Читать книгу Cold Harbour - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 8

As Craig Osbourne reached the edge of St Maurice, there was a volley of rifle fire and rooks in the beech trees outside the village church lifted into the air in a dark cloud, calling to each other angrily. He was driving a Kubelwagen, the German Army’s equivalent of the jeep, a general purpose vehicle that would go anywhere. He parked it by the lych-gate that gave entrance to the cemetery and got out, immaculate in the grey field uniform of a Standartenführer in the Waffen-SS.

It was raining softly and he took a greatcoat of black leather from the rear seat, slipped it over his shoulders and went forward to where a gendarme stood watching events in the square. There were a handful of villagers down there, no more than that, an SS firing squad and two prisoners waiting hopelessly, hands manacled behind their backs. A third lay face down on the cobbles by the wall. As Osbourne watched, an elderly officer appeared, wearing a long greatcoat with the silver grey lapel facings affected by officers of general rank in the SS. He took a pistol from his holster, leaned down and shot the man on the ground in the back of the head.

‘General Dietrich, I suppose?’ Osbourne asked in perfect French.

The gendarme, who had not noticed his approach, answered automatically. ‘Yes, he likes to finish them off himself, that one.’ He half turned, became aware of the uniform and jumped to attention. ‘Excuse me, Colonel, I meant no offence.’

‘None taken. We are, after all, fellow countrymen.’ Craig raised his left sleeve and the gendarme saw at once that he wore the cuff title of the French Charlemagne Brigade of the Waffen-SS. ‘Have a cigarette.’

He held out a silver case. The gendarme took one. Whatever his private thoughts concerning a countryman serving the enemy, he kept them to himself, face blank.

‘This happens often?’ Osbourne asked, giving him a light. The gendarme hesitated and Osbourne nodded encouragingly. ‘Go on, man, speak your mind. You may not approve of me, but we’re both Frenchmen.’

It surfaced then, the anger, the frustration. ‘Two or three times a week and in other places. A butcher, this one.’

One of the two men waiting was positioned against the wall; there was a shouted command, another volley. ‘And he denies them the last rites. You see that, Colonel? No priest and yet when it’s all over, he comes up here like a good Catholic to confess to Father Paul and then has a hearty lunch in the café across the square.’

‘Yes, so I’ve heard,’ Osbourne told him.

He turned away and walked back towards the church. The gendarme watched him go, wondering, then turned to observe events in the square as Dietrich went forward again, pistol in hand.

Craig Osbourne went up the path through the graveyard, opened the great oak door of the church and went inside. It was dark in there, a little light filtering down through ancient windows of stained glass. There was a smell of incense, candles flickering by the altar. As Osbourne approached, the door of the sacristy opened and an old white-haired priest emerged. He wore an alb, a violet stole over his shoulder. He paused, surprise on his face.

‘May I help you?’

‘Perhaps. Back in the sacristy, Father.’

The old priest frowned. ‘Not now, Colonel, now I must hear confession.’

Osbourne glanced across the empty church to the confessional boxes. ‘Not much custom, Father, but then there wouldn’t be, not with that butcher Dietrich expected.’ He put a hand on the priest’s chest firmly. ‘Inside, please.’

The priest backed into the sacristy, bewildered. ‘Who are you?’

Osbourne pushed him down on the wooden chair by the desk, took a length of cord from his greatcoat pocket. ‘The less you know, the better, Father. Let’s just say all is not what it seems. Now hands behind your back.’ He tied the old man’s wrists firmly. ‘You see, Father, I’m granting you absolution. No connection with what happens here. A clean bill of health with our German friends.’

He took out a handkerchief. The old priest said, ‘My son, I don’t know what you plan, but this is God’s house.’

‘Yes, well I like to think I’m on God’s business,’ Craig Osbourne said and gagged him with the handkerchief.

He left the old man there, closed the sacristy door and crossed to the confessional boxes, switched on the tiny light above the door of the first one and stepped inside. He took out his Walther, screwed a silencer on the barrel and watched, the door open a crack so that he could see down to the entrance.

After a while, Dietrich entered from the porch with a young SS Captain. They stood talking for a moment, the Captain went back outside and Dietrich walked along the aisle between the pews, unbuttoning his greatcoat. He paused, took off his cap and entered the other confessional box and sat down. Osbourne flicked the switch, turned on the small bulb that illuminated the German on the other side of the grille, remaining in darkness himself.

‘Good morning, Father,’ Dietrich said in bad French. ‘Bless me for I have sinned.’

‘You certainly have, you bastard,’ Craig Osbourne told him, pushed the silenced Walther through the flimsy grille and shot him between the eyes.

Osbourne stepped out of the confessional box and at the same moment the young SS Captain opened the church door and peered in. He saw the General on his face, the back of his skull a sodden mass of blood and brain, Osbourne standing over him. The young officer drew his pistol and fired twice wildly, the sound of the shots deafening between the old walls. Osbourne returned the fire, catching him in the chest, knocking him back over one of the pews, then ran to the door.

He peered out and saw Dietrich’s car parked at the gate, his own Kubelwagen beyond. Too late to reach it now for already a squad of SS, rifles at the ready, were running towards the church, attracted by the sound of firing.

Osbourne turned, ran along the aisle and left from the back door by the sacristy, racing through the gravestones of the cemetery at the rear of the church, vaulting the low stone wall, and started up the hill to the wood above.

They began shooting when he was half way up and he ran, zigzagging wildly, was almost there when a bullet plucked at his left sleeve sending him sideways to fall on one knee. He was up again in a second and sprinted over the brow of the hill. A moment later he was into the trees.

He ran on wildly, both arms up to cover his face against the flailing branches and where in the hell was he supposed to be running to? No transport and no way of reaching his rendezvous with that Lysander now. At least Dietrich was dead, but, as they used to say in SOE in the old days, a proper cock-up.

There was a road in the valley below, more woods on the other side. He went sliding down through the trees, landing in a ditch, picked himself up and started to cross and then to his total astonishment, the Rolls-Royce limousine came round the corner and braked to a halt.

René Dissard of the black eye-patch was at the wheel in his chauffeur’s uniform. The rear door was opened and Anne-Marie looked out. ‘Playing heroes again, Craig? You never change, do you? Come on, get in, for heaven’s sake and let’s get out of here.’

As the Rolls moved off, she nodded at the blood-soaked sleeve of his uniform. ‘Bad?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Osbourne stuffed a handkerchief inside. ‘What in the hell are you doing here?’

‘Grand Pierre was in touch. As usual, just a voice on the phone. I still haven’t met the man.’

‘I have,’ Craig told her. ‘You’re in for a shock when you do.’

‘Really? He says that Lysander pick-up isn’t on. Heavy fog and rain moving in from the Atlantic according to the Met. boys. I was supposed to wait for you at the farm and tell you, but I always had a bad feeling about this one. Decided to come along and see the action. We were on the other side of the village by the station. Heard the shooting and saw you running up the hill.’

‘Good thing for me,’ Osbourne told her.

‘Yes, considering this effort wasn’t really any of my business. Anyway, René said you were bound to come this way.’

She lit a cigarette and crossed one silken knee over the other, elegant as always in a black suit, a diamond brooch at the neck of the white silk blouse. The black hair was cut in a fringe across her forehead and curved under on each side, framing high cheekbones and pointed chin.

‘What are you staring at?’ she demanded petulantly.

‘You,’ he said. ‘Too much lipstick as usual, but otherwise, bloody marvellous.’

‘Oh, get under the seat and shut up,’ she told him.

She turned her legs to one side as Craig pulled down a flap revealing space beneath the seat. He crawled inside and she pushed the flap back into position. A moment later, they went round a corner and discovered a Kubelwagen across the road, half-a-dozen SS waiting.

‘Nice and slow, René,’ she said.

‘Trouble?’ Craig Osbourne asked, his voice muffled.

‘Not with any luck,’ she said softly. ‘I know the officer. He was stationed at the Château for a while.’

René stopped the Rolls and a young SS Lieutenant walked forward, pistol in hand. His face cleared and he holstered his weapon. ‘Mademoiselle Trevaunce. What an unexpected pleasure.’

‘Lieutenant Schultz.’ She opened the door and held out her hand which he kissed gallantly. ‘What’s all this?’

‘A wretched business. A terrorist has just shot General Dietrich in St Maurice.’

‘I thought I heard some shooting back there,’ she said. ‘And how is the General?’

‘Dead, Mademoiselle,’ Schultz told her. ‘I saw the body myself. A terrible thing. Murdered in the church during confession.’ He shook his head. ‘That there are such people in this world passes belief.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ She pressed his hand in sympathy. ‘You must come and see us again soon. The Countess had rather a fondness for you. We were sorry to see you go.’

Schultz actually blushed. ‘Please convey my felicitations, but now I must delay you no longer.’

He shouted an order and one of his men reversed the Kubelwagen. Schultz saluted and René drove away.

‘As always Mamselle has the luck of the Devil,’ he observed.

Anne-Marie Trevaunce lit another cigarette and Craig Osbourne said softly, ‘Wrong, René, my friend. She is the Devil.’

At the farm, they parked the Rolls-Royce in the barn while René went in search of information. Osbourne removed his tunic and ripped away the blood-soaked sleeve of his shirt.

Anne-Marie examined the wound. ‘Not too bad. It hasn’t gone through, simply ploughed a furrow. Nasty, mind you.’

René returned with a bundle of cloths and a piece of white sheeting which he proceeded to tear into strips.

‘Bandage him with this.’

Anne-Marie set about the task at once and Osbourne said, ‘What’s the score?’

‘Only old Jules here and he wants us out fast,’ René said. ‘Change into this lot and he’ll put the uniform in his charcoal burner. There’s a message from Grand Pierre. They’ve been on the radio to London. They’re going to pick you up by torpedo boat off Leon tonight. Grand Pierre can’t make it himself, but one of his men will be there – Bleriot. I know him well. A good man.’

Osbourne went round to the other side of the Rolls and changed. He returned wearing a tweed cap, corduroy jacket and trousers, both of which had seen better days, and broken boots. He put the Walther in his pocket and gave the uniform to René who went out.

‘Will I do?’ he asked Anne-Marie.

She laughed out loud, ‘With three days growth on your chin perhaps, but to be honest, you still look like a Yale man to me.’

‘That’s really very comforting.’

René returned and got behind the wheel. ‘We’d better get moving, Mamselle. It’ll take us an hour to get there.’

She pulled down the flap under the seat. ‘In you go like a good boy.’

Craig did as he was told and peered out at her. ‘I’m the one who’s going to have the last laugh. Dinner at the Savoy tomorrow night. The Orpheans playing, Carroll Gibbons singing, dancing, girls.’

She slammed the flap shut, climbed in and René drove away.

Leon was a fishing village so small that it didn’t even have a pier, most of the boats being drawn up on the beach. There was the sound of accordion music from a small bar, the only sign of life, and they drove on, following a rough track past a disused lighthouse to a tiny bay. A heavy mist rolled in from the sea and somewhere in the distance a foghorn sounded forlornly. René led the way down to the beach, a flashlight in his hand.

Craig said to Anne-Marie, ‘You don’t want to go down there. You’ll only spoil your shoes. Stay with the car.’

She took off her shoes and turned, tossing them into the back of the Rolls. ‘Quite right, darling. However, thanks to my Nazi friends, I do have an inexhaustible supply of silk stockings. I can afford to ruin one pair for the sake of friendship.’

She took his arm and they went after René. ‘Friendship?’ Craig said. ‘As I recall, in Paris in the old days it was rather more than that?’

‘Ancient history, darling. Best forgotten.’

She held his arm tight and Osbourne caught his breath sharply, aware that his wound was really hurting now. Anne-Marie turned her head and looked at him. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Damned arm hurting a bit, that’s all.’

There was a murmur of voices as they approached and found René and another man standing beside a small dinghy, an outboard motor tilted over on its stern.

‘This is Bleriot,’ René said.

‘Mamselle.’ Bleriot touched his cap, acknowledging Anne-Marie.

‘This is the boat, I presume?’ Craig demanded. ‘And what exactly am I supposed to do with it?’

‘Around the point and you will see the Grosnez light, Monsieur.’

‘In this fog?’

‘It’s very low lying.’ Bleriot shrugged. ‘I’ve put a signalling lamp in and there’s this.’ He took a luminous signal ball from his pocket. ‘SOE supply these. They work very well in the water.’

‘Which is where I’m likely to end up from the look of the weather,’ Craig said as waves lapped in hungrily across the beach.

Bleriot took a lifejacket from the boat and helped him into it. ‘You have no choice, Monsieur, you must go. Grand Pierre says they are turning the whole of Brittany upside down in their search for you.’

Craig allowed him to fasten the straps of the lifejacket. ‘Have they taken hostages yet?’

‘Of course. Ten from St Maurice, including the Mayor and Father Paul. Ten more from farms in the surrounding area.’

‘My God!’ Craig said softly.

Anne-Marie lit a Gitane and passed it to him. ‘The name of the game, lover, you and I both know that. Not your affair.’

‘I wish I could believe you,’ he told her as René and Bleriot ran the dinghy down into the water. Bleriot got in and started the outboard. He got out again.

Anne-Marie kissed Craig briskly. ‘Off you go like a good boy and give my love to Carroll Gibbons.’

Craig got into the dinghy and reached for the rudder. He turned to Bleriot who held the boat on the opposite side from René. ‘Pick up by MTB, you say?’

‘Or gunboat. British Navy or Free French, one or the other. They’ll be there, Monsieur. They’ve never let us down yet.’

‘So long, René, take care of her,’ Craig called as they pushed him out through the waves and the tiny outboard motor carried him on.

Rounding the point and facing the open sea, he was soon in trouble. The waves lifted in white caps, the wind freshening, and water slopped over the sides so that he was already ankle-deep. Bleriot was right. He could see the Grosnez light occasionally through gaps in the fog blown by the wind and he was steering towards it when suddenly the outboard motor died on him. He worked at it frantically, pulling the starting cord, but the dinghy drifted helplessly, pulled in by the current.

A heavy wave, long and smooth and much larger than the others swept in, lifting the dinghy high in the air, where it paused in a kind of slow-motion, water pouring in.

It went down like a stone and Craig Osbourne drifted helplessly in the water, buoyed up by his lifejacket.

It was intensely cold, biting into his arms and legs like acid so that even the pain of his wound faded for the time being. Another large wave came over and he drifted down the other side into calmer water.

‘Not good, my boy,’ he told himself. ‘Not good at all,’ and then the wind tore another hole in the curtain of the fog and he saw the light of Grosnez, he heard a muted throbbing of engines, saw a dark shape out there.

He raised his voice and called frantically. ‘Over here!’ and then he remembered the luminous signal ball that Bleriot had given him, got it out of his pocket, fumbling with frozen fingers, and held it up in the palm of his right hand.

The curtain of fog dropped again, the Grosnez light disappeared and the throb of the engines seemed to be swallowed by the night.

‘Here, damn you!’ Osbourne cried and then the torpedo boat drifted out of the fog like a ghost ship and bore down on him.

He had never felt such relief in his life as a searchlight was switched on and picked him out in the water. He started to flail towards it, forgetting his arm for the moment and stopped suddenly. There was something about the craft, something wrong. The paintwork for example. Dirty white merging into sea green, a suggestion of striping for camouflage and then the flag on the jackstaff flared out with a sharp crack in a gust of wind and he saw the swastika plainly, the cross of the upper left-hand corner, the scarlet and black of the Kriegsmarine. No MTB this but a German E-boat and as it slid alongside, he saw painted on the prow beside its number the legend Lili Marlene.

The E-boat seemed to glide to a halt, the engines only a murmur now. He floated there, sick at heart, looking up at the two Kriegsmarine ratings in side-caps and peajackets who looked down at him. And then one of them threw a rope ladder over the rail.

‘All right, my old son,’ he said in ripest Cockney. ‘Let’s be having you.’

They had to help him over the rail and he crouched, vomiting a little on the deck. He looked up warily as the German sailor with the Cockney accent said cheerfully, ‘Major Osbourne, is it?’

‘That’s right.’

The German leaned down. ‘You’re losing a lot of blood from the left arm. Better take a look at that for you, sir. I’m the sick berth attendant.’

Osbourne said, ‘What goes on here?’

‘Not for me to say, sir. That’s the skipper’s department. Fregattenkapitän Berger, sir. You’ll find him on the bridge.’

Craig Osbourne got to his feet wearily, fumbling at the straps of his lifejacket, taking it off, stumbling to the small ladder and went up. Then he went into the wheelhouse. There was a rating at the wheel, an Obersteuermann from his rank badges, Chief Helmsman. The man in the swivel chair at the small chart table wore a crumpled Kriegsmarine cap. It had a white top to it, usually an affectation of U-boat commanders, but common enough amongst E-boat captains who saw themselves as the elite of the Kriegsmarine. He wore an old white polo neck sweater under a reefer coat and turned to look at Osbourne, his face calm and expressionless.

‘Major Osbourne,’ he said in good American. ‘Glad to have you aboard. Excuse me for a moment. We need to get out of here.’

He turned to the coxswain and said in German, ‘All right, Langsdorff. Leave silencers on until we’re five miles out. Course two-one-oh. Speed, twenty-five knots until I say different.’

‘Course two-one-oh, speed twenty-five knots, Herr Kapitän,’ the coxswain replied and took the E-boat away with a surge of power.

‘Hare,’ Craig Osbourne said. ‘Professor Martin Hare.’

Hare took a cigarette from a tin of Benson & Hedges and offered him one. ‘You know me? Have we met?’

Osbourne took the cigarette, fingers trembling. ‘After Yale, I was a journalist. Worked for Life magazine amongst others. Paris, Berlin. I spent a lot of my youth in both of those places. My dad was State Department. A diplomat.’

‘But when did we meet?’

‘I came home for a vacation. That’s Boston, by the way. April, ’39. A friend told me about this series of lectures you were giving at Harvard. Supposedly on German Literature, but very political, very anti-Nazi. I went to four of them.’

‘Were you there for the riot?’

‘When the American Bund tried to break things up? Oh, sure. I broke a knuckle on some ape’s jaw. You were quite something.’ Osbourne shivered and the door opened and the Cockney appeared.

‘What is it, Schmidt?’ Hare asked in German.

Schmidt was holding a blanket. ‘I thought the Major might need this. I would also point out to the Herr Kapitän that he is wounded in the left arm and needs medical attention.’

‘Then do your job, Schmidt,’ Martin Hare told him. ‘Get on with it.’

Seated on the narrow chair at the tiny ward room table below, Osbourne watched as Schmidt expertly bandaged the wound. ‘A little morphine, guvnor, just to make things more comfortable.’ He took an ampoule from his kit and jabbed it on to Osbourne’s arm.

Craig said, ‘Who are you? No German, that’s for sure.’

‘Oh, but I am in a manner of speaking, or at least my parents were. Jews who thought London might be more hospitable than Berlin. I was born in Whitechapel myself.’

Martin Hare said from the door in German, ‘Schmidt, you have a big mouth.’

Schmidt stood up and sprang to attention. ‘Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.’

‘Go on, get out of here.’

‘Zu befehl, Herr Kapitän.’

Schmidt grinned and went out taking his medical kit with him. Hare lit a cigarette. ‘This is a mixed crew. Americans and Brits, some Jews, but everyone speaks fluent German and they have only one identity when they serve on this ship.’

‘Our very own E-boat,’ Osbourne said. ‘I’m impressed. The best kept secret I’ve come across in quite a while.’

‘I should tell you that we play this game to the hilt. Normally, only German is spoken, only Kriegsmarine uniform worn, even back at base. It’s a question of staying in character. Of course the guys break the language rule sometimes. Schmidt is a good example.’

‘And where’s base?’

‘A little port called Cold Harbour near Lizard Point in Cornwall.’

‘How far?’

‘From here? A hundred miles. We’ll have you there by morning. We take our time on the way back. Our people warn us in advance of the Royal Navy MTB routes each night. We like to keep out of their way.’

‘I should imagine you do. A confrontation would be most unfortunate. Whose operation is this?’

‘It’s run officially by Section D of the SOE, but it’s a joint venture. You’re OSS, I hear?’

‘That’s right.’

‘A tricky way to make a living.’

‘You can say that again.’

Hare grinned. ‘Let’s see if they’ve got sandwiches in the galley. You look as if you could do with some nourishment,’ and he led the way out.

It was just before dawn when Osbourne went on deck. There was quite a sea running and spray stung his face. When he went up the ladder and entered the wheelhouse, he found Hare on his own, his face dark and brooding in the compass light. Osbourne sat by the chart table and lit a cigarette.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ Hare said.

‘The boat’s too much for me, but not for you, I think?’

‘No, sir,’ Hare told him. ‘I can’t remember when boats didn’t figure in my life. I was eight years old when my grandfather put me to sea in my first dinghy.’

‘They tell me the English Channel’s special?’

‘A hell of a lot different from the Solomons, I can tell you that.’

‘That’s where you were before?’

Hare nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘I’d always heard torpedo boats were a young man’s sport,’ Osbourne said, curious.

‘Well, when you need someone with the right experience who can also pass as a German, you’ve got to take what you can get.’ Hare laughed.

There was a faint grey light around them now, the sea calmer and land loomed before them.

‘Lizard Point,’ Hare said.

He was smiling again and Osbourne replied, ‘You like it, don’t you, all this?’

Hare shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

‘No, really like it. You wouldn’t want to go back to how it was before. Harvard, I mean.’

‘Perhaps.’ Hare was solemn. ‘Will any of us know what to do when it’s over? What about you?’

‘Nothing to go back to. You see, I have a special problem,’ Osbourne told him. ‘It would seem I have a talent for this. I killed a German General yesterday. In a church, just to show how much I lack the finer feelings. He was head of SS intelligence for the whole of Brittany. A butcher who deserved to die.’

‘So what’s your problem?’

‘I kill him so they take twenty hostages and shoot them. Death seems to follow at my heels if you know what I mean.’

Hare didn’t answer, simply reduced power and opened a window, allowing rain to drift in. They rounded a promontory and Osbourne saw an inlet in the bay beyond, a wooded valley above.

A small grey harbour nestled at the foot of it, and two dozen cottages around. There was an old manor house in the trees. Below, the crew had come out on deck.

‘Cold Harbour, Major Osbourne,’ Martin Hare told him and took the Lili Marlene in.