Authors: Vic Robbie
‘
R
onnie
,’ Ben called out. ‘Where are you, Ronnie?’
No response.
He stopped and listened, but the only sounds were of birds in the trees outside. At the rear of the café, there was a small bar with shelves of bottles backed by a large mirror and in front of the panoramic window none of the tables had been laid for diners. Although the door was unlocked, the café appeared to be deserted, and he wondered where Ronnie had gone. The ceiling fans still rotated slowly as if someone had left in a hurry.
By the side of the bar, another door led to the kitchens and he walked towards it, his shoes clicking on the wooden floor. It creaked like the other one as he pushed it open and he found the kitchen to be empty and there were no signs that anything would be cooked for several hours at least.
Sensing a presence behind him, the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. But before he could move, a large brown forearm had him in a choke hold, compressing his windpipe so it felt like his brains were being squeezed out of his eye sockets. Another pair of hands pulled his arms behind him, and the cold metal of handcuffs encircled his wrists and clicked shut. At the same time, more hands grabbed his legs, pulling him off balance and he was suspended in mid-air while shackles were fitted around his ankles.
He pulled his head from side to side in an attempt to free himself, but the grip was too strong. ‘What the–’
Before he could finish the sentence, they forced a rag into his mouth and stuck tape over his lips to secure it. A black hood was pulled over his head, allowing only a hint of light through the thick stuff of the cloth. His kidnappers made no sound as they carried out their task taking them only seconds, and he realised they’d done this before. They hoisted him up on their shoulders like a roll of carpet, a door opened and he felt them moving out into the hot afternoon air.
For the first time, he heard a voice. It spoke only one word he couldn’t understand and he heard another door open before they bundled him like a corpse into the back of a van stinking of gasoline. And the wooden floor was rough and skinned his knees and elbows. The door slammed shut and someone banged a hand on the side of the van and yelled ‘
Allez
.’ Its engine started up, coughing unhealthily, and the driver engaged first gear and it moved forward picking a path out from behind the café. As it increased speed, he rolled around in the back unable to stop his head banging into the sides and skinning his cheeks and elbows even more. He was like a boxer on the ropes with his arms trapped by his side while the champion pummelled him at will. He began to gag and a panic rose up in his throat as he struggled to swallow and breathe.
They were obviously moving out of town as the van didn’t slow and after a while he guessed they were climbing as the engine note changed and it began to complain in a whining growl. And every time the driver engaged a gear, the van lurched and he took another blow.
Who were these people? What did they want from him? And what had happened to Ronnie? Had they – the secret police or the Nazis – killed her, and were they taking him somewhere they could interrogate him? He had been on the island only twenty-four hours and hadn’t had time to make enemies. He was just a writer researching a book. Then he remembered the two Nazis. Perhaps they knew why Smee wanted him on the island, even if he didn’t.
After a journey of what he estimated to be more than an hour, the van stopped abruptly with a squeal of brakes. He heard his kidnappers coming towards the back of the vehicle. The doors opened again and, when they pulled him out, he grunted in pain as an elbow dragged along the wooden floor. And someone hoisted him up and carried him before dumping him on the ground.
Another engine started up, different from the van and more like a chugging sound, and he smelled pungent diesel fumes. This time the wooden floor was polished and not rough. But it was moving, rocking to and fro and swaying from side to side making him feel sick.
He was on a boat.
B
en reckoned
the swaying and rolling of the boat had induced sleep or perhaps it was a combination of the motion and the blows to his head when he rolled about in the back of the van. Now he sensed movement around him. The chugging of the boat’s diesel engine cut out and he heard his captors speaking in French although he couldn’t understand the dialect. Again, they pulled him upright and put him over someone’s shoulder. The carrier took a couple of steps and steadied himself before stepping out of the boat, and more hands supported them and pushed them onto dry land. His weight was causing problems for the man whose breath wheezed and rattled. He had taken only a dozen or so steps before Ben was hoisted up onto the back of what he reckoned was an open truck because he felt a cooling breeze on his skin. After more shouts, the truck lurched off and he slammed into its side, wincing in pain as sharp metal caught his head. It was as painful as the earlier journey and, as the truck wound its way up a hill, he was again thrown around with nothing to protect him. Mercifully, they came to a halt before not too long and once more they manhandled him out of the truck and pushed him up some steps. They led him through two sets of swing doors, down a long corridor with their footsteps echoing around them, and through another door before they deposited him on a wooden bench. The door slammed shut behind them with an ominous click.
‘Why–’ Ben tried to shout, but the cloth in his mouth reduced it to a consumptive cough ‘–am I here?’ The rest of it trailed off into nothingness. He couldn’t hear anything and wondered if there were people in the room watching him. His hands and legs were still shackled and he tried to push himself up into a standing position only to lose his balance and pitch headlong onto the stone floor.
He lay there gasping, deciding it would be better to conserve what energy he had left. After about thirty minutes, the door opened and, judging by the footsteps, two people had joined him. Again, he tried to ask the question but realised it was useless.
‘Get it off his head,’ an educated voice said.
Fingers pulled at the hood and as it came away he blinked at the brightness although the light in the room was dim. Now he could see again relief surged through his body. The man pulled the tape off his mouth and reached into it to extricate the sodden cloth. Ben considered biting his fingers but instead spat it out.
Gasping for air, he croaked: ‘Why am I here? What do you want with me?
Another man, the one with the educated voice, spoke from behind. ‘Unshackle his legs,’ he ordered.
The first man bent down and unlocked the shackles and pulled them free. And he didn’t try to stop Ben standing up.
The other man spoke again. ‘If you sit down, we can do the same for your hands.’
The first man hesitated.
‘Do it, he can’t be any danger to us.’
Ben rolled his wrists and flexed his fingers, rubbing them to bring them back to life. ‘You guys sure know how to make a visitor welcome.’
The other man chuckled. ‘Think yourself privileged.’
‘Who are you?’ he asked, surprised he sounded calm.
The first man stepped aside and took out a pistol from its holster and trained the firearm on Ben.
A tall man emerged from the shadows. He held himself like a boxer and looked balanced as if ready to evade the next punch. Only a gradual greying of the hair at the temples and in a light beard suggested he might be older than he looked. His eyes ran over Ben sizing him up. It was a strong face with a prominent nose and chin and a forehead so deeply lined it appeared to have been sculpted. It had a look suggesting it would be compassionate yet at the same time could quickly change to something more threatening. And when he spoke in a soft baritone, the voice was measured. ‘I admire your spirit, Peters, but it should be me asking the questions?’
He glanced over at his colleague and, with a shake of his hand, ordered: ‘Put the gun away.’
‘Are you secret police? You’re not the right colour for Nazis.’
The man chuckled and came and sat on the corner of the table in front of him and hesitated, unsure how to answer him. ‘The Nazis and the police would be happy to be in the same room with me. My name is Raymond and they’ve been looking for me for some time.’
‘So you’re not a Vichy sympathiser?’
Raymond shook his head.
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, but next time could we meet in a bar?
‘Let me apologise for the way you’ve been taken here,’ Raymond said. ‘Some of my men can be a bit exuberant and treat friends the same as they do enemies. I hope you’re our friend?’
‘My mother told me never to talk to strangers.’
‘You’re bleeding.’ Raymond ran his fingers over Ben’s forehead. ‘Minor cuts. You’ll survive, believe me. I’m a doctor.’ He retook his seat on the corner of the table and ordered his colleague. ‘Get someone to clean him up.’
‘Are you just as nice to your German friends?’
Raymond chuckled again in the low rumble of a smoker. ‘Oh, no, for them we have special treatment.’ He broke off as a girl entered the room with a bowl of hot water and some towels she used to dab his head and clean up the blood trickling down the side of his face. Ben tried to catch her eye, but she avoided contact as if she were cleaning a statue.
‘That’s an improvement,’ Raymond said at last. ‘Now tell me why you’re here on the island and who sent you?’
He ignored that. ‘Where are we?
‘Not where you think, this is not Martinique. It’s Dominica.’
He flashed Raymond a confused look.
‘It’s an island about thirty miles north of Martinique. It’s British, and it’s safer for us to operate from here.’
He felt relief flooding through him. ‘And do they know what you’re doing to poor people like me?’
‘Oh, I’m sure they’d approve. If we were still on Martinique, both of us would probably be in a Vichy cell or in front of a Nazi firing squad.’
‘They must want you pretty badly?’
Raymond shrugged his big shoulders as though he hadn’t heard. ‘Let’s just say it’s a capital offence to support the Free French.’
‘So you, the Resistance, still manage to be a thorn in their sides?’
‘Enough of this, please answer my questions.’
‘What have you done to Ronnie?’ Ben persisted.
‘Ronnie?’ Raymond looked puzzled and glanced at the other man. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’
‘Ronnie is a girl and she’s my driver,’ he said.
‘My men didn’t report any complications.’
He wondered if she’d managed to get away although he didn’t want her going to the authorities to report his kidnap. That would only complicate matters.
‘Who are you, Peters?’ Raymond asked.
‘You’ve got it in one.’
Raymond looked irritated so he thought it better to answer him. ‘Just a scribbler who occasionally gets paid for his writing.’
‘Tell me what I want to know and perhaps I’ll allow you to go back to your scribbling or–’ Raymond stood up towering over him.
‘What?’
‘If you don’t tell me who you’re working for then sometime in the future, maybe days from now or weeks or even months, your body will be found snagged in some fisherman’s nets. And by then, the fishes will have eaten the tasty bits and no one will know who you are.’
‘They don’t anyway so what’s the difference?’
‘Tell me, why are you on the island?’
‘How many times must I say this? I’m writing a book on Martinique and I guessed I’d better have a look at the island if I’m going to write about it.’
‘Okay, that’s a convenient cover. What’s your real reason for being here?’
‘I told you.’
‘You’re an American, how did you get here?’
‘How could you tell?’ Something in the look in the man’s eyes persuaded him he should answer. ‘Flew in from New York.’
‘You could be working for the Nazis–’
‘I’m an American,’ he answered self-righteously as though that explained everything.
‘So what? I’ve known some very convincing American Nazis. There are any number of German agents living in your country who are as American as apple pie. You could be a decoy to flush me out.’
‘If that’s the case, I’ve succeeded and I’ve got you right where I want you.’
Annoyance rippled across Raymond’s face, and he sensed the Resistance leader was struggling to keep a tight rein. ‘On the other hand, if you really are an American you could be working for any number of their intelligence services.’
He shook his head.
‘Or even the British.’
‘Sounds like it puts us on the same team.’ He laughed.
‘Not necessarily.’ Raymond got up and paced the room. ‘What we don’t need is outside interference.’
‘I can understand that.’ He crossed his arms as if the matter were closed. ‘I know nothing about any intelligence services. I’m here to write a book.’
‘As may be. Someone could have other plans for you, and you won’t know anything about it until it happens.’
His mind flashed back to the meeting with Pickering and Smee in the London club, which now seemed an age ago. While he trusted Pickering, Smee was another matter.
‘This is not a game we’re playing here.’ Raymond continued. ‘My people and I are committed to a free France and we would even give up our families to ensure the future freedom of our country. Have no doubt; we’ll crush anyone who stands in our way. If you’re a Nazi, we’ll dispose of you. If you’re working for Britain, what is your mission? If you’re an American agent, who are you working for? We would welcome America’s involvement, but as I said my priority is my island, and this island can be a dangerous place for strangers. All matters of accidents can happen here. Many people have been known to lose their footing while out at sea and fall overboard, never to be seen again.’
‘I’m sticking to my story because it’s the only one I’ve got.’
One of Raymond’s men entered the room and whispered in his ear.
‘Good.’ Raymond clapped his hands together. ‘My people have picked up your friend, Ronnie, and we’ll interrogate her. I’m sure they’ll find out what we need to know. I’ll have some food and drink sent in for you, I have no more time to waste. I’ll speak to our contacts in New York to see who you really are. If they don’t know you, then I’m afraid…’ He spread his arms.
As Ben bolted down the welcome food, he recounted his conversations with Ronnie. What he didn’t know was how Smee’s people had come to employ her in the first place. His life depended on what she told them and what they learned from New York, and he wondered to whom they were talking.
When Raymond returned, he looked grim like a judge about to pronounce sentence. ‘We spoke to Ronnie and she sang like a pretty little bird.’ He paused and studied Ben. ‘And we contacted New York.’
Raymond shook his head and added: ‘I’m sorry. It’s time you took another boat trip.’