Assignment in Brittany (30 page)

No one had been on the path. That Hearne had verified. The danger point was passed. Their speed increased. Three hundred feet ahead of them was the north-west promontory of the island with a chapel on its rocks. Three hundred feet, one hundred yards, and they would be on the darkened west side of the Mont. The sand was firm enough so far, and the walking was easy. But farther out from the rocks, the sand’s colour changed in light and dark patches; and even on its apparent flatness there must have been hollows, for the inches of water which still lay in them spread like black shadows. Hearne was wondering which were the danger spots, the dry or the wet sand... He thought he remembered something about wet sand, but it was only a vague memory. If it were true, then the journey back to the mainland under cover of the flat banks of that stream would be no picnic. It would be a hopeless attempt without Etienne as guide. Even as Hearne worried to himself, the sand’s consistency changed under his feet. It became a soft rubber sponge, letting his weight sink for a good six inches into it, oozing quickly over his instep and round his ankles. It wasn’t a quicksand: it was just a hint of what they would have to deal with if Etienne were to lead them into one. But it wasn’t pleasant. Hearne stepped carefully, so that the half-sucking, half-sobbing sounds, when he drew each foot out from the semi-liquid surface, would be minimised. Again their pace slowed. Etienne gave one of his rare smiles, and pointed to the stretch of sands to their right. He emphasised the direction by shaking his hand warningly and then pointing it quickly downwards. The gesture was explicit enough.

He would be glad when he got out of this, Hearne thought. It was the highest piece of under-statement which he had ever committed. If anyone could have listened in to his emotions at that point, they would have heard one long, despairing groan. He tried not to look at that smooth, treacherous surface. Ten feet away. Much too near for his idea of comfort. Perhaps it was only imagination on his part, but he really felt that the give of the sand under his feet had increased. It swallowed more than his ankles now. Then suddenly it had become firm again, and Hearne breathed more naturally. But Etienne still motioned towards their right, still shook his hand, still pointed downwards. He was a nice boy, but Hearne wished he would stop the hand effects. After all, that idea didn’t need to be driven home twice. He kept rigidly behind Etienne, almost treading on his heels. If the boy had been afraid that Hearne would step out to the side to walk abreast, then he had won his point.

They were almost at the promontory. Thirty feet, or less, still to go. Then these cliffs to their left would swing round almost at right angles to face the west. They could already see the shallow pools which traced the course of the stream.

And then, from the shadows of a jutting rock, stepped Deichgräber. He had a gun in his hand, a smile on his lips.

“Up!” he said. “Up!”

They raised their hands above their heads, Etienne still holding his shoes.

“Drop them!”

Etienne did. They landed at his feet.

Deichgräber’s smile changed. He had half recognised Hearne. He narrowed his eyes for a moment and then he said triumphantly, “My friend on the farm! Well, now! Corlay is the name, I believe?”

Hearne tried to make his voice sound natural, even amused. “Captain Deichgräber, of course. Well, now we can take our hands down.”

“Keep them where they are! I was just about to waste a bullet on each of you, but now I think you will be more interesting as prisoners than as corpses. Will you tell me why you are here, or do you prefer to wait until I signal for the guards?”

“Don’t be a bloody fool, Deichgräber. Do you want Ehrlich and Lisa to laugh behind your back?” Hearne spoke as if he had the rank of general, at least.

“What has Ehrlich to do with this?” Deichgräber was angry, but he still kept the smile which was not a smile in place.

“Ask him.”

“I shall. Turn round, and start walking back. Any suspicious move and—”

“You will apologise handsomely for this,” Hearne warned indignantly. “Why don’t you summon the guards now, so that we can end this farce quickly? It would be simple enough. A couple of shots—”

“If you are as innocent as you pretend, there will be no need
to summon the guard. If you aren’t, they’ll hear the couple of shots when they strike your bodies.”

Hearne shrugged his shoulders. “By this time the men I am after will have heard us and escaped. Fool,” he said venomously.

Deichgräber ignored that. He pointed to Etienne.

“And who’s this supposed to be?”

“He’s my informant. You could do with one yourself, couldn’t you?” The savage sneer, the authoritative tone, had some effect, but not enough. “Wait until the major hears about it,” Hearne went on. “The new broom sweeps clean, too clean. I hope you’ll enjoy your new command after this.” That was a double-edged barb. Deichgräber as visitor to Mont Saint-Michel had not even the privilege of being a new broom.

“We’ll get back to the Abbey,” he said, but the calculated smile had vanished.

Hearne stood very still. He seemed to be listening intently, his eyes fixed anxiously on the stony promontory behind the German’s back. “I thought I heard them,” Hearne said, as if to himself. His voice was a mixture of anger and savage disappointment. “Our voices must have carried. They’ll get away.”

“Just where are these mysterious people?” The voice was contemptuous, but Deichgräber still watched Hearne, still pointed the revolver.

“At that small chapel on the promontory. You saw it, didn’t you? But let’s get back to the others. Perhaps it won’t be too late even then, to catch these men. Come on, Pierre”—he spoke to the boy beside him, who was standing motionless, his eyes on the ground—“we may get some results if we hurry.”

Etienne had flashed a glance at Hearne at the mention of the false name. With his hands still held high, he slipped his
right foot casually into one shoe. Deichgräber hadn’t noticed anything strange about that. Hearne drew a deep breath.

“Well have to hurry,” he said to the German, holding his attention by the urgency of his voice and eyes. Etienne was fumbling for the second shoe; and when his foot couldn’t find it, he knelt quite naturally to pick it up, his eyes still on the German, his free hand still in the air. He straightened slowly, both hands in the air now; he looked as if he were very bored.

Etienne’s leg moved so quickly that even Hearne was surprised. His right foot struck the German sharply on the wrist, with a savage side-kick which sent the arm high and the revolver flying. It fell somewhere in the rocks behind Deichgräber, as the shoe from Etienne’s left hand caught him across the mouth and silenced the shout from his opened lips. Hearne closed in, and the German warded off his blow with a kick from a heavy boot. The kick was sufficient to throw Hearne sharply against a low rock, and the jagged edge caught him beneath the knees like a knife: he lost his balance, falling backwards on the hard sand with a thud which smashed all the wind out of him. He lay still for a moment, his eyes closed. The German must have thought he was knocked out, for he turned and struck at Etienne. The boy slipped from his reach, twisted and turned, and ran back towards St. Aubert’s Well. He looked easy to catch. The German, not even pausing to shout, was on his heels. Etienne side-stepped, was missed by inches, started running out from the shore as if he had lost his head. The watching Hearne, picking himself up dizzily from the sand, smothered a shout in his throat into a hoarse croak of warning. Again Etienne side-stepped. But this time his arm was raised. Hearne saw the gleam of a knife as the boy’s arm struck at the German’s neck, saw Deichgräber
plunge heavily forward. He landed on one knee, his hands on the sand before him. And then the knee and hands disappeared. Deichgräber struggled, tried to shout, but the struggles became a spasm and the shout was only a whisper. The sand sucked more deeply; the grip was firm.

Hearne sat down on the rock. “God in Heaven,” he was saying to himself. “God in Heaven.”

Etienne came running lightly back, Etienne whose feet hadn’t paused for a moment even when he had stabbed. He was searching for his shoes, picking them up carefully. He was waiting for Hearne. “Come,” he said, “we’ve little time now.”

Hearne hesitated and looked towards the lump in the dark sands. Only twenty feet away...the strangled shout had given way to a moan, and then there was nothing to hear. Etienne must have read his thoughts. He said to Hearne, “He will soon be under: he struggled too much. It was either him or us and our friends.”

“Yes,” said Hearne, “it was either him or all of us.” But he didn’t look back as they walked on in silence. Not even when they had reached the promontory did he look round. He was thinking, Deichgräber must have gone right back down the stone staircase without waiting at the spring; he must have followed the path directly on to the shore while we were still coming down that cleft in the rock. He must have guessed that if anyone was escaping, they would make for the sand. And then he had explored it as far west as this promontory; he must have been on his way back when he saw us coming. Probably he was going to explore the east part of the north shore then. He was thorough all right. And he was ambitious. Too ambitious. If he hadn’t thought he could torture more information out of
us as prisoners, he would have shot us dead on sight. But that was one way of dying which they didn’t teach him in a Death-and-Glory academy.

Hearne followed Etienne automatically. Even when searchlights suddenly blazed over the north-shore sands, even when one of them swept round to the west while they both stretched flat on the mainland shore, Hearne was apathetic. Emotionally, he had reached saturation point. He just lay patiently, and waited until the gleam of light was switched away.

“They can’t risk it for long,” Etienne whispered consolingly.

Hearne nodded. “They are worried about him,” he suggested. “He’s overdue. Search-parties out now, probably.”

“They’ll find nothing.
Les lises...”
The boy shrugged his shoulders.

Les lises.
Water-holes... So that explained the quickness of Deichgräber’s end. Hearne remembered Pléhec’s vivid description of them one evening during his last visit to the Mont. Water-holes, they were: water-holes covered with a deceptive layer of sand. Just another of Mont Saint-Michel’s little surprises, Pléhec had said.
Spécialité de la maison,
Pléhec had added, and they had all laughed.

“No,” Hearne said. “They’ll find nothing.”

“And by the time the light is good enough to search properly, the tide will be in.” The boy’s voice was unemotional. He was neither triumphant nor fearful. He noticed Hearne’s curious stare.

“My father was killed. That was in the war, and that was what one could expect. War is war. But two weeks ago my brother was shot. Shot for something which he didn’t do, didn’t even know about. He and another, just chosen blindly, just pushed against a wall and shot in cold blood.” He paused, his
voice still unemotional.
“Merdre, alors!”
he said suddenly, and buried his face in his arms.

At last Hearne said, “I’m all right again,” and the boy rose silently to lead him over the salt-meadows. Clouds had blown up. A wind ruffled the trees lining the bank of the small canalized river, which Etienne now followed.

“I go this way, my friend,” Hearne whispered as they halted near a road. He swept his arm to the south and the west.

Etienne smiled. “Soon the tide will come in. This river will be flooded and the boats will leave from Pontorson. Pléhec said you might as well sail.”

“To where?”

“Past Saint-Malo. Anywhere up the River Rance towards Dinan, if that suits you.”

Hearne was smiling now, too. “Can I sleep on that boat?” he asked.

Etienne was politely amused.

“Sleep, and rest these blasted legs?”

Etienne was still amused, but he nodded reassuringly “After we get there,” he added cautiously.

“We shall,” Hearne said with unusual confidence.

And they did.

21

THE AWAKENING OF SAINT-DÉODAT

Another dawn was breaking when Hearne came back to Saint-Déodat. This time, he did not walk through the village. This time, he did not trouble to count the Picrels, the Guérins, or the Trouins. In these grey-stone houses now slept grey-uniformed men. Yesterday had been the day of their coming. Yesterday had been the day for Nazi flags and, no doubt, a Nazi band playing in the market-place. Hearne wondered if they had had the insolence to play Breton songs. Yet that had happened in other places. Anyway, the Picrels, the Guérins, the Trouins must have laid themselves down to sleeplessness with bitter thoughts last night. Grim as were his own at this moment, Hearne wondered just how he would feel if the names had been Jones, Brown, Robinson. Maniacal, he decided: without either exaggeration, or heroics, quite simply maniacal. He looked down the hill at the dim shapes of the quiet houses round the towering church, and he remembered the third tree in the seventh row in the
Corlay orchard. There would be many third trees in these farms in this hill and valley, and in all the other hills and valleys of Brittany. “No zo Bretoned, tud kaled,” Henri had said:

Hearne found himself quietly whistling the refrain of
Bro Goz Ma Zadou,
a Breton national song, as he crossed the stone yard of the Corlay farm. The kitchen door was closed but unlocked. Henri was kneeling beside Albertine, helping her place the first log of the new day on the glowing embers in the hearth. They turned round as Hearne entered. They waited until the last line of the song was completed, and then they came forward together, came forward almost quickly.

“You’re home,” said Albertine. Her voice, was roughly kind. Old Henri grinned through the gaps in his gums. He said nothing, but reached up with his thin, corded hand to pat Hearne awkwardly on the shoulder.

“He’s ice-cold,” Albertine said. “Henri, get that fire going. Do you want him to starve?”