Assignment in Brittany (34 page)

He added, “That is sufficient for your purpose, Corlay.”

“Yes, Captain Riedel. I’ll direct my men immediately as you suggest, and as soon as they learn of any possible sabotage I’ll inform you at once. And, of course, I’ll inform Ehrlich. Then you can instruct your men to contact my informants and go to work. This plan of yours, Captain Riedel, will be a double safeguard. The army will be in your debt, more than they will ever know.”

Riedel was pursing his lips at the map. “Just what are you going to tell your Breton agents?” he said suddenly.

“Only to ensure that there is no disturbance in those particular areas. I’ll put the fear of death in them, without telling them the reason why. That is your suggestion?”

“That is my suggestion.” Riedel folded the identification papers and pushed them across the desk.

Hearne buttoned his jacket. He was a very serious, very exalted member of the chosen band. He gave their masterful salute, and uttered their brief confession of faith.

“One more thing. How are you returning to Saint-Déodat?”

“The way I came. It isn’t far. And a bicycle will arouse no suspicion among the Bretons.”

Riedel nodded, and looked at the map. Hearne repeated the salute. Outside the door of the room the sardonic man was waiting for him to conduct him downstairs. The bicycle was in the hall.

Outside he paused to run two fingers round his sodden collar. For a moment he halted and leaned on the bicycle; then he was painfully negotiating the cobbled surface of the square.

The towers of Dol’s cathedral dropped behind him. Hearne, keeping his eyes fixed on the white road ahead, only saw a map under glass and the nervous forefinger which had tapped so peremptorily. Here, and here, and here...six points to remember.

23

AT THE HOTEL PERRO

In the week that followed Hearne made good use of his time. Afterwards he wondered just what it was that had impelled him to work so constantly and so hard, almost as if he had foreseen dimly what was going to happen. Then he would laugh at himself, for no one except the most second-sighted Celt would have foreseen that. But there was no doubt of the solid fact—he had made good use of his time.

Each morning he would drop his damp, muddy clothes on his bedroom floor, and then drop his numbed body on to the thickness of his bed. When he awoke his clothes would be gone, and later he would find them dried and brushed, or even washed, in the kitchen downstairs. At first he thought it was Albertine who was responsible. Then one morning when sleep was difficult—the morning after his visit to the aerodromes outside Dol, where he had almost been caught by a German patrol—he had wakened at the sound of the carefully opened
door. It was Anne who came in so quietly and gathered up the filthy clothes. He hadn’t moved, pretending to be asleep. She had gone as quickly and silently as she had come.

When he rose and dressed, it seemed as if his footsteps overhead had been the signal for Anne to have hot food ready for him. He wondered just how she had silenced Albertine, who scarcely raised one of her meagre eyebrows when he came down so late. Normally there would have been a feeling of thunder in the air at such nonsensical upsetting of routine. But instead the weather continued fair and warmer. Albertine, eternally busy, would work about the kitchen while Anne, after she had served his meal, would sit across the table from him and talk. Never anything about themselves or the farm, never a hint of a question about the mud on his boots or the tired look on his face. She talked about the village, which she visited daily—as if she had guessed intuitively that that was what he wanted. And Albertine would join in the conversation, too, telling what she had heard that morning after Mass. In this way Hearne knew almost as much about the village as if he had been staying next door to the Hôtel Perro and the Gestapo.

Kerénor had been turned out of his room at the inn. And he had gone to live with Guézennec, of all people! It was as much a symbol of the burying of old quarrels and jealousies as anything. Guézennec, the old schoolmaster, and Kerénor, his successor, were now together under the same roof; and Hearne was willing to bet their conversation wasn’t entirely scholarly, either.

The Trouins had opened their kitchen as a free house: there was no room in the small bar of the Hôtel Perro for any of the villagers. Instead, they brought their cider along with them to the Trouins’, and sat round the large wooden table
in the evenings until nine o’clock came and it was time for all Frenchmen to be off the street.

On the day of the weekly market the Bretons were amazed at the quickness with which their produce was bought. The market was over before it was begun, and the farmers found themselves with the right number of “occupation marks” (printed, it was whispered, in a van which stood with the trucks and tents on the green meadow below the church) in their hands, but with none of their usual purchases. For there was nothing left for the Bretons to purchase or to barter with. One large farmer, Laënnec, hadn’t liked the set prices: his vegetables were a bigger and better crop than those he had sold last month for more money. He insisted on an increase in price, or at least an equal barter exchange, and had gone so far as to argue. He wasn’t good at keeping his temper. Before Monsieur le Curé could reach him and lead him away to discuss the new regulations, he had thrown the worthless marks in the face of the nearest German soldier. By the time Monsieur le Curé had pushed his way to the spot all he saw was hot-headed Laënnec being marched to the small town hall at the side of the marketplace. From there he had been transferred to working on the roads. Quite a number had been “recruited” for that job; but it was particularly hard on the Laënnecs, for (unlike Picrel’s son and the others who were now working on the road which led through Saint-Déodat) Laënnec himself had been sent to some foreign country. No one knew where, although the guesses were as wild as they were numerous. Not even his wife knew. Old Madame Picrel had closed up her shop—she said her son could take care of anything left to sell—and had gone up to the small Laënnec farm to help. It was difficult for Marie Laënnec,
with three small children and a baby still to be born. Even old Monsieur Guézennec had left his books to go up there to help with the digging. The German colonel-in-command of the district announced that he had been extremely lenient.

Otherwise, as Albertine said, things were as normal as you could expect. As normal on the surface, Hearne amended to himself. The Germans were being rigorously correct. No incidents, no Frightfulness, so far. Nothing like the last German invasion. Hearne, watching Albertine’s relief, didn’t voice his thoughts. What was the good of saying “Just wait until they are retreating: wait then, and see how they leave you”? Instead, he listened to the description of the band which played each day at noon in the market-place, of the quickness with which huts were being built to replace the tents under the trees below the church. Even when Albertine marvelled at the fact that some houses in the village had been left unbilleted while German soldiers were sleeping in wooden huts, Hearne kept silent. It would only worry her to realise the true meaning of that fact. The colonel had decided to keep a good portion of his men together, and not let them be scattered. Then he could use them for quick action if that were necessary. Careful man, the colonel: thoroughly realistic.
Praktisch.

But the news which seemed most extraordinary to Albertine and Anne was that the annual
Pardon,
the procession and fete in honour of Saint-Déodat, had not been banned. It was to take place as usual next Sunday. This year the village had decided not to have any festivities after the religious ceremony, when offerings were carried to the church and those taking part in the procession mounted the worn stone steps on their knees, up to the sacred shrine preserving the bones of their Saint. On Sunday all the people from the village, from the farms on the hillsides, would be in the market-place. All would be dressed in their complete national costume. All would bring what they could spare from their fields and kitchens. Every one was pleased, Albertine had said. Except Kerénor, Anne had added—he was worried. He couldn’t guess why the
Pardon
had been permitted, and that worried him. Again Hearne could have given them all an answer. The
Pardon
had been permitted because it suited Hans and Elise and their present policy: the Breton nationalists were to be “persuaded” into accepting a separate Breton state. How could any Bretons be persuaded into co-operation if religious traditions were to be banned? And why the importance of this separate Breton state to the Nazis, except that it would be the beginning of the skilful disintegration of France? Alsace; Lorraine; Brittany; the north, with its coal-fields and industries; the Mediterranean south... So Hearne listened, and said nothing. What was the good?

When the women’s news was exhausted, he would go back to his room. There he worked on his notes, listing his findings of the previous night, copying them into his own shorthand, adding careful diagrams or neat two-inch-scale maps when it was necessary for extreme accuracy. Then the sheets of thin paper joined the others behind the false panel in the bookcase, and he would pay his short daily visit to Madame Corlay. After that, it was a matter of preparing with the map for the journey he would make next night. He had to know each mile of ground forward, backward, and sideways.

It was a simple enough routine, but it was producing results. The railway, the roads, the canal—all these had repaid his visit. Trucks, oil-tanks, barges, concentrations of material and
troops, construction work, all found their place in the notes on the square miles which formed his “district.” And above all, the airfields which were being built to the north of Dol. He could feel some pleasure as he looked at the bookcase each morning. “Thank you, Captain Riedel,” he would say, and he would salute it informally with one finger and a wide grin. That was how he was feeling these days. He ought to have known that the luck was too good to hold. Especially after that long night near Dol, when the patrol just missed him by so little... just by a bullet grazing his thigh. He ought to have known. Perhaps, deep underneath, he did.

For when the Germans came, he rose to his feet almost calmly. No time to move, no time to get away by the back door. There were footsteps in the yard. Anyway, he thought, there was nothing left lying about upstairs to incriminate him. He even gave Anne, her eyes wide with fear, a smile of encouragement.

It was Albertine who had voiced their thoughts as the pounding came to the front door and they heard it open.

“The Boches,” she had said, and crossed herself as if the Devil himself had arrived. Anne rose from the table where she had been sitting as he finished his bowl of soup. She had been laughing at something he had said. Her lips were still parted, but the laugh had died in her throat.

He was on his feet, too. And yet he was calm enough, as if he were only reacting to something which he had been long expecting.

He had only time to say to the two white-faced women “Keep silent!” and then the German lieutenant walked into the kitchen. His hand was on his revolver. Two armed soldiers were behind him. Two more entered from the back door.

“Corlay?” In appearance, even in voice, the man was a duplicate of Deichgräber.

Albertine’s hand had gone to her mouth as if she were holding in a scream. Anne stood as still and white as a statue. She hardly seemed to breathe.

“Yes. What do you want?”

The officer pointed with his revolver to the door. “At once!” he said.

“Why?”

“At once!”

Hearne shrugged his shoulders. He left the two women standing beside the table. Albertine was crying silently, her hand still held to her lips. Anne was as rigid as if she were facing a firing squad herself. He felt her eyes follow him into the yard.

In the high field old Jean and Marie were standing, watching. Henri had gone.

Past the heap of hay on the cobbled yard, past the pool of water which gleamed beside the well, past the empty cart lying backwards with its shafts pointing into the air. And then they were round the corner of the house. He looked up involuntarily at Madame Corlay’s front window. She was there. She had left her chair; and she was trying to pull the window open. She must have succeeded, because as they took the path to Saint-Déodat he could hear her voice. Perhaps the solid Germans grouped round him didn’t know Breton: for Madame Corlay’s sake, he hoped not.

And then he saw Henri. Henri had reached the orchard. He was standing there, near the third tree in the seventh row. And then there were only the fields, and the dovecote, and Anne’s farm, and the thin fringe of trees...

Today was the nineteenth: Friday the nineteenth. Tomorrow Elise should arrive. So it couldn’t be that Kerénor had told her about his warning. In any case, Kerénor was not a teller of tales. No, it couldn’t have been that. Or was it that Deichgräber had been found still alive? Or that Ehrlich’s mission to Mont Saint-Michel had resulted in the arrest of Pléhec and Duclos? Or that Captain Riedel had become suspicious? Or that Henri had got drunk and talked about the American? Or had the boat which sailed for Penzance been captured? Or what? If only he knew, then he could muster up some kind of story, perhaps even be able to deny enough to give himself a brief respite, a chance to collect his notes from the bookcase and head for the coast tonight. He cursed silently to himself as they crossed the stone bridge into the village street. Even if he could only get a chance to make for the coast, he could always leave his notes behind. He remembered enough of the main details to do without them if necessary. But the real problem was letting Duclos know in time, so that he could be picked up on the French coast as arranged. For originally, before van Cortlandt blew in on the scene to alter things, Hearne’s plan had been to visit Mont Saint-Michel just as he was ready to leave. Then Duclos would have sent out the chief items of his information—to make sure of its arrival—and then let Matthews know from where and when he was leaving. Matthews had given him the choice of three suitable places. Well, now it looked as if he couldn’t use that choice. Now he wouldn’t even be able to get word in time to Duclos by the boat which had brought him back from the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel. He didn’t fancy spending any extra days or nights on the shores of Brittany, waiting for his message to reach Duclos and then Matthews: not with the Gestapo hot
on his trail. Now he’d better just try to get
any
boat and sail across the Channel, alone if necessary.