Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day (20 page)

‘Thought so,’ the German said, as he let Marc go.

Marc gasped, but his relief only lasted until the German snapped a set of rigid metal cuffs over his wrists.

‘Climb in the truck,’ he ordered.

‘You said I could go.’

‘I lied.’ The German smiled. ‘Sabotage of German property is a serious matter. You’re in very deep shit, young man.’

Marc had an awkward time boarding the truck with his hands bound together, but he’d fared better than the other two. PT got dragged from the trees, with his head hanging forwards and blood streaming down his face.

Dumont was worst of all, barely conscious with his clothes shredded and welts the shape of rifle parts all over his body. It took two Germans to lift him. They bent him forwards, so that he stood in the gravel with his head in the back of the truck. Marc watched as the driver grabbed a length of towing rope, then made a noose out of it before pulling it tight around Dumont’s neck.

‘End of the line for you, fatty,’ the biggest German said.

‘Please,’ Dumont sobbed. ‘Please don’t kill me.’

Marc and PT exchanged a desperate glance as they lay on the floor of the truck.

‘Just gotta find a nice strong branch to hang you from,’ the German smiled, pulling hard on the noose, before grabbing Dumont’s belt and hitching him up into the truck.

‘Their dinners will be stone cold again,’ Maxine said angrily, as Paul helped her wash the dishes. ‘And Luc Boyle said those cows need regular milking if we’re going to get a decent yield out of them.’

‘I said I’ll speak to them,’ Henderson answered, with a touch of annoyance creeping into his voice. ‘Let me concentrate on encoding this message.’

He sat at the table with Rosie. A road map of northern France was spread out and notepaper sprawled around it.

If Henderson had been deliberately sent on a long-term spying operation, he would have been accompanied by a professional radio operator who could transmit and receive Morse code at between forty and sixty words per minute. Henderson and Rosie struggled to transmit any more than twenty words per minute. The maximum safe transmission time was ten minutes, restricting them to a two-hundred-word message each night.

While Henderson used the notes he’d made that lunchtime, carefully sorting all the facts in the order of importance, Rosie compressed them. The 106 characters of was slashed to the thirty-three characters of
I have viewed the official German invasion map at headquarters and you can regard the following information as authoritative
VWD OFFICL INVSIN MAP AT HQ.RGD INFO AS VG
.

When Rosie wasn’t sure if the compressed message was comprehensible, she’d get Paul or Maxine to read it back. If they didn’t understand she’d rewrite it.

‘I think we can get most of the pertinent information into two ten-minute messages,’ Henderson said, as he chewed the end of his pencil.

Rosie looked up from the notebook she was using to encode the message. Henderson’s key phrase was a short chapter from Dickens’ entitled ‘Mr Merdles’ Complaint’. Henderson knew the words by heart and over the last few weeks Rosie almost felt that she knew them herself.
Little Dorrit

‘Put the trimmings out for the chickens and see if there’s any eggs,’ Maxine said, as she handed Paul a mixing bowl filled with potato peelings and carrot tops. ‘You’d best get a move on if you want to listen to the news.’

Henderson glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost eight. As Paul headed out into the evening light, Rosie went through to the living room to warm up the radio they’d brought up from the pink house in Bordeaux.

There was a cool breeze as Paul headed outside. He didn’t want to stir Maxine up by complaining, but he was cross because the chickens were supposed to be PT’s job. As he hurried across the front lawn, Lottie the goat caught the smell of vegetables and thrust her head into the bowl.

‘Scoot,’ Paul ordered, but the goat didn’t take the hint so he tossed a few shavings off into the distance and gave her a shove.

The chickens knew food was coming and ran to the wire as Paul approached the cage, but he stopped because there were two cars coming up the road. None of the nearby farms was occupied and as this was the first traffic he’d seen since they’d moved in, he dropped the peelings and ran back to the house.

‘Cars,’ Paul gasped, as he broke into the kitchen. ‘I think they’re coming here.’

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ Henderson said, as he frantically folded the road map and stacked away the papers and the encoding grid. ‘Rosie, get back in here.’

‘I heard,’ Rosie shouted, ‘I’m just tuning the radio away from the BBC.’

Pas-de-Calais was a special military zone and listening to an overseas radio station was on the long list of offences the German Army deemed punishable by death.

‘They might search,’ Henderson yelled frantically, as he stuffed the map and paperwork into his briefcase. ‘Get these papers out of the house. Keep low so they don’t spot you.’

As Rosie raced out the back door with Henderson’s briefcase, Maxine walked on to the front lawn to welcome the two cars coming up the driveway. The first was a luxurious Citroën saloon, with Luc Boyle at the wheel and his wife Vivien in the passenger seat. There were two Germans in the Kübelwagen behind.

Luc pulled down his window as he came to a halt and Maxine saw that his wife was crying.

‘Whatever happened?’ Maxine asked, as Henderson stayed back in the house.

He’d made a contingency plan for a German raid and kept a loaded German service revolver under a paving slab out back. If the situation looked bad, he’d go out the back door, grab the weapon and sneak up on the two Germans.

‘Something to do with your boys,’ Vivien sobbed. ‘They’re in Calais with Dumont. We led the Germans out here because they didn’t know the way.’

Henderson strode out when he recognised the passenger stepping out of the German car. He was military police and Henderson had translated in several meetings with him before being reassigned to Oberst Ohlsen.

‘What’s the matter, sir?’ Henderson asked, in German.

The policeman pointed at the rear seats of the car. ‘You and your wife, get in. You must come to Calais at once and speak with Major Ghunsonn.’

Paul watched from inside the house as his surrogate parents climbed into the open-topped Kübelwagen. Henderson was trying to hold a conversation with the military police officer, but judging by the body language he was in no mood to listen.

Lottie the goat bleated with disgust before scrambling off as the two cars used the front lawn to turn around. When the headlights disappeared from view, Paul slumped into a dining chair and felt sick with nerves.

A moment later the door creaked and Rosie came in. ‘What was that all about?’

‘Maybe they found the radio,’ Paul suggested.

‘I doubt it,’ Rosie said. ‘I mean, if they thought we were spies they would have taken everyone and turned the house upside down looking for clues.’

‘Plus Luc and Vivien were there, and earlier …’ Paul tailed off, but Rosie glowered at him.

‘Earlier what?’ Rosie snapped. ‘Spit it out.’

‘We robbed this house. Like, a really nice one with loads of fancy stuff in it. Maybe they found out.’

Rosie bristled with contempt. ‘I know Marc and PT are always up to no good with that fat moron Dumont, but why did you get involved this time?’

‘I didn’t really,’ Paul explained. ‘I only wanted to tag along and not be such a loner for once.’

‘What a mess,’ Rosie sighed. ‘I mean, robbing a house. It’s not like there’s anything we badly need and it’s attracting attention that we can do without.’
complete

‘So what do we do now?’ Paul asked anxiously. ‘What if Maxine and Henderson don’t come back? What about all those notices the Germans put up everywhere about shooting people for doing any tiny little thing wrong?’

Paul backed up because Rosie had the look she always got when she was about to thump him.

‘Boys!’ Rosie shouted. ‘You’re total morons, all three of you.’

‘So what do we do?’ Paul asked.

‘Henderson’s got all that information to send. I’ve already started encoding the message.’

‘You’re still going to transmit?’

‘Absolutely.’ Rosie nodded. ‘And if Henderson isn’t back we’ll sit up until two and listen to the return message too. I’ll go out the back and grab Henderson’s briefcase. You’ll have to help me go through his notes and work out which information is most important.’

*

PT, Marc and Dumont sat against the wall of a bare hotel room. Strip out the furniture, strengthen the doors and weld bars over the windows and just about any hotel makes a prison. There was a bucket on the floor as a toilet, which created a nauseating stink because Dumont had used it to throw up. A bare bulb illuminated walls and a floor spattered with blood and down the hallway a woman screamed horrifically as the military police worked her over.

Marc was in the best condition out of the three boys, but he almost wished that he was drifting in and out of consciousness like PT or paralysed with fear like Dumont, who still had the noose around his neck. As the woman’s screams pierced the walls, Marc looked at a crusted pool of blood on the floor. Death had never felt closer.

He tried not to think, but it was too important not to.
Whose blood was it? Men or women’s, kids as young as him? What had they done? Had they begged for mercy? Was it a bullet through the head or something slower or more painful? And how idiotic was it to earn yourself a spot in this hell hole because of Dumont’s stupid idea?

‘Pass the bucket,’ Dumont said.

Marc got to his feet. The bucket had been emptied but not cleaned out properly and there were bugs and streaks of shit stuck all over the outside, so he used his boot to sweep it across the floor. He couldn’t bear to watch or smell Dumont throwing up again and the furthest away he could get was to stand up near the door and peek out through the spyhole.

The corridor outside hadn’t changed from when it was a hotel, with moody lighting and carpeted floor.

‘What can I know? What can I know?’ a man screamed. ‘Just kill me now.’

As Marc shuddered, Dumont groaned. A second later the door burst open, knocking Marc into the room. It was Major Ghunsonn, accompanied by the bespectacled brute who’d worked Dumont over in the lane.

‘So,’ the major smiled, speaking in German as he loomed over Dumont. ‘This is the little cockroach that pissed in my car?’ Then he switched to French so Dumont would understand. ‘I think he’s a spy. Don’t you, grenadier?’

‘Absolutely, sir.’ The grenadier nodded.

‘You know what we do to spies, cockroach?’ the major said, as he made the shape of a gun with his fingers. ‘
Bang
.’

‘Please,’ Dumont sobbed, ‘I’m sorry.’

The major ignored Dumont’s plea and resumed talking in German. ‘Grenadier, I want that fat bag of shit on the firing-squad list for tomorrow.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the grenadier said enthusiastically. ‘What about the other two?’

‘Tell the police to take them down to the holding cells for a couple of days. Make sure they get a few lumps knocked out of them and then send them home. We need to give these French peasants a clear message about what happens to people who mess with our equipment.’

Marc spoke in German, ‘Major, sir,’ he said meekly.

The twelve year old trembled as the two Germans swivelled towards him. ‘Something to say?’ the major asked.

‘Dumont’s parents are wealthy,’ Marc explained. ‘Perhaps they could pay for the damages or something.’

There was a sharp crack as the major knocked Marc to the floor with a hard slap.

‘What about you?’ the major growled. ‘Are parents wealthy? Maybe you could take Dumont’s place. I’m a sworn officer of the Reich. How
your
dare
you suggest that I’d take a bribe.’

*

Three floors below, Vivien Boyle sat in an interview room, bawling, as a female translator explained that her son had confessed to urinating in a German officer’s car and that Major Ghunsonn had ordered him to be put before a firing squad at noon the following day.

‘He’s a simple boy,’ Vivien wailed. ‘He wouldn’t have known what he was doing.’

Maxine stood behind. ‘What about my two?’

The translator patiently explained that Marc and PT would be released in a few days. As Luc Boyle hugged his desperate wife, Henderson backed out of the room and searched for a telephone.

‘Aren’t they entitled to a trial?’ Luc asked.

‘Criminal offences are dealt with by French police,’ the translator explained. ‘Offences against the German forces are dealt with in summary fashion. No lawyers, no courts.’

Henderson walked down a long hallway and found a public telephone near the reception desk in what had previously been the hotel lobby. He picked up the receiver and asked the operator to connect him to the army headquarters where he worked.

Army HQ was permanently manned, but there was only a skeleton staff at night. It took several minutes to get one of the operations staff to pick up the telephone and some smooth talking to get the switchboard operator to hand over the number of Oberst Ohlsen’s quarters. Luckily the Oberst was in his hotel suite across town.

‘Sir, I know this is a terrible liberty,’ Henderson explained meekly, ‘but my oldest son and two of my nephews got themselves involved in something rather stupid and have landed themselves in a cell at military police headquarters.’

‘I see,’ Ohlsen said suspiciously. ‘What is something stupid?’
exactly

‘Something to do with urinating in a Kübelwagen. It’s wrong, I know, but boys often do such things.’

Ohlsen’s tone became more jovial. ‘Was that Major Ghunsonn’s Kübelwagen, by any chance?’

‘Probably,’ Henderson said. ‘I mean, how often do your Kübelwagens get urinated into?’

‘Good point,’ Ohlsen said cheerfully. ‘Ghunsonn’s a pompous prat. Never would have made any kind of rank if he hadn’t married the daughter of a well-connected general. I’ll put a call in to the duty commander.’

‘Sir, that’s ,’ Henderson said, gushing with genuine relief. ‘I owe you a great deal and I assure you that I’ll be thrashing those boys to within an inch of their lives when they get home.’
wonderful