Читать книгу The Children of Freedom - Марк Леви, Marc Levy, Marc Levy - Страница 12

It was Claude who was first to introduce himself to the farmer. He followed to the letter the instructions Jan had obtained from his contact with the Maquis.

‘We’re here on behalf of Louis. He told me to tell you that tonight, the tide will be low.’

‘Too bad for the fishing,’ the man replied.

Claude didn’t contradict him on this point and immediately delivered the second half of his message.

‘The Gestapo are on their way, the weapons must be moved!’

‘My God, that’s terrible,’ exclaimed the farmer.

They looked at our bikes and added, ‘Where’s your lorry?’ Claude didn’t understand the question, and to be honest nor did I and I think it was the same for our comrades behind. But he’d lost none of his talent for repartee, and immediately replied, ‘It’s following us, we’re here to start organising the transfer.’ The farmer took us to his barn. There, behind bales of hay piled several metres high, we discovered what would later give this mission its codename: ‘Ali Baba’s Cave’. On the ground were rows of stacked-up boxes, stuffed with grenades, mortars, Sten guns, entire sacks of bullets, fuses, dynamite, machine guns and more that I can’t remember.

At that precise moment, I became aware of two things of equal importance. First, my political appreciation regarding the point of preparing for the Allied landings had to be revised. My point of view had just changed, even more so when I realised that this cache was probably only one arms-dump among others that were being built up in the country. The second was that we were in the process of looting weapons that the Maquis would probably miss sooner or later.

I was careful not to share these considerations with comrade Robert, the leader of our mission; not through fear of being judged badly by my superior, but rather because, after further thought, I agreed with my conscience: with our six little bicycle trailers, we weren’t going to deprive the Maquis of much.

In order to understand what I was feeling as I looked at those weapons, knowing better now how much a single pistol meant within our brigade and at the same time comprehending the meaning of the farmer’s well-meaning question, ‘But where’s your lorry?’, all you have to do is imagine my little brother finding himself, by magic, standing in front of a table covered with all kinds of goodies when he was unable to eat.

Robert put an end to our general excitement and ordered that, while we waited for the famous lorry, we should begin loading what we could into the trailers. It was at that moment that the farmer asked a second question that was going to leave us all stunned.

‘What do we do with the Russians?’

‘What Russians?’ asked Robert.

‘Didn’t Louis tell you?’

‘That depends on what it’s about,’ cut in Claude, who was visibly gaining confidence.

‘We’re hiding two Russian prisoners who escaped from a prison camp on the Atlantic wall. We have to do something. We can’t take the risk of the Gestapo finding them, they’d shoot them on the spot.’

There were two disturbing things about what the farmer had just told us. The first was that, without intending to, we were going to cause a nightmare for these two poor guys who must already have had enough on their plate; but even more disturbing was the fact that not for a single moment had the farmer in question thought about his own life. I shall have to think about adding farmers to my list of magnificent people during that inglorious period.

Robert suggested that the Russians should go and hide in the undergrowth overnight. The peasant asked if one of us was capable of explaining this to them, as his attempts at their language had proved less than brilliant since he took in these two poor devils. After closely observing us, he concluded that he would rather do it himself. ‘It’s safer’, he added. And while he rejoined them, we loaded up the trailers to bursting point. Emile even took two boxes of ammunition that we couldn’t use, since we didn’t have a revolver of the corresponding calibre, but we didn’t know that until Charles told us on our return.

We left our farmer with his two Russian refugees, not without certain feelings of guilt, and we pedalled for all we were worth, dragging our little trailers along the road to the workshop.

As we entered the outskirts of town, Alonso couldn’t avoid a pothole, and one of the bags of bullets he was transporting was jolted over the edge. Passers-by stopped, surprised by the nature of the load that had just emptied itself all over the roadway. Two workmen came over to Alonso and helped him to pick up the bullets, replacing them in the little cart without asking any questions.

Charles made an inventory of our booty and found a good place to put it. He returned to us in the dining room, offering us one of his magnificent toothless smiles, and he announced in his own very special language: ‘Sa del tris bon trabara. Nous avir à moins de quoi fire sount actions.’ Which we instantly translated as: ‘Very good work. We have enough there to carry out at least a hundred operations.’