by David Gilman
Everyone’s attention was riveted on his instructions.
‘When the wire dissolves it releases a striker that hits the detonator. Put two of these timers into each block of explosives in case one fails to work.’ He checked their faces again. ‘All right, now you.’
He waited patiently as Maillé and Drossier followed his example. Ginny reached across and made up the fourth. She did it quicker and more confidently than the two men, but there were soon four hefty blocks of explosives and their pencil timers laid out. Four single blocks remained. Mitchell tucked them into his haversack. ‘We use these for the tracks.’ He stood and checked his watch as everyone loaded their haversacks with their explosives. Those who had Stens broke them down into three pieces and eased them into the haversacks.
‘The train will leave Paris at 0400. Time the charges for 0430,’ Mitchell told them. ‘I’ll time mine for ten minutes after that.’
‘And if the train leaves late?’ said Laforge?
‘They’re Germans,’ said Gaétan’s man, Edmond. ‘They’ll be on time. Colonel, I have looked at the road next to the tracks. Once we have laid the charges we will drive south across the river, through the suburbs and then get back here.’
‘Good,’ said Mitchell. ‘We’ll plant dud explosives and the rats where they’ll find them afterwards. The air strike is at 0500.’ He looked at everyone. ‘Timing is everything. Questions?’
No one answered.
Chaval slung his Schmeisser across his shoulder. ‘We should go.’
‘We meet back here, see that everyone is all right. Then Thérèse and I will get back to the city,’ said Mitchell. They bade each other good luck and separated.
Olivier Gaétan and his wife watched as the gas service vans drove out of the gates.
‘Perhaps we should return to Norvé and leave this Colonel Garon to his own plans. It could be getting too dangerous for us to stay so close to the city if he is planning more sabotage,’ said Gaétan. ‘If he is successful he will be given priority for more arms and ammunition while our circuit at home will be starved. The British do not realize how ordinary Frenchmen and -women risk their lives every day. They will always look after their own before us.’ He looked at the smouldering tip of his cigar and blew on it to make the slow-burning tobacco flare. ‘Perhaps it is time we plan our own operation. Then we can go back.’
‘I have my charity work, chéri. There are senior people in the police and army who might start asking questions if I was suddenly not a part of their social gatherings. People know us.’
Gaétan sighed. ‘You will be seen once too often with them and then you are vulnerable.’
‘More vulnerable than this Pascal Garon? You had him followed in the city?’
‘Yes. He was picked up by a gendarme. I’ve learnt it was a sergeant from the Préfecture. I have made enquiries; he is a collaborator.’
‘Then you cannot give him your trust.’ She switched off the light and began climbing the stairs to their bedroom leaving her husband in the half-light of the fire.
*
Mitchell sat in the passenger seat as Maillé eased the van along the marshalling yards’ perimeter wire.
‘There’s a café further along that wire fence. It’s where the rail workers get a coffee before they start their shift. We’re going to get inside and use its rooflight to get over the wire.’
They had driven slowly past the main entrance gates where the rail workers would report each morning. A row of buildings ran along one side of the yards and the overhead floodlights would cast deep shadows should they be turned on if the alarm was raised. That would give them a chance to escape, he told the others, pointing out quickly where the night became even darker along the edge of the buildings. However, Mitchell hoped the floodlights would not come on should anything go wrong: the Germans might think the explosions were little more than markers for a night bombing raid and therefore be afraid of illuminating such a vast area. Here and there across the vast expanse of the rail yards, single lamps glowed dully, giving a narrow cone of blurred light. Maillé followed Mitchell’s instruction and parked the van in a nearby street.
‘All right, listen. There was no sign of any sentries, so they’re going to be inside the locomotive sheds. If any Resistance group was going to attack and try to disable the engines they would cross the tracks easily enough but never breach those sheds. The Germans have little to fear outside of them.’
‘Why?’ asked Maillé.
‘Because there are so many railway tracks it would be impossible to destroy them in any significant number. The treasure is inside. When we get into the yard and reach the turntable we have to place the charges inside the steel lattice, tight up against the turntable’s pivot. Make sure it’s wedged. Then we crimp the pencil timers. When that’s done walk, not run, to the main gate. Go individually. I’ll cut the lock, that way the Germans won’t suspect the café owner.’ The two men nodded their understanding. They looked nervous. Maillé wiped a hand across his mouth and then caught Mitchell watching him.
‘My mouth is dry.’ He smiled guiltily.
‘That’s a good sign,’ Mitchell told him. ‘Once we’re laying the charges you’ll soon forget about being afraid.’
‘I never said I was scared,’ Maillé said quickly.
‘You’d be stupid not to be.’ Mitchell wondered if the men could see his own hands trembling in the darkness of the cab. He turned to look at Drossier in the back of the van. ‘Now we need to get into the café. How are your lock-picking skills?’
He saw a flash of a smile in the darkness.
*
The darkness almost overwhelmed Chaval and the others as they scurried along the railway lines. His poacher’s night vision helped him discern shapes, which made him more surefooted than Laforge behind him. He had tied a strip of torn white shirt around his neck to help guide the résistant, whispering urgently for him to keep up. Laforge stumbled once or twice, sprawling across the gravel beneath the rails, cursing under his breath. Edmond, however, was as used to night work as the man who led them and needed no help.
And then the hulking figure in front of Laforge stopped and half turned, putting out a restraining hand to stop his companion bumping into him in the darkness. ‘Edmond, put yours here.’ There was no reason the gamekeeper would argue but Chaval didn’t wait and whispered quickly to a sweating Laforge, ‘Reynard, come on, another twenty metres and you lay your charges.’ He strode away along the tracks, which now glimmered with the occasional reflection as the moon’s light filtered through the passing clouds. Chaval cast a weather eye towards the sky, reckoning that in less than an hour the clouds would blow clear. He and the others needed to be far away by then. ‘Here. Charges both sides of the track just like Pascal told us.’
He saw Laforge go down on one knee and sling free his haversack. By the time he had taken out the first of his explosives Chaval was further along the track. He looked back and saw the men’s movement in the darkness. On the other side of the narrow strip of road that ran parallel two metres below the rail embankment the solid block of forest shielded them from sight. The river was not that far away on the other side and would reflect any light that the night sky yielded. He knew that if he were a pilot he would follow the silver ribbon to his target like a night owl gliding towards its kill. He eased the haversack from his shoulder and lay down the Schmeisser against the track; then he moulded the slightly tacky surface of the plastique into the track’s recess above the bolts that secured it to the sleeper. All being well they would be finished in half an hour.
They had parked the van up a dirt track into the forest, invisible to anyone who might pass by. The curfew was long in place but there was always the chance of a German patrol passing along the narrow road between forest and railway line. Ginny tightened her raincoat belt as she hid in the ditch by the roadside. Clouds scuttled past overhead and for a few seconds she clearly saw the three men crouching against the skyline. She had worn the black wooll
en beret for warmth but had kept its rim above her ears, ignoring the bite of cold, wanting to make sure that she heard any approaching vehicle or the boot scrapes of a foot patrol.
Thankfully the moon was soon obscured again and she stood up from her cramped position. The night was never completely silent; she had learnt that. Wind through the forest rubbed branches together in a dull persistent groan. It also deadened any sound and she failed to hear the downwind approach of a small car until its rough engine caught her attention. She spun around and saw the gamekeeper and Chaval gesture wildly to her because their keen hearing had already heard the car’s approach. Then the men lay flat as a small two-seater sports car came around a bend fifty metres away, its headlights sweeping the road ahead, catching her full in its beams. She froze like a rabbit caught in their glare. Somewhere behind her she heard weapons being cocked as the car slowed and stopped ten paces from where she stood. It would have been foolish to run and create immediate suspicion. She raised her hand to stop the headlights blinding her and made out two men in an open-top sports car. They wore shaped caps and there was sufficient light for her to see the Luftwaffe wings on their brims and pinned on their leather jackets. One of the men called out. His voice didn’t sound distrustful, more concerned as he asked her in French if everything was all right.
She walked towards them smiling, greeting them and thanking them for stopping because she had fallen off her bicycle and it was broken in the ditch. By the time she reached the two young flying officers she could see that they had been drinking and were probably returning to base. The driver turned to his passenger, suggesting they help. The second man seemed less intoxicated than his friend. Had he seen movement up on the railway line? His hand reached for the small leather holster at his belt. As they raised their eyes to her they saw the young woman had levelled a pistol at them. The shock held them motionless and she fired two shots into each man at close range. The Luftwaffe pilots’ bodies bucked and lay contorted, caps askew. For a moment she stayed rigid, arm extended, uncertain whether to shoot again, but clearly the men were dead. She released the breath held tight in her chest and turned to face the saboteurs on the railway track who had half raised themselves with weapons at the ready.
‘Hurry,’ she called.
49
Mitchell led the way across the multiple rail tracks, silver curves snaking this way and that in the flitting moonlight. A dozen railway lines fed out from the closed sheds into the vast turntable that was capable of turning engines on to any chosen track in the yard. Locomotives were always taken into their stalls front first, then backed out on to the turntable and spun around to roll off on the desired track. In the distance the fireboxes in the cabs of a couple of small locomotives glowed. Hissing steam eased from valves. The men could smell heated oil and coal smoke but neither of the little steam engines was moving. Mitchell guessed they were used for shunting wagons around the yard. He peered into the gloom, stooped beneath the weight of his haversack and the desire to appear as small as possible. The armoured train leaving Paris carrying the retooling machines would pass by these marshalling yards. Mitchell was anxious about setting the timers to detonate at the correct time. Too soon and the vital train would be alerted and return to the city yards. Too late and the heavy locomotives and their lifting gear would be able to get down the tracks and make the repairs. How timely would the bombing run be? Doubts clouded his mind but he consoled himself that if the bombers never came – were cancelled for any reason – then at least he would have stranded the vital tooling machines in the French countryside and that would give the Allies the luxury of destroying it when they wished. And there was the satisfaction of knowing he would have stopped hundreds of French civilians being killed.
‘Here,’ he hissed, hunching down outside the vast sheds. The scale and depth of the turntable brought him up short. The men would have to clamber a couple of metres down into the concrete pit. Drossier would plant his explosives on the lower track, the circle of rail that lined the circumference of the turntable pit allowing the turntable to be spun on bogey wheels. While Drossier did that Mitchell and Maillé would plant their heavyweight plastique in the turntable’s base, close to the central pivot.
The others crouched. Mitchell held up a finger. ‘One,’ he whispered and pointed to Maillé. ‘Two.’ He gestured to Drossier, who nodded and followed Maillé as they eased off their haversacks, lay belly down and lowered their cargo into the turntable’s well. Mitchell ran to the far side of the bridge that carried the turning track straddling the middle of the sunken turntable. With two heavy charges on either side of the pivot’s mechanism, the turntable would be rendered useless. Mitchell was sweating, his shirt stuck to his back, but he steadied his breathing, eased the haversack down and then lowered himself into the pit. Banishing any doubt about the scale of the mechanism he quickly unpacked the explosives and bent beneath the steel latticework. Laying the charges seemed to take much longer than he planned. Time crawled agonizingly slowly. Panic began to grip him. He swore to himself. Shook it free from his mind. The charges were well concealed. He had arranged with Maillé, unseen on the other side of the turning base, to acknowledge Mitchell’s tap on the steel structure so they could co-ordinate the timer charges. He tapped twice. He waited, crimping pliers in hand. There was no return signal. Doubts about Maillé’s reliability taunted him. There was nothing he could do. And then he heard the dull double tap in response. He crimped the copper end of the timer. Grabbing his rucksack he made for the wall, jumped up for the top of the rim and tried to haul himself over the lip but he didn’t have the strength to pull his body up the turntable wall. He leapt again, found a better purchase, scraping his shins as he struggled to heave himself up. Suddenly two hands reached down and grabbed his haversack straps and hauled him upwards. Fear lurched in his stomach. Thoughts of German soldiers lying in ambush flashed through his mind. Once he was over the wall he rolled on his back ready to fight and kick his way clear until he saw Drossier’s grinning face leering down at him.
‘No time to hang about, Pascal. Reckoned you’d need a helping hand. Maillé and I helped each other out.’
Mitchell wasted no time thanking him. A curt nod was enough. ‘Timer’s set?’
Drossier nodded. ‘Yeah. Me and Maillé crimped them at the same time. Doubt there’s little more than a few seconds between you and us. Had no idea it was going to be so huge.’
Mitchell didn’t admit to having the same impression. ‘They always are,’ he said. He saw Maillé walking towards the distant gate and then bending down to place something under a track.
‘The rats,’ said Mitchell. ‘Have you planted yours?’
‘Yeah. On the tracks away from the turntable. They’ll spot them because I left the timer in plain sight sticking out of the rat’s arse.’
Mitchell raised his luminescent watch face. They had done well in planting the explosives but time was tight. He reckoned that they had less than ten minutes to clear the yard before the explosions. They followed Maillé. Mitchell stopped, quickly eased the haversack down and emptied out the two smaller blocks of plastique. He handed one to Drossier and together they pushed in a pencil timer without crimping the copper end. When found it would look as though the saboteurs had been disturbed or careless but would also hopefully identify them as being British agents. They placed the explosives several yards apart, spanning either side of what looked to be the main track leading out the yards from the direction of the turntable. Once done they followed Maillé, who was nearing the gate. One of the heavy metal doors of the locomotive shed began to grind open. Dull outside lights flickered into life. They heard steam hiss and the chug of pressure as smoke puffed from the smokestack. A sudden screech of metal against metal echoed from the cavernous shed as the driving wheels found purchase. The doors widened; all three men crouched as dimmed lights in the shed bathed the massive locomotive. A French railwayman emerged and walked ahead of the engine swinging a lantern, guiding the way forward.
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‘They’re on the move,’ hissed Drossier.
It was obvious the engine was scheduled to be coupled up to one of the many lines of boxcars across the yard. A coal tender sat several tracks away. Mitchell saw the direction the locomotive would take. Once on the turntable it would swing around, link up with the intended track and then back on to the coal tender. Soldiers appeared behind the locomotive as it eased out of the shed. A few feet away from where Mitchell and Drossier stood railway lines clanged as points were changed. Mitchell spun around. In the distance he could make out a signal box’s light showing men heaving on levers.
‘Walk,’ said Mitchell. ‘Slowly. Don’t look back. There’ll be men coming out on to the tracks anytime soon if they’re preparing this train.’ He prayed Maillé would not open fire on the distant soldiers. They were out of range from where he had stopped and at the moment posed no threat. Drossier’s nerve held and he walked towards where Maillé had pressed himself against the perimeter wire. Mitchell waited a moment longer, peered at his watch face and strained to hear the sound of the train carrying the machine tools, which would pass by the marshalling yards. He looked back to where the locomotive edged towards the turntable. It would be an added bonus if the engine was on the turntable when the explosives went off. There was no time to wait and see. He angled his approach some distance from Drossier’s so it would not appear that the two men were together. Every step made his back crawl. If they were challenged they were caught in the open. He heard the sound of a train beyond the yards. It was travelling fast, heading in the direction of Chaval and the others. Mitchell prayed his mathematical skills had not let him down because he had estimated the speed of the train and the distance it needed to travel to reach Chaval’s position. In the stillness of the night the train’s bellowing engine threw sparks into the night sky, where the clouds scuttered across the face of the moon. He quickened his pace, taking longer strides, urging himself not to break into a run. He was close to Maillé now. Drossier reached the gate and then Mitchell was with them. He had forgotten to retrieve the bolt cutters from his haversack.
