Return to the Field

by Alexander Fullerton

  But anyone might have spilled it all, by now. She changed the subject: ‘Those trucks – there was a convoy of nine parked on the Châteauneuf–Briec road—’

  ‘Really?’ He’d interrupted her: ‘Bridge ahead here now. Just praying it’s not blocked. Doubt it would be – waste of their own time and manpower, this far from the action… About le Guen, though – yes, Wednesday – he came for one of our regular sessions and I grilled him. I’d had him followed, see.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well.’ He’d slowed a bit: they were approaching the bridge over the Odet: were on it now, humming over: moonlight glittering down there on black, fast-running water. ‘Had my people keep eyes on him, anyway. One of ’em was with him when he made his drop in Place Saint-Matthieu. Saturday, that was…’

  ‘Why have him tailed?’

  ‘Because I smelt double-dealing. With you as chief suspect.’

  ‘Me?’

  A snort of humour. They were off the bridge now. ‘Sound so surprised… My girl saw the two of you meet on Sunday, for God’s sake. That was when you gave him the time and place for tonight’s rendezvous – correct? Well, I know it, he told me. But heavens, why wouldn’t I take an interest – fellow hates my guts – OK, he’s entitled, I don’t mind – comes twitching along saying he’s thought better of it, where his duty lies, all that cock…’ Braking, slowing in short pumping jerks: the junction was coming up, the Briec turn. ‘I’m supposed to believe in this change of heart. I know it’s possible he’s working for the SD – there’s one called Fischer who calls in at the Kommandantur quite often, and I remember wondering if our friend wasn’t a touch cagey when the name was mentioned… But – I don’t know, didn’t credit him with the guts, somehow. Silly of me, I suppose: but it was your part in it that intrigued me. We’ve had little differences between us before this, haven’t we – my outfit and yours?’

  ‘One’s heard of – friction. But I’ve worked for your people before this, I might mention.’

  ‘I gathered so… Wouldn’t light me a cigarette, would you?’

  ‘Why not… Anyway, you faced le Guen with all this on Wednesday – at your surgery – and he told you about the message-drop on the previous Saturday.’

  ‘Admitted it – I already knew about it. But he told me everything. Starting with an assertion that he was on my side – your side, my side, same thing, in his view – all right, it is, fundamentally – and only pretending to work for the SD because they had his daughter in Kerongués, so forth, and you were getting her out somehow, he’d be going au vert with her tonight.’ Another snort: ‘How you persuaded him into that – well, I take my hat off to you. But this was my first clear intimation that the SD were on to me.’ He took the lighted cigarette from her. ‘Thanks. And obviously I had to consider baling out.’ A long drag at the Gaullois. ‘Got a message away – Wednesday night – and the answer came last night saying yes, pull out, and confirming they’d had a tip-off to the same effect – that I was blown – from SOE and originating with you. So now you tell me.’

  ‘I will. But sticking to the subject for the moment – you went to Place Saint-Matthieu—?’

  ‘I’d like to clear my mind on this first. I’d been slow on it – on their having me under surveillance. I think it must have started after I’d recruited le Guen – and pressured him a bit much. That was – unwise. But you see I’d had reassuring inside information, I thought I knew I was considered to be OK. For one thing I’d informed on a so-called Résistant – about six months ago—’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Double agent – a woman. Considerable threat to us. But the SD didn’t know I knew that side of it, in fact they had reason to believe I couldn’t have known. Wouldn’t have expected me to – just a bloody dentist?’

  ‘In their good books, anyway.’

  ‘There were other reasons to believe so. The man whose job it is to drive this car is one source. A driver with sharp ears picks up a lot, you know.’

  ‘What happens when the car’s missed?’

  ‘First thing tomorrow’s the likely time. Yard broken into, chain on the gate cut through—’

  ‘But if they’re pulling out all the stops tonight?’

  ‘Oh, it’s possible. Anything is. But not probable.’

  ‘Are we all right for petrol?’

  ‘Yes. Tank’s kept full.’

  ‘Will he know it was you who took it?’

  ‘Probably – but that doesn’t matter. As long as his superiors don’t guess he knows. They’ll put two and two together – once they know I’m on the run.’ He cursed under his breath: easing the car over to the right, the narrow verge: the road was also narrow here and two other vehicles were coming around the long bend, the second of them swinging out wider than he should have: that had been a car like this one, and the leader a Mercedes: they’d bombed past, and Prigent had scraped this one’s right side along a hedge that had sounded like it had barbed wire in it. Thorn, more likely. ‘Salauds…’

  She began, ‘If they already know you’ve taken off – and they do find it’s gone—’

  ‘Forget it. There’s no obvious connection.’ Shifting gear for the incline and the right fork that was coming up. ‘And it’ll be under cover by first light – God willing. What I was saying, Zoé – I learnt from le Guen on Wednesday that they were on to me – using him. But you were wise to it before that, weren’t you. When did he tell you?’

  ‘It was—’ she put her mind back – ‘Wednesday, I think. No – Tuesday.’

  ‘Of last week.’

  ‘Yes. I was in Quimper on the Tuesday and the Wednesday.’

  ‘He told you this on the Tuesday – April second, that was. You notified London – when?’

  ‘The next day – Wednesday. The soonest I could get a signal out.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have notified me directly?’

  ‘No.’ She knew what he was driving at: had seen it from the start – and thanked God she had decided to tell Baker Street when she had. Remembering that period of dilemma, and telling Prigent – as the offside wheels slammed jarringly through an exceptionally deep pothole – ‘I’m sorry – couldn’t. Knowing your line might be tapped – and already wishing I hadn’t called you before, incidentally – using the name “Zoé” as I did – they might have been on to you then, for all I knew – and if so, after that call they might well have been looking for me.’

  ‘So what did you tell your people, that Wednesday?’

  ‘As part of a longer message, as far as I remember it, Micky reports Cyprien cover blown.’

  ‘You sent that ten days ago – and it came in this morning. Last night, actually, but to me this morning. Ten days after you’d told them!’

  ‘I couldn’t have contacted you direct. You can see that?’

  ‘It’s the ten-day gap that’s the point. “F” Section hears from you that Wednesday, picks up a scrambler to my people within the hour – I’d have known by the morning of Thursday the fourth – nine days ago. We’ll be passing through Moncouar in a minute. Could be – slightly crucial…’

  Slightly. Grimacing to herself in the darkness, and touching the gun in her pocket… Moncouar being a point of access to the lanes leading down to and around the bridge and Kerongués and Lestonan. It was about as likely a spot for a road-block as could be imagined. Time now – she couldn’t see it. Not less than eleven-thirty, anyway. She took a long pull at her cigarette, to get a glow of light from it, close to the dial. Eleven thirty-two.

  Bombers in the air yet?

  Ready for take-off, at least. Pathfinders first, of course. Perhaps thundering down the runway now, this moment.

  Those Mercedes left in view at the château would be bait, nothing else. If the naval staff were meeting this weekend it wouldn’t be at Trevarez. But to trap and annihilate a large force of Maquis – and perhaps as a by-blow get to their arms’ dumps, through torture of those captured – would be well worth the loss of a few old Mercs. The admirals
might be glad to get new ones.

  He’d eased the speed down a little, in preparation for Moncouar coming up. Taking the cigarette out of his mouth, clearing his throat… ‘The puzzle of not hearing from London until last night – perhaps academic, here and now. Especially as I’ve known since Wednesday. It still intrigues me, rather. Why London would have sat on the information for so long. Eh?’

  Because I asked them to…

  She said, ‘No doubt when we get to London—’

  ‘When!’

  ‘Has to be some explanation.’ Crossing her fingers. There wouldn’t be. Baker Street weren’t going to open their files to SIS – not in one’s own lifetime – or ever… She asked him, artlessly, ‘What about your people or person here, however your signals come and go?’

  ‘No. That’s not the answer.’ Cigarette between his lips again now, both hands on the wheel. ‘But as you say – wash the dirty linen if and when we make it back… Here’s Moncouar.’

  It might have been better to have gone via Châteaulin, she thought, taken the left fork five kilometres back and steered slightly wider around the general area of all this. Slightly longer route, was all: but time was a somewhat vital factor.

  Life and death factor. If this car wasn’t missed until the morning, and practically every able-bodied Boche in Finisterre was concentrated around Trevarez, there might be some hope – might be – of getting clear: if one could make it to cover before daylight.

  ‘When did you say you heard they’d arrested le Guen?’

  ‘Friday night. I got Gabrielle away then.’

  ‘Gabrielle?’

  ‘My receptionist. Blonde, rather attractive?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But I was going to ask – what about your wife?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Oh. I thought – assumed, for some reason—’

  ‘I have two ex-wives. Both a long way from here.’

  ‘Both French?’

  ‘No. Number Two is English. Well – Welsh. That’s how I was over there – quite a lot, just before the war. Her uncle was – well, in the Foreign Office, in London.’

  ‘How you got to be recruited, I suppose.’

  A grunt, shrugging… ‘As far as Moncouar’s concerned, Zoé, seems we’re in luck. And if we get through Briec as easily – oh, damn…’

  A vehicle ahead – head-on, seemingly holding to the middle of the road. Prigent muttering, ‘Get over, you Boche filth…’

  It had a blunt, military look about it. And wasn’t large. Rosie thought suddenly of Lannuzel and his bouc: if Henri had got through to Brigitte, and Brigitte had got herself to the farmstead at Laz – by bike or maybe in the pickup – and Lannuzel knowing that she – ‘Suzanne’ – was sitting in Jacques Perrot’s kitchen…

  It had lurched aside, hurtled by: was some kind of military vehicle. Guy Lannuzel wouldn’t have been on this road though, he’d have come the way she had, surely.

  If he’d come at all. She hoped he wouldn’t, but he might. Doubling-up his personal risk less out of noblesse oblige than simply because he wouldn’t want her caught – exactly as she’d dreaded le Guen being caught.

  ‘One way we’re lucky.’ Prigent delved in a coat pocket, fished out a pack of cigarettes and passed it to her. He’d flicked his stub out of the window a minute ago. ‘In all this excitement, nobody can be sure who else is or should be on the road. And we don’t look like fugitives in this little bus. Isn’t going to occur to anyone, is it?’

  She lit new cigarettes for both of them. Thinking of Henri Peucat, hoping to God he at least would have got clear. Then in the flare of the match seeing the time – fourteen minutes to midnight. Pathfinders and bombers would surely be on their way. If Brigitte had got to them at Laz – well, the Maquis would have scattered back into their forests, while Boche troops – several hundred at least, and other units might have moved in from the Carhaix direction too – would be in position around and maybe inside the château. Le Guen hadn’t known anything about an air attack. He’d guessed at an assault by Maquis, and she remembered that she’d neither confirmed nor denied it. Prigent, even, hadn’t known the RAF were to be involved, he’d told her. The detail of ‘Mincemeat’ hadn’t concerned him, only the provision of le Guen as informer.

  The important thing, anyway, was that since le Guen hadn’t known it, the enemy wouldn’t either; current troop deployments would be aimed at catching the Maquis in the open and with their pants down, so to speak.

  So there should be some benefits.

  ‘In a way—’ she passed Prigent his Gaullois – ‘this may turn out rather well, as far as the bombing’s concerned. With at least a few hundred concentrated there.’

  * * *

  In Briec not a soul was stirring.

  She’d asked him – again – ‘You went to the house in Place Saint-Matthieu because you knew it was where le Guen had dropped his message, so there’d be a line to me – to warn us—’

  ‘Only way there was. Wasn’t my business, exactly, but—’

  ‘I know. And very much appreciate it – however this turns out.’

  A principle in SOE training was that if you were in a spot and had a way out, you got out, didn’t as it were throw good lives after lost ones. Prigent, who not even being SOE had no shred of obligation towards her in any case, could have been out and clear by now – straight out of Quimper, not going anywhere near Lestonan… He was telling her – about his going to the Berthomets’ house – ‘Got a foot in the door, more or less. Hell of a job convincing the old boy I wasn’t Gestapo. Want to know how I did it?’

  ‘Yes – please…’

  ‘I’d argued without getting anywhere. Suggested I’d go in another room and block my ears, he’d get through and ask you or whoever it was to ring him back – so I wouldn’t know where or who—’

  ‘If you’d been Gestapo you could have told the operator to identify the number.’

  ‘I know. And he wouldn’t play. So then I put my Luger on the table, showed him there was a round in the chamber and safety catch off, told him, “Get through, then point this at me, if I do anything but warn him they’re all in danger, shoot me.” That did it, but only because the old girl saw sense and persuaded him.’

  ‘Hell of a risk. Shaky old hand?’

  ‘I slipped the safety on again after the demonstration. As it happened he didn’t touch it anyway. Not the killer type, eh?’

  ‘I’m very grateful to you. For myself obviously – but all of us. And old Henri in particular – the one you spoke to. He’s a splendid character.’

  ‘I’m sure. Lots of ’em about. I hope he managed to pass it on, that’s all.’

  ‘I know who he’d have phoned, and she – well, as long as she got there…’

  She paused. Looking out on her side across uneven, streakily moonlit countryside. Thinking of the bombers coming, and Trevarez being in that direction, roughly thirty kilometres away. It couldn’t be far off midnight now. Thinking of Brigitte and her brother too, whether they’d have got away. He could have taken her into the Fôret de Laz with his Maquis friends to start with: but after that, getting back to their farm – when the whole area would be crawling with Boche soldiery. There’d be the bouc to dispose of, too.

  A spark, in the corner of her eye, out there in the east…

  ‘Hey – I think—’

  A grunt on her left: he’d seen it too. Like an expanding star, radiating whiteness: and another – two more, close together, opaque white blossoms floating in blue-black sky. She was winding the window down… ‘Couldn’t stop, could we?’

  ‘Not here.’

  Shifting gear, to cope with the incline. Not far ahead there’d be a crossing, side road to Gouézec, beautiful country down into the valley of the Aulne and to Châteauneuf – and Trevarez a bit to the right where a moon-coloured cupola of Pathfinder flares was throwing surrounding hills and forest into contrasting effects of light and darkness. The Citroën slowing, breasting a ridge, and the first bomb
hit then – small and distant, a spark like the start of a match igniting, flame-coloured, lasting only a split second but then others too – and the sound arriving now, at first individual thumps, single drumbeats becoming a long drum-roll: the last of the flares were falling into an upward-reaching orange-red glow. The château on fire, she guessed.

  Bloody shame there were no admirals in there… She’d turned to make some such comment to Prigent, but he got in first: ‘Seen enough?’ And was taking it for granted that she had – shifting through the gears, picking up speed again, Rosie thinking that it would probably be no different at Kernével – where there’d been no ground action called for, just a straightforward bombing raid, and that it might have been better if this had been mounted the same way, irrespective of Resistance and Maquis politics and Count Jules’ own ambitions. An air attack plus Maquis action such as Lannuzel had intended might have accounted for Messrs Doenitz and Bachmann, but only if they’d been there in the first place, and right from the start that had been a gamble.

  Prigent broke into her thoughts… ‘Looked good – if that was what was wanted?’

  ‘But I’ve done no good at all. In fact more harm than good.’

  ‘Well – the thing’s gone wrong, sure—’

  ‘Hasn’t it, just. They didn’t need me here to do that.’ Gesturing back towards Trevarez. ‘All I’ve helped to do is put good people on the run and – maybe worse. Hostages’ll pay for it too.’

  ‘They would have anyway. And the weak link was le Guen, not you.’

  ‘I brought him into it!’

  ‘No – he was given to you. By me. I was asked whether I’d have any way of getting at least a few days’ notice of the next weekend conference, he was the answer and London jumped at it. So I duly put you in touch with him. I’m not blaming myself, incidentally, I did what I was asked to do – as you’ve done, uh?’

  ‘You’re a much nicer man than I thought.’

  ‘You didn’t like me, did you? Thought I was unkind to our “Micky”… And I was. Actually I’m not nice at all… But listen – the people you mention, on the run and in danger, et cetera – they were taking their chances, weren’t they? Name of the game – once you start monkeying around SOE-fashion, anyway. That’s my grouse – I had a good set-up there, you know?’