The girl was dressing and was mercifully mute. He hated it if they tried to talk afterwards. Gaerte would never engage any girl for a second visit if she was talkative. In fact he preferred variety, rarely requesting the same girl twice, considering each one to be a personal conquest. Gaerte preferred them young, pliant and swift to leave once the act was over. Aside from beauty, that was all he desired of a woman. Gaerte had enjoyed watching this long-limbed brunette undress. She had been a welcome interlude after a frustrating day wrestling with the never-ending problem of the Komet’s fighting weight.
Gaerte’s new idea was to make the plane land in a powerless descent with the engine turned off, a white-knuckled pilot sliding it down in a steep glide, praying he would land softly enough to keep the volatile mix of fuel from igniting around him. That day’s experiments had proved only partially successful, the plane had not exploded but it did dip dramatically to one side on landing and a wing had been damaged, which meant more cost, further delay and one of only two serviceable prototypes out of action until it could be repaired.
So far not a single enemy pilot had been engaged and Gaerte had no spectacular kills to boast of in his reports to Goering but he was convinced the glider principle could work on landing. If he could just squeeze a few more seconds from the fuel mix and reduce the weight still further he was certain the flight time would increase. The pilots would then gain precious extra moments in the air to locate incoming targets and the kills would follow. No one failed to be impressed by the speed of the Komet or its manoeuvrability in the air. If Gaerte could just keep it in the skies for a little longer, the hard part would then be keeping score of the downed Allied pilots.
Kornatzki reported no breakthrough regarding the mysterious disappearance of the Milice leader. Combret had simply vanished. Tauber suspected he lacked confidence in the outcome of the war and was attempting to flee the country to save his own skin. He instructed Kornatzki to alert the border guards then continued to quiz his second in command on Combret’s recent movements.
‘The man operated in such secrecy,’ admitted Kornatzki, ‘even his own men didn’t know what he was up to most of the time. He often worked alone or with that big peasant body guard. No one knows anything about the night he left, though one of his men said he saw a Maquis informant a couple of days ago.’
‘An informant?’ Tauber became animated, ‘from within the Maquis? Do you have the name?’
‘Not yet, Standartenfűhrer, but I am investigating.’
‘You’re investigating?’ Tauber was unimpressed. He couldn’t contain his interest. He scraped back his chair and rose to his feet. ‘Get the name from Combret’s men,’ he ordered, ‘make sure they understand where their loyalties lie, sweat them, frighten them, make them give it up. Do it now. When you have the name get them to arrange a meeting with the informant and we will take the man off their hands. My God, this could be the breakthrough we’ve been looking for.’
36
‘As long as people believe in absurdities
they will continue to commit atrocities.’
Voltaire
Walsh opened his eyes just as the earliest dawn light peeped through the flap of the tent. Emma was still asleep beside him and his first thought was the lack of any pressing need to leave the warmth of her side. Then he noticed something, a sound or more accurately the lack of a sound. Walsh realised he had woken because of the complete silence. Usually he awoke around the same time each morning, roused by the beginnings of a dawn chorus. Today there was nothing. Walsh waited but still no sound came from outside. What could have scared the birds away from the camp?
Quietly, without disturbing Emma, Walsh crawled towards the tent flap and parted it very slightly, just enough for him to see a sizeable portion of the camp. The shock hit him like a blow. A German soldier was walking silently through the camp, crouched low, his Schmeisser MP40 machine-pistol at the ready. Walsh spotted a second just behind him, then a third. The Germans were in the camp, infiltrating the Maquisard lair, aiming to kill or capture everyone there.
Fear took a grip on Walsh then, his heart raced and his chest began to heave. At first he was frozen, convinced he could no longer breathe, as the panic gripped him but Walsh knew he had to act if they were to have any chance of survival. Behind him Emma murmured and rolled over. Realising he had stirred, she opened her eyes, sat up, blinked at him and was about to speak but he shot her a look and pressed a finger to his lips. She understood immediately and froze. Walsh crawled back to her, grabbed his bag, retrieved the commando knife with its large serrated blade and pressed its handle into her hand. He spoke quietly yet urgently.
‘Soldiers, outside, in the camp, we can’t go out this way, cut through the back of the tent, do it now.’ Emma was stunned but she nodded and took the knife. She stabbed its razor sharp point through the canvas then moved the blade quietly downwards in a sawing action until a long slit began to appear. Satisfied with her progress, Walsh took the Luger, crawled back to the front of the tent, pulled the flap aside aimed and fired twice. Walsh reasoned this was as good a way as any to alert the camp to the presence of the Germans. The crack of the pistol was louder in the silence of the morning.
The two nearest men, including the soldier with the MP40, fell to the floor, fatally wounded from Walsh’s shots. He immediately ducked back into the tent. The others, shocked by the unseen assault on their fallen comrades, abandoned stealth and began to call to each other. Some returned fire, blazing wildly, unsure of the direction of Walsh’s bullets. Others sent indiscriminate bursts into the nearest tents and shelters. Walsh saw panicked and bleary-eyed maquisards begin to emerge from their shelters. Some were cut down before they realised what was happening. Walsh realised there were too many soldiers to make any kind of fight of it. They had to run.
Wash turned back in time to see Emma disappearing through the hole in the tent. He stuffed the pistol into his belt, grabbed his bag on the way and scrambled after her. Emma seized his arm and hauled Walsh through the gap and they were off and running, hurtling through the long damp grass at the rear of the camp, desperate to reach the protection of the woods. Behind them the camp erupted with noise, bursts of gunfire drowned out the desperate cries of dying men. The Maquis were being slaughtered and there was nothing Walsh could do about it. He did not need to look behind him to realise that this was a full assault. Walsh realised if the Germans had done this properly there would be no escape for any of them. The door would already be slammed shut.
‘Head for the high ground,’ shouted Walsh but she was already going that way and they scrambled up the hill together. It was so steep Emma’s palms hit the ground in front of her as she stumbled upwards. Walsh expected them to be cut down at any moment but no shots found them. Were the Germans too busy fighting their way through the camp? They rounded a clump of trees, hoping to use them for cover, and almost collided with two German soldiers running into the camp from the opposite direction to outflank the Maquis. Both had their bayonets fixed. The nearest made a stab at Walsh who jumped back to evade the bayonet. On the second lunge he stepped to one side, grabbed the end of the rifle on the follow-through and pulled hard, throwing his attacker off balance. The soldier stumbled and Walsh hit him viciously in the face with the butt of his own rifle, knocking him cold.
From the corner of his eye, the second man loomed upon him. It was too late to evade the blow, too late to do anything except take a bayonet in the belly. Walsh had a moment of realisation that it was all over, he was going to die here in this French field. Then there was a loud crack and the second soldier fell forward onto the grass and lay motionless.
Emma was standing stock-still, a shocked expression on her face, the Browning Automatic still pointing straight out in front of her, as if she half expected the dead German to rise again and she would have to shoot him once more.
‘Thanks,’ he said, the inadequate word all he had time for. Wal
sh spun Emma round to face the opposite direction and gave her a push to help her on her way. There was no time to reflect on his narrow escape or they would be killed where they stood. They pressed on up the hill, the sound of gunfire and men screaming behind them spurring them on. Emma was wild-eyed and Walsh realised this was probably the first time she had ever killed anyone.
It took the Germans less than fifteen minutes to overrun the whole camp; now there was an eerie silence as the storm subsided; no more gunfire or screaming, just a few barked orders from the officers to shatter the calm. Walsh pressed his finger to his lips and Emma nodded. They crawled slowly forward until they reached the edge of the ridge high above the camp, their position affording them a perfect view of the devastation far below them.
They had been lucky. Though they were not yet entirely free of danger, Walsh’s swift reaction to the assault got them though the cordon of soldiers before it closed tightly around the camp. Walsh had risked an occasional backwards glance as they climbed, checking for pursuers, but none came. Instead there was only the horrifying spectacle of the camp being overrun by the soldiers. They had a bird’s eye view as the Maquis vainly tried to engage or evade their attackers. He witnessed the last act of one man, as the poor desperate soul tried to run and was cut down. Others were rounded up at the point of a bayonet and forced to their knees, their hands bound behind them before they were hauled up and marched away while the killings went on around them.
Now from their vantage point, Walsh and Emma could see bodies strewn between the tents and small shelters, and witnessed a similar number of captured maquisards being loaded on to a truck for questioning. Torture then transportation to the notorious camp at Le Struthof would follow.
It was then that Walsh noticed the second line of prisoners, for not all of the captured men were being taken away. To one side were a dozen helpless figures kneeling in the mud, hands tied behind their backs, heads bowed, being watched over by soldiers who were laughing and joking. Walsh reached into his bag and pulled out binoculars then looked again. To one side of the group was a figure Walsh instantly recognised. Colonel Tauber was holding a pistol. It was going to be an execution.
Walsh trained his field glasses on the line of captured men, desperate to find out who had been chosen to die? Tauber moved behind the line of men and the first shot from his pistol rang out then straight after it there was another. Two men fell forwards. It was impossible to identify the sprawled figures now lying face down in the mud.
Tauber was clearly relishing his work and he wasted no time in taking aim at the third in line. It was the fourth that caught Walsh’s attention and his heart sank. Next to die would be a tall, tanned, swarthy man who was holding his head up as high as he could, unbowed, determined to show defiance even in death.
‘Jesus,’ gasped Walsh.
‘What?’
‘It’s Alvar.’
‘Oh no,’ and as Emma spoke there was a puff of smoke from Tauber’s gun and Alvar was gone.
‘That bastard,’ said Walsh, ‘if I have the chance I swear I’ll…’
‘Who else?’ asked Emma urgently and Walsh trailed his field glasses down the line. He recognised each man there and experienced a grim jolt of recognition in every face; a word remembered, a gesture, a joke shared in one of a hundred interactions from weeks in the same camp together. All of these men would die, right in front of his eyes and Walsh was powerless to help any of them. He had almost reached the end of the line, gaining some hope from the faces that were missing, though he knew they might already be dead or taken away in the lorry. He had not seen Sam Cooper or Montueil, Triboulet the schoolteacher, nor Lemonnier; and Simone would never have been at the camp so early. He knew she would hear the gunshots from her farm, and that was just as well, or she might have walked straight into a German ambush. Then Walsh’s eye fell on the last man in the line and he realised the cowed figure was Christophe Valvert.
Tauber had not yet reached Valvert, there were still two or three to die before it was his turn but he would not have to wait long. Walsh scanned the ground around him, desperately searching for a way for Valvert to make a break for it but he already knew it was hopeless. There were soldiers all around him, chatting and laughing as the men were killed. One even appeared to be filming the act. They were proud of themselves.
‘They’ve got Christophe too,’ said Walsh.
‘Oh God,’ gasped Emma.
Tauber despatched the last man but one in the line then he reached the lone figure of Valvert, whose head had been bowed the whole time, as if in prayer or merely desperation. And then a strange thing happened; Valvert raised his head, turned to face the man who was about to kill him and said something. Tauber stopped, lowered his gun for a second and leaned forward incredulously. Valvert spoke once more and something passed between them. Valvert was talking and Tauber listening intently. The exchange did not last long but whatever was said it had an immediate effect on the Nazi. Tauber suddenly flew into a rage and aimed a clumsy kick at Valvert’s head. The bound Frenchman fell on to his side and Tauber lashed out at him again, kicking him twice more before suddenly remembering he had a gun in his hand. In his fury he sent bullet after bullet into Valvert’s body, which twitched and jerked as each round found its mark.
Walsh could not help but be moved by the defiance Valvert showed. ‘Good for you, Christophe,’ he said quietly.
‘What happened?’ asked Emma.
‘I’m not sure but Valvert said something to that Nazi colonel just before he was shot. Whatever it was, it got the bastard worked up into a right old rage.’
‘Oh,’ was all Emma offered in reply. She had not witnessed and perhaps could not fully appreciate Valvert’s defiance in the face of an absolute evil like Tauber but Walsh could not think of a finer way to face death. To turn towards the man who thinks he has won, the Nazi who is about to kill you, then tell him where to go. He only hoped he would possess the same courage himself when his own time came.
The informant was weeping. Kornatzki knew this even though his view through the narrow hatch of the cell door was hampered by the gloom. He knew it even though no sound came from the hunched figure whose face was obscured by his hands; Kornatzki could tell from the silent convulsions that racked the man’s body that he was sobbing uncontrollably. He left the informant alone for a time before returning, this time with the Colonel. By then the sobbing had ceased but the man appeared no less wretched for it. Was this the look Judas had before he hanged himself, Kornatzki wondered?
‘I don’t know why you have been weeping,’ said Tauber, showing even less understanding of the human condition than Kornatzki would have credited him with, ‘you are perfectly safe.’
‘What have I done?’ Kornatzki felt the choked words were aimed more at the man’s maker than Colonel Tauber.
‘You have acted sensibly to remove terrorists from the world and saved your life into the bargain.’
‘I did not do it for my own life.’
‘No, of course not, it wasn’t to save your skin and it certainly wasn’t because of the money we paid you.’ Tauber permitted himself a sly little smile, ‘it was for your family, wasn’t it? Well let’s just say the rest is a bonus then, shall we?’
‘What are you going to do with me?’ and fresh tears fell, ‘you said you would…’
‘We promised you salvation,’ Tauber lifted a chair from the centre of the room and sat down in front of his informant, ‘and you shall have it. We were careful to keep you separate from the men we brought in. One at a time they will leave for Le Struthof, never knowing who in their number was wise enough to cooperate with us. I have seen Le Struthof and I would not recommend it even for a day, much less a year. They work men to death there. You should rejoice, for you will never know what it is like. Instead you will soon be a free man.’
The prospect gave the informant fresh alarm. ‘I can’t go back out th
ere, you’ve got to protect me. If anybody suspects…’ And he could not bring himself to describe his likely fate.
‘Don’t worry. In a day or two we will raise an alarm and start a manhunt. One of the men captured during the raid on the maquisards will have managed a daring escape. No one will know you left the camp long before the raid on it. Hell, I’ll even send patrols out with dogs looking for you and all the while you’ll be safe in here. The patrols will cease but the town will know there is a fugitive out there who has eluded us. Everyone will be praying for you. I am sure it will be good for their morale, don’t you think?’ This prompted a new bout of weeping.
‘There are others like you working for us within the so called “resistance movement”. We will arrange to have you taken in by another band of maquisards. You will infiltrate them and report everything back to us.’
Kornatzki could see the informant was shocked to the core. The poor fool thought he would merely have to live out the rest of his days with one unspeakable act of betrayal on his conscience, not realising his living hell had only just begun.
‘I can’t do this again, I can’t.’
‘But you must,’ Tauber said it so reasonably, as if he were making a perfectly fair bargain, ‘if you wish to stay safe.’
‘No, no, I can’t do it, I won’t. I did it this one time because the Englishman would have got us all killed anyway and civilians too, but I can’t do it again.’
‘Mmm, very well,’ Tauber murmured the words gently as if his suggestion for a drink in the local café had been politely declined due to a prior engagement, ‘if you really feel you cannot provide this small service then it is as well you tell us now,’ he made as if to leave and Kornatzki followed. ‘I think I will arrange for all of your comrades to come together in the holding cell to say goodbye to you before they leave for Le Struthof. I’ll explain you won’t be joining them and the reason why but don’t worry, I feel certain they will understand. They will surely forgive you once you explain your motives. After all, they are family men too. We’ll leave you to think about it for a while, shall we?’
Ungentlemanly Warfare Page 23
