant boldly.

  “Is he another?” the sergeant demanded. “Is he?”

  Basdevant’s smile had evaporated. He looked again towards old Yves, still motionless, still watching. The silence in the room was like the deep vacuum before a typhoon.

  “Yes, I am,” young Yves answered. “He would have told you if I hadn’t brought my friends along with me.”

  Basdevant took the sneer with the same fatalism he had already shown. His authority had gone, and he knew it. But he still felt he held the ace of spades: he was still on the winning side.

  It was at this moment that Hearne chose to pour himself a drink.

  “Put that bottle down,” commanded the German who was doing the talking. Hearne put the bottle down just beside Myle’s hand, lying so negligently on the bar.

  “Put down that glass!” The German was losing all patience.

  “Why?” Hearne wasn’t even looking at the sergeant.

  At once! Outside! You and these four men. Outside, with your hands raised. Hands raised!”

  Hearne took a step forward. Seven feet away, he calculated. “Let’s go,” he said. He threw the glass of spirits at the sergeant’s eyes, and dropped to the floor. Jules and his friend had moved even as he threw. The Nazis’ necks were drawn back in a throttling elbow grip. The two shots echoed through the room. Townshend clutched his shoulder and swore earnestly in his light, thin voice. A Breton had fallen forward on a table. Two shots; that had been all. The revolvers clattered jarringly on the wooden floor. The two uniforms, once the Bretons’ arms had released them, folded heavily forward like two sacks of flour. Jules wiped his knife on his trousers and exchanged a small thin smile with the man beside him, who was cleaning his knife too.

  But Sam wasn’t watching Jules and his friend or the dead Germans in front of them. His eyes were on big Louis.

  Myles had caught up the bottle by its neck; one smash against the counter’s edge, and it became a jagged threat. Hearne picked up a chair as he rose. They too were watching Basdevant.

  The Breton saw his only chance: it was speed. His only hope was to escape, to inform. Whirling on his heel, even as the Germans dropped, he had knifed the man who was still exchanging a smile with Jules. And, quick as Jules was, big Louis was still quicker. He knocked Jules sideways and slashed him as he went down. He had reached the foot of the stone steps.

  “Throw a knife, someone!” yelled the American, and flung the broken bottle at Basdevant; it struck the back of his shoulder, but the gash didn’t stop him.

  Then Sam moved. The shouts of the Bretons were cut off short as they saw the red-haired arms encircled Basdevant’s legs, and the weight behind his dive knocked the Breton off his feet. He fell forward heavily, his head striking against the top stone step. Young Yves’s foot was grinding the wrist which held the knife. The shouts broke out once more as the mass of dark-haired men surged forward.

  Hearne had headed that rush. It was Sam he wanted. Myles, hobbling over to the milling group, cursing his feet, cursing everything and everyone and his lack of a weapon, saw the two men suddenly being ejected out of the crowd like a football out of a scrum. He steadied them as they slipped on the blood on the floor, and pulled them back towards the safety of the counter where the woman, large-eyed and tight-lipped, was standing. She was watching the men round the door. The glass, which she had been wiping on her apron as the Germans and Basdevant had entered the room, was still in her hand.

  “You were damned lucky to get out of that, if you ask me,” Myles began, and then a smile broke over his face as he looked at Sam. “That was a lulu. Boy, that was a lulu.”

  “You blasted fool, hanging on like that,” said Hearne, regaining his breath.

  “I was winded,” Sam said. All the sulkiness and anger had gone now. He was smiling to himself. “All of eight feet that was, lad. A beezer.”

  Hearne relented. “More like ten feet. It was a beezer all right. A bobby-dazzler and all, Sam.”

  “The best yet, Sam.” It was Townshend, looking whiter and younger than ever. His right hand held his left shoulder; the fingers were red.

  Sam’s pleasure was gone. “Hurt bad?”

  “I was lucky.” Townshend nodded to the table over which the Breton fisherman had sprawled. The man lay as he had fallen. Townshend looked round the room and shook his head incredulously. “It was less than five minutes ago that the car arrived,” he said.

  The car, thought Hearne. He looked quickly at his watch. There was much to be done in the next five minutes, too. The bodies, the cleaning up of this room, the car...yes, there was much to be done.

  “Dead as mutton,” the American said suddenly. Like the woman, he had been watching the group round the door. “And some of the others seem to have been getting in the way.”

  The woman’s face relaxed. Hearne followed her glance towards the men who were now coming towards the bar. Jules was among them. His arm showed a long red cut where he had warded off Basdevant’s lunge. But he was safe. The woman finished wiping the glass which she held in her hand, and set it down slowly on the shelf behind her. When she turned round again, she could smile back to Jules. It was a pity, thought Hearne, that he should have to interfere at this moment, but someone had to take charge. Old Yves and his men had kicked Basdevant’s body away from the door; some of them were already moving out into the street.

  Young Yves walked over quickly to Townshend. “Come now—we are going.”

  “At once?” the American said blankly.

  “At once.” The boy pointed towards his father waiting at the door.

  “Better take this chance,” advised Hearne. “They’ll get you safely to their village, and it’s better for us all to leave here as quickly as possible. I’m leaving, too.”

  “It’s sort of sudden,” the American said awkwardly. Hearne handed him an envelope for an answer.

  “Heavy,” Myles observed in surprise.

  “All ready to sink, if need be. Take care of it. Remember everything I’ve told you?”

  “Yes.” The American placed the envelope carefully into a deep pocket. “I’ll keep one hand on it until I hand it over to Matthews. That right?”

  Hearne nodded. “For heaven’s sake, see you get it across.” He looked at Townshend and Sam.

  “We’ll get there,” said Townshend, and started to move towards the door. Old Yves watched them impassively.

  The American hesitated. “Perhaps I’ll be seeing you some day,” he said, “so you may as well know my name. It isn’t Myles: that was just my subconscious coming out. I’ll explain it to you some day. I’m van Cortlandt, Henry van Cortlandt. We’ll get together some time, and you can tell me how this ends for you, and I can tell you how it all began for me last summer. Right?”

  Hearne nodded. Van Cortlandt stepped carefully over the bodies. “What about these buzzards?” he said. “What about the car?”

  “We’ll take care of that.”

  “I hate to go while the job’s half finished,” the American grumbled. Hearne gave him a grin and a wave of the hand. “Hurry, you idiots,” he told the three loiterers. “What do you think you’re doing? Sightseeing?”

  “Well, goodbye, and good luck,” Townshend said abruptly, making the decision for the other two.

  They followed the Bretons into the street. Sam’s face turned to give a last enormous grin. He jerked his thumb up, and held it that way for a moment. And then they were gone.

  Hearne wished he could have gone too, could have seen them safely on to that boat tonight along with his precious envelope. But events had moved too quickly, and that always meant plans had to be scrapped and reshaped.

  He turned to Jules. “First, we must get rid of these bodies. You can put them where they won’t be found?”

  “When they are found, they will not be recognisable. “Jules’s voice was as business-like as Hearne’s.

  “This place will have to be scoured
: all traces of the fight must be removed. And no one must keep any of the Germans’ equipment. That might mean death for the village.”

  The woman, standing now beside Jules, nodded. “I shall see to all that,” she said determinedly. “We’ve had fights here before. I know what to do.”

  “Then there is the man Corbeau.”

  “He was probably left to sail back the boat safely from Saint-Malo. He will be late, he will be drinking. We know him.”

  “You will take care of him, when he returns?”

  Jules nodded. “He isn’t one of us,” he said.

  “I shall take the car and abandon it as far from here as possible. That will keep the village safe. You must look after the rest; you know what to do. And if the police come asking questions, then you will say that big Louis left to buy provisions this morning at Saint-Malo, that he hasn’t returned. That’s all you know.” He looked round the set faces. “Is that clear?” They nodded. Hearne realised that what he asked of them was something they considered not so very strange, something they could do much more efficiently than he could plan. There had been no fear in their eyes when he had spoken of police: they would take a pleasure in outwitting any policeman, and there would be all the more pleasure if he were German.

  “You must act quickly,” Hearne said, looking at the bodies.

  “Some will clean this room. I shall go with Philippe, Jean-Marie, Henri, to set some nets.” As he mentioned their names the men came forward. Jules nodded his head towards the bodies, and the men moved over to them.

  Jules went to the table where the Breton had been killed by the wild bullet.

  “It is sad about Robert,” he said, his tone altered. “Robert was always friendly to big Louis.”

  Hearne looked again, and saw that Robert had been the man who had tried so hard for appeasement. “Too bad,” Hearne said sadly, and shook his head slowly. The woman lowered her eyes so that he wouldn’t surprise the smile in them. The men went gravely on with their job.

  Hearne paused to pick up one of of the revolvers. “I’ll leave this with the car,” he said to the woman. “But don’t let anyone here keep any souvenir.”

  “I understand,” she said, and turned to take the pail of water which one of the young boys had carried in.

  “Goodbye,” Hearne said, and the Bretons nodded politely. It seemed as if they had forgotten he was even there. He moved towards the door. It was just as mad as that, he thought. You left a woman scrubbing blood from the floor, men moving four corpses into the back room, and you stepped into the street, and got into the car. You drove it straight ahead, so that the wheel tracks would look as if they had passed right through the village. You saw two middle-aged, tight-lipped women at the door of a cottage; and they didn’t seem to notice you, just as they hadn’t seemed to notice the uproar in the pub this morning. Behind you was the Etoile d’Or, and floors being cleaned, and bodies being weighted for their last dive. It was all as mad and as simple as that, he thought.

  He swung the car into a small road leading away from the river. Behind him Yves and his men would have almost reached their village. Tonight a few fishing-boats would set sail and creep silently out into the estuary to reach the Channel. It would be pleasant to be in one of these boats: however great the danger, it would be pleasant. He discarded the thought of the English Channel abruptly. He’d come to that in good time, unless he ended up against a stonewall. But there was no use in thinking about that, either. The job, now, was to get to Mont Saint-Michel, to his friends Pléhec and Duclos with his nice little wireless transmitter.

  Strange how seeing men die so suddenly made you start thinking of death. Not the best frame of mind for the work on hand, he decided, and increased the speed of the car. A few more miles on these side-roads were all he could risk: as it was, he had already come farther than he had intended, but the farther he went the safer were Jules and his people. Van Cortlandt and he owed a lot to the woman’s courage and to Jules’s frankness. As the car swayed on the road’s hard stone surface he suddenly remembered Sam’s engine and the Pole who had driven it so dangerously. Perhaps it was the memory of Sam’s solid voice and equally solid face, or it might have been his idea of the Pole’s vocabulary when the engine halted so determinedly, but Hearne’s spirits rose. He would hear the end of that story yet, even if he had to scour all Yorkshire to get it. He stepped on the accelerator to pass a detachment of German soldiers, and flipped his hand codfish-wise as he had seen it done from a high flag-covered platform in Nürnberg. The junior officer saluted back. Either the car had passed too quickly, or it was itself a guarantee of authenticity, for neither these soldiers nor any of the other detachments had challenged him. But of course all the French walked or bicycled these days, unless they were in the proud position of being trusted by the Germans. He had been taken for one of these, and he was allowed to pass with the usual German contempt for an ally. An ally won sneers just as an enemy won relentless hate. The Germans alone were beyond sneers, and worthy of love. Hurrah for the master race, goose-stepping so neatly to the fulfilment of their conquering destiny. He pressed the horn viciously and watched a small column of soldiers scatter obediently to the side of the road.

  He curbed his enthusiasm for this kind of sport: he had had just about enough good luck for one day. He knew when to stop. But it was with regret that he abandoned the car, in the ditch running along a lonely stretch of winding road. It had been a pleasant journey, after all.

  There were no houses, no civilians, no soldiers in sight. Even the sky was clear of planes. This was the moment. He pulled the German’s revolver from his pocket and aimed for the petrol-tank carefully. Quickly he felt for his matchbox. Four matches inside. Enough. He lit one carefully and held it to the stalks of the others. As they sizzled like a fire-cracker and then flared into life he threw them at the growing pool of petrol and ran as if the whole German army were at his heels. He had reached the small road at the edge of the wood. Beyond it were fields and more twisting roads and a ditch whose long weeds hid the gun. Any curious people within these two square miles wouldn’t be interested in him: the car which had become a flaming torch would seem much more important. His run slackened to a walk. He was near the coast now. Ten more miles, perhaps even less, and he would be at the island of Mont Saint-Michel.

  He was still thinking of the last half-hour: it had been a pleasant journey, after all.

  18

  ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNTAIN

  The road to Mont Saint-Michel was simple, for it stretched in a series of straight lines over the flatness of the reclaimed sea land. But it was just this simplicity which added to the danger of the journey, which forced Hearne to follow the road itself and not trust himself to the emptiness of the miles of open grass and vegetable fields. Flat as a pancake, he said to himself in disgust, and there was just about as much cover as a fly would find in a stroll over a pancake. One thing he could be thankful for: he wasn’t the only person on this road. Here and there was a lonely figure trudging patiently along with a heavy basket for company, or a small family group of fishers and oyster-gatherers.

  In front of him a woman thickly bundled in black petticoats had halted to rest. The little boy in his faded and patched blue dress waited patiently beside her. As Hearne drew level with them the woman lifted the basket slowly on to her back.

  Hearne slowed his pace. “You’ve a heavy load there,” he said.

  The woman gave a final heave to the basket, settling it as comfortably as it was possible between her shoulders. The black blouse was threadbare and sewn into a patchwork of mends. She was eyeing his dusty, crumpled clothes, probably trying to place him within her limited knowledge of people. But at least he couldn’t have seemed dangerous, even if he was filthy, for she at last gave him an answer.

  “Yes,” she said, and plodded on with the child half walking, half running at her side. He was a thin little thing, probably no more than five years old although he had the face of a child of ten. His closely
cropped hair, as if shaved for scarlet fever, bristled thinly over the egg-shaped head and made his large, dark eyes larger, darker.

  “I’ll take the basket,” Hearne said, “and you can take the child. He looks tired.”

  The woman didn’t answer, but she had heard him, for she gave him a long sideways look and tightened her hold on the basket.

  “I said I’d carry the basket for you,” he tried again, and again there was silence. He was only frightening the woman into tight-lipped distrust.

  Hearne smiled. “Well, I’ll carry the boy,” he said. The child would be lighter than the. basket, but if the woman was afraid to trust him with the oysters, then that was her look-out.

  The child’s body stiffened as Hearne picked him up. And then, as he felt himself quite safe on this strange man’s back, with his two thin hands tightly clasped under the funny man’s chin, with his bony little shanks held firmly by the big man’s arms, the rigor of his body disappeared. He was speaking in his thin, hoarse voice after they had gone only twenty steps: he was saying, “I’ve got a horse! Look, maman, I’ve a horse!”

  The mother didn’t speak. Her mouth had tightened as if to say, “Such like nonsense: teaching the boy bad habits, that’s what you are.” But their pace had noticeably quickened, and she was pleased in spite of the will to be displeased.

  She asked at last, “Where are you from?”

  “Saint-Malo. And you?”

  “This side of Le Vivier.” The admission was made grudgingly, but after all, she had started the questioning. And an answer deserves an answer.

  “Where are you going?” she said after a pause.

  “Beyond the Mont. Where are you?”

  “The Mont.”

  Hearne’s technique had the desired result. There were no more questions. What’s your business, were you fighting, are you married, what was your father, where were you born, how old are you, why are you going beyond the Mont—all these and more were stillborn on the woman’s tongue.