‘I’ll come with you,’ Sandrine said. ‘We’ll cover more ground if we both look.’ She put her hand on Lucie’s arm. ‘Will you be all right on your own?’
Lucie nodded. ‘I’ll manage.’
‘You sit tight. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
She and Eloise walked back towards the town, Sandrine still wondering if it would be more sensible to stay put. On the other hand, they could be waiting for hours.
‘I’m going this way,’ Eloise said, pointing at a narrow flight of steps winding up into the oldest quartier of the town. ‘If I were you, I’d start with the Grand Café Oliverot, on the Foix road. Inspector Pujol’s often there.’
Sandrine remembered seeing it on the corner as they drove in to Tarascon.
‘If not,’ Eloise continued, ‘there’s another café he likes, close to the railway station.’ She sighed. ‘And, if that fails, there’s a bar below the Tour Castella, on the opposite riverbank. A real old-timers’ place.’
‘All right.’ Sandrine nodded.
‘Let’s meet back at Pujol’s in an hour? See if we’ve had any luck.’
Sandrine walked quickly towards the Oliverot, all the time hoping to see a glimpse of Monsieur Baillard’s distinctive pale suit and panama hat. On the far side of the Pont Vieux, she noticed a heavy-set man with an old fashioned hat. Was it Inspector Pujol?
‘May we have a word?’
Her heart skipped a beat. She’d been concentrating so much on the road ahead, she hadn’t noticed the man standing in the shadow of the doorway of the épicerie. She glanced at him, trying to place his accent. She was certain she didn’t know him.
‘I’m sorry, I’m in an awful rush. If you’ll excuse me.’
Sandrine tried to walk on, but he stepped in front of her and blocked her way.
‘Excuse me,’ she said again, trying not to sound scared.
‘It won’t take long, Fräulein.’
This time the voice came from behind her. Sandrine spun round to see a second man standing behind her, also blocking her way. Fear jabbed her in the chest.
‘Just a question we need to ask,’ he said.
His accent was far stronger. German, but was he a civilian or something more? And why did they want to talk to her?
‘All right,’ she said, attempting to sound calm.
‘We were overhearing your conversation earlier. You are mentioning a friend of ours.’
‘Was I?’ she said, furiously trying to remember what she’d told Eloise and, at the same time, work out what the men wanted.
‘Sylvère Laval,’ he said. ‘You know him?’
Her relief that it wasn’t Raoul they were after was short-lived. Sandrine felt a battering of nerves in her stomach. Monsieur Baillard had said he thought there might be more than one group looking for the Codex, German as well as French.
‘We are anxious to speak to him, fräulein,’ the second man said.
‘I’m afraid I don’t really know him awfully well,’ she said, wondering if they had seen her with Laval and Authié or just heard her talking to Eloise.
‘Do you know where he is?’
Sandrine’s heart was thumping, but she forced herself to pass on the same information as she had given to Authié earlier. Setting the same trap, or so she hoped.
‘It was just something I’d heard. Apparently, he – Sylvère – was going to somewhere called the Col de Pyrène. I don’t know any more than that, messieurs.’
The Germans exchanged a glance, then the man standing in front of Sandrine stepped to the side and waved her through.
‘Danke schön,’ he said.
Sandrine waited until they had gone then, on shaking legs, ran the rest of the way across the bridge. The man with the hat had gone, so she turned and ran back to the Café Oliverot. It was now even more urgent she found Monsieur Baillard.
And what about Raoul? She had to warn him too.
COL DE PYRÈNE
‘Hurry,’ said Authié.
Laval put his foot on the pedal, pushing the car as fast as he could towards the mountains. Authié was going over his conversation with Sandrine Vidal in his head once again. In the past couple of hours he had become more suspicious. There was something about the guileless way she had told him what Déjean had said at the river that didn’t sit right with her self-possession. He couldn’t decide if she had let the information about the cave slip out by accident. If she genuinely didn’t realise the significance of it or was not interested in it. Given her sister’s record, was it possible she was such an innocent?
‘As soon as we have secured the site, Laval, we’ll return to Tarascon,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to Sandrine Vidal again.’
‘Very good, sir. And there was another thing I was going to mention. The girl who came to meet Vidal gave a false name. Or, strictly speaking, Saint-Loup is her maiden name. She’s Eloise Breillac now.’
Authié glanced at him. ‘Why would she lie?’
‘She’s married to Guillaume Breillac, another established local family, like the Saint-Loups. He’s a partisan sympathiser, though we haven’t got anything against him yet. Not enough to bring him in.’
‘Then I shall talk to Madame Breillac too,’ Authié said.
Laval pulled off the road, then drove as fast as he could along the increasingly rutted track until they reached the site. Ahead of them was a field-brown Opel Blitz truck, just visible beneath the trees. It was clear that the branches had been pulled back to allow the vehicle in, then pulled over it again as camouflage.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Authié demanded.
Laval immediately went to investigate. Authié got out and waited, watching as his lieutenant looked in the window of the cab, then examined the open cargo bed and licence plates before coming back.
‘Civilian plates, sir,’ he said. ‘This was on the front seat.’
It was a copy of Der Stürmer, the most notoriously anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic of the tabloid Nazi newspapers. Many top-level party officials condemned it as pornographic propaganda, but others – such as Himmler – endorsed it and appeared often on its pages. Authié frowned. He’d always known Bauer was an enemy of the Church.
Authié thrust it back at Laval. ‘When you talked to Bauer’s men in Le Vernet, did they say anything?’
‘No.’
‘Would they have been able to keep the information to themselves? In the circumstances.’
Laval held his gaze. ‘I was thorough, sir. I believe that if they had known anything, they would have chosen to tell me.’
Authié nodded. He had seen the results of Laval’s ‘thorough’ interrogations in the past. ‘In which case, how the hell is Bauer here before us?’
‘Given how freely the Vidal girl talked to you, she’s probably gossiped to other people. Tarascon’s small. Things get around.’
‘You believe she was telling the truth?’
‘I don’t think she realised what she was saying.’
Authié pulled his revolver from his pocket. ‘Bring what we need.’
Laval took a cumbersome canvas holdall from the boot. ‘Shall I conceal the car?’
‘We have every right to be here,’ Authié said drily, ‘whereas Bauer does not.’ He paused. ‘Let them do the hard work.’
‘You are not going to approach Bauer?’
Something in Laval’s tone of voice caught Authié’s attention.
‘No,’ he said slowly, watching his lieutenant’s face. ‘Bauer chose not to communicate the information about the Col de Pyrène to me. So I don’t intend to give him the chance to explain. At least, not yet.’
Authié followed Laval up the path, his weapon drawn and alert to any sounds of life. Once they’d climbed through the woods, the land was open and with little shade or cover, but there was no one around. Presently, he saw a cluster of juniper bushes and what appeared to be an unbroken rock face.
‘The entrance isn’t obvious from here, but that’s it,’ said Laval.
/> ‘Is is the only entrance?’
‘To my knowledge, yes.’ Laval paused. ‘Are we going in, sir?’
Authié thought for a moment. ‘No, I don’t want to lose our advantage. We’ll wait and see what they do.’
They took cover behind a small outcrop of rock, shielded from the entrance. Laval took two Mauser K98 rifles from the bag, standard Wehrmacht issue. Authié had decided against using weapons that could be traced back to French operations. He wanted everything to look like a German undertaking. He waited while Laval loaded five rounds into each magazine and secured the bolt.
Authié had not yet decided whether he was going to kill Bauer or not, but he was ready. A holy warrior. His hand went once more to his lapel, then he flexed his fingers, feeling the weight of his gun in his hand.
Raoul lay flat on his stomach, watching Sylvère Laval and Leo Coursan as they took cover behind the outcrop. He steadied his breathing, his anger. His finger itched to pull the trigger. The temptation to shoot was overwhelming, but he couldn’t give away his position. Yet to have Coursan in his sights and be unable to shoot him was almost too much to bear.
The Nazis had been in the cave for two hours. Raoul had heard the catarrhal chug of the truck engine some time after four o’clock, then the sounds of equipment being unloaded and fragments of German. Eloise had told him it was common knowledge in Tarascon that there were Wehrmacht and SS in the area, though everyone pretended otherwise. Some, because they benefited from their presence. Others, because they weren’t sure if they had the right to be in the zone nono or not. Even so, it was a shock to hear German spoken so freely and so openly.
There were five of them. One wore a suit and hat, struggling in the heat even though the sun was still low. The other four were in working clothes and carrying equipment, including hurricane lamps, a winch and hoist, pickaxes and shovels. Raoul had managed to get to the rendezvous point to meet Guillaume Breillac, so Baillard should by now be aware of the German presence. He didn’t understand how it had happened so quickly – Sandrine wasn’t due in Tarascon until Wednesday – though rumours were clearly spreading. But he couldn’t see a way to inform Baillard about the latest development without leaving his observation point, and he didn’t want to do that.
He glanced at his wristwatch. It was six o’clock now. Breillac wasn’t due back until nine. Raoul put his hand on his revolver, and kept his eyes trained on Coursan.
Chapter 95
‘Sir,’ murmured Laval.
Authié nodded. Four men had appeared in the mouth of the cave. They stretched their arms and squinted into the early evening sun after the gloom inside. Their shirts, open at the neck, bore signs of hard work, streaks of machine oil and subterranean grime. Their faces and lower arms were tanned by the weeks of Midi sun, but the skin beneath their collars was pale.
The largest of them pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered them around. The group had the satisfied air of men who’d achieved what they’d set out to do.
‘Morgen?’ Tomorrow?
The big man shook his head, and looked over his shoulder towards the cave.
‘He says tonight. We head for Pau and cross into the zone occupée there. Then up the Atlantic coast.’
‘Wieder zu Hause?’
‘Home, yes.’
‘Out of this heat.’
‘Proper beer.’
‘And the rest of it,’ a third leered, his mime leaving no doubt what he had in mind.
‘What about your wife, Hans?’
‘She can wait a day or two longer,’ he said.
The men all laughed.
Authié calculated. If Bauer was preparing to leave tonight, it was confirmation that he had found something worth taking to his masters in Berlin. So he could approach Bauer and attempt to negotiate with him. Or he could take it by force. Not leave any loose ends. He had briefed Laval for both eventualities. He had prepared himself for both eventualities.
For a moment, the decision hung in the balance. Authié closed his eyes, praying for guidance. His fingers touched the metal on his lapel. The cold physicality of the crucifix gave him the determination he needed. There were four of them against two. If the negotiations turned sour, the odds were not in his favour. The only advantage they had was surprise. To strike first.
He turned to Laval, and nodded. Laval got into position. Authié lifted the Mauser K98. He wedged the stock tight against his right collarbone, braced his left elbow hard against the stone, adjusting his grip several times until it was secure.
His focus narrowed. The noise of the men talking, the sound of their feet on the gravel and rock of the path, the whisper of the cicadas in the long grass below, everything faded away. He lowered his head to the sight, feeling the muscles strain in his neck. He lined up his target through the notch sight then, slowly and gently, he pressed down on the trigger, keeping his aim true, giving life to the bullet in the chamber. The propellant gases expanded, exerting pressure on the bolt, then there was a deafening crack and a starburst flash as the bullet left the rifle.
On the path below, an explosion of red as the shot hit, taking away half of the man’s head. Blood, brains, bone.
For an instant, the other three froze. Then their training kicked in. Soldiers, not civilians.
‘Get down!’ the leader shouted. ‘In Deckung!’
One threw himself behind a boulder, another rolled into the juniper bushes at the edge of the path to take cover. The third, hesitating a moment too long, resting his hand on his dead friend’s shoulder, gave Laval a perfect shot. Laval struck the target straight in the chest, a clean hit. His body slammed back against the trunk of a beech tree.
Authié lowered his rifle, pulled back the bolt, reloaded and locked into position, then fired again. This time his shot went wide. The survivors returned fire, but their pistols – Authié guessed standard German army-issue Lugers or Walther P38s – were no match for the range and power of his weapon.
The man behind the boulder loosed off several rounds, splintering wood and branches some five metres below Laval’s position, but posing no real threat. The German paused to reload, breaking cover momentarily. It was just long enough to give Authié a clear shot. He pushed down on the trigger again. Another blast, another flash of burnt propellant. More blood. Three of the four men were down.
The final target ran for the woods. He kept low, zigzagging to left, to right. Laval couldn’t get a clear shot. The man disappeared into the trees.
Gesturing to Laval to cover him, Authié withdrew from his hiding place and made his way up towards the cave itself. Suddenly, he was terrified Bauer wasn’t there. That he had already gone.
He had to go in and see.
Behind him another shot rang out and struck the ground, shattering the wood of the trees. Authié ran through the undergrowth to the entrance of the cave. He glanced at the bodies. Their weapons were 9mm Lugers, new models. He picked one up and, seeing the chamber was full, took it.
He pressed himself against the cave wall. ‘Bauer?’ he shouted.
Only the echo of his own voice came back at him. Laval fired another shot. Authié put down the rifle, too heavy for close combat, and stepped into the darkness of the cave.
The silence was deafening. Adrenalin surged through him. It had been years since he’d been involved in active operations. For too long he’d been directing matters from behind his desk, rather than leading men out in the field. It felt good to be a soldier again, a Christian knight.
‘Bauer, are you in here? Come out and we’ll talk.’
Nothing. He listened, but could hear nothing. No sound of digging or breathing or footsteps, nothing. His heart sped up. If Bauer was here, why hadn’t he shown himself? Was he hiding? Or was he so far underground he hadn’t heard the shooting?
Authié hesitated, in the end the silence persuading him that Bauer didn’t have other men inside. Laval had reported that the German’s team was comprised of six men. Two were in Le Vernet. The ot
her four were neutralised outside.
Laval joined him. He, too, had abandoned the rifle in favour of a Luger.
‘All down?’
‘Yes,’ Laval replied. ‘Any sign of Bauer?’
Authié shook his head, motioning for Laval to go in front as they made their way into the tunnel. The ground sloped down and the temperature was dropping, but hurricane lamps had been set at regular intervals along the passage so they could see where they were going.
He reached out his hand to get Laval to stop. In the stillness, Authié heard the sound of metal banging against rock. He tightened his fingers around the Luger, then ordered Laval forward once more, until he saw a glow ahead. The tunnel opened out into a chamber, floodlit by lamps on high metal tripods. And there was Erik Bauer. He was standing beside a wooden structure that had been erected over a hole in the ground. A rough frame with a crankshaft handle, a metal pail hanging from a rope.
Authié watched Bauer for a moment, realising he had sent his men away so they didn’t witness what he’d found. He cast his eyes around, double-checking there was no one else with him. He could see no sign that Bauer was armed. There were only digging tools within reach.
‘Bauer,’ he said, coming out from behind the rock.
The German spun round. Authié saw the look of shock on his face immediately turn to horror. Bauer’s hand went to his pocket.
‘What have you found?’
But before the German had the chance to answer, the sound of a shot rang out, a sharp crack echoing off the stone walls of the chamber, hitting Bauer in the chest.
‘Hold fire!’ Authié shouted.
The order was lost in the sound of a second shot, this one striking Bauer in the shoulder. He swayed on his feet, then crumpled sideways to the ground.
Authié covered the distance with a few long strides. Bauer was lying in a pool of blood, a splinter of white shoulder bone showing through his skin and cotton shirt. He pushed the body with his foot. A gush of blood spurted from the wound in Bauer’s chest, though his pale eyes were still open. Authié reached down and took a small wooden box from the German’s hand.