Ormerod's Landing (25 page)

'I wish I'd thought of that,' said Ormerod.

The German grinned. 'I hope you are better soon,' he said. He stood up and moved on. He shook his head sadly when he saw Bailey's youth and his wound. Ormerod watched him sorrowfully. He had a very strong suspicion that this would be General Wolfgang Groemann's last day on earth.

Lunch was served in the ward and Ormerod began to wonder when anything was going to happen. Without any hope he asked Bailey if he had ever heard of a man called Smales who had been at Bagnoles. Bailey shook his head. Ormerod wondered how far he could trust Marie-Thérèse word that Smales would be located for him. Not far, he had to fancy. Not when she had her own business occupying her mind. And today, after whatever happened, he knew they would have to be on the run and in hiding again. At two o'clock precisely the frightened French doctor came through the ward and gave Ormerod a small, petrified glance. Something was going to occur. Almost at once the sleeping man in the next bed sat up. Turning to Ormerod as if he had known him for years he said in French-English: 'Get your clothes on you.'

Ormerod stared at him. The man looked amazingly like a baby in the swathes of dressing. He had a young, puffy face and blue eyes. Ormerod glanced towards Bailey, already feel-ling somehow ashamed at his cheating. Fortunately, Bailey was dozing. Like a man who knows he is descending into the chaos of a nightmare but can do nothing to stop himself, Ormerod rose from the bed and removed his clothes from the bedside locker. Hardly taking his gaze from the bandaged

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man in the next bed he began to dress. An afternoon somno
lence had settled on the ward. Sunshine through the big win
dows lay unrolled on the floor and across the beds. The bandaged man said: 'I am Henri. Do as I tell you.' He was putting his own clothes on now, a hospital blue jacket and
trousers and a grubby white shirt. For some obscure reason
Ormerod wondered if he would take his bandages off. He did,
quickly releasing them and unwinding them like some resur
rected Egyptian mummy.

'Lock the door at the end of the ward,' ordered Henri. 'We have arranged as far as possible that nobody will interrupt, but we don't know. You have no gun?'

'No, I thought it would look silly in here.'

Henri did not appreciate the cynicism. 'They will bring guns for us,' he said. He turned and looked out of the window to where the green lawns of Bagnoles stretched down to the shore of a calm water that reflected the cruising October clouds. 'This,' he said with satisfaction, 'is the perfect sniper's window.'

'Oh, Christ,' said Ormerod quickly, realizing fully what they
were going to do. God, he would have given half his expected
life to be out of that place then. But he was trapped with it. He stared at Henri with a mild misery. I said lock the door,' repeated the Frenchman.

'We're not going to get away with this business,' Ormerod
whispered desperately, as if he had to make some sort of protest.

'Do not be afraid, my friend,' smiled Henri. 'There is nothing to stop us.'

The Frenchman began pulling his shirt over his head. He looked through the aperture of the neck at Ormerod and stared at him as if surprised he was still there. 'Monsieur,' he said, hard and quiet, 'go to the door.'

Ormerod looked stupidly about him. Their rising and their
conversation had all but gone unnoticed. He walked unsteadily to the ward door, the terrible feeling of the thing beginning to grasp him. He closed it with casual carefulness and slotted the bolt. He turned and saw Henri regarding him with suspicion. He nodded as if to say, 'I've done it,' then shuffled

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back between the beds. Henri was standing watching the door as if expecting someone. 'My friend,' he said, when Ormerod was near enough, 'today you are with us or you are against us. We do not need a referee. Be careful. Because either we will shoot you or the Germans will shoot you. Or perhaps both.'

A light jumped into his eyes and Ormerod saw that Jean Le Blanc had come through the door at the other end of the ward, his head wobbling like that of a carnival giant. Marie-Thérèse entered after him and then a third figure, a man unknown to Ormerod. This man carried a case in which Ormerod guessed immediately was a rifle with a telescopic sight. He was right.

The intruders had still caused little stir in the ward. Most of the patients still dozed. Now Marie-Thérèse closed the door behind her and called out: 'Will everyone please pay attention.' She said it first in English and then in French. The wounded men awoke, grumbling at the interruption. Some sat up to see what was happening, some had to remain flat. Ormerod watched Bailey wake and painfully turn his good eye onto the group. He saw the unique expression of single sur
prise in the eye as the young man saw he had dressed and was
with the intruders.

'What's happening?' he asked Ormerod. 'What's going on?'

'We are friends,' Marie-Thérèse said loudly so all the ward
could hear. 'Comrades. We have come in the name of France and England and their allies. All we ask is that you stay where you are in your beds and do not move or try to interfere. Everything will be done quickly and nobody here will suffer. It is all part of the war for which you have been wounded.'

While she spoke Jean Le Blanc had gone to the window. He looked down onto the lakeside and a satisfaction came into his face. Marie-Thérèse walked to Ormerod and handed him a pistol. He felt almost ashamed as she gave it to him and he let it drag down by his side. He could see Bailey staring at him disbelievingly with awful lonely eye. Marie-Thérèse knew he needed to be told. 'It is all right,' she whispered. 'It is the correct thing, Dodo.'

It was too late to argue anyway. Henri had also been given

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a gun and had stationed himself by the door through which the group had arrived. He sat at the bottom of a bed nursing a pistol and watching the stairs outside. The man who had carried the case now undid it and brought out the rifle in two parts, plus a tripod and, lastly, after he had assembled the the other components, a telescopic sight. He briefly laid the sight on the bed that had been Ormerod's and the Englishman looked at it with slightly more apprehension than he looked at the rifle.

Bailey suddenly started to get out of bed, only slowly, but it was enough to make Jean Le Blanc turn on him and point his pistol. The young man sat down. He was ashen, his eye strangely seeming to be in the centre of his head. 'But you can't,' he whispered. 'You can't shoot anyone here. Not
here.'

'You will see,' said Le Blanc. 'Return to your sheets.'

'Who?' Bailey said, not appearing to have heard. 'Who is it?'

'Bailey, son, get back into bed, please,' pleaded Ormerod.

A man sat up abruptly across the ward. 'I know,' he said in a strangled way. He had a dressing around his throat. 'They're after the general! The man who came in here.'

'He is a German,' snapped Marie-Thérèse. 'Stay in your bed.'

Ormerod was looking wildly about. The patients were moving and muttering.

"The general?' Bailey was aghast. 'You can't. For Christ's sake, this is a military hospital. You can't do that
here,
I tell you.'

'This hospital is covered by The Hague Convention,' said a British officer across the room. His words were slow, and said with difficulty. 'They have kept to it. So must you. I am ordering you to leave. Get out!'

Jean Le Blanc raised his pistol but Ormerod pushed him quickly and fiercely aside and hurried across to the man in the bed. 'Listen, sir,' he said, 'for fuck's sake shut up. He'll kill you. He's a right bastard, believe me.'

The man appeared not to hear or even see him. He was staring at the gun they were assembling at the window. He moved forward. Ormerod felt Le Blanc raise the pistol al-

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most at his ear. He rushed forward, stumbled against the British officer, clumsily embracing him. The man also had a wounded leg and it gave way under him. With Ormerod still clutching him he staggered back almost comically and sat down heavily between the beds, bringing Ormerod with him. They lay on the polished floor, Ormerod on top. 'Sorry,' he gasped. 'Sorry about the leg.'

He got to his knees and looked around. Jean Le Blanc still had his pistol levelled at the British officer. Ormerod turned and raised his own gun at Le Blanc. 'Shoot him and I shoot you,' he said simply.

The domed Frenchman looked at him with incredible disgust. 'Today who I shoot is no concern for me,' he said. 'As long as I kill the Nazi. Nobody else matters.'

The interlude had enabled the British officer to get to his knees. Ormerod using one arm helped him to get back into his bed. 'Stay there,' he pleaded. 'For God's sake, stay there.'

The Englishman looked at him with a sort of dull hatred, but he did as he was instructed. From across the ward Bailey said to Ormerod: 'How did you manage to get mixed up with these bastards?'

'Our Government sent me,' said Ormerod succinctly. 'The same Government that sent you.'

'Voila,'
said the man who had been assembling the gun. He had taken no notice of what had happened behind him. Jean Le Blanc turned eagerly. Marie-Thérèse was still facing into the room, looking at the hostile men in pyjamas grouped around the walls. She had not looked at Ormerod at all. Henri was still watching the door. Now everything was still. An autumnal fly buzzed insidiously against the window but that was all.

With two or three flicks of his eyes Le Blanc saw that the gun was right; securely on its tripod and with the telescopic sight correctly aligned. He crouched and looked along its bare barrel. Even as he did so two German staff cars pulled up alongside the lake below. A fissure of a smile opened on his face. 'He is come,' he muttered. 'The man is here.'

Below them, six storeys below, General Wolfgang Groemann, having lunched at the officers' mess, stepped from his

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car onto the sunny grass. Einder was fussing again. Where was the boat? Where were the wounded soldiers? Where were the photographers?

He need not have worried. The News and Propaganda Department knew how to assemble its props and parts. As the general descended from the car a smart white rowing boat appeared, nudging its way around to the small bay where the cars had stopped. Two German soldiers, one with each of his arms in a sling, the other with a theatrical-looking bandage across his head and eye, were sitting on one of the cross-boards. Another soldier pulled back the oars.

'We shall not need the crew,' asserted Groemann as the boat came to the bank. I shall really do the rowing. I will not have it said that I only row for photographs.'

Annoyance flushed Einder's face. Any lowering of what he felt ought to be the general's prestige he looked upon as a lowering of his own. 'Are you sure, sir?' he said anxiously.

'Oh, for God's sake Einder, don't be such a washerwoman. Of course I'm sure. I've rowed a boat before, you know.' He looked out to the level, shiny waters of the lake.

Einder shrugged and grunted something to the sergeant holding the painter of the boat. The sergeant gave an order to the man at the oars and he left the boat smartly. The photographers took some pictures of the group on the shore, and then the general by himself. He was smiling after the photographs and began to take off his tunic. Einder's eyes were raised in shock. 'Sir!' he protested. 'Surely ...'

'Yes, surely,' Groemann affirmed stiffly. I cannot row a boat done up like a turkey.'

'But it will not look
correct'
protested Einder. 'Your
medals.
Your medals will not show.' He leaned closer to his superior. 'And, forgive me, my general, perhaps your lunch will.'

He knew he had scored his point. Groemann was more than conscious of his increasing stomach. No, Einder was right, it would not have been proper. He nodded his acknowledgement. 'All right, so I
am
a turkey.' He climbed into the boat, ignoring the helping hand offered by the sergeant, sat down and smiled at the wounded soldiers.

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The two men facing him sat as white as their bandages. He grinned at them. 'After this you get a medal,' he joked. 'You must be very brave to volunteer for such hazards. Maybe you have to swim.'

They smiled uncertainly. Not being able to salute or click their heels or come to attention they had no notion of how to confront the general. He eased their apprehension by shouting to Einder: 'Where are those photographers then? Come on, we want to be sailing.'

Obediently a larger boat propelled by an outboard motor came throatily around the grassy head of the park. Aboard were half a dozen men with cameras and a newsreel cameraman. 'We are to be film stars,' said Groemann encouragingly to his stiffly sitting passengers. 'Always I have wanted to be a film star.'

Awkwardly he began to row away from the bank. He could not remember at first which oar guided the boat which way and Einder watched apprehensively and with a certain measure of disdain. He did not think that a man of Groemann's rank should be so obviously enjoying himself with such pursuits and in such company. If it were necessary for propaganda, then do it; but to enjoy it was undignified.

Forty feet from the bank and the general finally remembered how to steer the little craft. The oars made pleasing patterns on the polished water. The general smiled and the wounded soldiers smiled diffidently back. At that moment the boat cleared a hanging willow which had been obscuring it to the window of the hospital ward.
'Tres bien,'
whispered Jean Le Blanc who was crouched behind the sniper's rifle. The words were to himself.
'Tres bien, tres bien.''

If he had intended to squeeze the trigger then, he had to change his mind, because the little craft on the lake swung erratically as the general rowed and Le Blanc was abruptly afforded only a view of the soldiers' backs as they sat in the passenger seat. Then the target cleared again, only to be once again obscured by the cutting across of the photographers' boat. He cursed through his teeth.