Storm Force from Navarone. Sam Llewellyn
thought Mallory, charging around like bulls in a china shop.
‘But Colbis is only in the next valley. We will take you there, when we have transport. There is a problem with the transport. They don’t know what. A lorry will come soon, they say. Franchement,’ said Hugues, his voice rising, ‘I do not believe these people. They are like the Spanish, always mañana-’
‘Ask them how soon.’ And calm them down, thought Mallory. Calm them down.
They say to wait,’ said Hugues, not at all calm. ‘It is seven miles to the village. There may be patrols. There is a cave they know. It is dry there, and German patrols do not visit it. They say it will be a good place to wait. The lorry will come to collect you, in one hour, maybe two.’
Mallory looked at his watch. Raindrops blurred the glass. Just after midnight. Monday already. And they were being told to wait on a mountain top in the rain, and the Werwolf pack was leaving at noon on Wednesday.
He said, ‘Where’s this cave?’
‘I know it,’ said Jaime’s voice.
Mallory sighed. Patience. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Andrea appeared at his side. Mallory felt the comfort of his gigantic presence. ‘This is not good,’ said the Greek, under the babble of excited talk from the escort.
‘We will make it better,’ said Mallory. ‘Hugues. Tell these people to be quiet.’
Hugues started shouting. The crowd fell silent. They started to walk in the lashing rain.
Jaime set a cracking pace up the valley, towards Spain, following a track that wound through a field of tea chest-sized boulders which had fallen from the valley’s sides. The map had been right; those sides were not so much slopes as cliffs. From the rear, Mallory could hear Hugues’ voice, speaking French, raised in violent argument with someone. Mallory was beginning to worry about Hugues. Staying alive behind enemy lines meant staying calm. It was beginning to sound as if Hugues was not a calm person. He called softly, ‘Shut up.’
Hugues shut up. The procession became quiet.
Mallory said to Miller, ‘What was that about?’
‘He was looking for someone. Someone who’s not around.’
In ten minutes the valley floor had narrowed to a hundred yards, and the sides had become vertical walls of rock, undermined at their base, hidden in inky shadows. ‘Here,’ said Jaime’s voice from the dark. A flashlight beam illuminated a dark entrance.
Andrea materialised at Mallory’s side. ‘Bad place,’ he said. The cave had no exit except into the valley. And the valley was more a gorge than a valley. It felt bad. It felt like a trap. ‘Hugues,’ said Mallory, without looking round. ‘Tell these people that this is no good.’
Mallory turned. ‘Hugues,’ he said. ‘Tell these people-’
He stopped. There were no people. Hugues was a solitary dark figure against the paler grey of the rocks.
Hugues said, ‘They have left.’
‘Left?’ said Mallory.
‘Gone to look for the transport. Also, there was a … person I wished to see who did not arrive. That was why I had a discussion - yes - an acrimonious discussion.’ His voice was rising. ‘These people are frankly peasants-’
Andrea said, ‘Enough.’
Hugues stopped talking as if someone had flipped a switch. Mallory said to Andrea and Miller, ‘We’re stuck with this. We need the transport. If we move, they’ll lose us. We’ll have to wait. Take cover.’
Andrea and Miller were already fading into the dark, taking up positions not in the cave, but among the rocks on the valley floor.
The night became quiet, except for the sigh of the wind and the swish of the rain, and the drowsy clonk of a goat bell from inside the cave.
This is all wrong, thought Mallory. We have been inadequately briefed, and we are dependent on a Resistance organisation that seems completely disorganised. It sounds as if the SAS have already compromised us. If the enemy comes up the valley there is no way out, except into an internment camp in Spain.
Mallory lay and strained his ears into the wet dark rain, wind, goat bells -
And another sound. A mechanical sound, but not a motor. The sound of metal on metal, gears turning. The sound of a bicycle.
There was a sudden crash. The old sounds returned, with behind them the noise of a back wheel spinning, ticking to a stop.
Mallory waited. Then he heard the brief, otherworldly bleep of a Scops owl.
Mallory had as yet heard no Scops owls in the Pyrenees. But there had been plenty in Crete, where he had served his time with Andrea.
Something moved at his shoulder: something huge, blacker than the night. Andrea said, ‘I found this,’ and dropped something on the gritty ground beside him, something that drew breath and started to croak.
Mallory allowed the muzzle of the Schmeisser to rest gently in the hollow under the something’s ear. He said, ‘Quiet.’
The something became quiet.
Mallory said, ‘I am a British officer. What do you want?’
The something said, ‘Hugues.’
‘Good God,’ said Mallory.
The something was a woman.
The woman got her voice back. She batted at Mallory with her hands. She was strong. She said, ‘Laisse-moi,’ in a voice both vigorous and tough.
Out in the dark and the rain, Hugues’ voice said, ‘Bon Dieu!’ Mallory thought he could hear something new in it: shock, and awe. He heard the uncoordinated stumble of Hugues’ boots in the dark. ‘Lisette!’ cried Hugues.
‘Hugues!’ cried the woman. ‘C’est bien toi?
Then Hugues was embracing her. The fear was gone now. All the terrible things were gone. All Hugues’ life, people had taken what he loved away from him, for reasons that seemed excellent to them but incomprehensible to him. They had taken away his parents and sent him to a stupid English school. They had taken away Mireille and the children because he was a saboteur. And then he had met Lisette, in the Resistance, and become her lover. When SOE had flown him out in the Lysander, he had thought that that had been the end of Lisette, too.
But here she was. In his arms. As large as life, if not larger.
‘My darling,’ he said.
She kissed him on the cheek, murmuring what sounded like pet names. Then Mallory heard her tone change. She sounded frantic about something.
‘Merde,’ said Hugues, in his new, firm voice. ‘We must leave. Now.’
Mallory said, quietly, ‘Who is this?’
‘Lisette,’ said Hugues. ‘A friend. A résistante.’
‘Is she the person you wanted to see who did not arrive?’
‘Yes. She is an old friend. She knows the people on the ground in the region. It is an excellent thing that she has found us. Providential. She says there are sixty Germans coming up the valley.’
‘Three lorries,’ she said. Her accent was heavy, but comprehensible. ‘The ones who reached Jonzère told me they caught two of your reception committee, found them with parachutes.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Half an hour,’ said Lisette. ‘At the most. They told me to warn you.’
Mallory’s stomach felt shrivelled like a walnut. One and a half hours in France, and the operation was as good as over. He pushed the thought into the back of his mind. ‘Jaime!’ he said.
Jaime