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‘Marcel the baker?’ said Hugues.
‘That’s the one.’
Hugues nodded approvingly. ‘A good man,’ he said.
Mallory had the feeling that he was sitting in on gossip about people he did not know. He said, ‘I need information about the Werwolf pack, not bread.’
‘Voil?,’ said Jaime. ‘Marcel proposes breakfast in the … in his cafе. Then he will provide you with transport to where it is you wish to go. He has another Englishman there, you will be glad to hear, who may have information.’
May, thought Mallory. Only may. He took a deep, resigned breath.
‘Oh, good,’ said Miller, edging towards the fire. ‘And the dancing girls?’
‘You may find some dancing girls.’
‘Breakfast would be fine,’ said Miller.
Mallory beckoned Jaime over. The men with the berets followed him as if glued to his side. ‘Why are there no Germans in the village?’
One of the men with the berets grinned, and spoke quickly. Jaime translated. ‘Because they are all in Jonz?re. First, fighting. Now, trying to catch some bandits before they arrive in Spain.’ There was more talk in a language that was not French. Basque, Mallory guessed. ‘This man says there has been a battle. Many Germans have been killed. There may be reprisals. It is said there was an Allied army in the mountains. In the next valley.’
Mallory raised his eyebrows. ‘An army,’ he said. From regiment to army, in the space of three minutes.
‘Yes,’ said Jaime, solemn-faced in the dim light of the torch. ‘And they say it is lucky that we were not involved, being so few, and one of us a woman.’
Mallory looked at Jaime hard. Was that the ghost of a wink? Andrea’s face was impassive. He had seen it too. His great head moved, almost imperceptibly. Nodding. Suddenly, Mallory found himself perilously close to trusting Jaime.
Mallory hardened his heart. ‘Now you listen,’ he said. ‘I am grateful for your offers of hospitality. But I don’t want to go into the village, breakfast or no breakfast. I want our transport out here, and I want to get up to the coast. The more time we spend in the mountains, the messier it’s going to get, the bigger the rumours. We want to do this quick and quiet. I don’t like rumours and reprisals, or battles. I want intelligence, and I want transport, and I want them before daylight. Tell these people to tell Marcel.’
Jaime said, ‘I don’t know-’
Mallory said, ‘And make it snappy.’
Jaime looked at the steady burn of the deeply-sunken eyes over the long, unshaven jaw. Jaime thought of the cliff that nobody could climb, that this man had climbed; of three burned-out lorries in the pass; and the pursuit on a wild goose chase towards the Spanish border. This was not a man it was easy to disobey. Perhaps he had underestimated this man.
‘Bon,’ he said.
‘And now,’ said Mallory, when the men in berets had gone outside, Thierry. Time to tell the folks at home we’ve arrived.’
Thierry nodded. He looked big and pale and exhausted. His head moved slowly, as if his neck was stiff, the big jowls creasing and uncreasing, stray strands of straw waving jauntily over the burst crown of his hat. He began to unpack the radio. Miller was in a corner, stretched out full-length on the straw, humming a Bix Beiderbecke tune. Andrea was relaxed, but close to a knothole in the door, through which he could keep tabs on the sentries. Mallory leaned his head against the wall. He could feel his clothes beginning to steam in the heat from the fire.
He said to Hugues, quietly, ‘What do you know about this Marcel?’
‘Jules’ second-in-command,’ said Hugues. ‘It is an odd structure, down here. Security is terrible. But they are brave men.’
‘And we trust them?’
Hugues smiled. He said, ‘Is there any choice?’
Mallory kept hearing Jensen’s voice. It seems quite possible that the Germans will, in a manner of speaking, be waiting for you.
Damn you, Jensen. What did you know that you did not tell us?
It was raining again, a steady rattle on the roof of the barn. On the mountain it would be snowing on their tracks. Perhaps their tracks would be comprehensively covered, and the Germans would not be waiting for them. Perhaps they would be lucky.
But Mallory did not believe in luck.
Thierry said, ‘Contact made and acknowledged.’
‘Messages?’
‘No messages.’
Mallory closed his eyes. Sleep lapped at him. Despite the fire he was cold. Two hours later, he was going to remember being cold; remember it with nostalgic affection. For the moment, he lay and shivered, dozing.
Then he was awake.
A lorry engine was running outside. He gripped his Schmeisser and rose to his feet, instantly alert. He could see Miller covering the door. Andrea was gone. What -
The door crashed open. A man was standing there. He was short and fat, with a beret the size of a dinner plate, and a moustache that spread beyond it like the wings of a crow. His small black eyes flicked between the Schmeisser barrels covering him. He grinned broadly. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Colbis welcomes its allies from beyond the seas. Allons, l’Amiral Beaufort.’
Mallory said, ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Marcel,’ said the man. ‘I am delighted to see you. I am only sorry that you had some little problems last night, of which I have already heard.’ He bowed. ‘My congratulations. Now, into the lorry. It will soon be light, and there are many eyes connected to many tongues.’
Outside, a steady rain was falling. In the grey half-light black pines rose up the steep hillside into a layer of dirty-grey cloud. The lorry was an old Citro?n, converted to wood-gas, panting and fuming in the yard. ‘Messieurs,’ said Marcel. ‘Dispose yourselves.’
Mallory closed the Storm Force into the canvas back of the lorry, and climbed into the front. Marcel ground the gears, and started to jounce down a narrow track that snaked through the dripping trees. ‘Quite a fuss,’ said Marcel. ‘The Germans have met an army of maquisards, it is said. Oh, very good -’
Mallory said, ‘I am looking for three submarines.’
‘Naturally,’ said Marcel. ‘And I know a man who will take you to them. We must meet him now. At breakfast.’
‘A man?’
‘Wait and see,’ said Marcel, hauling the lorry round a pig in the road.
The trees had stopped. They were crossing open meadows scattered with small, earth-coloured cottages. Ahead was a huddle of houses, and the arched campanile of a church. Nothing was moving; it was four-thirty in the morning. But Mallory did not like it.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Breakfast, of course. In the village.’
‘Not the village.’ Villages were rat-traps. In the past eight hours, Mallory had had enough rat-traps for a lifetime.
Marcel said, ‘There are no Germans in Colbis. No collaborators. It is important that we go into the village. To see this person.’
‘Who is this person?’
‘As I say,’ said Marcel, with a winsome smile, ‘this will be a surprise.’
Mallory told himself that there was no future in getting angry. He said, ‘Excuse me, but there is very little time. I do not wish to commit myself to a position from which there is no retreat.’
Marcel looked at him. Above the jolly cheeks, the eyes were hard and knowing: the eyes of a lieutenant whose commanding officer had been killed in the night. Mallory began to feel better. Marcel said, ‘This person you must meet cannot be moved. Believe me.’
Mallory gave up. He pulled his SS helmet over his eyes, checked the magazine of his Schmeisser, and leaned back in the seat. Slowly the lorry wheezed out of the meadows and wound its way through streets designed for pack-mules into the centre of Colbis.
There was a square, flanked on its south side by the long wall of the church. In the middle were two plane trees in which roosting chickens clucked drowsily. There was a mairie, and a line of what must have been shops: butcher’s, baker’s, ironmonger’s. And on the corner, a row of tall windows streaming with rain, with a signboard above them bearing the faded inscription Cafе Des Sports.
“Ere we are,’ said Marcel, cheerfully. “Op out.’
Boots clattered on the wet cobbles. The etched-glass windows of the cafе reflected the group of civilians and the three Waffen-SS with heavy packs and Schmeissers; the civilians might have been prisoners. It was a sight to cause twitched-aside curtains to drop over windows - not that there was any visible twitching. The German forces of Occupation in the frontier zone were remarkably acute about twitched curtains.
Grinning and puffing, Marcel hustled his charges into the cafе, and shepherded them up through the beaded fringe covering the mouth of a staircase behind the bar. Miller’s nostrils dilated. He said, ‘Coffee. Real coffee.’
‘Comes from Spain,’ said Marcel. ‘With the senoritas and the oranges. Particularly the senoritas. Come up, now.’
Miller went up the stairs. Mallory was behind him. Miller stopped, dead. Mallory’s finger moved to the trigger of his Schmeisser. At the top of the stairs was a large landing overlooking the square. The landing had sofas and chairs. Too many doors opened off it. It smelt of stale scent and unwashed bodies.
Miller said, ‘It’s a cathouse.’
Mallory said, ‘So you will feel completely at home.’
They had been walking most of the night. Mallory was soaking wet and shivering. His hands felt raw, his feet rubbed and blistered inside the jackboots. He wanted to find the objective of the operation, and carry the operation out while there was still an operation to carry out.
And instead, they were attending a breakfast party in a brothel.
‘Village this size?’ said Miller. ‘With a cathouse?’
It should have meant something. But the smell of the coffee had blunted Mallory’s perceptions. All he knew was that he had to get hold of some, or die.
It was light outside, cold and grey. But inside on the sideboard there was coffee, and bread, and goat’s cheese, and a thin, fiery brandy for those who wanted it. Mallory drank a cup of coffee. He said to Marcel, ‘You said there was someone here.’
Marcel nodded. ‘He will be sleeping. Another croissant? I make them my own self.’
‘We’ll wake him.’
Marcel shrugged, and opened one of the doors off the landing.
The smell of sweat and perfume intensified. It was a bedroom, decorated in dirty pink satin. On the bed was a man in khaki uniform, lying on his back like a crusader on a tomb. Bandages showed through the unbuttoned waistband of his battledress blouse: bandages with rusty stains. On the chair beside the bed was a beret bearing the winged-hatchet badge of the SAS.
Mallory glanced at the pips on the epaulette. He said, ‘Morning, Lieutenant.’
The man on the bed stirred and moaned. His eyes half-opened. They focused on Mallory. They saw a man in a coal-scuttle helmet and a Waffen-SS smock, carrying a Schmeisser.
‘Hiding up in a brothel,’ said Mallory. ‘All right for some.’
The man’s hand crawled towards his pillow. Mallory’s hand beat him to it. His fingers closed on metal. He came out with the Browning automatic. ‘Relax,’ said Mallory.
The Lieutenant glared at him with berserk blue eyes. His face was white, with grey shadows. Pain. He was badly wounded. ‘SOE,’ said Mallory. ‘We’ve come to bail you out.’ Inwardly, his heart was sinking. This would be one of Killigrew’s men. One of the gung-ho shoot-em-up boys who had been dropped and got themselves lost. Who had probably compromised the operation already. Things were in a bad enough mess without a wounded SAS man to slow them down. A badly wounded SAS man, by the look of him. Perhaps he could be smuggled over the border into Spain.
‘How do I know that?’ said the Lieutenant.
‘Admiral Beaufort will tell you,’ said Mallory. ‘So did a little man called Captain Killigrew.’ He opened the buttons of the SS smock. ‘And this is British battledress. Seemed tactless to wear it on the outside, somehow.’
‘Who told you I was here? Marcel-’
‘Marcel was very discreet,’ said Mallory, soothingly.
Slowly, the blue eyes lost their berserk glare. The wariness remained. ‘Killigrew,’ he said. ‘Yes. When did you get in?’
‘Albemarle, last night,’ said Mallory. There was no time for chitchat. ‘I need to know what happened to you.’
‘Landed on a bit of a plateau … near here,’ said the SAS man. He obviously wanted to give as little away as possible. ‘Brought a Jeep.’ A Jeep, thought Mallory. A full-size actual Jeep. On parachutes. Amazing. But that was the SAS for you. ‘Heading for the coast. Ambushed. Other chaps bought it. I took a bang on the head and a bullet in the guts.’
Mallory said, ‘How did it happen?’
‘Driving down a track,’ said the SAS man. ‘Next thing we knew, there were two Spandaus. One either side of the road. Don’t remember much after that. The Resistance brought me here.’ There was a shake in his voice. He was very young.
‘So it was a road block?’ said Mallory.
‘Not much of one.’
Mallory nodded. Give me strength, he thought. Conning your way through a checkpoint behind enemy lines, SAS style. Two grenades and put your foot down. ‘Where were you going on the coast?’
‘Doesn’t really matter,’ said the Lieutenant. This was his first operation. It was just like school, on the Rugby XV. You went for it, and sod the consequences. Your own team tactics were your own team tactics, and you kept them to yourself. The only thing different about war was this damned bullet. He did not let his mind stray too close to the bullet, in case the pain made him sick again. It felt the size of a cricket ball, down there. And it hurt. Was hurting worse, lately … He concentrated on his dislike for this old man in the Waffen-SS uniform who had burst in and dropped a few names, and thought that gave him a license to pump him, take over the operation, grab the glory. Let him find out for himself.
The old man’s face was close to his. It had a broad forehead and very young brown eyes; eyes like old Brutus, who taught Latin at Shrewsbury and climbed Alps in the summer hols. The eyes seemed to remove the Lieutenant’s reserve the way a tin- opener would take the lid off a tin. The old man said, ‘Where were you going and who were you going to see?’
The Lieutenant summoned up his undoubted toughness. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
The eyes hardened. The old man said, ‘Don’t be childish. There’s very little time.’
The Lieutenant gritted his teeth. He desperately wanted to tell someone. It would be less lonely, for one thing, and he was really, terrifyingly, lonely. But a secret was a secret. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t … I’m not authorised.’
Mallory allowed his eyes to rest on this lieutenant. He really was absurdly young. His was the berserker’s bravery, frenzied and unbending. If the Gestapo got their hands on him, he would break like a twig.
Mallory sighed inwardly. He got up, opened the door and put his head out. There seemed to be a party going on. He said, ‘Andrea.’
The huge Greek padded across from his seat overlooking the square. His shoulders seemed to blot out the light in the little room. Mallory said, ‘If you won’t tell me, tell the Colonel.’
The SAS man frowned. He saw no colonel. He saw an unshaven giant with a huge moustache. He saw a pair of black eyes, eyes like the eyes on a Byzantine icon, that understood everything, forgave everything. ‘Colonel?’ he said.
‘Andrea is a full colonel in the Greek army.’
‘How do I know that’s not another bloody lie?’
Andrea sat down in the pink plush armchair. Suddenly the SAS man felt weak, and ill, and about fourteen years old. ‘You are frightened,’ said Andrea.
