Miller was fifteen feet from the top, sweating, his breath coming in gasps. Clamp a hand on the rope. Pull up, shoving with feet. Clamp the other hand. There was shouting down below. Clamp the other hand. The hands like grey spiders against the cliff. They could have belonged to anyone, those hands, except for the pain, and the heavy thump of his heart.
And suddenly the other hand was not grey, but blazing, brilliant flesh-colour, and every fibre of the rope stood out in microscopic detail. And Miller was a moth, kicking on the pin of the searchlight.
A rifle cracked, then another. Chips of rock stung his face. His back crawled with the expectation of bullets. Ten feet to go. It might as well have been ten miles.
But there was a burst of machine-gun fire from above, and the searchlight went out, and suddenly the rope in his hands was alive, moving upwards like the rope of a ski tow. And he looked up and saw a huge shape, dim above the cliff, shoulders working. Andrea.
Andrea pulled him up those last ten feet as if he had weighed two hundred ounces instead of two hundred pounds. Miller hit the dirt in cover, rolled, and unslung his Schmeisser. Trouble, he thought. I am not a goddamn human fly, and as a result we are in it up to our necks, and sinking.
Beyond the boulder the cliffs were brilliant white. In their light he could see Andrea cocking a Bren.
‘I’ll cover you,’ said Andrea, in his unruffled craftsman’s voice. ‘Grenades?’
Miller and Mallory each took two grenades from their belt pouches and pulled the pins. Two, three,’ said Mallory. ‘Throw.’
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the metallic clatter of the grenades bouncing down the cliff, two left, two right. The world seemed to hold its breath. They would be setting up a mortar down there; taking up positions, radioing for reinforcements. Though, in a gorge like this, radio reception would be terrible –
Then the night flashed white, and four explosions rang as one, followed by a deeper explosion. Andrea crawled to the edge of the ledge. The lights had gone out. There was a new light, orange and black: a burning lorry. The firing lulled, then began again.
Mallory said, ‘Cover us for ten minutes. We’ll meet you at the top.’
Andrea’s head was a black silhouette against the orange flicker of the gasoline fire. The silhouette nodded. For a moment his huge shoulders showed against the sky, the Bren slung over the right. Then he faded into the rocks. The five other men and Lisette gathered up the packs. Jaime said, in a voice apparently unaffected by fear, ‘There is a path. A little higher.’
‘Miller,’ said Mallory. ‘We don’t want those trucks to get back. Or anywhere with anything like decent radio reception. Anything you can do?’
Miller shrugged. ‘I’ll give it the old college try,’ he said. His hands were already busy in the first of the brass-bound boxes. He felt for one of the five-pound bricks of plastic explosive, laid it on the ground, latched the first box and unlatched the second. The second box was thickly lined with felt. Unclipping a flashlight from the breast pocket of his smock, he used it to select a green time pencil: thirty seconds’ delay. Delicately he pressed the pencil into the primer and looked at the radium-bright numerals on his watch. Then he snapped the time pencil, yawned, and carefully lit a cigarette. By the time he had pocketed his Zippo, twenty-five seconds had elapsed. He took the brick in both hands and heaved it out and over the vehicles in the valley below.
Miller really hated heights. But nice, safe explosives were familiar territory. It felt great to be back.
For the space of a breath, there was darkness and silence in which the sound of Germanic shouting rose from the valley, mixed with the scrape of steel on rock as they set up the mortars.
Then the night turned white, whiter than the searchlights, and Mallory was blasted against the cliff by a huge metallic clang that felt as if it would drive his eardrums together in the middle of his head.
‘Go,’ he said, the sound small and distant behind the ringing in his ears.
They began to file up the cliff: Mallory in the lead, then Jaime, Lisette, and Hugues, with Miller bringing up the rear. Andrea climbed the fifty-degree face behind the chockstone until he found another boulder. There he stopped, unfolded the Bren’s bipod, and rested it on the stone.
Fires were still burning on the valley floor. The flames cast a flickering light on torn rock and twisted metal, and many still bodies dressed in field-grey. There were three trucks. Two of them were burning. The other lay like a crushed beetle under a huge slab of rock prised away from the gorge wall by the force of the explosion. At the far side of the gorge, three grey figures were draped over the rocks beside what had once been a mortar.
One of the figures moved.
Andrea pulled the Bren into his shoulder, and fired. The heavy drum of the machine gun echoed in the rocks. The grey figure went over backwards and did not move any more.
Then there was silence, except for the moan of the wind and the patter of sleet on rock.
Andrea watched for another five minutes, patient, not heeding the icy moisture soaking through his smock and into his battle-dress blouse.
Nothing moved. As far as he could tell, the radio sets were wrecked, and there were no survivors. But of course there would be survivors. He had no objection to going down and cutting the survivors’ throats. But if he did, it was unlikely that he would be able to rejoin the main party.
Andrea thought about it with the deliberation of a master wine maker deciding on which day he would pick his grapes: perhaps a little light on sugar today, but if he waited a week, there was the risk of rain …
Naturally, the Germans would assume that the force that had attacked them had gone on to Spain.
Andrea took a final look at the flames and the metal and the bodies. He felt no emotion. Guerrilla warfare was a job, a job at which he was an expert. His strength and intelligence were weapons in the service of his comrades and his country’s allies. He did not like killing German soldiers. But if it was part of the job, then he was prepared to do it, and do it well.
To Andrea, this looked like a decent piece of work.
He slung the Bren over his shoulder and began to lope rapidly up the steep mountain. It had begun to snow.
It was a wet snow that fell in flakes the size of saucers, each flake landing on skin or cloth or metal with an icy slap, beginning immediately to melt. They slid into boots and down necks, becoming paradoxically colder as they melted. Within ten minutes the whole party was soaked to the skin. And for what seemed like an eternity, there was only the rasp of breath in throats, the hammer of hearts, and the sodden rub of boots against feet as they marched doggedly up the forty-five-degree slope in the icy blackness. Miller’s mind was filled with anxiety.
He said to Andrea, ‘What do you think?’
Andrea knew what he was being asked. ‘They will think we have gone to Spain.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And they will send out patrols. In case we have not gone to Spain.’
‘Exactly.’
One foot in front of the other. Hammering hearts. Sore feet. Soon they would have to stop. Food was needed, and warmth. But they were walking away from food and warmth, upwards. Into unknown territory. Where they had been assured Jules would be waiting, somewhere warm and dry. Assured by Lisette.
Mallory was having to rely on people he did not know. And that made Mallory nervous.
Mallory said quietly, ‘We’d better watch the rear, in case anyone drops out.’
Andrea stepped to one side. The walkers passed him: Jaime in the lead, Miller, Thierry. Then, a long way behind, too far, Hugues and Lisette: Hugues hunched over Lisette, apparently half-carrying her, their shapes odd and lumpy against the white snow, like a single, awkward animal. Andrea could hear Hugues’ breathing.
‘You all right?’ he said.
‘Of course,’ said Hugues, in a voice whose cheerfulness even exhaustion could not mar.
Andrea frowned. Then he fell in behind, and kept on u
pwards.
It felt like an eternity. But in reality it was only a little more than an hour before Jaime emitted a bark of satisfaction, and said, ‘Voilà!’
The ground had for some time been rising less steeply. Between snow flurries, Mallory saw a silvery line of snow lying across the black-lead sky: the ridge. Between the walkers and the ridge was what might have been a narrow ledge, running diagonally upwards, its lines softened by six inches of snow. Jaime kicked at the downhill side with his foot, revealing a coping of roughly-dressed stone. ‘The Chemin des Anges,’ he said.
The path was easy walking, following the contours, skirting precipices over which Miller did not allow his eyes to stray. They followed it up and onto the ridge.
Lack of effort let them feel the chill of their sodden clothes. They paused to let Lisette and Hugues catch up. Mallory took his oilcloth-wrapped cigarettes from the soaking pocket of his blouse, and gave one to Miller. Their faces were haggard in the Zippo’s flare. Hugues and Lisette approached.
Hugues said, ‘Lisette needs food. Rest, warmth –’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Lisette’s voice. She sounded weak, but resolute.
‘But my darling –’
‘Don’t you darling me,’ she said. ‘Can we go on?’
Mallory said nothing. It was possible to admire this woman’s spirit. It was less possible to admire the speed at which she moved. Too slow, thought Mallory. It was all getting too slow, and there was a hell of a distance to travel before they even got to the start line.
His watch said it was 0200 hours. He said to Jaime, ‘How long?’
‘Two hours. All downhill. The slope is not so bad now.’
Mallory could hear Hugues’ teeth chattering. There was a thin, icy wind up here, and the snow was colder. ‘Any shelter before then?’
‘In ten minutes. A shepherd’s hut. There will be nobody.’
‘We’ll stop for twenty minutes.’
‘Thank God.’
The shepherd’s hut had a roof and three walls, facing providentially away from the wind. The floor was covered in dung-matted straw, but it was dry, and after the snow it was as good as a Turkish carpet. They burrowed into the filthy straw, smoking, letting their body heat warm their soaking clothes. Jaime produced a bottle of brandy. Lisette was half-buried in the straw next to Hugues. When Mallory shone his flashlight at her, he saw her face was a dead grey. He took the brandy bottle out of Thierry’s hand and carried it over to her. ‘Here,’ he said.
The neck of the bottle rattled against her teeth. She coughed. ‘Thank you,’ she said, when she could speak.
Mallory said, ‘It was a good thing you found us.’
‘Love,’ said Hugues. ‘It was the power of love. A sixth sense –’
‘There was a little more to it than that,’ she said, dryly. ‘Hugues, you are getting carried away.’
‘Yes,’ said Mallory, warming to her toughness. ‘So how did you do it?’
She shook her head. Her shivering was lending a faint seismic movement to the straw. ‘They were talking, the résistants. One of them I knew. They said the radio signal arranging your drop mentioned that you were carrying money, I don’t know if it’s true. They made a deal with a German officer. They are demoralised, some of these Germans in the mountains here. And of course the résistants too; some of them are no more than bandits. The German was to kill you. Then he was to give them the money and collect a medal, I guess.’ Her teeth gleamed in the pale reflection from the snow outside. ‘I saw them come back to warn the officer. I knew where they had come from. So I got on my bicycle, and fell off in the right place. And it didn’t work out for those pigs.’
‘Thank God,’ said Hugues, fervently.
Mallory found he was smiling. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He got up, his weary knees protesting. It looked as if there was a new addition to the party. A brave addition, but a slow one. He hoped that Hugues would get his ardour under control, and start acting human again. He said, ‘We’re moving out.’
An hour and a half later Jaime led them down a snowy path and into the trees above the village. There was another barn-like building in the trees.
Jaime opened the door and said, ‘Wait in here.’
Mallory said, ‘Where are you going?’
‘To find some friends.’ There was a fireplace. Jaime struck a match, lit the piled kindling, and threw on an armful of logs. ‘Be comfortable. Dry yourselves.’ His eyes were invisible in the shadows under his heavy eyebrows.
Mallory’s eyes met Andrea’s. He did not like it. Nor, he could tell, did Andrea. But there was nothing he could do.
Jaime disappeared into the night. Lisette sank down in front of the fire and began to pull her boots off.
‘Outside,’ said Mallory.
She looked at him as if he was mad.
‘What if Jaime comes back with a German patrol?’
‘Mais non,’ said Thierry.
‘Jaime?’ said Lisette. ‘Never. He hates Germans.’
Hugues’ face was pink and nervous. ‘How do you know?’ he said. ‘How does anyone know? The Germans arrived at the drop site within half an hour. Someone betrayed us –’
‘I told you what happened,’ said Lisette. ‘Now for God’s sake –’
‘Outside,’ said Hugues.
Something happened to Lisette’s face. ‘Non,’ she said. ‘Non, non, non, non. I am staying.’
‘And I also,’ said Thierry, his big face the colour of lard under the straw hat.
‘Women,’ said Hugues.
‘I am not women!’ snapped Lisette. ‘I am someone who knows Jaime. And trusts him.’
‘’Ah, ça!’ said Hugues. ‘Well –’
‘But perhaps you trust your friends more,’ said Lisette.
And when Hugues looked round, he saw that where Mallory, Miller and Andrea had been standing were only wet footprints.
Out in the woods Miller lay and shivered in a pile of sodden pine needles, and thought longingly of the warm firelight in the barn. He had watched Hugues storm out, heard the slam of the door. Then nothing, except the icy drip of rainwater on his neck, and the mouldy smell of pine needles under his nose.
After half an hour, the rain stopped. There was silence, with dripping. And behind the dripping, the wheeze and clatter of an engine. Some sort of truck came round the corner, no lights. Miller sighted his Schmeisser on its cab. Three men got out. As far as Miller could see, the truck was small, and not German.
A voice said, ‘L’Amiral Beaufort!’
Another voice said, ‘Vive la France!’
The barn door opened and closed.
Mallory saw Hugues come out of the bush in which he had been hiding, and walk across to the barn. Hugues knew these men, it appeared. That was Hugues’ area of speciality. So Mallory got up himself, and went in.
The men Jaime had brought wore sweeping moustaches and huge berets that flopped down over their eyes. They carried shotguns. Two of them were talking to Hugues in rapid French. Mallory thought they looked a damned sight too pleased with themselves.
‘There are no Germans in the village,’ said Jaime. ‘But there is a small problem. It seems that Jules has had an accident. A fatal accident, they tell me. He was shot at Jonzère, last night.’
Mallory stared at him. ‘How?’ he said.
‘A matter of too much enthusiasm,’ said Jaime.
Hugues ceased his conversation and turned to Mallory. He said, ‘Or to tell the truth, a mess.’
Jaime shrugged. He said, ‘The résistants heard we had landed. There was an idea that we were a regiment, maybe more, because there were only two survivors from the German patrol in the gorge. So Jules heard all this and went to Jonzère to stop these hotheads getting themselves killed. But he was too late. They were firing on the Germans, and the Germans were firing back, and they got themselves killed, all right. And Jules got himself killed with them.’
Hugues blew air, expressing scorn. ‘It is not as it is in the north
. These mountain people have too many feelings and too few brains.’
It was Jules who had known the man who knew where the Werwolf pack were being repaired. Without Jules, the chain was broken.
Mallory said, with a mildness he did not feel, ‘So how are we to continue with the operation?’
‘Ah,’ said Jaime. ‘Marcel has a surprise for you, in Colbis.’ He did not look as if he approved of surprises.
‘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.’
‘Voilà,’ said Jaime. ‘Marcel proposes breakfast in the … in his café. 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 Jonzère. 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.’