A Bitter Field (4 page)

Then he asked for some food and, with Peter’s assent, agreed to a couple of omelettes and a side salad.

‘I have never understood this obsession with motor vehicles,’ Peter
said, when the owner had gone; he had some French, but nothing like the fluency of Cal Jardine. ‘But I take it we have fixed these fellows as not being local.’

Cal nodded and sipped his beer while keeping an eye on the two youngsters, the shorter of whom looked like a teenager, now conversing in a way that indicated they were trying to decide what to do. The conclusion had the tall one in the crumpled suit heading for the
bijouterie-tabac
, which had a sign outside to indicate it had a telephone, both men watching till he disappeared inside.

‘I doubt he’s gone for a paper,’ Cal said.

‘Calling for instructions, perhaps?’ Peter essayed. ‘You’d best fill me in on how close your cargo is.’

‘Did I say it was close?’

Peter looked at his watch, trying and failing to hide his impatience, which actually pleased his companion; it was equally enjoyable to get under his skin.

‘Lunchtime now, your barge has to be in the port, I suspect, during the hours of darkness, as will your freighter. But you have to allow time to get them alongside, more for loading so the vessel can sail at first light, and barges are slower than the lorries I thought you were using. How am I doing?’

‘So far so good.’

‘And can I add you are going to have to fully trust me anyway, much more now that we seem to have come across a slight impediment to that smooth transfer you earlier anticipated?’

‘That set of buildings just by that bridge we crossed.’

‘When you tooted the horn in that rather curious manner?’ Cal nodded and did so again when Peter identified that as a warning to get ready to move.

‘Who’s waiting?’

‘French sympathisers and a couple of Spaniards who will take the cargo on and land it.’

‘Not communists, I hope.’

‘Not a chance, they are Basques and they don’t like Madrid, whoever is in charge.’

‘Why the lorries?’

‘I had them as backup, just in case anything went wrong getting down the canal.’

Peter allowed himself a grim smile. ‘So it’s not a careful plan designed to go like clockwork?’

‘Take my word for it, Peter, should you ever indulge in the business of running guns, it never can be.’

‘Advice I shall cherish. Is there an alternative to moving them now?’

‘Not an easy one, given I’ve already sent a message to the freighter to enter port.’

‘Here comes our chum,’ Peter hissed.

Without being too obvious, they both observed the well-built suit returning to the car with his swaggering gait. If unable to hear what he said, it was a barked instruction that got both driver and passenger back in their seats, the engine firing with a bit of a roar through the twin exhausts, before it slipped out of the square heading inland.

Oil, vinegar and a basket of bread arriving allowed Cal to ask about the roads around the town and where they led, the conclusion, after much waving of hands, that there was any number of ways by which anyone could go anywhere, back to La Rochelle or inland to Niort on the
route nationale
. More importantly, he established that
one of them would take the roadster back to that bridge without having to come back through the town.

‘So what’s the plan, Cal?’ asked Peter when the owner had gone.

‘Wait a mo,’ he replied, standing up and walking towards the
tabac.

In an exaggerated fashion, Peter stretched out his legs and lifted his beer to his lips, calling loudly after Cal, ‘Do get a move on, old chap, this gun of yours is going to ruin the cut of my blazer. Oh, and fetch me some gaspers, will you, British if they have any.’

‘You’ll be lucky.’

Peter did sit up when his omelette came and he ordered two more beers before tucking into that and the bread. His plate was clean by the time Cal returned, his face set hard.

‘Something tells me the news isn’t good.’

‘No.’

‘Am I to assume whoever runs that shop overheard something?’

‘No, I bribed her to ask the telephone operator what number our suit just called. Told her to say he had left his wallet.’

Peter clicked his fingers. ‘As easy as that?’

‘Look around you, Peter. When do you think was the last time anyone in Dompierre saw a hundred-dollar note?’

‘I doubt anyone in this dump would recognise American currency of any denomination.’

‘They do, this was a country awash with rich Yanks until the Wall Street Crash. Anyway, our madame of a shopkeeper did and that’s all that matters.’

‘Which, I assume, you flashed under her nose.’

‘I just asked her if she knew anywhere close by where I could change one and waited for the reaction, which was pleasingly negative.’

It had been a pantomime of regrets, but Cal had seen avarice in the old woman’s eyes at the sight of the high-denomination foreign note, one that became more valuable with each passing day in a country with a falling exchange rate; it was probably equivalent to half a year’s profits in her
petit magasin
.

If his explanation of what he wanted had sounded false to the point of being risible in his ears, even in his perfect French, that
La Patrie
was in danger from foreign spies and he was offering a reward to thwart them, it had been enough to persuade her, once the note was in her hand, to call the operator with the required excuse. Having got the number, he then made a second call, pretending to be the fellow returned for his wallet, asking to be put through to allay any concerns.

What he heard from the other end set Cal Jardine’s mind racing; if you live on the edge of danger or discovery all the time it is easy to become paranoid, but it is also necessary to exclude nothing from your thinking, especially the very worst possibility, like that on which he was reflecting now as he began to pick on his salad and munch on his barely warm omelette.

‘So what did you find out?’

‘Our blond-haired chum phoned the La Rochelle headquarters of the
Jeunesses Patriotes
.’

A
period of silence followed while both mulled over the significance of that discovery, not least in the fact of how they had come to the attention of what was in essence a private army. Cal knew the name well, Peter Lanchester only vaguely from the not-very-comprehensive reports in the British press, but he was well aware of the fact that France, in this fractious decade, was no different to his home country when it came to political disruption.

Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts were only the most visible of those who demanded radical change in Britain; there were outfits even more extreme while France was awash with organisations like the
Jeunesses Patriotes, Action Française
and
Solidarité Française
or
Les Camelots du Roi.

These groups ran through the gamut of right-wing monarchists all the way to the outright fascist, but they did have certain things in common. They were all aggressively anti-Semitic, anti-socialist
gangs of thugs, the main difference between them being in the level of violence they employed.

When it came to causing mayhem, the hot-blooded French left the British fascists looking placid; indeed they would stand comparison with the Nazis when it came to challenging socialists, communists and Jews on the streets and taking on the government. Street battles were endemic and collectively they had sought to storm and torch their own parliament in Paris two years previously, which led to them being outlawed.

All it meant, in truth, was they went underground until the smoke cleared. Then they could come to the surface again and operate more or less openly in a country where the state authorities, the police and internal security outfits were more likely to have some sympathy for their aims than any great desire to forcibly curtail them.

That would be particularly true in an isolated city like La Rochelle, which, judging by the obvious wealth of the conurbation, was probably a bastion of right-wing conservatism, where oversight by the law had to be minimal given the
Jeunesses Patriotes
felt safe to the point of openly answering the headquarters phone with their name.

Regardless of their chosen designation the French right had one other thing in common: all the groups were solidly anti the Spanish republicans, whom they saw as bedfellows of the greater enemy, the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union, and would act as unpaid spies when it came to stopping any weapons getting into anti-Franco hands.

The
Jeunesses Patriotes
were an ultra-violent paramilitary group modelled on Mussolini’s Fascist Youth or the Spanish Falangists. It
was made up of university students and the sons and daughters of the rich and a higher bourgeoisie determined to protect their privileged existence and their money.

They espoused in particular a virulent hatred of communists, despised socialists, reviled Jews, and they were as an organisation known to be prepared to kill, their activities formed and funded by the champagne millionaire Pierre Taittinger and like-minded industrialists.

‘Who did you tell where you were headed, Peter?’ Cal asked finally, picking at his food.

‘Only the people who needed to know.’

‘From where did you tell them?’

‘The Paris embassy.’

‘In code?’

‘Of course.’

‘Which means you used the Cipher Room?’ Peter nodded, making the connection immediately: the clerk who coded his message would have to know the contents prior to encryption. ‘You’re sure those two chaps you brought from the Paris embassy were ignorant about my cargo?’

‘I can’t be certain, Cal, but there was nothing in the message I sent to alert them to the truth, nor in their behaviour when in my company. You were not referred to by name and nor were any details of your shipment. I merely informed those I had to that I was pursuing my assignment to La Rochelle. How the hell that got passed on to a French fascist party I cannot tell.’

‘I don’t think these young sods are following me, Peter, I think they are following you and that information could only have come from London.’

‘Unlikely,’ Peter insisted, without hesitation.

‘You seem very assured and I’m not confident you can be, given our previous conversation.’

‘I have good reason to be, Cal, but why is not something I am yet prepared to discuss with you.’

‘Indulge me. Air the thought.’

‘There’s no point. Besides, if someone in London blew the gaff, and I fail to see how they could, they would surely tell their French equivalents in the
Deuxième Bureau
and that would have meant either of the scenarios we discussed before this wonderful
repas
.’

‘Meaning I would not have got this far?’

‘Exactly, you’d be sitting in choky thinking about rubber truncheons. And I might add, given we are where we are, in the middle of bloody France and these chaps pose what seems to be an unquantifiable threat, is there any point right now in speculation about what got you pegged?’

‘There is, Peter, plus a scenario that’s even more troubling. Someone knows and has let slip to the wrong people that there is a cargo of very high-quality weapons on the way to Spain—’

Peter cut across him. ‘Which the
Jeunesses Patriotes
will be determined to stop.’

‘Maybe yes, maybe no. We’ve got two proper Charlies on our tail who don’t seem to care about being spotted, but it’s bloody obvious what they are after. When they make a phone call it’s not to the gendarmes, it is to the headquarters of their organisation, which just happens to hate the present centre-left French Government and would love to bring it down – something they cannot do peacefully.’

‘I’m not following you, old boy.’

‘What if the
Jeunesses Patriotes
are not trying to stop the weapons from getting to Spain, but are trying to steal them for their own use here in France?’

‘When did that notion occur to you?’

‘Between making that call and coming back here.’

‘Don’t you think you are jumping a bit too far along the old conspiracy trail?’

‘It’s possible, Peter, but you think it through and come up with another answer that makes sense. We’ve got both the weapons and ammunition to equip a substantial force and what appears to be a couple of young thugs who are part of a group of mad bastards trying to get their mitts on them.’

‘Hand them in,’ Peter conjectured, ‘feather in the old cap, sort of thing?’

‘These kids and their backers don’t want to impress the Government, Peter, they want to kick it out and very likely line the ministers up against a wall and shoot them.’

‘It might be wise to recall that they are only kids, Cal.’

‘They’re old enough to kill and have shown more than once they are capable of doing so.’

‘Street battles, heat-of-the-moment stuff.’

‘Say I’m right and they do want to steal that cargo. What happens to the likes of you and me, what happens to the people waiting to help me if they do? If they are not planning to hand in the guns they are not planning to hand us over to the authorities either.’

‘Say you’re barmy?’

‘Is it worth the risk?’

‘No,’ Peter replied, standing up, ‘and I hope while you were doing
all that thinking you came up with a way to put the mockers on the blighters.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To buy those fags you forgot to get me, which will also, as I enter the shop with the telephone, make our chums wonder what we are up to, given I should think one of them is watching us.’

Cal nodded, but made no attempt to ascertain if there was any truth in what had been said.

‘I expect, by the time I get back, that you will have formulated a way out of this mess that does not risk me getting shot at again. Why is it every time I get involved with you I seem to be at some risk of an early grave?’

‘You don’t have to be part of it.’

‘If you are right, Cal, and I am still to be convinced that you are, then it’s too late for that. How soon do you have to get that cargo moving if it is to go out tonight?’

‘Quickly; it will take at least eight hours to get to the canal basin, then right through to the port and clear customs in a way that does not arouse suspicion.’

‘Do you have to lead our Johnnies to them?’

‘No, Peter, I have to lead them to a place where they can be dealt with and I also have to get a barge moving without anyone working out what it’s carrying. So go and get your fags while I pay our host.’

Cal checked his watch as they pulled out of the square heading back to the bridge, waving away the excessively pungent smoke of the cigar-thick French cigarette Peter had just lit up.

‘I am going to presume they don’t know where the cargo is; for instance, like you, they have no idea it’s on a barge. If they did, why
tail us, given there is only one way out to sea?’

‘And in order to tell their mates they have located them they need a telephone, which means they must come back here, since we doubt there’s one closer that they know about.’

‘Their chums can’t move to intercept until they know where to go. So maybe we should lead them to that farmhouse and set a trap.’

‘Which neither you nor I would walk into, Cal.’

‘But then we would not have been spotted if we wanted to tail anyone, would we?’

‘Are they stupid or just cocky?’

‘Bit of both and certainly the latter, I’d say. I don’t recall ever meeting a French
über
-patriot but they are of a type, no different to their German counterparts, full of themselves and sure that God, ideology and history are on their side.’

As if to prove what he had just said the Hispano-Suiza appeared once more in the rear-view mirror, a fact that Cal passed on. The situation was the same, driving without haste, except this time as they crossed to the southern side of the bridge he stopped and waited, seemingly indecisive, looking left and right, his tail pulling up likewise before his wheels hit the crossing.

‘Seven minutes,’ Cal added, looking at his watch again. ‘Say ten minutes to get to that phone, make the call and drive back to the bridge. He’s bound to drive like a bat out of hell.’

Peter reached into his pocket and pulled out a penknife, looking very smug indeed as he opened the blade. ‘Except, when he gets there he will find the instrument does not work.’

‘You cut the connection?’

‘No point in just being a passenger, old boy, and I reckoned you
had paid the old biddy who owns the shop more than enough to cover the repair.’

Cal nodded and moved off, driving straight into the jumble of barns to pull up beside the two lorries, slightly annoyed as they got out that two of the men who had agreed to aid him came out of the largest barn to greet them and thus made their presence known.

It would have been pointless to chastise them even if he had the power, so he just smiled and raised his hand in welcome, while telling them to get ready to move; he planned to be well away from here when the roadster came back.

The roar of that car’s twin exhausts alerted them to the fact that any previous calculations, such as sending the lorries in different directions, were useless. The Hispano-Suiza swept over the bridge, turned right and, with the driver’s foot right to the floor, shot off down the road to La Rochelle.

‘One assumes,’ Peter said, with his usual studied calm, ‘that the chums are already on their way and our Johnnies have gone to meet them and chivvy them along. We have been humbugged, old boy.’

Cal’s response was not calm, it was a loud and foul expletive followed by a stream of rapid French as he informed those he had brought with him – another quartet had emerged to make six in all – about the danger they were in, that followed by a set of rapid instructions.

The most important were to despatch the two Basques to tell the owner of the barge, who had stayed aboard to guard it, to get it moving towards the port and an insistence all three ignore anything else that happened around them.

He was still talking as he dashed to the nearest lorry to open the passenger door, reaching under the seats to pull out a roll of
sacking, which, when rolled open on the ground, revealed the matt black metal and wooden stock of one of his Czech ZB26 light machine guns, complete with spare barrel and the front bipod, which he began to assemble and load, before dragging out and opening a canvas backpack to reveal several box magazines.

‘Peter,’ Cal said, removing and handing over his jacket, ‘take my car back over the bridge. Get it out of sight, then cross back over and keep an eye on the road from La Rochelle. Oh, and you might need that spare clip for the Mauser.’

His old army comrade was looking at the machine gun and he was clearly worried. ‘You can’t start a war, Cal.’

‘I’ll try not to, Peter, but these sods have to be stopped and I don’t think blowing kisses at them will do the trick. Now please do as I ask and quickly, we don’t know how long we have and I need to think of a way to throw them off their game.’

With no idea of numbers or the level of the arms they might be carrying, Cal knew one very pertinent fact: with lorries likely to be against cars he could not outrun them, which would mean whatever he did, flight would only bring on a contest and in the open country, where he would be at an even greater disadvantage than he was at present.

So he had to think of a way to stop them getting into these farm buildings, a place he could easily be driven out of unless he was prepared to use the machine gun, and that might bring about, depending on how aggressive those heading this way were and regardless of his own disinclination, the need to kill.

Given no alternative that is what he would have to do, but quite apart from the bloodshed there was a second consideration in terms of the discreet smuggling out of a barge-load of weapons. It would
hardly help to have the whole region, and probably the town and port as well, crawling with gendarmes after a gun battle and several fatalities.

He was also responsible for those Frenchmen, dock workers who had come along to help their fellow anti-fascists in Spain. They might be committed enough to run the risk of arrest but they were not armed, only along to provide the muscle he needed to load the weapons on to the ship, and now a quartet were looking at him waiting to be told what to do and right at that moment he was struggling for a solution.