Operation Kingfisher (12 page)

‘It must be about seventy kilometres by road. You could do it in a day. What are you thinking?’

‘If we could get a message to Cyrano, he could tell London what we’ve seen.’

‘He’s probably up in the Morvan hills by now. You won’t find him in Corbigny.’

‘But I know where I left him. That was where his contact was. They must be able to get in touch with him.’

‘Luke,’ Christine interrupted, ‘it’s not safe for you to go. Suppose you were stopped on the way?’

‘It’s the only chance.’

‘No. I could go. It’s different for me.’

‘You can’t go alone.’

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘I won’t let you.’

‘You can’t stop me.’

‘But suppose … suppose something happened and we … we were separated. We have to stick together, Sis.’

‘I could go with her,’ Rollo said.

‘No!’ Luke spoke more sharply than he intended, and both Rollo and his sister looked surprised.

‘You are not going anywhere,’ Pasquier growled. ‘I need you here.’

‘Chris, we have to do this,’ Luke said. ‘It’s a chance to help the Allies. We can’t just ignore what we’ve seen. And after all, we cycled from Decize to Blaye without any problems.’

She looked at him, biting her lips in indecision. Her mother had asked her not to let Luke go off on some romantic escapade, and she knew that she should try to dissuade him. But on the other hand, she could not dismiss the thought that Cyrano would approve. He would certainly be told who had brought the message and he was bound to be impressed. He might even pass the information to the woman she was supposed to report to when she got back to England, and that must enhance her chances of being accepted into the mysterious organisation to which he belonged. Better still, and this was the prospect that clinched the matter, they might be taken to meet him, to tell him in person what they had seen.

She caught her breath and nodded. ‘OK, you’re right. We’ll do it.’

Luke looked at Pasquier.

‘We’ll need a day each way and probably one in between. Will you wait for us?’

‘There’s no chance I’ll be ready to move in less than three days,’ was the curt answer. ‘And there’s no guarantee that I’ll be going in the right direction for you when I do, but provided you are not longer than that, we’ll be here.’

‘Right!’ Luke said. ‘That’s decided then.’

N
ext morning, Luke and Christine untied their bikes from where they had been lashed to the wall of the wheelhouse, and wheeled them down the gangplank and onto the wharf. The traffic jam on the river outside the town had cleared eventually and the
Madeleine
had been able to tie up in the appointed place.

Christine had already been ashore to buy bread, and breakfast had been a hasty, rather tense occasion. Now, as at Decize, they had waited until the morning rush hour when the quaysides and the roads were crowded with people, many of them on bicycles, either heading out to work in the fields or going to the various factories and workshops along the river frontage. Rollo came ashore with them. He was more subdued that usual and when they shook hands, Luke saw that he was genuinely reluctant to see them go.

‘I’d come with you, if the old man would let me,’ he said.

‘We’ll be back in three days,’ Luke promised. ‘Even if it’s only to say goodbye.’

There were German soldiers patrolling the quay, but there were too many people heading in both directions for them to check everyone and Luke and his sister were just two more faces in the crowd as they pedalled away along the towpath. Nevertheless, they both let out a breath of relief when they were safely out of sight.

The going was easy for the first thirty kilometres, as they retraced the route they had just followed along the canal, and they were both amazed at how quickly they were able to cover a
distance that had taken more than a day in the boat. At Mailly-la-Ville, with the castle towering above them on the far bank, they paused to draw breath and drink from the water bottles they had brought with them. Here, the canal veered away to the west so they left the towpath and took a minor road that climbed through thick forest, until Christine’s legs were aching.

‘Phew! I haven’t had as much exercise as this since … I can’t remember when,’ she said when they stopped again to eat their sandwiches.

‘Cheer up,’ her brother answered. ‘It’ll be downhill all the way now, until we reach the canal again.’

They approached the main road between Clamecy and Vézelay with caution, having been warned that it often carried German convoys, but it was clear in both directions and once they were clear of the little village of Clamoux, they felt the worst danger was past. Shortly afterwards, they came to a corner and saw the road ahead of them dropping away through the trees in a series of tight bends.

‘What did I tell you?’ Luke pushed off, pedalling to pick up speed and then free wheeling. ‘Tallyho…!’

Christine raced after him until her front wheel was level with his rear wheel, both of them laughing with the exhilaration of their speed.

The German roadblock was so close to the bend, that they were on it before they had time to react. They were at the entrance to a small village, where a bridge crossed a little stream, and a temporary barrier had been erected across half the width of the road. A battered
gazogène
-powered van was drawn up, facing in the opposite direction, while its driver was being questioned by a soldier in German field-grey. A second man stepped forward and raised a hand as they skidded to a stop.

‘Papers!’

Luke was panting, dizzy with shock, but he tried to sound casual.

‘What’s going on? Why are you stopping us?’

‘Papers,’ the soldier repeated, as if it was the only word of French he knew.

Christine was already digging in her pocket. She held out her identity card and gave the man what she hoped was a seductive smile.

‘Here you are. My name’s Christine Beauchamps. We’re not from round here. We’re on a cycling holiday.’

Luke was making a show of searching his pockets. The soldier scrutinized Christine’s card, glanced up at her face to check that it tallied with the photograph, and handed it back with a grunt.

She chattered on, ‘Isn’t it a lovely day? Do you like it here? It’s very pretty, isn’t it? But it’s prettier where we live. We come from the Auvergne. My family own a vineyard. Perhaps you’ve tasted some of our wine? It’s called Caves des Volcans….’

‘Papers!
Schnell
! Quickly!’ The soldier was not to be diverted.

‘I … I can’t find them,’ Luke said breathlessly. ‘I think I must have left them behind in the last place we stayed.…’

‘Oh, he’s so forgetful!’ Christine forced a laugh. ‘Honestly, he’d forget his head.…’

There seemed to be some kind of dispute going on around the stationary van. The guard was trying to open the rear doors and the driver was trying to stop him.

‘Come!’ The German reached out and gripped Luke’s arm, pulling him towards a small hut where a third man was lolling on a stool beside a motorbike.

Luke instinctively resisted, and the man’s free hand went to the rifle that hung from his shoulder.

‘Luke, don’t!’ Christine shouted.

At that instant, the other guard succeeded in tugging open the van doors. There was a cacophony of shouts and squeals as a dozen piglets spilled out into the road, running between the legs of the driver and the two guards. The soldier who had hold of Luke let go, and made a dive at one of them, while another ran under his feet and tripped him so that he measured his length on
the road. The second guard and the driver of the van were engaged in a futile attempt to grab the others.

‘Come on!’ Luke jumped onto his bike and tore across the bridge and into the village street, with Christine close behind.

As they pedalled frantically down the street, which was mercifully empty as it was
le midi
, they heard the motorbike being kicked into life behind them. The village was tiny and within a minute or two, they were out on the open road again and among the trees. The way was still downhill and they picked up speed, but they could both hear the motorbike gaining on them. They rounded a bend and Christine skidded to a stop.

‘In here! Hide in the trees.’

They heaved their bikes over a small ditch and dragged them behind some bushes, then lay panting as the sound of the bike came closer.

‘He can’t see round the next bend,’ Christine breathed. ‘He’ll think we’re still ahead of him.’

She was right. The bike rounded the bend, one of the guards riding pillion behind the driver, and sped past them without stopping.

‘Oh, thank God!’ Christine gasped.

‘Wait. It can’t be long before he gets to the bottom of the hill and realizes he’s missed us,’ Luke said.

‘What do we do now?’

‘Lie low and hope they don’t search too thoroughly. Pray they haven’t got dogs with them.’

Very soon, they heard the sound of the bike returning. It passed their hiding place and they heard the engine die away and then cut out.

‘He’s gone back to the guard post to report,’ Luke said. ‘Come on. Let’s see how far we can get before they start looking again.’

They dragged their bikes back onto the road and pedalled away as fast as they could. Outside the next village, they veered off to the left along a tiny lane which led them deeper into the forest and finally petered out into an unmetalled forestry track.

‘I can’t hear any sound of the motorbike,’ Christine said breathlessly. ‘What do we do now?’

Luke studied the map.

‘If we’re where I think we are, this track will bring us down to the road again at Nuars. From there, it’s a maze of minor roads until Corbigny. Unless they’ve got road blocks on all of them, they haven’t a chance of catching us.’

He spoke with more confidence than he felt and for a moment they looked at each other, reading the same thought in each other’s eyes.

What fools we were to abandon the Madeleine for this crazy adventure!

Christine peered over her brother’s shoulder at the map.

‘First we have to get through Nuars. I don’t see any way around.’

‘We’ll just have to go very carefully and hope for the best,’ he said.

They rode on, bumping along the rutted track until they came out of the trees and saw the village ahead of them. It was mid-afternoon by now, but the place seemed to be only just recovering from its lunchtime siesta. A few elderly women were sitting outside their front doors, gossiping with neighbours; some men were drinking outside the café in the square; a horse-drawn wagon loaded with timber rumbled out of a side road.

Luke and Christine dismounted and wheeled their bikes behind it, until they crossed a bridge and found themselves once again in open country.

‘No sign of the
Boche
there,’ Christine said. ‘Perhaps they’ve given up looking for us.’

‘Well, we won’t take any chances,’ her brother responded. ‘Let’s take this road. It goes across country.’

It was early evening by the time they reached Corbigny and they were both weary, hot, and hungry. Luke found the street where the pharmacy was located without difficulty, but as they parked their bikes outside Christine said, ‘Who do we need to speak to?’

‘I don’t know,’ Luke replied. ‘Cyrano wouldn’t let me go into the shop. He said it was a matter of security – better if I couldn’t recognize anyone.’

‘So you’ve no idea whether we have to ask the owner or one of the assistants?’ She stared at him in dismay. ‘We can’t just walk in and say “anyone here know Cyrano?”’

‘Perhaps there’s only one person in there,’ Luke suggested lamely.

She sighed.

‘Well, we’re here now. I suppose we had better try.’

There was only one person behind the counter, a slight, earnest-looking young man with glasses. Luke was about to speak when the door opened behind him and an elderly lady came in. He stood back and gestured to her to take his place.

‘After you, Madame.’

She gave him a suspicious look, but walked past him to the counter, where she engaged the pharmacist in a long, low-voiced discussion and eventually left with her bottle of medicine. The young man turned to Luke,

‘Yes?’

Luke took a deep breath.

‘We’re looking for Cyrano.’

‘Who?’

‘Cyrano. We’ve got a message for him.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know anyone of that name. It’s a character in a play isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but it’s a man as well.’ Luke was beginning to feel desperate. ‘I brought him here, a few days ago. He had to meet someone. He’d hurt his ankle and I brought him on my bike.’ He saw the man’s eyes narrow, as if the description meant something to him. ‘He’s a music teacher, here in Corbigny.’

There was a pause. The pharmacist studied him for a moment.

‘A music teacher, you say? I think I might know who you mean. What did you want him for?’

‘We have an urgent message for him. It’s … it’s to do with his job.’

Another silence. Then the pharmacist appeared to come to a decision.

‘You’ll have to wait until I close the shop. Come through here. You can wait in the back room.’

He raised the flap in the counter and led them through into a small, stuffy room that doubled as a store cupboard.

‘Wait here. I shall be closing in just over half an hour.’

He shut the door and left them alone.

‘I think we’re on the right lines,’ Luke said with relief. ‘He must know what I’m talking about.’

‘I hope so,’ Christine said. ‘For all we know, he could be phoning the nearest German camp.’

‘Don’t! Why would he do that? If Cyrano came here, he must be OK.’

‘Well, I wish he’d offered us a drink,’ she said. ‘I’m parched.’

The minutes dragged by and the room became stuffier. Luke went to the door and tried it.

‘He’s locked us in!’

‘Why? He wouldn’t hand us over to the
Boche
, would he? Not really?’

‘I don’t know.’ Luke sat down on a stool and ran his hands through his hair. ‘No, surely not. Perhaps he just doesn’t want us coming back into the shop, in case there’s a customer there who would ask awkward questions.’

They heard footsteps outside and the door was opened. The pharmacist stood there.

‘Come!’

‘Why did you lock us in?’ Christine demanded. ‘We don’t mean any harm.’

‘This way,’ was the only response.

He led them down a passage and opened a door at the rear of the shop. Darkness had fallen, complete because of the blackout, and it was hard to make out where they were. Luke reached for his sister’s hand and they stumbled forward, following the shadowy figure of the pharmacist.

Suddenly he was grabbed from behind, a hand was clamped over his mouth and something that smelt of old sacking was thrown over his head. He kicked out blindly and heard a grunt of pain but then his legs were seized and he was lifted bodily off the ground. He felt himself being carried and then swung and dumped roughly, face down, onto a hard surface. He tried to speak, to protest or explain, but the sack was pulled up and a piece of cloth was forced between his teeth and tied behind his head. At the same time, somebody else bound his hands and feet. Seconds later, he heard doors slam and then an engine started and the vehicle he was in, whatever it was, lurched off over uneven ground.

He lay still, struggling not to gag on the cloth in his mouth, his mind whirling. No one had spoken, so there was nothing to give him a clue about the nationality of his captors, but it seemed to him that the Germans would have been more open. They would have marched into the room with their guns at the ready and handcuffed them. So if these were not Germans, who were they? What was more important, where was his sister? He had not heard her cry out, but then, he had not had time to cry out either.

A movement close beside him told him that she had suffered the same fate. He wriggled across the floor until his shoulder touched hers. She made an inarticulate noise of mingled fear and pain and he nudged her and made what he hoped was a reassuring noise in return. She wriggled closer and they lay against each other, drawing what comfort they could from the contact. The engine note of the vehicle changed and Luke realized that they were climbing, going back up into the forest. Was it possible, he asked himself, that they were the captives of the
Maquis
? If so, what did that portend? Clearly, the man in the pharmacy had not trusted them. He must have thought that they were spies or collaborators. How could they convince their captors otherwise?