Liquidate Paris (31 page)

'They're out searching for something,' murmured Porta, as we took cover again.

'Us, I shouldn't wonder,' said Little John. 'I reckon it's those coppers gave the alarm. You should've let me finish 'em off when I wanted to.'

Somewhere close by we heard the clatter of a machine-gun. A group of the field police at once jumped down and went running off into the blackness. They returned a few minutes later with a couple of youths in handcuffs, tossed them into the vehicle and went on their way. This sort of scene was by now fairly routine in Paris. It was the nightly war fought by both sides, spreading terror throughout the city. Innocent or guilty, citizens were hauled from their beds and taken in for questioning and torture; German soldiers were found with their throats slit; small children were beaten and shot. It was the start of the reign of brutality that was to mark the liberation of Paris.

We hid the carcass in a darkened doorway and set off down a side road to take a look at the bridge. In two hours' time, as Heide repeatedly informed us, it would be day.

'And you're not thinking of carting that thing about the streets of Paris in broad daylight, I suppose?'

'Why not?' demanded Porta, aggressively. 'If you ask me, it looks a damn sight more suspicious running round with it at night!'

'My God!' said Heide. 'Anyone sees us with that whacking great lump of meat and we'll have half Paris at our heels. They'll knife you in the back for a bit of bacon rind these days, never mind a whole pig.'

The bridge, so far as we could ascertain, seemed to be unguarded. We walked back to fetch the pig arid found an old crone staring at it, her eyes glazed, her mouth open, her hands clasped together on her stomach.

'Jesus Mary and Joseph!' she cried, as we approached her. 'Messieurs... monsieur'--she clutched at Porta, who happened to be in the lead--'have pity on an old woman! Never a word have I said against the Germans! Never a one! My husband deserted in the first war and he's never fired a gun since!'

Her voice rose both in pitch and in volume. Porta began shouting back at her in his own brand of French. She had the edge on him in vocabulary but on the other hand his voice was louder. For a while they fought a running battle, until at last Porta shook himself free of her frenzied grip and roared loud enough for half Europe to hear him.

'Me chef! Pig my friend! You savvy? You no savvy, then you die!'

Porta began firing an imaginary machine-gun. The old woman spat at his feet, moved back a pace and. stood malevolently gleaming at us.'

'Lovely French,' said the Legionnaire, admiringly. 'Couldn't do better myself.'

'Well, I think it's pretty good,' admitted Porta, modestly. 'When you belong to an invading army I think you should take the trouble to master the lingo.'

'I quite agree with you,' said the Legionnaire, with a grave face.

There was a warning hiss from Gregor, keeping watch in the road.

'Careful. Trouble's coming.'

Porta instantly pulled out his revolver. Little John was already toying with the length of steel wire that never left his pockets these days. The trouble approached, in the shape of two youths, both in their early twenties, walking side by side with their hands in their pockets--a sure sign of the times. The Legionnaire stepped out suavely to meet them.

'Bonsoir, messieurs. Ou allez-vous?' (Good evening. Where might you be going?)

'Prendre l'air. C'est defendu?' (To get some air. Is that forbidden?)

'Pendant le couvre-feu, oui.' (During the curfew, yes.)

The two youths stood eyeing us, seemingly unsure of their next step. Porta flicked back the safety catch of his revolver.

'Well?' said the Legionnaire, softly.

There came the sudden sound of men marching. Heavy boots on the paving stones. Harsh voices talking in German.

'Patrol!' hissed Barcelona.

We pressed back into the doorway. If a patrol found us red-handed with our booty we should have no choice but to shoot it out with them.

The two youths had crowded into the doorway with us, as anxious not to be seen as we ourselves. The old crone was suffocating somewhere in our midst, with Little John's hand over her mouth. The Legionnaire tucked the butt of his gun under his arm and prepared to fire a whole burst into the first person who tried interfering.

The patrol came in sight on the opposite side of the street. Eight men with the familiar steel helmets and the half-moon badges. At their head was an Oberfeldwebel. By the looks of him he was one of those who was unable to sleep easily in his bed if the night's work had not produced at least a couple of corpses.

The patrol passed by unsuspecting and Porta lovingly caressed the head of the dead pig.

'No doubt about it,' he said. 'They'd give a lot to get their hands on you, my fat friend!'

The Legionnaire turned back to the two youths. In the general emergency they had pulled out revolvers. That was no surprise: we had known they must be carrying them. But it was a matter of some interest that they should be P.38s--the revolvers used in the German Army.

'Nice weapons you got there,' remarked the Legionnaire. 'Where'd you pick them up? In a kids' toyshop?'

'We found them.'

'You don't say?' The Legionnaire's-eyebrows went up. 'You're sure Father Christmas didn't bring them? They're very much in vogue just now, so they tell me.'

'What's it to you where we got them from?' demanded the youth, defiantly. 'What do you intend to do about it? Go running to the Gestapo?' He laughed. 'Not likely! You weren't too keen to get mixed up with that patrol just now, were you?'

The Legionnaire shot out a hand and caught him by the collar.

'Any more talk like that, pal, and you're for the high jump!'

'Why don't we get rid of 'em both and be done with it?' urged Little John, fingering his length of steel wire.

The second of the two youths, who had not so far spoken, now moved forward and spread out his hands peaceably.

'Surely there's no need for all this animosity?' he said.

In German. In a Hambourg accent. He smiled as we stared at him.

'Yes, I'm one of you. So I don't see the need for us to fall out. What you're doing here'--he glanced down at the vast pink body of the pig--'is strictly illegal and liable to cost you your lives if you're caught. Well, so what? I'm in the same position. I deserted from the Army. That's liable to cost me
my
life if I'm caught. So why can't we call it quits? And by the way,' he added, 'my name's Carl. He's Fernand.'

'So,' said the Legionnaire, narrowing his eyes. "You're deserter, are you?'

'A deserter and a saboteur!' Heide advanced upon them in one of his swift and menacing rages. 'You know what we do to your sort? The same as you did to four of our men the other day. They were shot with a P.38,
now I
come to think of it----'

'We've never fired on any of your lot,' said Carl, swiftly. 'That is one thing I couldn't do, I promise you that.

'You expect me to believe the word of a deserter?'

'Shut up!' said the Legionnaire, curtly. He pushed Heide out of the way and turned back to Carl. 'What arr you doing out here at this time of night, anyway?'

Carl shrugged a shoulder.

'Business...You know how it is.'

'Hm. And suppose we let you go on your way, nice and peacefully, like you suggest? What guarantee do we have that you won't go running straight to the first patrol that comes your way?'

Carl laughed.

'You're joking, of course! You really think we'd risk our necks on account of a lousy pig? I couldn't give a bugger if you'd nicked a thousand flaming pigs! No, my friend. She's the one'--he nodded towards the old woman, who had been forgotten in the general commotion--'she's the one you want to watch out for. She's liable to start gossiping to her pals in the market place and before you know it the news will be half-way round Paris. I should kill her, if I were you. Life's cheap these days, no one's going to miss her.'

The old woman shrank back against the wall, shrieking.

'Stop that row!" snapped the Legionnaire. 'What's the matter with you ? Anyone laid a finger on you yet?'

'She's the concierge over the road,' said Fernand. 'She's got no business to be out of doors at this time of night. We've been toying with the idea of getting rid of her for some weeks now.'

The old woman shrieked and threw herself sobbing at Porta's feet, clutching him round the ankles. The Legionnaire caught her by the shoulder and pulled her up.

'Listen to me, old woman. You just watch your tongue if you want to stay alive, O.K.? One squeak out of you and you've had it. And don't forget that from now on you're a marked woman. Right?' .

She scuttled away like a crab, back to her own building. Carl and Fernand accompanied us to the end of the road.

'How the hell do you expect to get back with that flaming great thing?' demanded Fernand. 'It's not exactly what you'd call inconspicuous, is it? You'll certainly never get over the Seine with it. Every bridge in Paris is guarded.'

We were still hoping that the little Notre-Dame bridge would be safe
to
cross, but we had left it too late.

'There was no one there half an hour ago!' complained the Old Man, bitterly.

Fernand shrugged.

'You must have been mistaken. Or else it was a fluke. You can see for yourself how it is.'

Sure enough, there were a couple of armed policemen guarding the far bank. We stood frowning, and from behind us came the sound of an approaching Kubel.

'Ditch the pig!' hissed Gunther.

With one quick movement Barcelona and I tipped up the bicycles and the pig went flying over the hedge into the square of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. There was a startled cry from the other side of the hedge. The pig had fallen on two sleeping tramps, who were now sleeping no longer but running as fast as their rags would allow down a side street. It was doubtless the first time in their lives that manna had descended from heaven upon their very heads, and they had been too terrified to take advantage of it.

We were stuck on the wrong side of that bridge for almost an hour and were no nearer to finding a solution to our problem. Heide was still obstinately repeating that we should never have come in the first place. The Old Man was monotonously moaning beneath his breath, and Fernand had pointed out not once but at least a hundred times that every bridge in Paris was guarded and the task was impossible.

'We could always swim?' suggested Porta.

'And tow the pig behind us?'

'Throw the pig away,' grumbled the Old Man. 'It's more trouble than it's worth.'

A fierce argument between, him and Porta.

'One of us could swim across and clobber the guards,' I said.

And I looked hard at the Legionnaire, who was adept at that sort of thing.

'Anyone kills those bloody guards,' snapped Heide, 'and we'll all have our necks in the bloody noose.'

'So what do you suggest?'

'Dump the pig.'

'Dump the pig?' repeated Porta, dangerously.

'That's what I said. Dump the pig. I told you right from the start we should have had a plan, but as usual I was overruled. Oh no, they said, play it by ear. Leave it to chance. We can't be bothered with a plan. Well, look what's happened. Just what I said would happen. Here we are stuck with a monstrous great pig in the middle of Paris----'

'Here, where's Little John got to?' demanded Barcelona, trying to create a diversion.

'I don't know and I don't care,' said the Old Man. 'We should never have come on this trip in the first place.'

'Exactly what I've been saying all along, only no one ever listens to me. If you people occasionally took a bit more note of what I had to say----'

'It's obvious,' declared Fernand, as if he were about to come up with a new piece of information, 'that they're not going to leave a single one of the bridges unguarded. They're not fools. Leave one unguarded and you might as well leave them all. You'd have illegal traffic going over it all night long. It stands to sense----'

The conversation continued in increasingly irritable circles. I don't think any of us noticed the return of Little John until he suddenly tossed something into our midst with a loud 'Ha!' of satisfaction.

What's that?' said the Old Man, gloomily.

Little John gave a proprietary beam.

'What's it look like?'

We all studied it closely, and the Old Man hunched an indifferent shoulder.

'A coffin.'

'Got it in one! It is a coffin. It's a coffin for putting pigs in.'

You had to hand it to him. He didn't have much brain but he certainly came up with some bright ideas.

'Where the devil did you get a coffin from?' asked the Legionnaire, admiringly.

'Oh, I just picked it up. I was walking round looking for things that might be useful and I saw this coffin in an undertaker's yard. So I picked it up and brought it along.'

'Will the pig fit?' I said, anxiously.

The pig fitted to perfection. We put it in and nailed it up, waved farewell to Carl and Fernand and set off at funeral pace across the bridge. The guards stood respectfully to attention as we passed. Porta took the opportunity to bare his one tooth and let a few tears trickle down his cheeks, where they left clean streaks among the grime.

It was growing light and Paris was waking. We received many sympathetic glances as we marched past with our coffin. Redcoat and Janette were waiting for us in the bistro, but at the sight of the coffin Janette gave a loud scream and rushed out to the kitchen. Even Redcoat looked a bit bothered.

'An accident?' he said.

He counted us up and wrinkles gathered in his forehead.

'Nobody's missing----'

'We thought it as well to be prepared!'

'Hang on,' said Porta, as we unceremoniously dumped the coffin on the kitchen floor. He turned to the Old Man. 'What was the name of that pig they had in olden times?'

'Who had?' asked the Old Man, patiently.

'The gods and things. Odin and Thor and all that lot.'

'I haven't the faintest idea.'

'Odin,' supplied Barcelona. 'It was Odin that had a pig. What was it called?'