‘Just wondering how much longer to the summit,’ he said, when he noticed Baillard looking at him.
‘Some time yet.’
‘Where are we now?’
‘Do you need to know, sénher?’ Baillard said mildly.
‘No,’ he said quickly, ‘just interested.’
Keeping the water to their left, Baillard led the group on towards the pine forest that lay between Étang de Baxouillade and the plains before the Étang du Laurenti. At least in the woods they would be less exposed. He glanced behind him and saw the man was lagging behind.
‘Sénher, you must hurry,’ he said.
‘I had to stop. Something in my shoe.’
Baillard peered ahead. One of the most hard-working passeurs had been caught last week, which was why he had agreed to take the group higher up into the mountains than he usually did. He was expecting to see the Spanish guide hired to take them over the border, but there was no sign of him.
The Frenchman caught up and walked in step. Baillard’s misgivings grew. He glanced at the Dutchman and could see he was suspicious too. Baillard’s hand went to his pocket and found his pistol. He slipped the safety catch off and positioned his finger on the trigger, ready to act if need be.
‘Put your hands up.’
The shouted order came from the woods. A line of police, armed with semi-automatic rifles, were stepping out of the cover of the trees. Baillard immediately dropped to the ground.
Another shout. ‘Drop your weapons!’
The Englishman tried to run. The police opened fire. Blood and guts exploded from his chest as a hail of machine-gun fire hammered into him. The other two immediately put their hands on their heads. The informer leant close to him.
‘You’ve got no chance, old man,’ he said.
Baillard pulled the gun from his pocket and let off a shot, but it went wide. He saw the informer’s hand come up, then felt a blinding flash of pain on the side of his head. As he lost consciousness, he was aware of his hands being dragged up behind his back.
When Baillard came round, he was in the back of a police van. The Dutchman and the dissident were also there, along with several other men. Some had been roughed up, others looked as if they’d been arrested at work or in their homes.
It was hot and airless and there was a stench of blood and dirt, the sour smell of fear. The van wasn’t moving.
‘How long have we been here?’
‘Two hours, maybe three,’ the Dutchman said.
Baillard could feel dried blood on his ear and neck. The force of the blow still seemed to be reverberating in his head. He tried to move, but the handcuffs tightened on his wrists and pinched his skin.
‘What are they waiting for?’ the scholar asked.
‘For the last lot to come in. Five raids today, all tip-offs,’ the Dutchman said. ‘That’s what they were saying.’
The door of the van was suddenly thrown wide and the faces of two guards appeared in the opening. They peered through the metal grille.
‘Audric Baillard?’
No one spoke.
‘We’re looking for him, an old man. Arrested today.’
Without appearing to move, the Dutchman and the Jewish dissident both slightly shifted position in the van, so that Baillard was blocked from the policeman’s view.
‘No?’
‘This lot were arrested in the mountains,’ the younger officer said. ‘If he’s as old as they say, he’d hardly be all the way up there.’
The door was slammed shut again. For a moment, no one spoke. Then Baillard gave a long sigh of relief.
‘Gentlemen, I am in your debt,’ he said quietly.
‘It’s the least I can do to repay the compliment,’ the Dutchman said. ‘I’ve been shown nothing but kindness.’
‘And I know your work, Monsieur Baillard,’ said the dissident. ‘It is an honour to meet you, even in these circumstances. I wish I had realised earlier.’
‘Better that you did not.’
There was a bang on the side of the van. The driver fired the engine, and they moved off. Baillard closed his eyes, thinking of the trials of the past. Of a young man murdered in the dungeon of the Château Comtal many centuries ago. Of those tortured in the cloisters of Saint-Etienne and Saint-Sernin in the name of religion. Of those being sent to camps in the East. An endless cycle of persecution and death, or so it sometimes seemed. Perhaps it would never end.
If he died now, then everything he had suffered would have been in vain. The wars he had fought, the disappointments he had endured, the endless task of bearing witness to the worst of human nature for the sake of the downtrodden and the defeated. Baillard thought of those he had failed to save in the past and those he was trying to help now. He didn’t know where they were taking him, or how they knew his name, only that his life could not end here. He had to find a way to escape, to survive until the end.
The story was not over yet.
‘A la perfin,’ he murmured.
PART III
The Last Battle
July 1944
TWO YEARS LATER
‡
Codex XVIII
‡
GAUL
TARASCO
JULY AD 344
‘Please, Lupa,’ Arinius pleaded. ‘When the time comes, you must promise me you will take the boy and go to the mountains with the others.’
His wife folded her arms and fixed him with a stony look. ‘I’m not leaving you.’
Lupa was a woman now, a mother, someone others looked up to in their growing community of Christians. Arinius still saw in her the strong-minded girl who had found him unconscious on the plains below the Pic de Vicdessos and taken him to her father’s house. The girl who had nursed him back to health – with the burden of carrying the Codex lifted – looked after him and, to his great and everlasting gratitude, loved him. A few of his brothers in the community in Lugdunum had refused to take wives, believing they should dedicate their bodies as well as their souls to God alone. But it was rare. Arinius knew that the love he felt for Lupa was a reflection of all that was good in the world, a sign of God’s grace for his creation.
The past two years had been the happiest of his life, the most tranquil. But no longer. The fragile peace that held in the borderlands between Hispania and Gaul, while the rest of the Empire disintegrated into warring factions, had finally broken. Tarasco was no longer safe.
‘They say there are soldiers lower down the valley,’ Arinius said. ‘Everyone is leaving to seek refuge in the caves. I beg you, take Marcellus and go.’
‘There are always rumours,’ Lupa said stubbornly. ‘Bagaudes, bandits. They’ve said such things for as long as I can remember, and nothing happens.’ She folded her arms. ‘I won’t leave you.’
‘It need not be for long.’
‘I shan’t go.’
Arinius turned to look at their son, lying on his back in the shade of a silver birch tree. Brown arms, brown legs against the pale blanket, kicking and stretching up into the air as if reaching to heaven. He smiled with pride. Marcellus was a joyful child, a happy baby. They barely ever heard him cry.
‘They say more than a hundred men are heading south,’ he said quietly. ‘An army.’
He picked up his son and Marcellus’ face lit up with pleasure. Although little more than a year old, he had, Arinius was certain, inherited his own gentle temperament. There was nothing fierce about the boy. Arinius had no doubt that if they had daughters, they would inherit their mother’s fighting spirit.
‘These men are not bandits,’ he said. ‘They come from beyond Lugdunum – perhaps even from beyond the great eastern river. Couzanium has been put to the torch, Aquis Calidis has been sacked. The people massacred where they stood.’
‘Do we know that to be true?’ Lupa said, tossing her long plait over her shoulder.
Arinius remembered the exhausted, bloodied messenger who had run for days through the forests, without resting, to carry the dreadfu
l news, half crazed with the horror of what he had witnessed.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly.
Lupa faltered, but then continued. ‘Well, even if it is, Couzanium is many miles away. Two days’ walk, at least. There’s no reason why they should come this far.’
Despite his frustration, Arinius felt proud of her courage.
‘Lupa, you would be a great comfort to the others if you were with them,’ he said. ‘You know the mountains better than anyone. You know the safest places to hide until the soldiers leave. Help to keep the children safe.’ He paused. ‘You could stand in my stead. Pray for our deliverance.’
He saw her now reconsider. Lupa’s faith was, in some ways, stronger than his. In the valleys surrounding Tarasco, where Christianity had never previously shown its face, there was something in the people that accepted the presence of a single God in everything they saw in the world about them. In the rocks and the sky, the melody of the water as it came down from the mountains, in the crops growing on the southern slopes.
‘There are always rumours,’ she said, though her voice was less certain. ‘Why would they come so far? What could they hope to find here?’
Arinius laid Marcellus back down on his cloth.
‘The Empire is crumbling, Lupa. Divided. From the East, a new enemy has already taken much of the territory once claimed by Rome. They live by different laws. Have no respect for the lands they conquer.’
‘But you told me they are Christians, like us,’ Lupa threw back at him. ‘They believe what we believe. Why would they harm us?’
‘This is a battle for territory,’ he said. ‘It is not about faith, but power.’
Lupa stared at him. ‘But you told me that those who take up the sword in the name of God are not true Christians.’
Arinius sighed. ‘It is what I believe.’
‘It is against the Word,’ she said. ‘What you tell me scripture says. How can this be so?’
Arinius turned his head and looked up towards the Pic de Vicdessos and the cave where the Codex remained undisturbed. The texts that preached peace and tolerance had been destroyed. The spirit in which they had been written had been driven out of the Church. What he feared had come to pass. That those who lived in a state of grace were silenced and those who pursued faith through the sword had triumphed.
‘It is not for us to question the way God works in the world,’ he said.
Lupa raised her chin. ‘I cannot accept that. Why can I not think for myself?’
Arinius knew she was trying to deflect him. ‘When the time comes—’
‘If the time comes,’ she interrupted.
‘When the time comes, Lupa, you must promise you will take Marcellus and go with the other women and children.’ He took the bottle from around his neck and placed the leather strap over his wife’s slim, dark shoulders. ‘And when you do, you must take this.’
She looked at the iridescent glass. In two years, she knew he had never let it out of his sight. Knew that it was the most important thing he possessed, the reason he had come to Tarasco in the first place.
Now, she understood how serious he believed the situation to be. How he believed it might be the end of things.
‘No,’ she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. For several seconds, minutes, they stood locked in a gaze that shut out the rest of the world. Then she turned and looked out over the valley.
‘I cannot believe God will let anything happen to us. Not in so fine a world as this, a place like this. He will protect us.’
‘I pray that you are right,’ he said.
Arinius looked at his wife and saw a different expression on her face.
‘You will go then?’ he said.
Lupa wrapped her fingers around the green glass and he saw she had changed her mind. ‘When do you think they will come?’
He sighed with relief, though with grief too at the thought of losing her company. At being parted from his son. ‘I don’t know.’
‘No.’ She nodded. ‘Well, when the time does come, I will go.’
Arinius leant forward and kissed her on the forehead, felt her arms go around his waist. For a moment they stood there, clinging to one another for comfort. Then Marcellus let out a wail.
‘He’s hungry,’ Arinius said, releasing her.
Lupa nodded. ‘He is always hungry,’ she said with a smile. ‘Much like his father.’
‡
Chapter 100
CARCASSONNE
JULY 1944
Sandrine raised her Walther P38 and took aim. She steadied her hand, squeezed the trigger and felt the revolver jump as the bullet left the chamber. A fraction of a second later, she heard the glass of the lamp marking the entrance to the Berriac tunnel shatter, and the railway was plunged into darkness.
She darted back into the undergrowth at the bottom of the steep slope that fell away from the railway track. Silence. If anyone had heard the shot, they weren’t coming to investigate. Still, she stayed in position for a moment longer. From her hiding place she could just make out the faint outline of the village houses a kilometre or so to the north. To the west, a little further away, the brighter lights of the cafés on the Canal du Midi in Trèbes, favoured by junior Nazi officers.
The Berriac tunnel was of great strategic importance. The line linked Carcassonne with Narbonne, forming part of the key west–east German supply lines. Food and ammunition were transported from the stores in the old hat factory in Montazels to the Wehrmacht and SS troops stationed on the coast. All the old beach resorts were garrisons now. There had been two attempts at sabotage in the past month, one closing the tunnel for twenty-four hours. But this was an unscheduled train and Sandrine was determined to stop it. So far, she had seen no French or German guards on the line.
She looked across the waiting land to the window of the tiny chapel where the candles would be lit as her sign to act when the convoy was approaching. She tucked the weapon back into her belt. She hoped she wouldn’t have to use the stolen gun again tonight.
Sandrine hated this dog-end time before an operation, the counting down to zero hour. It was the moment she ceased to be Sandrine Vidal, sister of Marianne, daughter of the late François Vidal, and became instead Sophie – résistante, saboteur, one of many still fighting the German occupation of the Aude.
Ever since the Nazis had crossed the demarcation line on 11 November 1942 and taken control of the rest of France, Sandrine had lived this double life. She, Marianne and Suzanne in Carcassonne, helped by Robert and Gaston Bonnet and – on the few occasions he’d risked coming into town – by Raoul. Geneviève, Liesl and Yves Rousset were in Coustaussa, with Eloise and Guillaume Breillac fighting in Tarascon. Together they made up the network known as ‘Citadel’, with the men who supported them, although no one but them used the name. So far, they had not been caught.
Sandrine glanced at her watch. Ten forty-five.
There was always a first time.
This last half-hour was always the worst. The time when dread took hold and the fear that, this time, their luck would run out. Her fingers, toes, bones, roots of her hair, her whole body itched with anticipation.
She hoped Marianne was bearing up. She was in the chapel, more a shrine really, outside the village, her hair covered by a country headscarf and her figure hidden beneath a drab coat. When Marianne heard the train coming, she would light four candles and exit by the main door, leaving a panier packed with explosives and fuses by the wooden chancel door for Suzanne to collect and deliver to the small electricity substation next to the track some five metres before the entrance to the tunnel. Suzanne would prime the device, then double back to where Robert Bonnet would be waiting on the Villedubert road. From that moment, Sandrine had to wait until the optimum moment to light the fuse, then get out of the way before the bomb went off.
Sandrine’s plan was to knock out the power and block the entrance to the tunnel at the same time. There was a key Wehrmacht munitions stores at Lézignan, halfway t
o Narbonne, where German troops were also billeted. If she succeeded, Nazi operations would be seriously compromised, for a day or two at least. But it was the sort of operation she hated most. So many things could go wrong: Robert might fail to get to the rendezvous on time to pick Marianne and Suzanne up; any one of the three of them might be seen; the device might not work or go off too soon. Sandrine took several deep breaths, settling the butterflies in her stomach. Suzanne was as good as they came, but several partisans had been injured – even killed – by their own home-made devices in the past few weeks.
It will go off all right, she told herself.
She rolled her shoulders, feeling the tightness in her muscles as she flexed and unflexed her hands.
Ten fifty-five.
Suddenly Sandrine saw a flicker of light through the plain glass window of the chapel. Twenty minutes early. She watched to make sure it was the signal, waiting as the pale flames grew stronger, then stronger again as Marianne lit each of the candles in turn. There was no mistake.
The instant she saw the fourth flame, Sandrine was on her feet. Nerves gone, her senses on high alert, adrenalin propelling her up the bank and towards the substation. Keeping as low as she could, she ran across the open ground. The main grid was in the upper storey of the squat, rectangular tower, three metres or so above ground level. The porcelain shields protecting the connectors shone an eerie white in the dark of the night.
The panier was in place. Sandrine crouched down and lifted the red and white chequered napkin from the top of the basket. A jumble of wires and pipe. As she located the fuse without touching anything, she could hear the hum of the tracks and the rattle of metal sliding over metal. She held her breath, listening and counting to gauge the speed of the train, then took a box of matches from her pocket. The flame guttered and flared, but went out. Sandrine slipped the match into her pocket, so as not to leave any evidence, then took another and scraped it along the strip. This time, the flame held steady.