Assignment in Brittany (27 page)

“Don’t worry, my friend,” he said. “This is a little luxury which I permit myself each evening.
This
is not rationed. The choice is either thoughts such as these, or a chloroformed sleep. I prefer to keep awake.”

Hearne nodded sympathetically, and finished the shelling of the peas. They were pitiably few.

“How many customers?” he asked.

“Exactly seven. Duclos and Gouret from the Museum; Guehenneuc, Grault, and Boulleaux, the guides to the Abbey; old Dr. Fuzet and Picquart the notary. Yes, exactly seven. But it
simplifies things for me. It gives me a lot of free time for more urgent business.”

“Can you trust them?”

“The customers? But of course...” He smiled enigmatically. “They come to eat here, and talk, and get through one more evening.”

“What about meeting Duclos?”

“I shall forget to lay a glass before him, and the way to the lavatory is through here.” He pointed to the door through which Etienne had first emerged. Hearne was satisfied, and nodded. He mentally blessed the peculiarities of the ancient plumbing on the Mont Saint-Michel.

A cool draught swept into the kitchen from the restaurant. The front door was open. There were voices.

Pléhec hurriedly wiped his hands. “Put these in the pail: tomorrow’s lunch,” he said, nodding towards the fish-guts on the table; then clipped the bow tie round his neck, before picking up the glazed black jacket. He reached for a white linen cap, and, with a smile, placed it on Hearne’s head. He was still smiling as he closed the door leading into the restaurant behind him.

Hearne settled the cap more securely on his head.
Well,
he thought, and took a deep breath. Well, here he was, in a half-lighted eighteenth-century kitchen, clearing fish-guts carefully into a pail. Here he was, with a cap a foot high on his head, waiting for a white-haired archæologist to pass through to the lavatory. In his pocket was that folded wad of paper with its neatly coded phrases. Tonight Duclos would send them out into the air.

He wiped his hands on his apron, tilted the starched cap
securely over one eye, and casually turned his back to the restaurant door as it was swung open. It was Pléhec. He bustled over with quick, short steps to the soup-pot hanging above the drift-wood fire.

“I gave him the sign,” he said in a voice so low that it was almost drowned in the ladle of soup which he held to his lips. He nodded his head as if satisfied. The lines at the side of his mouth deepened: there was perspiration on his brow and upper lip. He worries more than I do, thought Hearne: he’s worried and he’s nervous. Hearne looked at the anxious brown eyes. “Two lousy Boches just arrived,” Pléhec muttered; and then, as he handed the ladle to Hearne, he added, in an attempt at a normal voice, “It is as good as it ever will be. Three platefuls, Etienne. Two small ladles and no more for each person.”

The door opened again. Hearne’s hand tightened on the ladle.

Pléhec spoke hurriedly. “Ah, Dr. Fuzet. I am just about to bring the soup.”

An old voice said, as though from a distance, “Good.” Old feet shuffled across the stone floor behind Hearne. He measured the two small ladlefuls of soup carefully into the plate, and handed it to Pléhec. Two more plates to be filled, and then the tired feet shuffled back across the kitchen floor. Pléhec followed them into the restaurant The door swung open once more. Hearne slipped his hands into his pockets. I am near enough to the fire to drop the wad of paper into the flames, he thought. But the footsteps were light, and the hand which touched his elbow was friendly. The white-haired man with the sallow skin scarcely flickered his drooping eyelids as Hearne turned to face him. Like Pléhec, he had aged. Like Pléhec, the lines in his face were more finely drawn, and the shadows under the half-veiled
eyes were deeper. As he recognised the Englishman his smile changed from politeness to pleasure. But he said nothing.

He pointed. Hearne followed him silently into Etienne’s room.

19

CONTACT

It was a dark little room, lighted only by one high, narrow window.

Duclos gripped Hearne’s hand.

“It’s good to see you, my friend,” he said simply, and then suddenly put both arms round Hearne’s shoulders; and their cheeks touched for a moment. Hearne was silent, but he clapped Duclos’ arm. It was good to see him.

“Well,” Duclos said, “we must be quick. Two Germans in the front room. And we’ve been watched for the last two days. You want me to send a message?” He was unlacing his boot as he spoke.

“Yes,” said Hearne, and handed the wad of paper to Duclos. It was a duplicate of the paper he had given Myles—no, van Cortlandt. His observations and notes, and the list of names and other details of Elise’s organisation. The Frenchman took it silently and slid it into the sole of his sock. He pulled on his
boot again and laced it methodically.

“First of all,” said Hearne, “zero date is August the fifteenth. August the fifteenth. Then tell them that a fishing-boat must be met off Penzance tomorrow at sunset. Penzance. Tomorrow at sunset. American on board has vital information. Got it?”

Duclos finished tying a loose knot. “Fishing-boat. Penzance. Tomorrow at sunset. American,” he repeated.

“Then, after that, send the message I’ve given you, if you have time.”

Duclos smiled at the last phrase. “If I am not interrupted, you mean,” he said calmly. “First, August the fifteenth; then the fishing-boat; then your information. And then?”

“You’ve reported about the gun emplacements along the coast?”

“I’ve only heard vaguely about them. We aren’t allowed to move about freely, you know.”

“Who’s covering this territory?” Hearne was half incredulous, half angry.

“Dunwoodie was. Haven’t heard from him for two weeks.

I fear—”

“Jimmy Dunwoodie?”

Duclos nodded sympathetically. Hearne paused. Jimmy Dunwoodie. Another good man...no time for thoughts. He shook himself free from them.

“Well, then, fourthly, if you still have time: guns are being mounted along this coast, between Le Vivier and Pontorson, about two miles, from the sea. Possibly to guard aerodromes, which are also under construction.” Must be for the aerodromes, he thought. Large batteries would be pointless here. This part of the French coast was about a hundred and fifty miles from Southampton. Big guns, Michel had said. But all guns seemed big to a child. “Further information regarding aerodromes will follow,” he ended.

Duclos repeated the sentences in his low, calm voice.

“That’s all,” said Hearne. He looked at the Frenchman.

“Au revoir.” And for God’s sake take care of yourself, he added in his heart.

“Au revoir.”

Tonight the customary phrase had a literal meaning which lifted it out of its usual off-hand triteness. They meant it, both of them.

Duclos had gone back to the dining-room and his meagre supper. Hearne picked up the cook’s cap which had fallen from his head, and slipped back into the kitchen. Duclos would finish his dinner unhurriedly, as if he had all the time in the world; and after making his quiet good-night to the others he would walk slowly up the hill in the gathering dusk. He would pause, perhaps for the view, and certainly for breath, on each stone platform as the street became a series of steep, twisting steps; and at last he would reach his narrow little house and its quiet garden under the walls of the towering Abbey. There he would settle in the high-ceilinged room at his book-littered desk. And there he would work until the dusk had become night, until it was safe for him to move quickly and silently through the garden, through a door hidden under climbing roses, into the thickness of the garden wall—and then into the base of the Abbey wall itself. The medieval mind which had designed that passage had no doubt pleasanter purposes in view: but now,
six hundred years later, medieval ingenuity and secrecy had perhaps their greatest success.

Hearne stood watching the peas swirling in the boiling pot on the iron rack. The acrid smell of vinegar came from the flat fish beside it, where the fish were steaming placidly. Oil must be scarce, he thought: too scarce for fish. He looked at the pail of fish offal. Tomorrow’s lunch... We’ll never know the half of it, he thought: those of us who live through this war in safety will never know the half of it. Even if we can imagine all the stark bloodshed which peacetime prophets foretold, we shall never guess about the little things, the little things which add up to a horror of their own.

He looked impatiently at his watch. In four hours, perhaps even three, Duclos would send that message. He remembered his last visit here, when Duclos had led him one night into the dark, narrow passage within the walls. Then it had been a kind of joke, a strange and rather mad kind of joke. But he also remembered the awe which had silenced his amusement when they at last emerged from that dark journey and found themselves inside the Abbey. They were standing in the shadows of a narrow, half-ruined courtyard. Above them, soaring into the night’s soft moonlight, were the delicate spires of chapels, the crenelated edge of terraces and twisting flights of stairs, the crowding walls of mounting churches and Gothic towers. They seemed to stretch up the steepness of the rock as if to reach heaven itself. It had been a subdued and silent Hearne who had followed Duclos into recently restored cloisters, and from there into a decrepit passage leading down into the depths of the Abbey’s foundations. Above their heads men had once prayed and sung, had feasted and fasted, had fought and lived. But
down here, where Duclos was now leading him (with a torch to light up the blocks of stone in their way), men had welcomed death to release them from their tortures, men had gone mad in hidden dungeons, men had been entombed alive in oubliettes. It was one of these, a hole in the wall where men could be forgotten by their enemies, that Duclos had discovered in the course of his excavations.

Pléhec bustled in and out of the kitchen. There was the clatter of plates. Hearne still stood in front of the fire—as if, there in the flames, he could see Duclos making his way so carefully and quietly to the secret oubliette. There had been two iron rings in the wall, at shoulder-height. Beneath them lay a small heap of dust and fragments of bone. After the flesh had rotted away the skeleton’s wrists had slipped free from the iron manacles. Death had given a double release. Hearne wondered whether Duclos had buried them when he set up the transmitter that he had smuggled there, piece by piece. Or had he left them to remind himself that others had died for their beliefs—as a savage warning against carelessness? That would be like Duclos, strange mixture of idealism and practicality.

The door of the dining-room opened. The firm, hard step on the stone floor gave warning. Hearne carefully stirred the soup, all his attention fixed on the hanging iron pot. Light, hurried footsteps followed. Thank heaven, Pléhec was watchful.

“Where is it?” It was a voice used to command and demand.

“Through there,” answered Pléhec. The confident footsteps resumed their march. A door banged. Pléhec began arranging some food on the two plates which he had placed on the table.

“Less for us all tonight,” he grumbled under his breath. He was grudgingly doubling the quantities on the Germans’ plates.

“Same price, double helpings!” The curses which moved on his lips were as blistering as they were silent.

The door crashed once more: again the steps rang on the floor.

“Such filth,” said the German, with characteristic tact. He paused in his stride. “How long must we wait for the food?”

“Coming. This instant,” said Pléhec.

The footsteps passed into the restaurant. Pléhec finished arranging the fish and peas on the plates. Then he spat on the fish, and smeared them carefully with his thumb.
“Garni!”
he said, grimly, and carried the plates into the restaurant.

Hearne, concentrating on the soup as if he were preparing the most difficult soufflé, could hear only the voices of the two Germans. The Frenchmen were sitting in complete silence. “How long must we wait for the food?” There was something familiar in that voice. Or perhaps every German talked French with that accent. “How long must we wait for the food?”

Hearne took off the. cook’s cap and walked silently to the screened restaurant door. By standing at the side of it and gently moving the pleated curtain half an inch, he could see well enough into the front room. The two Germans were at a table near the window. One was a dark-haired young man with a high, thin nose and tight eyes. He wore a uniform, but he wasn’t a soldier. The other man had his back half turned to Hearne. Tall; powerfully built. An officer. For an instant his head turned to watch the silent Frenchmen. For an instant Hearne could clearly see the even features, the colourless face, the smoothly brushed fair hair. He remembered the fluttering white curtains in Madame Corlay’s room, the immovable soldier at the door, the young captain who hadn’t enjoyed his visit. The ditch-digger...that was it! Deichgräber. If it wasn’t Deichgräber, then
uniformity was still on the increase in Germany. Deichgräber... what the hell was he doing here, anyhow?

Hearne moved quickly back to the table and began shifting some plates about. Pléhec returned, fussed about the pots and the table, and then he was back in the restaurant once more. So it went on for half an hour, and by that time the seven customers had all arrived and been served. By that time the Germans had finished their meal and left.

“They’ve gone next door. They’ll get wine and music there. They didn’t think much of this place,” Pléhec said when he returned with the news of their departure.

Hearne sat down on the nearest chair. He was tired and hot; his worry over Deichgräber wouldn’t go away. It cut through his head like a saw. “Any guess?” he asked Pléhec.

“Why they were here? Oh, just the usual: they come to look us over about once every week.”

“You know them by sight?”

“No; these were new ones. Picquart says they arrived yesterday evening. You’d enjoy Picquart, by the way. Pity you can’t meet him this time. He sits at his window next the Hôtel Poulard and watches the visitors in its garden. We have many visitors, you understand. We are now a Boche playground. Sometimes it is interesting. When Reichsmarschall Elephantiasis was here, for example. Unfortunately, the little bomb was not expert enough: it didn’t go off. But the Reichsmarschall left at once, and two men who had nothing to do with it were executed. That depressed Picquart. Still—it is war.” Pléhec hunched his shoulders, and cut himself a slice of bread, and poured himself the last cup in the coffeepot. “It’s war. Those who can help must keep alive, even if others are killed. Only
those who try to help are any good to France. The others are bilge-water, not even ballast.”